Yesterday for some reason I listened to several interesting podcasts;
"Left, Right and Center"
"The Argument"
and
"On the Media" that is also an NPR program from WNYC.
It the last pod
So during the OTM podcast I heard the following that blew my mind:
The cultural left, wrote Rorty, had come “to give cultural politics preference over real politics, and to mock the very idea that democratic institutions might once again be made to serve social justice.” He foresaw cultural politics on the left as contributing to a tidal wave of resentment that would one day result in a time when “all the sadism which the academic left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back.”
As democratic institutions fail, he writes in the quote above:
[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words [slur for an African-American that begins with "n"] and [slur for a Jewish person that begins with "k"] will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
He also then argues, however, that this sadism will not solely be the result of “economic inequality and insecurity,” and that such explanations would be “too simplistic.” Nor would the strongman who comes to power do anything but worsen economic conditions. He writes next, "after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich.”
Amazing hey?
I looked into this, and found some context for these prophetic words from Richard Rorty:
In Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1997), Rorty differentiates between what he sees as the two sides of the Left, a cultural Left and a progressive Left. He criticizes the cultural Left, which is exemplified by post-structuralists such as Foucault and postmodernists such as Lyotard, for offering critiques of society, but no alternatives (or alternatives that are so vague and general as to be abdications). Although these intellectuals make insightful claims about the ills of society, Rorty suggests that they provide no alternatives and even occasionally deny the possibility of progress. On the other hand, the progressive Left, exemplified for Rorty by the pragmatist Dewey, Whitman and James Baldwin, makes hope for a better future its priority. Without hope, Rorty argues, change is spiritually inconceivable and the cultural Left has begun to breed cynicism. Rorty sees the progressive Left as acting in the philosophical spirit of pragmatism.
So here is my take:
Rorty seems to be foreshadowing the failure of identity politics to meet societal needs following the retreat of socialism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the adoption by China of capitalism in the late 1980s, the model for the U.S. and the world in general was to recognize western style capitalism as the only feasible economic model. The preferred approach was to even the playing field by removing identity-based obstacles to success -- i.e. by reducing discrimination. This seems sensible, even in retrospect. We've made progress in reducing discrimination!
Accompanying the Clinton era push to reduce discrimination was an acceleration of economic globalization. Nationalism and its accompanying favoritism for existing rich countries was seen to be a roadblock to progress. Global capitalism was seen to be a win-win affair (nonzero!) with poorer economies getting a chance to participate more fully in the global economy and share in the benefits, while richer economies would get access to inexpensive labor from around the world, reducing prices and encouraging cross fertilization. Again, this makes sense to me, as far as it goes. The world is more interconnected, and poor and middle class people in developing countries such as the Philippines are doing better.
What we've seen, however, is that identity politics (reducing discrimination) and globalization, while both good ideas, left major societal needs unaddressed, and both took unhealthy turns. The downsides of globalization have become apparent following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 2003 Iraq War, Syria, Libya, Iran, the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing, and repeated financial bubbles, Brexit, the rise of right wing nationalism including Trump in the U.S., global warming, and the rise of China. Globalization took an unhealthy turn toward forcing our ideology and rules upon other countries.
With regard to identity politics, there has been a backlash as predicted by Rorty. Legitimate complaints of globalism have been met with accusations of racism. Understandable concerns about the pace of cultural change have been met with similar charges. Productive initiatives to reduce discrimination have devolved into vicious polarization, in my observation.
We've made enormous progress in some respects since Rorty wrote in 1998, but we're facing new challenges.
The brief Clintonian era of U.S. supremacy in ideology has clearly passed. Conditions are ripe for significant change of the kind that an Elizabeth Warren presidency would offer, in my opinion. Rorty spoke against nihilism, and for hope. His message is still relevant today.
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