Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

Four Common Weaknesses of Political Thought

And Their Implications for the 2020 Presidential Campaign

1.     Racial Reductionism

2.     Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

3.     False Equivalence

4.     Great Man Theory

Reductionism

The inspiration for this section comes from Adolph Reed, in an article entitled

The Trouble With Uplift, How black politics succumbed to the siren song of the racial voice.

Reed's long and academic essay boils down to a denunciation of identity politics, and of racial identity politics in particular: 

The politics thus advanced is profoundly race-reductionist…  if American racism is an intractable, transhistorical force—indeed, an ontological one, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has characterized it—then it lies beyond structural political intervention…  Coates and other proponents of reparations seem unconcerned with the strategic problem of piecing together the kind of interracial popular support necessary to actually prevail on the issue… Winning anything politically—policies or changes in power relations—is not the point. That is why the jeremiads offered by contemporary racial voices so commonly boil down to calls for “conversations about race” or equally vapid abstractions like “racial reckoning” or “coming to terms with” a history defined by racism.

Implications for 2020: Focus on economic issues for the majority.  Briahna Joy Gray:

Barack Obama’s two campaigns are a powerful model for what a presidential pitch centering economics, rather than race, sounds like. As Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Bob Dole observed, Obama’s 2012 stump speech was “very much an FDR Democratic class-warfare speech … He’s very much running on economic populist themes in tough economic times.” Highlighting class, Obama was able to win decisive numbers of white voters in crucial midwestern states. Despite his own identity, he won. Twice. Democrats should not let Trump’s racism drive them away from that effective strategy. 

Reed and Gray oppose reducing complex matters to racial foundations.  Rather, they favor interracial politics addressing concrete societal issues.

Racial and Ethnic Nationalism

Inspired by Norman Finkelstein, in an article entitled

Why the UK Labour Party should not adopt the IHRA Definition or any other definition of anti-Semitism.

Racial nationalism is related to race-reductionism.  Reed opposes reductionism in which a nation is seen as the sum of its constituent races.  Finkelstein opposed racial nationalism in which race is equated with national identity.  Reed's essay was about race and politics in the United States focusing on black-white relations.  Finkelstein's essay is about race and politics in the United Kingdom, focusing on relations between Jews and gentiles and the state of Israel.

Prodded by the anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement, the (Labour) Party’s leadership poured into the code a mass of verbal sludge that polluted the venerable principle of free speech. Now British-Jewish elites are terrorizing Corbyn to accept a purported definition of anti-Semitism that, one, is and couldn’t but be gibberish, two, exemplifies ethnic special pleading, three, is not just pointless but also stifles vital debate, and, four, has nearly nothing to do with anti-Semitism and nearly everything to do with shielding Israel from deserved condemnation...

“A man curses,” Malcolm X surmised, “because he doesn’t have the words to say what’s on his mind.” Something similar can be observed about he who reflexively reaches for epithets like anti-Semite and racist. It’s an impoverished, ignorant, slovenly substitute for rational dialectic. If he is so blessed as to possess the mental tools to engage in such a dialectic, it’s also inexcusable.

Implications for 2020:   The U.S. Democrats are comparable to the U.K. Labour Party.   Boris Johnson is comparable to Donald Trump.  Ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism tore apart the Labour Party and helped Boris Johnson win.  Accusations of racism, including those of anti-Semitism, are often reductionist, reducing complex issues and motives to simplistic stereotypes. 

Simplistic stereotypes are prevalent in U.S. foreign policy these days, on both sides of the political aisle.  Trump, Netanyahu, Pompeo, and Bolton on matters of foreign policy beat the war drums with regularity, often supported by Democrats (with regard to Venezuela and Iran, for example).  Democrats treat Putin as the devil incarnate, and take a tough military line in the new Cold War and it's current hotspot of Ukraine.  Rational discussion takes a back seat to epithets such as Moscow Mitch or Assad-lover.

Israel's racial nationalism may be a reaction to the German racial nationalism which brought us the holocaust.  Religious nationalism and ethnic nationalism are variations of this disease.  Nationalism, aka tribalism, is positive and necessary at some level.  It is generally good to bring one's group together behind a common set of values and goals.  Democrats can be successful by keep the focus on our group -- the United States -- and not being distracted by foreign affairs of only tangential interest to our voters.

We are multi-racial and multi-ethnic empire, and our success requires that we transcend race and ethnicity, both in our domestic affairs and our foreign allegiances. 

False Equivalence

Inspired by:

David Katz, in an article entitled
The “Double Genocide” Theory, The New And Official Form of Holocaust Denial

and

Mike Davis

On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism

Let's talk about socialism.  Bernie Sanders is a socialist, and he is one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Democrats will need the votes of his supporters to win the presidency in 2020.  Yet many Democrats fear the socialist label, seeing it as providing the Republicans with a lethal weapon. 

The Democrats have already boxed themselves into a corner somewhat by governing on the basis of what the Republicans will say as opposed to what is best for the country.  Thus, for example, Obamacare was crafted not as an efficient healthcare financing system, but rather as something that the Republicans wouldn't be able to discredit as socialist.  Now the Democrats are in the position of defending an inefficient, Republican system (originally developed by Republicans for Mitt Romney in Massachusetts).  And that didn't stop the Republicans from tarring Obama as a socialist.  (Obamacare was better than what we had before, and Democrats wouldn't have had the votes to institute a Canadian style system.  But they could have tried to do the right thing, and then fallen back on what became "Obamacare" as a compromise.  It could then have been termed Blue Dog care.)

So we Democrats should try to do the right thing, as opposed to being driven by what the Republicans will say.  What is the right thing with regard to socialism?  How can we Democrats be united in facing the inevitable charges the Republicans will make equating Democratic policies with Stalinism and Venezuelan government?  The truth is that democratic socialism works remarkably well in western Europe.  We have many socialist type programs in the U.S. such as universal, free public education through grade 12, Social Security, Medicare, the highway system, etc.

Implications for 2020:   Many socialist programs are very popular and successful in the United States and elsewhere.  The Democrats should speak up about these, while rejecting the name calling behavior.  The label is not so important as is the record of various social programs.  Republicans will be clearly engaging in false equivalence when they compare Democratic policies to those of Stalin or Hugo Chavez.  There is a vast difference between Norway and Stalinist Russia, for example. 

At a deeper level, the articles referenced above (The Double Genocide and On the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism) explore catastrophes such as the Holocaust, and famines in capitalist and socialist countries.  In particular, Nazism is making something of a resurgence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Centrists, including Democrats, have been getting uncomfortably close with Nazis in places such as Ukraine.  Democrats should not only steer clear of Nazis, but should speak out forcefully against Nazi activity.  Trump voters are not in general equivalent to Nazis, but there are real Nazis about including some we've supported in Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

There are some political issues where outrage is genuinely appropriate.  In addition to Nazism, fake news by the mainstream media is another, in my opinion.   Quoting myself from Ranking Outrageous Behavior on a Societal Scale:

Outrage is warranted. The establishment, led by the intelligence community, now lies brazenly about matters of war and peace. There is no investigation or reporting of these lies. This is worse than Vietnam and Iraq 2003, in my opinion. As hard as this may be to take, Trump's talk of fake media is true, in my opinion, and therefore the outrage supporting Trump's abominable presidency is somewhat justified. So don't hate your neighbor. Rather pull together behind the need to reclaim an honest press and an honest discussion of foreign policy, including the role of intelligence agencies in domestic politics.

Great Man Theory

The Adolph Reed article mentioned above (under Reductionism) got me thinking about how we often deify individuals and downplay political movements.  Slavery in the U.S., for example, wasn't ended by the heroic exploits of any one person, black or white.  Rather it was a combination of people of both races in a political alliance.

My friends worry about Bernie Sanders' age, and this is certainly reasonable.  Bernie's campaign slogan, Not Me. Us., addresses this, I think.  Suppose Bernie is elected president, yet dies in office or becomes debilitated.  Would everything he stood for be for naught?  I don't think so.  I think he would have a capable vice president. I think he would have expanded the nation's consciousness as to what is possible in terms of dealing with the serious problems facing our nation and world.  I think he would have made some good appointments, and that future leaders would step up to fill the void created by his incapacitation.

It's not about Bernie or any of the candidates.  It's about political movement -- getting people together to address real problems.