Interesting conversation with a Massachusetts liberal grandmother of a certain age—a long-time benefactor of many causes—who has real fire in her gut and there was no point in stopping her once she got going. I’m going to paraphrase.
“The whole point of being a liberal was to defend the working class and poor against the elites. Censorship was something we opposed. We didn’t like powerful corporate interests. Now look! The whole party is about the elites and complete disregard for the working class and poor. And this censorship with Big Tech is outrageous. And pharma? We used to understand that it was a corrupt industry. Now they run the government. My people are in charge! The whole party flipped the script. We are the enemy now. I cannot stand it. In fact, I’m disgusted beyond description.”
“It was the lockdowns. The elites closed everything and forced the working classes to serve them. The kids didn’t matter. The workers didn’t matter. The poor didn’t matter. The elderly didn’t matter. All that mattered was the elites and their interests. And then the economy fell apart. Religious liberty was tossed out. People weren’t even allowed to go to the gym to get healthy! And forget small business. They were all forced to close while the big-box stores stayed open. It was all about big business.”
“I once hung onto every word of National Public Radio and the New York Times. That has changed. Now they just push out the government line. I was raised under Watergate when the media was supposed to hold the government accountable. Now it’s the opposite. I don’t trust them. I even find myself agreeing with Tucker Carlson!”
“All my friends said there was no way they would take the vaccine because Trump was pushing it. Then the shot came out after Biden won and they all rushed to get it. When some people refused, they mandated it. The whole motivation was political. They cared nothing about science. It was a tribe rushing here and there based on nothing but loyalties. They even sacrificed their own bodies just to show that they were on the right team. Things have gone nuts!”
“I’m sure not giving to any of the organizations associated with the Democrats again. I might not even vote for them. My whole life I’ve been against Republicans but they are the only ones today making any sense. The whole agenda of my life to defend the working classes and poor and civil rights seems gone. And speaking of, what happened to ‘Black Lives Matter?’ They apparently don’t matter if they are skeptical of the potions pushed by Big Pharma!”
Ok, that was an earful. And I do wonder how many people for whom she speaks. The sheer isolation of party elites at this point is palpable. I feel like I’ve always known this. I recall watching the party conventions years ago and seeing nothing but a special-interest freak show. It was unions, crazy people, activists of various sorts, and people grasping for handouts.
But apparently it has taken many people much longer to come around to this point of view. The last few years do seem to have been a turning point. Traditional left-liberal ideology at least embraced things like the common good, worker rights, peace, and civil liberties. Those principles seem to be completely gone.
The union of the Democratic Party liberals with corporate elites does seem fairly recent. Maybe it’s been ten years or so. It was a generational change as elite-educated employees took over management and retained their socialist leanings despite working in private enterprise.
Management structures got so bloated that they were able to stay completely detached from customers themselves. These companies gradually mutated into divisions of government and other elites in their circle. The affections for free enterprise didn’t so much drain away but rather were never there in the first place.
So we developed this strange situation in which the richest elements of the social order had no affection for the actual mechanisms that allow societies to become rich. They cared nothing for where wealth came from. They just wanted more of it from whatever source. Their selfishness became palpable and utterly detached from principle.
As a result, the ideological structure of left-liberal progressivism has nothing in common with what it once was as recently as the Clinton days.
Is the party and even the world of liberalism itself ripe for massive disruption? It is actually possible. And this explains in part the candidacy of Robert Kennedy, Jr. He is polling very high among traditional party loyalists. He represents a turn back to first principles and a rejecting of this ruling-class/corporate invasion that has completely distorted all the values of the past. Maybe he is onto something.
It is indeed possible that once-loyal Democrats do indeed feel betrayed by the party, which is ever more nothing but a stalking horse for corporate/pharm/tech interests, the common good be damned. Will they sit by and let this happen without a fight? How many among them have to be disaffected before there is a revolt within the ranks?
There’s no question that the ideology of wokeness is a huge departure from liberalism as it was understood only two decades ago. Look no further than the fate of feminism: they are not even willing to stand up and protest as men take medals in women’s sports! They condemn blackface but drag shows for kids are great? How does this make any sense? If they cannot even see the trouble with that, there is something profoundly wrong.
So many people with whom I’ve spoken to recently have said the same thing and I agree. We are no longer in a position to luxuriate in ideological quibbles about details in philosophical parlor games. Everything we love and everything that constitutes civilization as we understand that term is very much at risk right now.
Left and right are obsolete. We are talking these days about a fundamental battle between despotism and basic humane values.
