Yes. You are listing everything that happened bit by bit by bit. I saw friends and relatives and union comrades slip and slide away. Writers and speakers I respected drift off. Whispers turn into accusations turn into theories turn into positive .......facts? Well, your guess is as good as mine. A lot of it confused me. I felt angry that trans people I knew were being bullied and abused by both straight and gay men and women who didn't accept their change of gender. And some of the trans people related to me were busy denying freedom of speech for those they called Terfs. Which also concerned me in a different way, as freedom of speech denied quickly turns into authoritarian control. And the right to demonstrate against, or for, got curtailed, then banned, then illegal......
and I found myself writing across my most recent ballot paper " No candidate worth voting for".
Sadly, the old school left we belonged to has long gone. Going forward us old school leftists will align with some conservatives and many libertarians on the funding of wars in places like Israel and the Ukraine. We will also align with some conservatives on free speech. The grassroots movement will be different depending on every issue. Hopefully more people in the modern left wake up, like us, and stop working with the fake left elite.
I don’t really disagree with anything you say. However, a huge irony seems to be that ‘the left’ has won. You may well say it’s not the ‘real left’, but the MSM, Hollywood, universities for sure, and seemingly the administrative structures of the federal government are all aligned pretty well under some general leftist/progressive/woke/whatever banner. How does that fit in do you think? (I fully accept that they have abandoned most of what was cool about the left of the 60s-90s).
i guess since long before i was born, but certainly all of my adult life, those of us on what we have called the left would make a very important distinction between the actual left and the liberals in power who echo left ideas in order to gain popularity. the latter group -- that is, democratic party leadership -- has long shared power in this country with the anti-woke party. this way they can argue about culture war issues while the planet burns. no one is trying to put out the fire. if the left were in power, we'd be actually trying to put out the fires, not start more of them.
a key aspect in understanding fascism is understanding that fundamental to the fascist orientation is mimicking socialism. it's called "national socialism" for a reason. in an identical way, liberalism mimicks other aspects of a progressive worldview for purely opportunistic reasons. they take the most divisive, culture war-friendly things to argue about, and ignore the parts that would really galvanize their base. they do this because they have no interest in giving their base anything like what we want -- an egalitarian society, easily affordable housing for all, universal health care, an end to imperialist foreign policy, etc. thus, them being in political control is not at all an indication of our victory, but the story of our cooptation and defeat.
The fundamental problem is that a true left can’t exist in a liberal democratic political order. The goal of a “true left” should be to transcend liberal democracy, not carve out ways to make it slightly more psychologically tolerable for certain segments. A liberal democratic government has no real answer for racism, sexism, or homophobia because they require systemic change that this sort of political system is not prepared to handle. It certainly won’t acknowledge the material conditions that create them. At best, you might get a few concessions that are then chiseled away gradually until nothing is left.
I think Margaret Thatcher was fundamentally right that there is no “society” in a liberal democracy, just a bunch of atomized individuals doing their own thing. If there’s no society, there are no societal problems, just immoral individuals making bad personal choices. Thus, problems that require a societal response just become moneymaking opportunities for arms manufacturers, prisons, police departments, pharmaceutical companies, mercenary corporations, and the like.
It also has to be noted that the Old Left and much of the New Left consisted of people who were out and proud communists and socialists of various flavors. They were actively trying for something different, not just rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship we call liberal democracy. This, of course, is an absolute no-go in our political environment. If nothing else, the threat of communism gave American workers some leverage to get some concessions. One that threat was gone, that leverage was gone. At least the robber barons of old built socially useful things when they needed to launder their images (eg schools, libraries, parks), whereas our modern tech robber barons expect us to get off on their plans to form the Martian Free State or their efforts to upload everyone’s conscious into the Internet.
I think this is what woke-ism is all about, and it's driving a lot of people to the right. At least that's what I've seen.
The left needs to become a big tent again.
Yes. You are listing everything that happened bit by bit by bit. I saw friends and relatives and union comrades slip and slide away. Writers and speakers I respected drift off. Whispers turn into accusations turn into theories turn into positive .......facts? Well, your guess is as good as mine. A lot of it confused me. I felt angry that trans people I knew were being bullied and abused by both straight and gay men and women who didn't accept their change of gender. And some of the trans people related to me were busy denying freedom of speech for those they called Terfs. Which also concerned me in a different way, as freedom of speech denied quickly turns into authoritarian control. And the right to demonstrate against, or for, got curtailed, then banned, then illegal......
and I found myself writing across my most recent ballot paper " No candidate worth voting for".
Well said. And that’s coming from the right.
Sadly, the old school left we belonged to has long gone. Going forward us old school leftists will align with some conservatives and many libertarians on the funding of wars in places like Israel and the Ukraine. We will also align with some conservatives on free speech. The grassroots movement will be different depending on every issue. Hopefully more people in the modern left wake up, like us, and stop working with the fake left elite.
You nailed it again, David.
I don’t really disagree with anything you say. However, a huge irony seems to be that ‘the left’ has won. You may well say it’s not the ‘real left’, but the MSM, Hollywood, universities for sure, and seemingly the administrative structures of the federal government are all aligned pretty well under some general leftist/progressive/woke/whatever banner. How does that fit in do you think? (I fully accept that they have abandoned most of what was cool about the left of the 60s-90s).
i guess since long before i was born, but certainly all of my adult life, those of us on what we have called the left would make a very important distinction between the actual left and the liberals in power who echo left ideas in order to gain popularity. the latter group -- that is, democratic party leadership -- has long shared power in this country with the anti-woke party. this way they can argue about culture war issues while the planet burns. no one is trying to put out the fire. if the left were in power, we'd be actually trying to put out the fires, not start more of them.
a key aspect in understanding fascism is understanding that fundamental to the fascist orientation is mimicking socialism. it's called "national socialism" for a reason. in an identical way, liberalism mimicks other aspects of a progressive worldview for purely opportunistic reasons. they take the most divisive, culture war-friendly things to argue about, and ignore the parts that would really galvanize their base. they do this because they have no interest in giving their base anything like what we want -- an egalitarian society, easily affordable housing for all, universal health care, an end to imperialist foreign policy, etc. thus, them being in political control is not at all an indication of our victory, but the story of our cooptation and defeat.
The fundamental problem is that a true left can’t exist in a liberal democratic political order. The goal of a “true left” should be to transcend liberal democracy, not carve out ways to make it slightly more psychologically tolerable for certain segments. A liberal democratic government has no real answer for racism, sexism, or homophobia because they require systemic change that this sort of political system is not prepared to handle. It certainly won’t acknowledge the material conditions that create them. At best, you might get a few concessions that are then chiseled away gradually until nothing is left.
I think Margaret Thatcher was fundamentally right that there is no “society” in a liberal democracy, just a bunch of atomized individuals doing their own thing. If there’s no society, there are no societal problems, just immoral individuals making bad personal choices. Thus, problems that require a societal response just become moneymaking opportunities for arms manufacturers, prisons, police departments, pharmaceutical companies, mercenary corporations, and the like.
It also has to be noted that the Old Left and much of the New Left consisted of people who were out and proud communists and socialists of various flavors. They were actively trying for something different, not just rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship we call liberal democracy. This, of course, is an absolute no-go in our political environment. If nothing else, the threat of communism gave American workers some leverage to get some concessions. One that threat was gone, that leverage was gone. At least the robber barons of old built socially useful things when they needed to launder their images (eg schools, libraries, parks), whereas our modern tech robber barons expect us to get off on their plans to form the Martian Free State or their efforts to upload everyone’s conscious into the Internet.