Frustrated With the Left (Particularly Liberals)

Published at 10:14 on 19 December 2016

The frustration is the general lack of activity in regards to the threat Trump poses. Attitudes tend to range from fatalism to denial (the latter typically accompanied by attempts at normalization of the situation). I am not alone; those I have met who agree the situation is urgent are also frustrated at this same thing.

Part of it, particularly amongst liberals, may be the desire to avoid facing painful and unpleasant realizations about one’s own worldview. Realizations such as:

  • Liberals have been wrong about the right to keep and bear arms. Arming oneself is wise in the present situation, and it is dangerous that those on the Left have generally eschewed doing so, resulting in a situation where those who most need to be able to defend themselves now tend to have the least ability to do so.
  • “Urban liberal elitism” is not just a meaningless buzz-phrase lobbed by conservatives. It is very much a real thing which has caused very real problems. There is a lot of despair outside of liberal urban bubbles which privileged urban liberals haven’t been good at all at acknowledging. This has motivated the despairing to back a fascist demagogue.
  • Liberal politics has been insufficiently class conscious, because identity politics has substituted for class politics. (Note that identity politics is a good thing, but it’s no substitute for class politics. Both are needed.) This problem is most acute at the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, but many Democrats in the base have accepted it in the name or realpolitik, setting aside their own personal beliefs. Again, this has created despair which Trump has exploited.

The first two in particular tend to be painful and inconvenient for many liberals to face. But facing them must be done.

Facing ones’ own faults may be hard, but in that difficulty lies a silver lining: because the faults are one’s own, one doesn’t need to get any other side’s buy in to fix them, therefore they are relatively easy and simple to correct. If, that is, one is honest and faces them.

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