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Originally Posted by AltaGuy
I remain of the opinion that there is no true dialectic in the US between extreme right and left. The extreme right is enabled, abetted, funded, and championed by many wealthy interests: a perverted betrayal of many poor citizens’ best interests, but a thrust that continues to exacerbate inequality and social ills.
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I agree that the economic far left poses no real challenge to the far right in America. But I don't think traditional notions of left-right hold up in today's political climate. Silicon Valley is the crucible of modern capitalism. However, the lords of the new economy despise Trump, and champion the cutting edge of progressive politics.
And you're thinking of the moneyed interests as the 1 per cent. But what about the 20 per cent? The educated, progressive, urban professionals who skew heavily Democrat today? Virtually all of the wealthiest 100 counties in the U.S. went to Clinton. The leafy suburbs of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, with their lawyers, doctors, professors, and HR managers, are the Democratic heartland today.
On economic issues, the Democrats largely abandoned the working class and economic egalitarianism in favour of identity politics and social progressivism. I don't think you can say at all that the Republicans are the party of moneyed interests anymore, when Clinton ended up with three times the campaign funding as Trump did.
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Originally Posted by AltaGuy
So yeah - social issues get some play - and make it seem as if the discourse is a dialectic. It’s not: the extreme right is backed by money, while the extreme left is part of a party that is firmly centrist and will never go far left because it would hurt its own moneyed interests too much.
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Social issues get more than 'some play.' Dogmas that only 10 years ago were confined to radical academia have become core social orthodoxy in progressive culture. Questioning those orthodoxies, no matter how provisionally, ends careers.
In 2005, a left-leaning American could challenge radical assertions that all differences in group outcomes are due to systemic oppression, that wearing ethnic costumes is egregious oppression, that American society is rape culture, or that toxic masculinity governs every dimension of our society. Today, you will be cast out of progressive society, and may well lose your job, if you challenge such orthodoxies. Just ask Katie Roiphe, Erika Christakis, and James Damore.
If social issues aren't that important in politics today, why are figures like Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, and Jordan Peterson vilified by the left? I'm confident all of them support universal public health care, public education, and progressive taxation. Nothing in their writing suggests they're patsies for the plutocrats who foster growing inequality. And yet they're reviled in every progressive media outlet and blog.
Then there's immigration. Progressive sensibilities have changed dramatically in only a few years.
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In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
...In its immigration section, the 2008 (Democratic) platform referred three times to people entering the country “illegally.” The immigration section of the 2016 platform didn’t use the word illegal, or any variation of it, at all.
“A decade or two ago,” says Jason Furman, a former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, “Democrats were divided on immigration. Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istake/528678/
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