Academics and professors love to debate things. They argue over the meaning of a particular event in history, whether a scientific experiment can be replicated with the same conclusion, what the proper makeup of a demographic sample is for a political science study, and so on. One professor I know called journal articles "one long, extremely drawn-out conversation." Scholars debate over ideas, they generally do not attack each other. This is why I am actually a pretty rotten scholar, and a pathetic weak-kneed pundit/pseudocommentator at the same time. The two halves of my personality clash like matter and anti-matter, instead of a brilliant flash of light though, the forces simply cancel each other out. At this point in time I cannot seem to decide whether I really want to be an academic historian, or a political journalist. My training lies in the former and my passion in the latter. So, when I come across a debate like the ones I found today, I am really torn as to whether I write about it now or twenty years from now to entertain my fellow inmates for debt peonage (oh yes, it is coming). The Progressive Movement such as it is in the United States is often labeled a "circular firing squad" because we just cannot get on message about anything.
Usually, when an academic writes something he or she is representing a university or some sort of institution, this is not always the case in Progressive writing. So the debate up for analysis is more representative of individuals than any kind of institution. The first shot was taken by Alex Pareene, which Salon sponsored as part of a so-called "hack list" ostensibly so popular that: "This column is a regular feature taking a deeper look at our media's most pernicious hacks, which we'll rank in order at year's end." Today's target: Aaron Sorkin,
"Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals. He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy. Sorkin has spent years fueling the delusional self-regard of well-educated liberals. He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic “everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid” attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him."
The smug appraisal does not get any less ad hominem from there.
Coming to Sorkin's defense, sort of, is Bob Cesca (regular readers know that I tend to hold Cesca's commentary in pretty high regard). He begins by saying,
"Seriously, the act of observing fellow liberals every day on the blogs, on The Facebook and elsewhere too often makes me want to smash my computer using a team of monkeys brandishing explosive wiffle bats. Specifically, the act of watching progressives who don’t understand the realities of American government and politics, watching progressives desperately seeking “reasonable” conservatives in some sort of futile attempt at détente, and watching hipster cool-kid progressives undermining support for the most liberal president of our time might actually make me lose my shpadoinkle, even though I generally feel pretty centered."
And takes a few shots at some media personalities he considers "hacks" himself. Guys like Chuck Todd, Harold Ford, Jr. and Mark Halperin who insist Americans "hate" Liberals, despite agreeing with liberal positions pretty consistantly. Cesca hits it on the head when he states that what they actually hate is "the stigmatized cartoon word and the absurd commie pinko caricature painted by the right-wing media for the last 40 years." This demonization is possible mainly because he "see[s] too many liberals shying away from the forceful argument or the contentious debate because of some kind of limp, exhausted sense of futility."
Then we turn almost 180 degrees to Steve Almond writing in The Baffler, an on-again, off-again critique of popular culture and standard-bearer for hipsterism that actually tries to poke some life into the "limp, exhausted sense of futility" noted above. Only, in this instance he is committing political aggravated assault with his targets. "The Joke’s on You" is one of those moments that makes a genuine Progressive hang his or her head and ask whether it might not be time to emigrate.
"What Stewart and Colbert do most nights is convert civic villainy into disposable laughs. They prefer Horatian satire to Juvenalian, and thus treat the ills of modern media and politics as matters of folly, not concerted evil. Rather than targeting the obscene cruelties borne of greed and fostered by apathy, they harp on a rogues’ gallery of hypocrites familiar to anyone with a TiVo or a functioning memory. Wit, exaggeration, and gentle mockery trump ridicule and invective. The goal is to mollify people, not incite them."
I guess the Rally to Restore Sanity and Stephen Colbert's equivalent faux-demonstration seem more understandable from this perspective. "Let off some steam you young concerned citizens, but don't actually organize into something durable that could threaten our little game." How hard do you think a visa for Germany or Sweden is to get?
But then Stephen Deusner comes along to calm our fears and assure us that everything's really okay.
"A passionate and often excitable writer, Almond can be a bold and incisive critic, but also occasionally trollishly provocative, as though tipping sacred cows was an end in itself. He often writes to be disagreed with, it would seem. And this piece is a mess. Almond argues pugilistically, adopting a tone more reminiscent of playground taunts than of high-minded cultural criticism. The essay is oddly cynical and ungenerous, too quick to dismiss its subjects and too unwilling to consider anything positive they might have to offer."
In conclusion though, Progressive criticism of other Progressives is doubly destructive. First, it ensures that the "circular firing squad" continues and "we" never get on the same page, as Cesca spends much of his articles emploring. Second, each criticism is like a bullet for the very organized, very powerful, and very evil right-wingers to pick up and use to gun down any survivors of the CFS. We see it often, someone's words taken out of context and blown up to caricature and demonize the left in its entirety. So whether or not Aaron Sorkin is a dick or Pareene is a dick for pointing out Sorkin's dickishness; or who's side John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are really on and if Almond is just another Joker trying to watch the world burn, you can bet dollars to donuts it will end up recycled into the one thing sean hannity knows for the week. And the left will only be weaker for the attempt.
A well-written and thought-provoking piece.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that main problem for the left lies with fragmentation and
the lack of community-building institutions. See, we on the left are not particularly inclined, like most self-identified "conservatives" on the right, to authoritarianism. Instead of comfortably echoing a Limbaugh or a Hannity until this reflex becomes for us truth, we seek our own truth from multiple sources, we convince ourselves that we could advocate better for our own particular cause, we see the few pundits on the so-called left allowed soundbites every week on major media outlets as ineffective and adulterated as a bad cup of Folgers. Meanwhile, there are few organizations on the left that have the indoctrination and community-building power that right wing churches wield at the local and state levels. The left has no means to keep its people engaged on a weekly basis other than alarmist emails that end with urgent, guilt-ridden pleas for donations. It is therefore, doomed to remain a starving lone wolf eating its own tail. The Madison uprising shows us that we can be effective at mobilizing outrage, but that we have no aptitude to sustain a movement that leads to long term momentum and real political change.
Perhaps to begin building a sustainable movement, we should determine what shared values we have and rally around them by founding interconnected institutions that nurture fun, supportive communities with, say, community gardens, bartering, bicycling, music, art, film, literature, knitting, hacking, etc. By knowing what shared values we have and a community that is physically in contact for debate, it will be easier to stay united against politicians that claim to be one of us and yet support things such as targeted assassinations by drones. And, perhaps, we could eventually redirect national conversations with this emerging power...
This is all much ado about nothing. The left has little to no power. It is plain foolishness to argue that failure or weakness on the left stems from fragmentation or dissension among the ranks. The productive forces and the media are all owned by the right or the so called liberal left. Dissenting commentary is nothing compared to the coercive power of these institutions
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason that I suggested counter-institutions rather than wallow in hopelessness of the hegemonic. Power comes from organization, from praxis, not dismissive trolling.
ReplyDelete