cf. Jon Elster
---
Jon Schwarz: The Democratic Party Must Harness the Legitimate Rage of Americans. Otherwise, the Right Will Use It With Horrifying Results.
It’s tough to be optimistic that today’s liberals can replicate Roosevelt’s success. The corporate-managerial-legal class that operates the Democratic Party fears anger and sees it as illegitimate as the basis for action. Having beaten back the threat of the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presidential candidacies, both fueled by strong populist emotion, they dream of a technocratic politics purified of messy, fickle human feelings.The piece has everything: The Democratic Party, The New Deal, John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath, populism, fascism, technocracy, everything but the word "socialism". It's popular anger and practical politics. It's not radical, not utopian. It's bourgeois to the core.
But the American right specializes in the politics of anger. If the Democrats refuse to harness the legitimate rage of Americans and direct it at those responsible for our predicament, the right will make this anger its own and will win.
Sanders and Warren fucked up. Their egos were too big to work together. Change comes from outside and below. The states are leading: Newsom, Inslee, Beshear, (who defeated the "progressive" candidate) followed by journalists with no interest in neutrality.
Yale epidemiologist vs NYT journalist. Empiricism vs Rationalism.
"This is journalistic malpractice. If we don't have scale-up of testing, we will be in lock-down for months & months. There is no debate on this, why frame it like there is one?"
The journalist replies "you’re picking the wrong fight, move along"
The Philosopher: "When academics veer towards activism, perhaps in quest of bureaucratically mandated 'impact', there's often a rise in hyperbole and a corresponding decline in credibility."
"Lawyers are the rule of law" Joe Jamail. Politics is vulgar.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comment moderation is enabled.