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we can't govern
Jul 21, 2017 · 7 min read

Yet another tempest has engulfed the Twitter teapot. For a platform that captures a tiny fraction of American adults, Twitter tends to overperform when it comes to generating drama. Journalists, pundits, and terminal political addicts all love it, and since all of their friends are on Twitter, they assume everyone else is too. I have to include this segment to properly contextualize the arguments that are currently playing out, but despite Twitter’s infinitesimal reach, the arguments there can still be notable in the sense that they reflect a larger struggle played out in the real world.

It began when famed Dirtbag Left podcast Chapo Trap House addressed the ongoing calls for Democratic unity in the face of Republican control of government. Will Menaker laid out his terms clearly:

However, to the pragmatists out there and the people who don’t like purity in politics, yes, let’s come together. But get this through your fucking head: You must bend the knee to us. Not the other way around. You have been proven as failures, and your entire worldview has been discredited. You bend the knee to us and then let’s fucking work together to defeat these things, not with fucking means testing or market-based solutions but with a powerful social democratic message.

CTH is rightly renowned for refusing to adulterate their message or fall into the trap of appeals to civility. Of course, the usual suspects — the right-wing Democrats who currently control the party, and see the rise of the Left as an existential threat — immediately fell into excited babbling about the racism and sexism of the Chapo boys and, inevitably, the Left as a whole. I am not interested in addressing those arguments as they 1) extremely stupid and 2) not made in good faith at all; the likes of Rebecca Traister, Sady Doyle, and Marcus Johnson are incapable of engaging earnestly even if they wanted to. Anyone who actually read the statement could immediately tell that it was a directive to the centrist wing of the Democratic party to relinquish control, not a crudely framed demand to submit to white male patriarchy. No reasonable person could interpret the remark that way, which is why many women and POC on the left have leaped to Menaker’s defense and echoed his sentiments. I have little to add on that score.

Instead, I’d like to address the reaction of Jeet Heer, New Republic editor and perennial Chapo Trap House invitee. Heer’s recent column showcases his displeasure at the “dominance politics” of Chapo Trap House. He wisely avoids the reactionary idpol trap and refuses to sink into the gutter. Instead, he uses his platform to condemn the rudeness and incivility of the so-called “dirtbag left” on two linked grounds: first, because it violates the egalitarian principles of socialism, and second, because tactically it hardens centrists against leftist entreaties.

Both of these positions do not survive analysis. Heer, by condemning the “dominance politics” of the left, betrays a surprising naivete about the nature of politics. It is tempting for me to write “the nature of politics in America” or “the nature of politics in 2017” but his misunderstanding is deeper and more universal. Politics is about power. It is about dominance. It always has been.

Lofty terms like “politics is the art of the possible” are misused by centrists to describe a sort of morally blank technocracy. They see political positions as, essentially, managerial. Living in the liberal world order at the end of history, they see their job as a sort of skilled labor, a manager who flips switches and turns dials to maintain a steady course. The final, perfected form of government has been achieved; all that remains is to ensure that it hums along undisturbed. Their blindness to the cruelty and failure built into the system left them unable to counter Donald Trump’s message of “American carnage” and led to the empty, vapid Clinton campaign and her ignominious defeat. They forget that politics is a moral struggle, a clash of values between people with fundamentally different visions, not just of the role of government, but of the shape of American life.

Republicans are working to reinstate a kind of feudalism where the laboring poor are little more than vassals to a tiny, entrenched rulership class. Democrats’ chief complaint often seems to be insufficient diversity among that exalted caste. They do not present an alternative moral vision. This is in large part due to their willful abandonment of politics as struggle. As the party of the managers and technocrats, they are constrained in their worldview by what is, unable to envision a better world; as the Republicans relentlessly drag the country to the right, the Democrats come with them, adjusting the borders of their imagination on a daily basis. In their world, rudeness is the ultimate sin, because it represents the rejection of a system that they agree is the final perfected form of government.

Saying that socialists cannot be rude because they are egalitarians is a bafflingly incoherent argument. It requires socialists to act like the rare fish dwelling in a tropical reef, hyper-adapted to their environment and unable to survive outside of it. It is most reminiscent of sneering accusations of hypocrisy thrown at socialists who own iPhones, subscribe to Netflix, or have jobs. “What, don’t you know capitalism made those?” Yes, we live in a capitalist world. We know that. Socialism is about a vision for a better world, not a delusion that that world has already come. If we lived in a socialist world, we would not need socialist organization; its very existence is a testament to the fact that capitalism is the predominant economic structure. The same goes for political tactics. We exist in an electoral system that necessitates hierarchy; for that reason, we must build a hierarchy, even as a temporary measure.

The irony is that, while they disclaim politics as a power struggle, the centrists have practiced “dominance politics” over the left for decades. Their boot has been on the neck of the left since the 1960s at least. When Keith Ellison, a black Muslim progressive, jumped into the race for DNC chair, the centrist wing of the party immediately set out to sabotage him. They nominated and funded Tom Perez and dumped opposition research on Ellison in an attempt to squash the left wing of the party. They have no problems with dominance politics when it is the center dominating the left; only when the left strikes back do they squawk in indignation. No matter how polite the left is, no matter how much it seeks to work in existing systems, the center will fight back as dirty as it can. This is because their opposition, far from being merely tactical as they claim (oh, he’s too far left for this country!), is ideological. Anyone imagining a better world than the dreary capitalist hellscape we live in today is a sworn enemy of the centrist technocrats, those who have already forsworn the possibility of anything ever getting better. By challenging the system you antagonize its guardians. Choosing to take the high road only and always is not an olive branch, it is a pre-emptive disarmament. Crude as they are, the barbs of the left expose the hypocrisy and venality of the Obama/Clinton New Democrats.

Finally, it is important to draw a distinction between the left’s treatment of centrist politicians, pundits and journalists and their treatment of the voters. We understand that a two-party system necessarily produces some pretty big tents, and we don’t need every voter to back us on every issue. You go to meet people where they are, and you find out how your platform can appeal to each voter individually. I would never, say, write off a quarter of the potential voters in this country as “deplorables.” But the talking heads, the journos, the two-faced Blue Dogs and New Dems? It’s open season on them. I don’t need to persuade Jonathan Chait, Joy-Ann Reid and Joan Walsh to come over to socialism. I just need the voters, and if the dead-enders and 8%s (so named because just 8% of polled Democrats disapprove of Sanders) want to be left behind, I’m ok with leaving them.

Let me be as clear as possible: centrists, you need us. For a long time, the left capitulated to you, accepting your argument that while we might not like your policies, we liked Republicans less, so we had to band with you to stop them. It turns out you can’t even stop them. You have nothing to offer us except dismal failure and humiliating defeat.

Politics is about power and dominance. It is fundamentally a clash of ideas, of moral visions. You have been losing continuously for a decade because your moral vision is cramped and ugly. It offers nothing except managed decline. You can’t argue with the results: a thousand state legislative seats, both houses of Congress, and the Presidency. Your vision has been tried, and it failed. It’s over. It’s time to try our vision. Power concedes nothing without a demand, so here’s our demand: you can unite behind us, or you can get out of the way. Many of you will become the Republicans you already were inside. At least your true nature will be on display for everyone to see.

Do you want to beat Trump? Do it under our colors. The left is rising. First the Democratic party, then the nation. If you’re willing to fight alongside the left, nobody will ask you to sing the Internationale or quote Das Kapital. We just expect your support in the struggle. If you won’t provide it, we will overcome you. We will sweep you away. We will bury you.

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we can't govern

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