U.S. leftists have a serious problem with dumping on anyone who achieves even modest levels of political notoriety or success. Someone with no audience and no pull is a pure, True Leftist. But as soon as they attract a following, or get in office, or have a chance at taking their ideas mainstream, they become a sellout, or a sheepdog, or otherwise too compromised to even critically support. Calling it a martyrdom template hits the nail on the head.
Faced with the intellectually challenging task of defending projects that didn’t always live up to our a priori ideals, with the task of understanding why they didn’t live up to those ideals, many opt for the doctrine of betrayal... Enthusiasm is proof of credulity, cynicism is proof of enlightenment — a hipster credo as much in politics as it is in art.
Posting about perfect leftist ideas is easy; going out there and trying to bend the real world towards those ideas is hard. And if you shit on people who are at least out there trying, well, you're smarter and edgier than everyone else, because having any hope of even modestly improving things is for suckers.
We'll never get anything done if we keep doing this. I'd rather have people who at least seem to be moving in the right direction than people who criticize while not moving anywhere.
Posting about perfect leftist ideas is easy; going out there and trying to bend the real world towards those ideas is hard. And if you shit on people who are at least out there trying, well, you’re smarter and edgier than everyone else, because having any hope of even modestly improving things is for suckers.
Yeah, and I think this is at least as important an influence as any Christian martyrdom complex.
It's embarrassing to admit that Western leftism is essentially politically irrelevant in the West, so it's much easier to say that AES don't deserve support. Then, they don't have to address the fact that there's nothing western leftists can do to materially aid AES even if they wanted.
We legitimately have not had a single political party or individual that hasn’t had their main goal be adventurism or personal profit.
This strikes me as overly-pessimistic speculation. We can't really know the personal goals of politicians (and those goals aren't as relevant as what said politicians do, anyway), and there's a bunch of evidence to the contrary (e.g., candidates not taking corporate donations).
There are local politicians who aren't reactionary and aren't imperialistic in any meaningful sense (they have about as much influence over U.S. foreign policy as you or me). Among national politicians, it turns into a conversation about what's "imperialistic" vs. a bad foreign policy opinion here or there, but you can certainly find politicians who are far better on foreign policy than the vast majority of Democrats.
My overall point is that we can either dismiss these people (who are at least trying something to make things better) over policy differences that rarely have any material impact, or we can push them on those policy differences while otherwise supporting the things they do that we all agree are good. I don't see the left accomplishing much with the first approach.
I think we have to keep shooting our shots, with the understanding that every opportunity we have to change things for the better isn't going to pan out. But some will, and if we keep moving people left and making gains here and there we can increase the odds of any given opportunity being successful.
It's far from ideal (especially given how pressing climate change and a dozen other enormous problems are), but it has a chance to work long term. And we have to try something.
I was thinking more of U.S. leftists who don't support other U.S. leftists who start to gain mainstream influence or power. After all, that's a place where U.S. leftists might reasonably have some impact. One thing this article doesn't touch on, that should be part of any discussion about U.S. leftists and China, is that our opinions have zero effect on reality (whatever those opinions may be). If every single U.S. leftist was united in opposition to China or in support of China, it would make no difference to China.
With respect to "not trying," I think a valid criticism of small-scale political activity (mutual aid networks, stopping sweeps of homeless camps) is that it's hard to see how that will translate into the type of mainstream influence/power leftists need to address big problems like climate change, imperialism, or mass incarceration. I wouldn't (and didn't) say that type of small-scale activity is useless, but I do think it's often over-praised because it's "pure," while mainstream efforts are often snubbed because they fail to live up to some idealistic standard. Ideally, leftists would do both -- they'd organize those mutual aid networks, but also support larger, more mainstream efforts to take steps in the right direction. We should see these as complementary strategies.
GOOD post
U.S. leftists have a serious problem with dumping on anyone who achieves even modest levels of political notoriety or success. Someone with no audience and no pull is a pure, True Leftist. But as soon as they attract a following, or get in office, or have a chance at taking their ideas mainstream, they become a sellout, or a sheepdog, or otherwise too compromised to even critically support. Calling it a martyrdom template hits the nail on the head.
Posting about perfect leftist ideas is easy; going out there and trying to bend the real world towards those ideas is hard. And if you shit on people who are at least out there trying, well, you're smarter and edgier than everyone else, because having any hope of even modestly improving things is for suckers.
We'll never get anything done if we keep doing this. I'd rather have people who at least seem to be moving in the right direction than people who criticize while not moving anywhere.
Yeah, and I think this is at least as important an influence as any Christian martyrdom complex.
It's embarrassing to admit that Western leftism is essentially politically irrelevant in the West, so it's much easier to say that AES don't deserve support. Then, they don't have to address the fact that there's nothing western leftists can do to materially aid AES even if they wanted.
deleted by creator
This strikes me as overly-pessimistic speculation. We can't really know the personal goals of politicians (and those goals aren't as relevant as what said politicians do, anyway), and there's a bunch of evidence to the contrary (e.g., candidates not taking corporate donations).
deleted by creator
There are local politicians who aren't reactionary and aren't imperialistic in any meaningful sense (they have about as much influence over U.S. foreign policy as you or me). Among national politicians, it turns into a conversation about what's "imperialistic" vs. a bad foreign policy opinion here or there, but you can certainly find politicians who are far better on foreign policy than the vast majority of Democrats.
My overall point is that we can either dismiss these people (who are at least trying something to make things better) over policy differences that rarely have any material impact, or we can push them on those policy differences while otherwise supporting the things they do that we all agree are good. I don't see the left accomplishing much with the first approach.
deleted by creator
I think we have to keep shooting our shots, with the understanding that every opportunity we have to change things for the better isn't going to pan out. But some will, and if we keep moving people left and making gains here and there we can increase the odds of any given opportunity being successful.
It's far from ideal (especially given how pressing climate change and a dozen other enormous problems are), but it has a chance to work long term. And we have to try something.
deleted by creator
I was thinking more of U.S. leftists who don't support other U.S. leftists who start to gain mainstream influence or power. After all, that's a place where U.S. leftists might reasonably have some impact. One thing this article doesn't touch on, that should be part of any discussion about U.S. leftists and China, is that our opinions have zero effect on reality (whatever those opinions may be). If every single U.S. leftist was united in opposition to China or in support of China, it would make no difference to China.
With respect to "not trying," I think a valid criticism of small-scale political activity (mutual aid networks, stopping sweeps of homeless camps) is that it's hard to see how that will translate into the type of mainstream influence/power leftists need to address big problems like climate change, imperialism, or mass incarceration. I wouldn't (and didn't) say that type of small-scale activity is useless, but I do think it's often over-praised because it's "pure," while mainstream efforts are often snubbed because they fail to live up to some idealistic standard. Ideally, leftists would do both -- they'd organize those mutual aid networks, but also support larger, more mainstream efforts to take steps in the right direction. We should see these as complementary strategies.