I saw a puzzling post on facebook. A poet well known for her poetry of witness said that she's rather fight neoliberalism than fascism. I couldn't even process it as first, and thought she had said the opposite of what she meant. Then I got it: she wants Biden to win, so that then the new (old) enemy will be his neoliberal policies rather than Trump's fascism. I sympathize and will not argue with her.
But we had so many years of calling the neocon warmongers fascist, that it rings a bit false to say, now, Oh we were wrong, the neoliberal Bushes were not fascists, it's Trump! I do hate Trump, but is he more fascist than the Bush family? Or were they metaphorical fascists and he is the real thing? To the left Trump and Biden are both contemptible, though in different ways.
This whole way of thinking seems wrong to me. You have to be fighting for what you think is right, not worrying so much about defining what name to call your enemy. Why can't you say, these are our policies, vote for them?
It seems that only the fascist label is motivating enough for real opposition, otherwise you get a contrast between two kinds of bad. It seem the Republicans always win when they can define the race as between two kinds of right wing politics! Then there is no motivation for the left democrats to show up at the polls.
This is why I despise politics.
6 comments:
I think she means neoliberal like Clinton and Obama.
Also too -- politics, by that you mean U.S. electoral politics, right?
And I guess petty office politics too
Both. My department politics is a shit storm of a different kind.
My insight for the week is that these kinds of politics aren't even actually politics, they are a substitute for them. I will work this idea out although I am sure it already has been. But it was from my meditation insight -- all of the problems I have that I consider individual, or psychological, or emotional, are actually political problems and their personal dimensions, or insurmountability at the personal level, dissipates immediately if one views them from the horizon of politics
I'm with you, except how do I translate from Individuals in my department to the larger political situation? The mappings aren't clear to me. So I could think that one side is woke progressivism, another more Latin American Cacique politics, the other bureaucratic HR mentality... But it doesn't seem to fit exactly. Maybe it's because I am not very lucid political thinker.
All of them are really there, and they can appear to fit although they do not really. None of them are really focused on the program or the field, and that is the political problem. If you start thinking politically, program and field, and solidarity with these, come into view. If you insist upon thinking in the terms of the three elements you name, all you get is individualistic neurosis.
(One of my colleagues is cracking up today, I am expecting the nice young men in the clean white coats any time, and it is all because he cannot get beyond these three options. He wants them to fit together in such a way as to save us. But they do not fit. Hence, his crisis.)
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