(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



TRUSTING THE PEOPLE: PROGRESSIVE PATRIOTISM [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-02-10  

We’ve all said it over the past years: “When will those people realize that they’re voting against their own interests?” Sometimes it’s more direct: “How can people be so stupid?” and even (in response to some new burst of QANON conspiracy bizarities), “I never realized so many people were mentally ill!”

What’s confusing is that a majority of Americans support most of the specific reforms that Democrats advocate. In the past few years, polls have shown that two-thirds of Americans (including 35% of Republicans!) said protecting the environment should be a higher priority than economic growth. Nearly two-thirds’ (including about 40% of Republicans!) biggest frustration about our tax system isn’t how much they pay, but that corporations and the wealthy don’t pay their fair share. Stricter gun laws: 60% of registered voters in favor. Same-sex marriage: over two-thirds support continued legalization. National Medicare-for-All: 56% in favor. Abortion: 57% against overturn of Roe. About the same number against a border wall against Mexico. Even immigration: in 2019, 75% of registered voters thought immigration is overall good for the country. These numbers are all large enough to support a dominant majority.. ( https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/07/politics/democratic-positions-majority )

But a critical and growing number of these people identify themselves as, and vote, Republican! Even worse: in recent years more than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party , particularly in white suburbs previously considered liberal. A lot of these are former Democrats.

We can’t say that the broad public is rational and knowledgeable when they agree with us but irrational and ignorant when they don’t. At some point, we have to accept that disaffected Democrats and Independents (and even some Republicans) aren’t stupid or ignorant or even confused about their interests. They know exactly what they want – and for many of them, it isn’t derived from Hillary Clinton’s list of deplorably hateful views and paranoid conspiracy theories.

THE LIST OF DEMANDS

Although the national Democratic Party doesn’t seem to know how to respond, it’s already common knowledge that a lot of working and middle class Americans feel that national elites have abandoned them, leaving the young without a future and the old without a safety net. Global business has moved good-paying manual (and some technical and low-level white collar) jobs overseas, leaving little room for blue collar or low-level technical employment between insecure service-sector and higher-level professional niches. Chain stores have squeezed small business and mid-sized towns into bankruptcy, leaving little to sustain civic life in rural areas and many mid-size towns. National media rarely show “ordinary” people as anything but caricatures and their way of life as something to escape, while increasing the visibility of now-rich celebrities from once marginal and low-status groups. The American dream of upward mobility through education or becoming your own boss seems to have died. It shouldn’t be surprising that people are angry, resentful, and looking for someone to blame. What they want is confidence in a better future for themselves and their children, stability, a feeling of safety in a world that feels increasingly dangerous.

But there is a deeper phenomenon going on as well. As difficult as it may be for policy-wonks (including myself) to grasp, policy issues are not the primary criteria for most peoples’ political self-identification and loyalties. It’s true that some people dedicate themselves to, and live lives defined by, a value or ideal or ideology: moral rebels of some kind. But most of us define ourselves through our social connections – the group of people with whom we share a common set of lived experiences, emotional ties, and cultural/behavioral attitudes and activities. This is what shapes the labels we use to describe ourselves based on family, religion, neighborhood, town, profession, class, sports team, country, gender, race. Like soldiers under fire, our first loyalty is to our group, our community. We wave its banner proudly, stand together against attacks, hope and work for an improving future.

Political labels are ideological, but our behavior and consciousness is sociological. Our political identity is tied to the group(s) we feel most part of even more than the issues we support. We seldom neglect personal self-interest, even if unconsciously expressed. But we also repeatedly rise to the opportunity of being part of something larger than ourselves in ways that expand our sense of self-interest – as social beings we look for and embrace community. In fact, people repeatedly sacrifice immediate self-interest for the sake of some larger cause or community: their family, or their religion, or their country. We see the group’s well-being as the foundation for our own.

THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY

While we all have complex identities, the ones we experience as shapers of the larger contexts of our lives are particularly powerful. In the modern world, this is predominately the nation. Over the centuries, the growth of mercantile and then industrial capitalism created enormously resource-rich social systems that replaced kingdoms and religion as the dominant organizer of our lives. Simultaneously, national governments emerged as the dominant political structure for the modern world – big enough to contain mass markets, powerful enough to protect major stakeholders, stable enough to define and control borders. Religion continued to have a hold, increasingly so in recent years as globalization undermines the ability of national governments to meet people’s needs, but during most of the past several centuries it was the nation that became the focus of political activity, secular culture, and social identity. Both the rich seeking to protect their wealth and the working classes seeking to improve their lot saw national governments as key to their wellbeing. Nationalism was a global phenomena: the blade that cut apart the world's empires in the twentieth century was the sharp edge of nationalism – the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, British, and Chinese were all replaced by nation states during and after the two World Wars.

In the United States, the wars were national and nationalist victories. For the vast majority of the population, particularly after WWII, the victory and post-war economic growth created the material foundation and the cultural experience of being part of a national community. “Ordinary Joes” were the honored heroes of “the greatest generation” that had won the war and now were leading their families. To be sure, racial exclusion was so integral to the New Deal coalition that it broke apart in the 1960s and 70s over the Democratic Party’s need to attract urban African-American voters to replace suburbanizing ethnics and party-switching southerners. But for the vast majority of the population there was a general feeling that national leaders were legitimate and mostly effective guardians of the general welfare.

The echoes of that feeling still linger. But it no longer expresses a “we’re all in this together” attitude. You can’t have missed noticing the increasing number of American flags hanging from home porches and front-yard flag poles – not only, but especially, in working class and rural areas? But does it make you as uneasy as it makes me?

Not that long ago, during the anti-Vietnam war movement, we protesters felt the flag – and the country – was still something we had to protect from the warmongers. We may have covered it with a peace sign or sewed it onto our clothes or even – as sung about in Hair – embroidered it with yellow fringe as we sang it to sleep at night. But it was our country and our flag even if we didn't like what was being done in its name and in violation of its best values. However, today as I drive by those homes with the American flag in front my first thought is that's probably someone who voted for Trump.

The Bi-centenial 4th of July in 1976 was a national celebration. There were publicly competing versions of the history and values worthy of celebration: bottom up and top down, rejuvenating rebellions and business growth, immigrant assimilation and manifest destiny. Progressives condemned the military nationalism of the official versions by insisting that there was a more positive, authentic, and “true” alternative, and that we were the inheritors of that tradition. But by last year, 2022, a lot of people, myself included, felt very awkward about July 4th, about celebrating the virtues of a country that seemed to be rapidly sliding towards fascism. It didn’t feel like it could be our holiday, and perhaps it wasn’t even our country.

Today, after the George Floyed murders and so many others, do you, like me, have a moment of hesitation about standing up or where to put our hands or even speaking during the pledge of allegiance?

Somehow, the liberals and progressives of America have allowed the right wing to take over all the symbols and slogans of our country's heritage. Constitutionalism used to mean standing up for minority rights; now it means “originalist” nonsense about immortalizing sixteenth century racist social relationships, pre-Civil War state’s rights, and pre-WWI robber baron laissez faire. Freedom was what the Civil Rights Movement fought for; now it's about the illegitimacy of any restrictions on individual pursuit of profit. The counter-culture’s “do your own thing” was meant to free people from capture by exploitative hierarchies so that they could rebuild authentic community; today “don’t tread on me” means the right to own – and use – battlefield weapons. Rebellion was a demand for more positive government action; now it's in opposition to the existence of government.

RIPS IN THE FLAG

How did we get here? Losing a war discredits governments – the Argentinian and Greek military dictatorships both collapsed after defeat. In Vietnam, the US lost a war for the first time in history. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans wonder how all their sacrifices were wasted. The de-industrialization of our economy and the decades-long stagnation of most families’ standard of living makes it feel like national leaders have turned their backs on the rest of us, have betrayed the loyalty and lives that nourished the American dream.

And the Democratic Party increasingly shared in the blame. The New Democrats and Third Way advocates took the decline of domestic US industry as a market-system given. They concluded that it was no longer possible to build a political majority around manufacturing-based labor unions, nor politically feasible to focus on ending poverty as a way to “lift all boats.” Instead, these “neo-liberals” sought to hitch themselves to the new digital economy and the rising college-educated professional sector. But, despite their shared-with-the-GOP commitment to a less regulated for-profit economy, compared to the Republicans they were liberals – they actively opposed the use of group prejudices to block individual success. Of course, there were limits: neoliberalism’s openness to the inclusionary demands from previously marginalized groups – women, people of color, gays – did not lead to bottom-up policies that help everyone rise. Instead, they focused on individual achievement, welcoming the most successful exceptions into the room. Women who “lean in.”. Black celebrities. Queer fashion setters. Media stars. It was a parade of upper middle-class success at the same time that the lives of blue- and white-collar working and middle class people was deteriorating. For many in the Democrat’s former base it felt like insult on top of injury.

CONSCIOUSNESS, CONSPIRACY, APOCALYPSE

No matter how solid the national community, ordinary people have always been cynical about “their betters”-- the bosses were always looking for ways to screw you. The rich always took care of themselves and each other. The corporate bigshots were always making deals for their own benefit, always willing to stab everyone else in the back. Back in the days of corporate liberal dominance, lefties saw this as a form of class consciousness.

Today, it’s clear that the same cynicism can also lead to paranoia – to conspiracy theories instead of class analysis. Class is a complex and confusing concept. It takes a leap of imagination to believe that lots of separate people and organizations, each fiercely competing with each other, will independently make self-benefiting decisions that somehow collectively create and sustain an entire social system of hierarchies. It’s much easier to imagine that small groups of the rich and powerful secretly meet together to plan how to gain as much as they can from everyone else – from price fixing to bribery to corrupt deal-making.

And in the absence of a more coherent explanation from the national Democratic Party, people fell back on to our societies tradition and culturally familiar themes. Disturbances come from below. Poor people are lazy. Immigrants and dark-skinned people cause crime. Jews control the money. The government can’t do anything. Politicians are corrupt. Cities are problems. Etc. etc.

The media’s constant churning of prime-time fear through crime shows and gory news was gasoline on the fire. And the slow rise of far-right media – starting with local AM talk radio, moving to Rush Limbaugh and other nationally syndicated venom sprewer, and brought together by the Murdocks print and cable systems – increasingly surrounded listeners with a drumbeat of blame. Change is always disquieting, disturbing. And the changes sweeping over the world – Islamic resurgence, climate catastrophe, regional wars triggering massive refugee migrations, and more – were beginning to feel existential. At some point it takes off into a vision of apocalypse: the world as we know it is under attack by unseen and vicious enemies and will certainly crumble on top of us unless we win it back. This is no longer about politics but end-of-days survival. It no longer sees the opposition as wrong, but as evil to the degree that it needs to be wiped out rather than simply outvoted. It’s us or them. Just as the 1970’s Weathermen group decided that it was America itself that was the enemy, justifying attacks on anything that kept the society together, the fanatic-right has declared war on all those who stand in the way of the re-imposition of their vision upon the nation.

AN OPENING

It is too late to return to either the New Deal or the Great Society political coalitions. But the Republican party is not yet positioned to lock in a new majority. Their march to the far right has upset as many people as it has attracted. There is room for the Democrats to regroup and rebuild. But it won’t happen overnight and will only succeed if its build on three strategic moves.

First, the Democrats have to deliver on the issues. Passing the needed legislation will require winning a few more state and congressional elections which, in turn, requires a 50-state rebuilding of county and state Democratic Party organizations. While Party leaders in Wisconsin, Georgia, and a few other states understand the need to work with advocates and set up grassroots networks in the year(s) before elections, state and county Democratic leaders in much of the country still act like a self-serving social club and see volunteers and community groups as annoying outsiders rather than vital allies.

And addressing issues is not enough – the programs created by new legislation and regulation must be structured so that people, and the public as a whole, directly sees and experiences their implementation. The Obama strategy of indirect assistance – sending funds to states and companies to allow them to avoid layoffs and continue programs – is not enough. It does not build the public awareness and support needed to maintain the programs and win elections over the long term.

Second, Democrats have to acknowledge that the world is an increasingly dangerous place — at least partly because of the destabilization of digital corporate globalism – and that we need to take care of our own people as much as we need to help others. It is not immoral to say that our priority is improving America so long as we aren’t doing it by exploiting or oppressing others. As a start, we need much greater control over both big tech and international investors who are undermining our own and other people’s well-being. Democrats have to embrace at least a degree of economic nationalism aimed at rebuilding our productive base – building on what Biden has already started. Democrats have to get in front of the immigration issue – accepting that some kind of border controls are necessary in an increasingly chaotic world while acknowledging that at least some of the massive uprooting comes from past US-based political, military, and economic interventions. Democrats have to be clear that force can reduce insecurity in the short-term, but it doesn’t address the underlying causes – either domestically or internationally – and we need to put as much or more resources into longer-term solutions.

And, third, Democrats have to re-embrace the People’s History vision of America’s past. Ever since the Vietnam War, liberals – and progressives even more so – have had trouble feeling proud of our country. But you simply can’t build a mass political movement in America on the basis of anti-Americanism. The Left has to proudly see and proclaim itself as the inheritors of a long history of progressive American ideals, trends, movements, and accomplishment. Yes, this country was founded on slavery. Yes, there has been a continuing genocidal treatment of the Indigenous peoples. Yes, the government has repeatedly repressed efforts of working people to improve their lives. We cannot ignore all that. But we also have to see the amazing universality of “We the people” and other documents that provided inspiration and legal space for countless progressive campaigns. Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel. But it may also be a legitimate base for a progressive.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/10/2152244/-TRUSTING-THE-PEOPLE-PROGRESSIVE-PATRIOTISM

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/