'Left' vs. Left ('Right' vs. Right)

It's one thing to complain when you're down and out, getting smacked upside the head by Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman; it's quite another to complain, as Taibbi does, that your side of the political spectrum is "a skittish, hysterical old lady ... easily mesmerized by half-baked pseudo-intellectual nonsense, and quick to run from anything like real conflict or responsibility" when the world is actually going your way. And I say that even though I actually agree some of the substance of what Taibbi has to say about the tensions and contradictions with American liberalism; it's not that he's wrong, it's that his tone is all wrong for a political moment when his side happens to be winning. -- Ross Douthat

Problem here is that the "tensions and contradictions" on the American left are now almost exactly identical to the tensions and contradictions on the American right: an interchangeable and idiotic thrall to major national and multinational corporate business interests; a growing and deepening cadre of young and radical cultural reactionaries whose common plank is a disgust with commercial homogenization and contempt for the turn of capital toward the commodification of identity, lifestyle, and emotion; an increasing inability to square at the national party level the moral with the political hazard of abortion; a schizophrenia with regard to nationalizing all social, economic, and political issues, only difference being on whose terms they're nationalized; a malfunctioning Iraq policy typified by half frozen grins and half doubtful headshaking, in which Postponement has been elevated to the level of grand strategy; an official presumption that any amount of legal immigration is an unvarnished good and that bureaucracy, not border security, is the best way to regulate illegal immigration; an obscene dedication to making our public school system into the Department of Vocational Technology; a now-instinctual fealty to a spastic and laughably inadequate drug policy; and as much control and initiative over the madness of government health care under boomer retirement as the more perennial denizens of a nursing home rec room.

If the "way that the world is going" appears to favor the open-ended expansion and entrenchment of squalid, overpriced, invasive, pancultural, inefficient, counterconstitutional, and therapeutic politics, then after Bush only someone blind in one eye has the perspective to conclude that this favors the American left. Young leftists of the sort that keep Adbusters one of the consistently sane mags on the stands are now experiencing the sort of nauseous reappraisal of Democratic orthodoxy as certain young conservatives are concerning post-Bush Republican orthodoxy. The only major gulf between these two groups is defined by the third vector among them of cultural libertarianism, which as I keep repeating is basically the question of sexual ethics. As young leftists recover a wounded common sense about the putative benefits of getting into an S&M relationship with the price-tagged, pleasure-pimped System in exchange for a golden ticket to being Sexually Active, they will grow more truly toward the Right; as young conservatives increasingly detach from the corporate host which has come to depart -- in diversity programming, employee welfare programs, and product/service ethos, they will grow more truly toward the Left.

That the obstacles to this happy outcome are the joint property of the establishment right and left in America ought to suggest that the only battle Taibbi might be winning is the one related to how we and other people should feel about who we and other people involve in lusts and loves public and private. I don't know enough about Taibbi to place him on the Prude-O-Meter, but I do know enough -- and so should we all -- to recognize a major divergence of the American cultural realignment from the present choice between national American political parties. In short, other than the sex thing, probably, there is no real way in which the liberals seizing the upper hand politically ever since Coolidge represent Tiabbi's "side," and from my read of Tiabbi's article, that was its thesis statement.

Comments

[John Savage]

Wow, PoMoCo, you’ve made some strong statements here. Basically you end up saying that Taibbi has cut all ties to “liberalism” except for the issue of sexual morality, which would become the only thing that clearly distinguishes Taibbi from a traditional conservative. I do see the parallels between the malaise on the Right and the malaise on the Left, but I’d say that Taibbi has rejected awfully little of the substance of liberalism. For Taibbi to become anything resembling a traditional conservative, he’d have to do a lot more than change his ideas about sexual morality. Sure, rejecting the commercialism of neoliberals is a big step, but it’s more likely to return someone like Taibbi to hippie-era liberalism, than make him anything essentially non-liberal.

Taibbi would still have a tough time talking to working-class traditionalists in this country. He still appears to be on the Left with regard to the social issue broadly construed, which would include not just sexual morality but race, immigration, and the role of religion in public life. I would guess he still believes in something akin to “white guilt”, while only criticizing the modern Left for an obsessive interest in PC, which he finds a distraction from issues such as Iraq. He shows no evidence of rejecting the longstanding leftist faith in government action to reduce inequality and provide extensive services, such as universal health care. He does not indicate that he would feel comfortable opposing globalization and war from a Buchananite nationalist position, as opposed to a socialist perspective.

I agree with Daniel Larison’s argument that political realignment in this country should eventually produce an elitist, interventionist, neoliberal party, and a traditionalist populist party. Yet Taibbi has made only a modest step toward the traditionalist populist party, while you seem to be saying he’s almost there. As I discuss at greater length at my own blog, he’s likely to keep trying to defend an older liberalism, even if it makes it much harder for him to deliver a coherent message than if he became a traditional conservative. I wish I were as optimistic as you about the prospects for a realignment in the near term. However, Taibbi has made only a small break with the Left, and only figures to detach a small fragment from the Left even if he moves away from it.

[CBH]

So, James, if you have a moment, please tell us how you really feel about our current political/cultural situation...