Note: crossposted at Emphasis Added
The problem for an effective opposition is that there are two "Lefts" in American politics: the one that offers a serious critique of Bush/GOP policies, and the one the Right wing successfully runs against in public opinion and in elections. The difficulty for serious opponents of right-wing extremism is untangling itself from those who share some of its positions, but not its reality-based approach. Sensible policies will beat insanity most of the time, but theocrats will beat hippies every time.
full story after the break or at Emphasis Added
Two Left Feet
Reading Daily Kos this morning, I was struck by a few paragraphs of Kos's description of a recent gathering of the ironically-designed "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" (VLWC):
At one session, one participant told me "we can achieve world peace if we just visualize it". What the fuck? I jumped down the guy's throat -- "When people were shooting it out in my front lawn in El Salvador, they didn't give a flying fuck about what you were visualizing. Neither do the warlords in Somalia, or in Darfur, or the insurgents in Iraq, or terrorists all over the world."
Man, talk about idiots reinforcing the worst stereotypes about our side. Jeez. Fantasizing about eliminating the Defense Department isn't being part of the Reality Based Community. If that's the sort of thing you like to do, and are offended by my bluntness, then deal with it. Being a part of the reality based community means we must operate in -- you guessed it -- reality.
So there were the crazies, some of them in leadership positions of fairly prominent organizations. Fucking obnoxious, and clearly a reason why our side can seem out of touch.
This description, which anyone who has participated in any left-of-center activity can probably corroborate from experience, demonstrates the problems of organizing serious opposition to the very serious threat to American values and interests posed by the VRWC (a genuine movement with genuine organization).
The difference is simple. On the Right, there may be some diversity of viewpoints, particularly between the self-styled libertarians and the theocrats, but there is a singularity of purpose, a basic agreement on the style of confrontation and the terms of debate, and a common set of assumptions about their tribal identity and the identity of the enemy. It makes sense to speak of a "Right" in American politics that comprises a spectrum of recognizable positions, and while individual interest groups and speakers may emphasize different portions of the agenda, it remains a single, ideologically-based agenda.
The same can't be said of the opposition, because in fact there are two distinct "Lefts" in America. One, which for better or worse should be considered the "true Left," is the left by intention. These are the leftover socialists, the unconditional pacifists, the hardcore identity-politics groups, the eco-extremists, and the New Age "visualizers" that Kos dumps on above. To the extent that these folks had a moment in American political history, it was more than 35 years ago, and even then, their relevance was defined mostly in opposition than in actual achievements in government. For a brief, tragic moment in the early 70s, the Democratic party took these people seriously, and they've been paying the price ever since.
Then there's the other Left: the Left-by-Default (LBD). The LBD is, essentially, anyone who objects to the Right wing agenda, not because they're committed to some aspect of batshit Leftist ideology, but because they find the arrogance, ideological rigidity and extremism of the governing party destructive to their values and interests.
Because the governing party has been taken over by people so certain in the God-given rightness of their positions that they see no purpose in moderation and compromise, and who have governed by deception and decree to the extent they can get away with it (which is considerable), the LBD represents a pretty large chunk of the American public: About 49%, or 55 million voters by the last official count (the 2004 election), and even greater if you follow the polls on specific issues.
The difference between the True Left and the LBD is significant and substantial. The True Left believes that their views on particular issues are metaphysically right in the same way that fundamentalist conservatives do. Whether the philosophical basis of True Left ideology is in Marxism/socialism (which, if nothing else, is a comprehensive, intellectually substantial and coherent critique), strongly-held morality, or New Age spirituality (Kevin Drum finds an example in James Howard Kuntsler's The Long Emergency), the basic paradigm is that some idea or set of forces or theories beyond the world of experience makes our position right and others wrong. As with the Right wing, the True Left finds (or manufactures) examples from life to fit the theories, and finds ways of rationalizing the failure of ideology such that it's the world that's at fault, not the basic belief system. Marxists are the unsurpassed masters at this.
The LBD define themselves as pragmatists, and self-identify as the "reality-based coalition." Advocacy for particular positions and policies is rooted in analysis of issues, attempts to build coalitions and compromises, efforts to see value in opposing positions with the goal of reducing conflict and harmonizing good ideas. Because different groups and people have different modes of analysis and different preferences for outcomes, there is some disagreement over strategic objectives. However, there is broad agreement on the tactics of reason, compromise, learning from observation, and distrust of dogma.
Despite rising evidence to the contrary, I strongly believe that this is how most people think about most things. Rigid ideologues of either the Right or the Left are people of limited intellectual skills or limited intellectual courage. Their need for certainty comes from the circumstances of their upbringing or psychological makeup, and their unwillingness to listen and compromise is rooted in profound insecurity. I think this tendency is present in most people to a limited extent, and the reason the Right has been so successful in mobilizing these emotions is because their message is highly-crafted to push those buttons, and they gain strength by offering their followers a strong sense of group solidarity.
That gives the Right an upper hand with the crazies, but if crazies aren't the majority (and I don't think they are, by a longshot), how do these guys keep winning elections against a party that is overwhelmingly dominated by practical, policy- and results-oriented people and candidates? Obviously, it's been by ignoring the sensible LBD and running against the extremely unpopular True Left. The Republicans have grasped the very simple fact that, although sensible ideas will trump insanity most of the time, theocrats will beat hippies every time.
That's not because the far Left is necessarily wrong. A lot of LBD folks agree with certain policies associated with the True Left because they happen to make sense in practical ways (or can be reconciled with achievable and desirable policy outcomes). The objection is to the ideological basis, the sense of inevitability and entitlement, and the self-righteousness that pervades True Left rhetoric and political style. As seen in the quote from Kos above, this doesn't appeal to LBD people either, regardless of incidental points of agreement.
The LBD's great frustration has been achieving separation from the True Left, and thereby getting a hearing among the persuadable public. The Right, whatever its internal disagreements, has been unified and extremely successful in binding the two together in public perception, which has served the purpose of neutralizing effective reality-based criticism of the Right's radical agenda. People who are not themselves right-wing ideologues nevertheless "know" (as a result of exposure to right wing propaganda) that anyone who doesn't support Bush must be some kind of flag-burning, pot-smoking pacifist faggot - or at least, not sufficiently opposed to such as to be trustworthy. The success that the Right had in branding John Kerry, of all people, as some kind of left wing hippie, demonstrates the effectiveness of this tactic.
The really complicated part for the opposition is that there often isn't much policy disagreement between the True Left and the LBD. LBD does not necessarily mean centrist or DLC-style conservative: it simply means fact- and results-oriented, rather than ideologically motivated. Groups like MoveOn and ACT are fairly far to the left in their critique, but not because they are Marxists or eco-terrorists. They make a fact-based case for their positions and argue in terms of tradeoffs and benefits, priorities and costs: the language of serious policy discussions. People may not agree with them all the time, but it's not correct to dismiss them as crazies in the same way as you can dismiss people who try to apply chaos theory or quantum physics to political debates, or root arguments in quotations from Engels and Lenin on the assumption that this adds indisputable legitimacy to their positions.
People have been talking about purges of far Left or too-far center people from the opposition coalition, but to the extent that that discussion is based on ideology, it's not productive. What the VRWC has right is its ability to agree on tactics and approach, despite significant differences in ideology. They have banished the reality-based members of their coalition and have fused everyone else together under a banner of uncompromising extremism, regardless of the specifics of their issues. An effective opposition needs to do the opposite: unite those committed to a sensible, realistic approach to issues, regardless of their ideological positions, and draw sharp distinctions between our thoughtful and serious approach to the real problems of today, versus the simplistic, harmful and staggeringly incompetent methods of those now in power.