By John Daniel Davidson
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Nearly 20 years ago, Radiohead released “Karma Police,” the
second single on their groundbreaking album “OK Computer.” The song is an
anthem for an illiberal age. It opens with a demand, “Karma police / Arrest
this man,” and the refrain sounds a warning, “This is what you’ll get / When
you mess with us.”
Given his left-wing politics, Thom Yorke no doubt feared
conformity of thought and suppression of speech and dissent would come from the
political Right, and from the homogenizing effects of capitalism and consumer
culture.
He was right that we were entering an era of intolerance,
but wrong to think it would come from conservatives. Our illiberal moment, and
the popular culture that creates and sustains it, is almost wholly a creation
of the Left.
Every passing day since the presidential election bears
this out. The spasms of outrage and protest that have rocked the country since
Donald Trump’s election have revealed what should have been plain to see for a
long time: progressives are through debating; they are interested only in
enforcing their views.
They believe they have won the culture wars, that there
is no room left for dissent on matters like gay marriage, abortion, and
transgender entitlements. They believe, too, that questions of public policy,
from health care to entitlements and welfare, have been settled once and for
all. Any remaining dissenters should feel the full weight of the administrative
state, with all its powerful mechanisms.
Don’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding? We’ll put
you out of business. Donate to the wrong political cause? You’ll lose your job.
Don’t want to pay for government-mandated birth control for your employees?
We’ll haul you before the Supreme Court, even if you’re a group of
septuagenarian Catholic nuns. This is what you’ll get when you mess with us.
You Don’t Reason
With Nazis, Do You?
What a shock, then, when half the country rejected the
reigning consensus. Many of those who voted for Trump didn’t agree with any of
his policies and disliked him personally. But they were tired of being told
what they could say and think by progressive elites, who after eight years of
the Obama administration have become comfortable treating with disdain anyone
who disagrees with them.
So the Left has been lashing out, in the streets and on
college campuses, but also on stage. On Friday, the cast of Broadway show
“Hamilton” lectured Vice President-elect Mike Pence, reading a statement from
the stage proclaiming they are, “alarmed and anxious that your new
administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or
defend us and uphold our inalienable rights.”
Set aside that people who really feel threatened by a
powerful government do not behave this way in the presence of that government’s
leaders. Set aside, too, the irony of celebrity actors lecturing the VP-elect
after an election in which the losing side leaned heavily on the endorsements
of celebrity actors.
The cast of “Hamilton” weren’t just broadcasting their
faux alarm and anxiety; they were signaling that they reject the new
administration and will not be seen colluding with it—or even entertaining its
leaders without protest. Imagine how a Trump voter in the audience must have
felt Friday night.
But, the Left will reply, who cares about the Trump
voter? There’s no such thing as a good Trump voter. If Trump is a racist and a
bigot, then those who supported him are complicit in his racism and bigotry,
and they will be partly responsible for all the bad things that happen in
Trump’s America. “To insist Trump’s backers are good people is to treat their
inner lives with more weight than the actual lives on the line under a Trump
administration,” writes Slate’s
Jamelle Bouie. “At best, it’s myopic and solipsistic. At worst, it’s morally
grotesque.”
Got that? It’s morally grotesque to insist Trump voters
are good people. If that’s true, and Trump’s supporters really are, in Hillary
Clinton’s phrase, just a big “basket of deplorables,” then who cares what they
think? Why bother trying to persuade these wicked people? Better to shout them
down, mock them, muzzle them by force, if possible. You don’t reason with
Nazis, do you?
The Rise of the
‘Dirtbag Left’
The fullest expression of this posture doesn’t come from
Bouie but from a cohort of young progressives styled the “Dirtbag Left” in a
recent profile in The New Yorker.
Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, and Will Menaker are the trio behind “Chapo
Trap House,” a comedy and politics podcast dedicated to “vulgar leftist
commentary,” which prior to the election had stood out mostly for its withering
critique of the Democratic Party and its erstwhile nominee.
It also stood out for its shit-talking, “Bernie bros”
tone. Christman told one interviewer that members of the dirtbag left aren’t
afraid “to offend the sensibilities of ‘leftist’ language police whose only
goal is sabotaging social solidarity in order to maintain their brands as
arbiters of good taste and acceptable speech.” The hosts, all thirty-something
white guys, don’t worry about offending anyone, even other progressives.
They’re as foul-mouthed as they please, even when they’re being interviewed by The New Yorker:
Menaker, who is thirty-three, told
me that fans are drawn to the podcast because the hosts have ‘no special
obligation to be nice to anyone, or get a pat on the head, or’—and here he
briefly affected the voice of an aristocrat—‘have a fine debate with mon
conservative frère.’ He rolled his eyes and mimed masturbation. ‘My reaction to
that is a jack-off motion so hard it opens a portal into another dimension.’
But the vulgarity isn’t just for entertainment. It’s also
a way of being honest—telling it like it really
is. Many on the Left called Trump a (short-fingered) vulgarian for doing the
exact same thing. He wasn’t afraid of offending. But it’s the dirtbag left’s
honesty that’s so instructive: these guys want you to know what they really
think.
That makes it easy to see their intolerance; they wear it
like a badge of honor. Asked if part of the blame for Clinton’s defeat should
go to voters who chose Trump despite his supposed racism and sexism, the
“Chapo” guys scoffed. “Even if you do blame the electorate, where do you go
from there?” Biederman asked. “Do we shame these people into liking us?”
Clearly not. You just ignore them, or make fun of them.
The dirtbag left isn’t interested in persuading Midwestern Democrats who voted
for Trump that the redistributive policies of Bernie Sanders would benefit them
more than whatever Trump is going to do. That’s not the conversation they want
to have. Before the election, much of their humor sprung from mocking the
insufficient progressivism of the Democratic Party. They were counting on a
Clinton victory so they could spend their time and energy pulling the Democrats
further left, not morphing into a podcast version of “The Daily Show.”
The Left Is
Impatient for Its Revolution
Now, they’re not interested in soul-searching about how
to forge a post-identity liberalism that focuses more on how to help out white
people in the Rust Belt and reach out to religious voters. For the “Chapo” set,
so much is already settled. Capitalism is dying, conservatism is bankrupt, and
quaint constitutional ideas about free speech and “religious liberty” deserve a
vanishingly small place in America’s future. Why bother trying to persuade
those who don’t agree with you? Anyone who doesn’t agree is an ignorant rube on
the wrong side of history—including, even especially, Democrats.
This was the prevalent mindset among Sanders protestors
at the Democratic National Convention back in July. They were outraged that
Clinton would be the nominee, not because they thought she would lose to Trump
but because they wanted to be done with her less-than-full-socialism brand of
liberal politics. One got the sense they felt they had defeated the GOP once
and for all, that Republicans were nothing but a laughingstock now and could be
safely cast aside. They were impatient to complete the revolution on the Left,
and furious they would have to wait for Clinton to have her turn in the White
House.
But such a mindset betrays a deep provincialism endemic
to the modern Left, especially the dirtbag left, which must be one of the most
provincial demographics in the country. If you think, like the “Chapo”
vulgarians do, that the “consequences of capitalism” for a lot of middle-class
white dudes is that they feel bored and aimless because they don’t fit into the
economy as producers or consumers, then you’ve probably had almost no contact
with poor people or anyone outside your immediate peer group. Likewise, if you
think the only reason Trump won is because Clinton was a bad candidate who ran
a lazy campaign, then you’re not trying very hard to understand America.
But then, that’s the conceit at the heart of the Left: if
you’re on the right side of history, what is there to understand?
No comments:
Post a Comment