Michelle Goldberg asks today why so many progressives have been moving to the right recently. Among the famous—Russell Brand, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Wolf—I think she gets it right: They suffered some kind of indignity from lefties and then turned on them.
For the great masses, though, I think the answer is simpler: They haven't. In fact, according to two reliable pollsters the number of people who identify as liberals has gone up over the past two decades:
Conservative ID, by contrast, has stayed steady this entire time.
But there's more to it, I think. The plain fact is that being a liberal is hard. You have to care about poor people and homeless people and Palestinians and trans people and the environment and Black people and the disabled and Hispanics and the neurodivergent and fast food workers and animals and undocumented immigrants and indigenous people and plastic straws and public transit and mass incarceration and DEI and white privilege and child workers and wage theft and lead pipes and educational equality and systemic racism and bullying and climate change and screen time and maternal mortality and social justice and fat phobia and antisemitic tropes and voter suppression and bank fees and racial stereotyping and income inequality and safe spaces and unconscious bias and football concussions and Black Lives Matter and eugenics and atoning for the past and food deserts and gender affirming care and neoliberalism and health equity and flying and the unbanked and restorative justice and toxic masculinity and biodiversity and colonialism and intersectionality and the global south and malaria and sexual harassment and microaggressions and dolphin-safe tuna and power relations and factory farming and stereotype threat and Davos and cultural appropriation and habitat loss and #OscarsSoWhite and gender identity and pronouns and whale hunting and police brutality and prosecutorial misconduct and Twitter and ableism and deeply problematic and heteronormativity and colony collapse and forever chemicals and body shaming and white saviors and mansplaining and gentrification and hate speech and plastic water bottles and the Bechdel test.
It's pretty exhausting caring about all this stuff all the time, and I'm not even counting issues that everyone cares about, like abortion or gun control. If you get overloaded by it all—and especially if you find some of these items sort of ridiculous to begin with—it's pretty easy to drift right, even if you don't go full MAGA.
They also often had some regressive views on social issues, that got overlooked at the time because they had left-wing economic views and sounded like Bernie Sanders supporters (and sometimes were). IIRC the "Red Scare" women were always kind of homophobic and such. Taibbi had some gross misogynistic stuff from his days in Russia.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of money available for contrarians who defect from the left. I imagine the money really helped the Taibbis and Greenwalds of the world - money not just from ample substack followers, but from right-wing rich patrons and organizations.
I agree about both Taibbi and Greenwald. They’re both making more money than they ever thought possible. Greenwald in particular is buckraking more money than his wildest dreams of avarice.
And, interestingly enough, by changing sides they’ve been protected from the consequences of their behavior (Tabbi) and “other” status (Greenwald’s homosexuality). In particular, Greenwald’s role as a Fox News Democrat is a seriously gross betrayal of his fellow homosexuals who are going to be targeted when the Republican Party is free to do so. Leading to a situation similar to Nazi Germany in which high ranking party members could be “sexual deviants” while ordinary people who were homosexuals were often sent to the camps.
Man, this is why you're my favorite blogger. Your posts are pithy and to the point. And they shine a light on matters that other people talk themselves into complicating. I can't remember when I've ever disagreed with you. (Your AI posts scare me and I really want to disagree, but I've got a sneaking suspicion you're right there too.)
Right on point, yes. Pithy, not so much.
I know what my credo is and it guides my opinion on all things: That we are all equal.
As a result of all being equal, we should care about the poorest, the weakest, those who suffer, those who are cast out, and those who need help, regardless of station. If you are Christian, you are commanded to wash the feet of the least among us. If you were Palestinian or an Israelite, you washed the feet of your guests without regard to who they were.
It takes conscious work to maintain fidelity to those values because we are all thoughtless, careless, selfish, and need a lot of "me" time. We are, as the Humanist would say, all imperfect but all important.
So yeah, "the plain fact is that being a liberal is hard." But I also think a lot of liberal scolds are misguided.
This. I don't think it is hard to care, I think it is hard to be beat up that you don't care *enough* or care *in the right way.*
"You can't understand me, you must understand me."
"You are inherently racist / sexist / transphobic."
Etc.
How hard is it to not be a bigot? It's a choice.
Ignorance isn't bigotry. It's what you do when you find out you were ignorant that makes the difference.
Realistically, though, lefties equally bought into prosperity gospel and happily voted to restrict development in their communities to "preserve our way of life", fought ADU rules, fought changes to grandfathering in property tax rates, fought zoning changes, etc... We like to think about and help the poor, but only if they will live somewhere else. Conservatives think they need a boot to the ass to put them right, liberals want to feed and house them...somewhere else.
Conservatives also want to do the ass booting somewhere else.
...based on what, exactly, Art?
Republicans exist. And when they can't get elected as Republicans, they'll lie.
J.B. Pritzker's commencement speech at Northwestern, this past spring: https://youtu.be/uWPFDpOJEME?si=6nj4joXxWcYFvqmp
I don’t think that being a liberal is that hard (though I get it that KD is exaggerating here to make a point). You just have to be in favor of prosperity as something that makes people’s lives better.
On income, economic growth, job growth, unemployment, the deficit… it’s no comparison. Liberals deliver better results every time. (Of course, this is why conservatives would like to change the subject to trans surgeries etc).
Liberals run better societies. It’s as simple as that.
This. Liberals run better societies.
It’s not “being” a liberal that’s hard. It’s easy. Being a liberal politician on the other hand is hard because that means having to come up with an attempt at policy to address a number of issues.
Being a Repub politician is so easy you can do it without even giving one rats ass about anything since having the government do nothing (other than punish) is all you need to know.
Well, when I lived in the Midwest, I felt this way. I felt like all the problems were due to Republicans and if we could just elect more Democrats our problems would be solved.
Then I moved to Portland Oregon, where everything is controlled by liberals, and things are not going well. I know what burning Fentanyl smells like now (it's nasty) and I've seen 9 yr old girls put on GnRH agonists, leading to growth retardation and extreme depression, because they saw I Am Jazz on TV in kindergarten and told their mom at age 6 they were like that, but really a boy in a girl's body.
There is crazy on both sides, is what I'm learning. Twenty years ago California was doing great with Democratic control, but there's increasing dysfunction (from reports of friends who live there). Humans are just human, and power corrupts, whether you profess to right wing or left wing feelings.
Matt Taibbi and others did not abandon the Left. The Left abandoned them. Matt Taibbi remains firmly committed to Liberalism. The Left has embraced illiberalism. And, for refusing to join the illiberal movement that Leftism has become, the Left then declares Taibbi to be a heretic who is guilty of wrongthink.
In “The American Press Is Destroying Itself” Taibbi asserts:
“[T]he American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
“The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation …
“They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ out loud to a data scientist fired from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!”
Taibbi is of course correct about all of this. And, on the one hand, I believe that debate is important; but, on the other hand, if you’re not at the very least willing to accept the serious nature of the problem posed by the illiberal left, I have to wonder if you’re worth wasting time on. Anyone who can still somehow cling to denialism about the illiberal left, at this point in time, may have simply lost touch with reality.
The Left has abandoned me as well. I personally believe that people should be judged primarily as individuals, not as members of an identity-based group. I believe, furthermore, that such judgements should based primarily on a given individual’s character, not on their immutable traits. And, when engaging in debate on these and other ideas, I emphasize the free expression of opinions rather than the safety of people who claim they could be “harmed” by encountering new, foreign, or potentially disturbing views.
But the modern Left doesn’t just think I’m wrong. For holding these and similar views, the modern Left judges me to be evil. People like me who disagree with Leftists aren’t just accused of insensitivity at best or racism at worst, we are in fact repeatedly told that our views are so harmful that they are genocidal.
In other words: Taibbi is right. The Left has lost its f*#ck$!g mind.
Taibbi is naive. What he's describing is human nature, not something endemic to the left.
@D_Ohrk_E1
If you are in fact interested in the reality of the situation, I recommend a new article by James Bennet on How the NYT Lost its Way.
It’s a horrifying tale of how the Leftists overthrew the Liberals @ America’s once most prominent newspaper, how journalistic neutrality was replaced with social justice warriors, and how a commitment to truth was a replaced with a commitment to Leftist views.
Taibbi, rather than naive, is well informed on these issues. There have been hundreds of articles by now documenting these Leftist excesses. And Leftism clearly constitutes a recognizable and distinctly illiberal movement.
Oh, when I say he's naive, I'm not saying he isn't well-informed; he's very smart and knowledgeable.
But, he's rationalizing his situation through the lens of confirmation bias, of a condition that exists within all of humanity. Therein, lies his naivete. The grass is not greener on the other side. Sour grapes.
Leo, Re your comment “a commitment to truth was a replaced with a commitment to Leftist views.”
i guess that’s why todays NYT front page has a headline “‘People snatchers’ for Ukraine use harsh tactics to fill ranks” that undercuts the paper’s strongly pro-Ukraine editorial position, while todays WaPo has a front page story on James Biden’s making money because of his supposed influence on his brother.
Both of these coming to a right wing site near you shortly.
Neither paper is perfect, far from it, but on balance their “commitment to truth” is much more apparent than their “commitment to leftist views”.
Methinks you protest too much.
I don’t think Tabbi is naive. I think his feelings were hurt at the same time he saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and decided to change sides.
Taibbi isn't naive. He's dishonest.
Dishonest with himself, yes.
And everyone else.
Um, you SURE DO "waste" a lot of time correcting the misbeliefs of us unwashed Libs, "Leo". "The Left" is the same tiny fraction of American society that they were when "Students for a Democratic Society" was belching out its own "illiberal" rantings in the '60's. There are maybe 10% of Americans who are moron Leftists and about three times that many who are moron Wingnuts. But most of the relatively sane "rest of society" think that people who mouth the selfish Libertarian bullshit you parrot are just sad, bitter, wanna-be billionaires with too much time on their hands.
If you were really the UberMensch you see yourself, you wouldn't have time to lecture this tiny, tiny subculture of the web. What a Loser.
@Anandakos:
“[P]eople who mouth the selfish Libertarian bullshit you parrot are just sad, bitter, wanna-be billionaires with too much time on their hands.”
In my post above, I promote liberty, equality, and freedom of expression. These concepts are the essence of liberalism. These values represent American at its best. And, in our modern world, there are only two groups that I know of who oppose them: MAGA and Leftists.
So, Referring to such ideas as Libertarianism is potentially misleading. There may indeed be some overlap between liberalism and cultural libertarianism. But I think most people are inclined to associate Libertarianism with an intense resistance to government (especially governmental interventions in the economy.) And that’s not the kind of thing that I’m emphasizing.
10% vastly overestimates the proportion of left-wing nutjobs.
I agree with both Taibbi and you completely about the woke left. But they are not the entire left. I've responded to their rise, and how awful they are, by affirming myself as belonging to the center-left, and drawing a clear distinction between center left and far left. I didn't used to draw such a crisp distinction, but it's become more important now to affirm that the cancelers don't speak for all of us, and that I can support a 70%+ top tax rate and free speech at the same time. I am sure that a fair number of people who would have otherwise been Democrats have become Republicans because they were mistreated by members of the woke left and they think that's the whole left. The center left needs to get louder to counter this.
"The center left needs to get louder to counter this."
+1 for that.
The loony left and the loony right have a lot in common in that both are authoritarian, yet hate the “deep state” government and are conspiracy prone. The difference is that the loony left aren’t actually in power and there are far fewer of them than the loony right. Somehow, nearly the entire Republican Party became the loony right. The loony left are still a fringe portion of the Democratic Party. I have long suspected that a lot of the 60’s era loony left are today’s loony right.
The loony left are totally a thing. I walked away from a favorite blog because they started down the path of screeching over "cultural appropriation". But you are right that it comes down to power. Loony lefties tend to get ignored while the loony right gets offered radio shows. The loony right literally invented the Only Fans platform before Only Fans was even a thing.
Just curious, which blog did you walk away from? I like a good slow moving train wreck.
You “walked away from a blog”?
Is that supposed to be the equivalent of trans high school athletes being thrown off their teams?
Puh-leeze.
'Woke left'
Woke means pro equal rights and respect.
So you're anti equal rights and respect?
Because that's what words mean. You do not get to steal someone's word and use it as an insult without being called out on it,
The most extreme left has no traction ao why are you afraid of them? And why use a racist meaning of a word to describe them?
Matt Taibbi was never committed to liberalism, often very explicitly. He routinely mocked liberals and the center-left. He adopted a pose of populist leftism.
Mostly, though, he was committed to Matt Taibbi. He was committed to the idea that, if you write really good prose, which he does, you don't need to learn anything about the subjects you write about. He was committed to the idea that, if you write really good prose, you can be thoroughly dishonest when you write it.
I've worked in the finance industry, and his pieces on the financial crisis a decade and a half ago were ignorant. He doesn't understand finance at all. He routinely omitted critical information, such as when he was bashing Barack Obama, without mentioning that the specific policies he was using to do so were actually implemented by the Bush administration and dismantled by Obama's team. But, hey, he can turn a really good phrase, and that's all that matters, right?
Disagree. Not that the Left isn't contradictory and extreme. That's why they call it the Left because, no matter what position you take, you won't be right. But your examples of their power are weak. The Left makes a lot of noise but they have no real power outside a few college campuses. And their power isn't 1/10000 as much as any right-wing millionaire or billionaire.
Indeed the right are +2 boycotts this year the left are 0.
Yes. And the noise they make on campuses is amplified far beyond its actual effect by right wing sites eager to stir up the panic du jour.
Unfortunately it seems to be working, forcing the rest of us to pay attention.
I’ll stick with @Crissa (somewhere above) that woke is just respect for people and celebrating our variety. Then tune out a lot of the noise.
Okay, but we have a two party system which means choices are limited.
It’s not a choice between Bach and Mozart. It’s a choice between McDonald’s and Wendy’s.
Decades from now, when a doctor signs your death certificate, it's going to list "logorrhea" as the cause.
Lol, oh goodness. Taibbi gives the game away when he reminds us that the great sin of the LEFT is trashing his reputation after it was discovered that he assaulted women. We must have free expression, but how dare the left judge me for my actions! Free expression is important for me, but not for you!
poor oppreassed Leo. I demand free expression, but not the kind of free expression that disagrees with me! How dare people dislike my commentary! We must have free expression, but how dare the left judge me for my actions! Free expression for me, but not for you!
Plus James Bennet from the Times! Lol, what a pick. Guy gets fired for a monumental goof and convinces himself its the evil Lefties that did him in.
There has always a segment of people that despises being judged by others and insists that any judgement of their own actions is a betrayal. Nothing is my fault, instead it is the fault of those judging me! HOW DARE THEY!
Its a sad, tired act every time.
Taibbi gives the game away when he reminds us that the great sin of the LEFT is trashing his reputation after it was discovered that he assaulted women.
It's sadder than this. You can decide for yourself whether the actual story makes Taibbi look better or worse.
What happened is that, in his memoirs of his time in Russia, Taibbi described committing sexual assault. Once people started reading them and publicly accused him of assault, he started backtracking. The woman he claimed to have assaulted said that it never happened.
So, Taibbi's defense against accusations of sexual assault, which I happen to believe, is that his "memoirs" are actually a work of fiction. Which means they fit right in with his journalism.
"The Left has embraced illiberalism. And, for refusing to join the illiberal movement that Leftism has become, the Left then declares Taibbi to be a heretic who is guilty of wrongthink."
Set aside Taibbi -- just cross his name out of this sentence and it still stands. I prefer the use of "apostasy" as it indicates the rejection of religious thinking, not just a different religious thought. And so much of the current lefty activist - and thus the loudest ones we have to react to - are a bunch of religious nuts. So yeah, you step away from them and try to get as much distance as possible to NOT be seen as one of them.
These same activists have made this uber-liberal city into a punching bag for the right ... not for the policies but for the illiberal qualities, for the pursuit of religious and not practical goals. We have one unit of government handing out tents to the homeless and another unit confiscating them (because tent encampments block sidewalks and make mobility of the physically disabled dangerous to impossible). We literally had the thug-left (yes, its a thing) come out and beat a group of feminists who dared to meet at a library - and for good measure the library closed its doors to the community for the day. Whatever happened to #believewomen? To respect for actual civil debate and disagreement?
The left stopped displaying the Stars & Stripes when doing so became associated with right-wing nutjobs - it doesn't mean they were less American. What we're seeing is a slow creep AWAY from the lefty activists. While I don't intend to move towards MAGA land, its inevitable that I will become relatively closer to them as I separate from this other pole.
Also ... note that Kevin's list doesn't include "Science". While I hate the "I believe in Science" signs I don't see a better way to achieve consensus and shared understanding of the world. My experience is that ALL activists like science only when it confirms their religious beliefs.
Because Republicans exist. If they can't get elected as Republicans, they'll still vote for the illiberal policies of stealing tents.
And you pretend they don't exist,
And as if Taibbi and the other 'the liberals left me' don't care - they're pro stealing tents.
So ... Republicans are like some kind of lizard people who hide in the skins of people and will work behind the scenes to achieve global dominance so they can eat babies or something?
People come to their positions for all sorts of reasons - some good, some silly, some just twisted. Treating them all as evil whilst positioning yourself as holding the truth is laughable and will get you nowhere.
In other words, you front a liar, and you can't admit it, Leo.
Literally none of the things he listed are 'the left leaving him', and most are confabulation.
The left doesn't believe you shouod be judged as a group, but you lie about that, too.
What about your comment here https://jabberwocking.com/alabama-bans-gender-affirming-care-up-to-age-19/
Here you lie about countries 'pulling back' you lie about transgender people and their care, and you demonize those who care for transgender children.
This is you as an individual, posting bigotry. You are a bigot.
And you can't face it. So you lie about it.
Just LOL ... this is so rich it causes arterial plaque from several blocks away.
"Here you lie about countries 'pulling back' you lie about transgender people and their care, and you demonize those who care for transgender children."
The kettle is calling the pot black! And thanks for demonstrating why I have no interest in being associated with you in a civil society.
Are you saying that multiple countries in Europe AREN'T pulling away from pediatric sex trait modification?
Is that what you are attesting? Dear lord, not this again.
LBJ was easily liberal and prowar.
That’s a great list.
Yes, the list can be overwhelming. But there is also a strain of liberalism/leftism that is committed to pessimism about it all. That can turn people off.
'fat phobia'
I really don't care how phobic fat people are. Put down the pork chop and the deep-fried Cheetos, that anxiety you feel is the fat screaming! You've buried yourself in screaming fat!
But really halfwits like Russell Brand and Naomi Wolf are exactly the people I've been calling social conservative leftists. Because social conservatism is a learning disability and it's expression primarily has to do with a person's formative experiences. If you have a formative experience, such as when you've grown up in a left-leaning household, your social conservative expression will be leftish, but it will have every characteristic of the more ordinary right-leaning social conservatism, --memorized, doctrinaire recipes for how things are and how they ought to be, that will come with huge spiels of aggressive blathering. Little humor, most of the time. Little engagement or interest except with whatever stokes the aggression and the blathering and that most reinforces the aesthetic. Conspiracy theories, especially those that involve religion and Jews. High levels of projecting their own alienation that they recast as victimization and sympathy for a narrowly defined group, in narrowly defined circumstances, and that 'no one else is sticking up for'.
Leftist social conservatives and rightist social conservatives are the same social conservatives, they may look different, they may act different, but their minds are identical, which is why they are unable to engage with people except with one another, and which is why the people who vote for Republicans are so easily freaked out about 'wokeness', -- it's the leftist version of themselves, and it's why leftists will think every conservative is Adolf Eichmann and every Muslim a noble savage.
Don't be silly, Kevin. Being a liberal does not require caring about all of the items on that list. On that list are some items that I care about a lot, some that I care about a little, some that I don't care about at all, and some where I think that the usual left position might be wrong.
The only way a person could think that they are *required* to care about *all* those things is if they are one of those extremely weak people who think they can't disagree with their fellows about anything or argue about anything or opt out of anything without being a bad person.
Agree. It's a ridiculous list. Nobody cares about all those things, but if you care about any of them, good chance you're a liberal.
Here's my list of things liberals need to care about: decency, truth, fairness.
Period. If you care about them, you'll find one side of our politics far more friendly than the other. If you don't, god help you.
The problem is someone who cares about the thing you don't will come along and try to get you kicked out and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt
You don't need to care about something to not be a bigot about it.
Yes (Shapeofsociety). Unfortunately a lot of leftists are too eager to make enemies of people who they actually agree with on 90% of issues.
Politics - successful politics anyway - is inherently about building coalitions among people who agree on a lot, though generally not everything.
Call it transactional if you want. I call it moving forward, and if it’s less than I’d hope for that means figuring out how to reach more people.
Hey! What about the water buffalo??? (For you non-boomers, reference is to Artie Johnson and "Laugh-in.")
Ok, I remember Artie Johnson...but water buffalo?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=dfr3a3Soros
Vely intelesting.
Never mind.
“Rumpole and the Judge’s Elbow.” Righty law and order judge hilariously veers forgiving left, mid-trial, when he feels his own back against the wall.
It should be obvious why so many "progressive" or Democratic-voting working people switched parties about 50 years ago, causing a huge rightward shift in national economic policy. It was because Republicans took up the burden of defending racism, as the national Democratic party abandoned it.
There was a big shift at that time, but the process continued, as many states outside of the deep South gradually became more Republican. The fact is that social liberalism has been winning as rights are extended not only to non-whites but to LGBTQ people (although the Supreme Court is trying to turn back the advances). Recent activity on the left - some of which is really excessive - is causing resentment among many who claim to be liberal, and may well be in economic matters. You can see this in comments to newspaper articles and other places and this kind of thing is what Goldberg is referring to.
Is the mass of Republican and swing voters really enraged at what a few students are doing at Harvard? Does anybody vote for Trump because of this? This is not likely - what MAGA voters are concerned with is the loss of White Christian Supremacy. Group dominance can be a life-or-death matter.
At the moment admitting to racism is not acceptable (this has been the case for a fairly small number of decades), so those who are actually motivated by racial supremacy have to cite other reasons for their votes and attitudes.
Bingo. My thoughts esactly.
"At the moment admitting to racism is not acceptable".
Hypocrisy is the "tribute vice pays to virtue". They know it's wrong, but damn, it's lucrative. This is especially true of black racists. Ask Clarence Thomas. But don't expect an honest answer.
Why are none of these excessive things ever listed that aren't 'club on campus kicked out someone for sexual assault' or 'small group decided to rename things after deserving people'.
in your examples, i'm pretty sure most of that list reduces down to some variation of 'do unto others' mixed with a healthy appreciation of social power dynamics
so i can't say those are really very hard for me to internalize
flipping that around, you could say it's equally hard being a conservative because they disagree with everything on that list
but it seems to me that conservatives really resent seeing 'the other' as worthy of their respect; condescension, revulsion, and victimization require a lot less mental strain than walking a mile in a man's shoes
this behavior is so deeply ingrained in the species that it takes years of socialization to get two year olds to stop doing it
some people just get a little further along in the process
Modern "conservatism" has become permission to hate--and a way to blame "others" for any problems you might have.
yeah, the only thing conservatives love more than freedom is prisons
Lately, I've been thinking about what it means to be on the left side of politics. To me, it means faith in the ability of the people to rule themselves and in America that comes in the form of representative democracy. I believe in the project of creating "a more perfect union." I believe that America is imperfect and will always be so, but we can make it better and it is our duty as citizens to strive to do so.
As I see it, the right is suspicious of democracy if not outright contemptuous of it. They believe in strict social hierarchy and that the wealthy should be free to do whatever they like without interference from government, unions or the people in general.
but freedom only for the wealthy that share their worldview
george soros is demonized, desantis hates disney, etc.,
With all the stress it's a wonder we aren't crazier than the insane Maga's!
Mental health is worse among the left
Is it? Suicide is higher on the right.
The challenge is to recognize that one's position on the label spectrum is driven by a complex set of concerns, e.g. ideals, resilience, and pragmatic accommodations or resistance. Changing responses to all of those concerns can be misinterpreted as left/right movement. The left requires way more litmus tests on its members as a result, and sometimes forgets/ignores its complexity in trying to simplify labeling. The alluringly simple two-dimensional left/right concept is also part of the problem. By taking on such complexity, the left needs to never forget that self-determination on a diversity of issues is one of its more basic ideals. We need to agree to disagree, test each other's ideas, and communicate toward a better understanding, acknowledgement, and acceptance of our diversity. And when we get offended, try to get over it, and return focus to our ideals.
I would think keeping up with the endless stream of insane right-wing conspiracy theories would be much harder. How many people can actually follow the narrative about Hunter Biden or the "Russia collusion hoax?" I can't.
The chart only goes to 2022 whereas this shift has been mostly discussed as a 2023 phenomena.
Some believe that being a Progressive is good, and being a Conservative is bad. For others, it's the other way round. Others, who think of themselves as Moderates, think either side in power is a to-be-controlled but necessary evil.
I believe we must adhere to the "we are all equal" principle in every context. I also believe that anyone that doesn't agree but wants to know what needs to be changed needs to look in the mirror.
The only thing harder than caring is not caring. Caring is invariably an investment with a small short-term negative ROI and a much larger long-term positive ROI. Not caring invariably comes with a small short-term positive benefit and a much larger long-term negative detriment.
The positive impact of caring - and the negative impact of not caring - is highly predictable, but the impact's timing and magnitude are highly unpredictable ... except that it is always obvious in hindsight.
If you care about everyone, then you are neither Progressive nor Conservative nor what is now called "Moderate." Instead, you are Centered. You're more likely to help marginalized people and people in need, but because you care about everyone, your behavior is progressive or conservative depending on the current context.
As I've said in a number of previous comments, the "care about everyone" principle is the wise (sapiens) principle that is the foundation of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and science. Violate the principle, and you are a [fill in the blank] in name only.
What conservative behavior is about helping marginalized and people in need?
You forgot saving the whales…
The only thing needed to be a progressive is to not be a jerk.
Those formerly perceived as being progressive who then "turned" to the right did not do so because they didn't care about the laundry list of things you mentioned, or because someone wronged them. They "turned" because at their core they were assholes that liked to insult, mistreat, or otherwise attack some people and eventually were told it was not OK to do so.
This, honestly.
The only real tenet of conservatism in America today is making sure the rich and powerful can always get what they want. If you reject that, then it probably means you give a sh!t about the people around you, and that usually makes you liberal.
Evangelicals have a Calvinist belief, "security of the believer" colloquially, "once saved, always saved." A true believer can't lose their salvation. Unfortunately, some folks who seemed to be true believers start behaving in ways and saying things that make it impossible to think they are saved. The solution in the Evangelical world? Not that the person lost their faith, but that they were never really saved to begin with. Can be a good explanation!
An evangelical is someone that [choose one of the following three options]:
Option 1: Someone that promotes the Gospel message that one must look at their enemy and see a neighbor.
Option 2: Someone that promotes the idea that one must look at their neighbor and see an enemy.
Option 3: Someone whose choice of Option 1 or Option 2 depends on whatever happens to be in their personal self-interest at the present moment.
+1
The satire in that list is obvious, but this is hardly a new development. Women campaigning for the right to vote in this country were criticized for focusing on that while Black men were being denied the right they already possessed to vote. It just took more effort to make the critique and get it amplified.
The underlying truth might be that differences of opinion on the left are amplified in ways where the right polices and shuts down such differences. It'd be easy enough to develop a similar paragraph listing all the contradictory things conservatives have to believe. I don't want to spend the time, but as a few examples:
The lives of the unborn are so important that the state should have the power to protect an unborn child that will live for minutes at best after birth even at high risk to the mother's health and fertility, but not so important that it can compel someone to wear a mask for a few minutes to prevent a pregnant woman from catching COVID.
A young woman's virginity is so sacred that she should be protected from any sexual images or ideas, including sex education, by the state controlling her education and what she can read or access at school, but the state doesn't need to spend any additional money pursuing rape cases.
God is so powerful that He can use even a sinner like Donald Trump to accomplish His works on Earth. But He would never do that with a Democrat.
And since 2000, conservatives have believed that Russia is evil and that Russia is good, that a strong NATO is good and that the US should leave NATO, that we must occupy Afghanistan permanently to fight terrorism and that we have to get out of Afghanistan, that America is the greatest country in the world and a shining example of democracy and that it's a disaster and its election systems completely corrupt and undemocratic.
+1
Americans engage in a lot of wishful and magical thinking. I don’t know if it’s more so than other countries, but we’re rich enough to let it dominate huge swaths of our politics. Other countries without our wealth and military probably have to make contact with reality more often.
Nicely done @Narsham!
Drum seems to be doing more trolling of late than he used to. Here he first shows that something isn't happening and then gives an explanation of why it is happening. The explanation is rather tongue in cheek, leaving it somewhat ambiguous whether he is making fun of the left or making fun of critics of the left. Most commentators seem to be taking him to be making fun of the left. But given that he first gives evidence that the left is growing, not shrinking one would hope that he is making fun of the critics of the left, including the commentators who are pointing to this article as agreeing with them.
That is some good trolling if he is making fun of the people who are writing about how right he is.
Meh. It’s not that hard, or at least not any harder than the endless cognitive dissonance and self-justification of the right. The part that’s hard, really, is developing a consistent enough moral center to question one’s own assumptions, which of course conservatism discourages. I don’t have to be especially invested in every single cause you cite to be able to consider the questions of justice that animate them, anyway, and sometimes there are really no good answers regardless of philosophical position.
+1
I said it elsewhere, but yeah: You don't have to care about each thing, not to be a bigot.
The tough part is, yeah, examining that maybe I did something bigoted.
+1. Both latts and Crissa.
Thank you!
It’s always easier to be an asshole than to be a person who cares about anything.
Maybe the weirdos aren't gonna take anymore shit.
I think weirdos should be tolerated but not celebrated. That's where I break with progressives.
In America you treat people equally. You do not have to like them. I oppose efforts to change that.
You don't have to treat people equally when they demonstrate that they're not going to be civil.