Liberals Are Giving Up on America
Liberals Are Giving Up on America
In their despair at Donald Trump’s victory, liberal pundits are concluding that the masses, especially the working class, are irredeemably terrible. That’s apolitical nonsense.
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I'm not giving up on America. But for now I've given up on Americans.
The reason is that we agree on all of the concerns, working class families should be getting attention and support and they're not. The rich are eating us alive. Mainstream politics isn't helping.
But it's clearly substantially more the fault of the right, who are lying through their teeth to the working class while accelerating wealth disparities, anti-worker policies, and removing their upward-mobility as well as democratic, institutional and social protections they actually rely on.
And if Americans are so uninterested in facing reality that they'd rather be lied to than put in a little effort to actually check the candidates' policies, if they'll vote against their interests and give in to blatant propaganda and manipulation, when everyone is telling them what well happen... Well, what can we say but, "Ok, face-eating leopards it is. Enjoy. Let us know when you're tired of that."
I think the reason why Democratic politicians have so much trouble articulating their vision is that their voters will call them out on blatant lies, so their positions need to have some logical consistency, or else those politicians will not win their support.
Republicans are not so encumbered. I think their base enjoys being lied to.
The left is judged based on their absolute worst (and often just a strawman of the left) while the right is judged based on their best (or a vague sense of what the right represents to them).
That's part of it. The other part is that they can't be honest about their vision because it (perpetrating the neoliberal status quo) isn't actually what the working class wants.
Or rather, they can be honest about it, but then they lose. Then, of course, they learn the wrong lesson, blame anybody but themselves, rinse and repeat.
[Edit: LOL, I just realized I accidentally wrote "perpetrating" instead of "perpetuating." Oh well, it fits so I'll leave it.]