Teddy Roosevelt didn't bust trusts, pass food safety laws and generally piss off the rest of his patrician peers by appealing to the better angels of the nature of robber barons. You cannot compromise with someone who has every incentive to screw you over. And I know you know that there are limits. Trying to persuade, say, Martin Shkrelli to do his part is an exercise in absurdity and I assume you're too smart to try. Or the still-living Koch brother whose name I can't be fucked to remember. Or any given coal or oil baron. Hedge fund managers have evolved into a very successful parasitic niche in the system and they will not be dislodged easily.
In other words, these people are motherfuckers. They're going to fuck mothers, it's right there in the name.
I'm not saying you have to appeal to the barons or the oligarchs. I saying you don't have to co-op authoritarian strategy when appealing to the masses. The vote matters and the masses outnumber the rich and the wealthy by a large margin. That's what broke Obama through when he first stood on the convention stage in 2004 and got him the nomination and presidency in 2008. That's what Biden is doing now, at least within the party.
"Other"ing the problems, many of which are exacerbated by but by no means caused by wealth inequality, and simplifying the situation down to crude talking points only serves to embrace the kind of authoritarianism and blunt policy that exacerbates the issues rather than solving them. It dumbs down the electorate by not trusting them with the nuance that many of the biggest problems of our lives (Global Warming, Racial Disparities, Housing, Internet regulation, global trade, the Rise of China as an expansionist Han Surpemest Ethnostate, rising Authoritarianism, failing democracies, etc.) are going to need to actually address those issues. Authoritarian language and approaches to politics only serve to further legitimize authoritarian politics, and this is a time we
need to take a stand against that more than ever.
Democracy as an institution is crumbling because every party and movement that used to ascribe to it has abandoned its principles. First it was the conservatives, then the whole GOP. Now the rot has spread to the progressive movement, the movement that most needs democracy to survive in order to be able to implement its policy priorities because that is the only way to insure they last. Populist authoritarianism infects
everything that fails to resist its temptations because it removes the doubt and trepidation that comes with complex policy solutions to address foundational problems, instead reaching for simple solutions or, more often, slogans, to fill the vacuum left by indecisiveness worry. A policy dialog about dealing with immigration policy, the southern border, and the economic necessity of immigration in the US is replaced with "build that wall." A conversation about federal debt, national priorities, and the role of the government in the economy is replaced with "small government" and "read my lips." A nuanced discussion about expanding healthcare to the remaining millions uninsured while trying to not panic people about disruptions in coverage is replaced with a contest of who can scream "medicare for all" the loudest.
FOSTA/SESTA is what happens when you start down this path, a poorly-worded law that no one who tackles those issues on a day-to-day basis would have recommended.
Progressive die hards Sanders and Warren voted for it. Senator Ron Wyden,
arguably the most thoughtful senator when it comes to the ramifications of internet policy, particularly in the technology sphere, was one of two votes against it (the other being Senator Paul, who will vote against anything he interprets as limiting freedom[tm]). A bill to help victims of trafficking puts more people at risk because "it sounds good" and no one talked to people in the know about the actual balance of interests because no one except two senators wanted to be against a law that said it was fighting child trafficking.
Brexit is what happens when you start down this path: foolish act of self harm because one party played footsie with a reactionary set of immigrant and race-baiting backbenchers to steal votes away from Labour's working class base after they had been fed a diet of tabloid trash that made the EU and immigrants the woes of the British public instead of a serious examination of the pros and cons of one of the most important decisions the country had ever made.
Trump is what happens when a party abandons its pretense for caring about democracy and feeds its base a constant diet of slogans, simple (and often non-responsive) policy prescriptions, and race-baiting media figures for more than two decades.
I'm worried about a similar vein coming down the pipe out of the progressive movement, touting an isolationist foreign policy, a grossly oversimplified view of economics, and no respect for constitutional law, democratic norms, or basic rule of law. What we do and say today shapes the likelihood of that future, and I get very very very antsy when people start accepting those tactics, especially in the political sphere, because it's one more slide to a future where we are a democracy in name only.
theintercept.com
