Part Three: What Do We Do?
So what do we do now? How to do we respond to this disaster called Donald Trump?
That will greatly depend on exactly what sort a government Trump’s will prove to be. I have written on this as well and you can see what I suspect to be the various possible scenarios that we may face (ranging from Fascism to Chaos) here, "The Trump White House: What Are The Scenarios?"
But, whatever we face, the Liberal Left will have to adapt. In particular, it will have to prepare for long years in the wilderness, re-organize itself as a vital and energetic organization, build bridges with those it had previously excluded, and, most important of all, seek a new Message...which, I suspect, will also be based on the same economic crisis which has already wounded us.
To take it one at a time:
1) Prepare for the worst—it is entirely possible that we will be excluded from power for decades. I hope that is not the case. I hope that the Liberal Left will be able to get its act together and retake power in a mere four years.
But, if this is not the case, that we need to be able to hang together as a movement, keeping our ideals alive, even as we move through long years of depression. (As an aside, and not to be too melodramatic, the Liberal Left may need to consider an underground. This, of course, is in reference to the Worst Case Scenario. It may be a good idea to have an branch of the Left that expects to suffer worst—it would be organized in cells, operate in secret, and be prepared for a long period of opposition.)
2) Organize —we need to get our act together as a political machine. We need to be as organized, and as disciplined, as the Right has been. We need networks of individuals and groups. We need to be one movement, united in our efforts, and open to all.
This means that various movements within the Liberal Left and which seek to take over the Democratic Party are incredibly important.
3) Outreach —Bluntly, the Left needs to reach out to white males, white women, and anyone else who felt left out of Liberalism’s grand narrative of the last half century.
The measures we would need to take would include but not limited to: a) muting the more extreme and virulent rhetoric of third wave feminism, offering men (at least poor ones) the same kind of protections and of other disadvantaged groups, crafting a Liberal narrative that included white males instead of demonizing them, and offering males concrete economic motivations to vote liberal (such as programs to advance their economic standing), b) reaching out to the sort of women who voted for Trump, discovering their motives, and then offering a more attractive alternative, and, c) abandoning identity politics to the greatest degree possible.
As importantly, the Liberal Left needs to open its doors to thinkers and doers of every sort. That includes Bernie Sanders and the people behind, the young men and women who are now facing so much difficulty in the world, and, yes, even the stray conservative or libertarian.
Or, even, people like us. We, who have no credentials, were not born in great wealth, and don’t have connections in important places.
4) Discovering A Message And A Goal -- What exactly do we stand for in his day and age? We were the party of the working class, but that fell by the wayside in the postindustrial economy. Then, we...or at least the Democratic Establishment...decided it was the party of the knowledge-worker in the Globalized Economy. But that’s failed, too.
So what do we become? What vision of the world do we offer humanity?
I would suggest that we embrace the very economic crisis that has nearly brought about our demise. The automation of the workforce has brought about our poverty and pain. Fine. Let us now advocate a society based on automation of almost all work. Let us assume that most human beings will have no place in economic of the future.
Instead, let us have the “Digital Athens.” Let us proclaim that our goal is society in which most people don’t work, in which they receive instead a basic income, and in which most hard labor is performed machines...leaving people to pursue lives devoted to the arts, the sciences, research, the humanities, the arts, beauty, sports, whatever.
Yes, we would have to admit that this is goal is utopian, and that it would not come quickly. But it is possible. And it would give us a goal and message which the Right, with its thinly disguised social Darwinism and elitism, could not match.
That will greatly depend on exactly what sort a government Trump’s will prove to be. I have written on this as well and you can see what I suspect to be the various possible scenarios that we may face (ranging from Fascism to Chaos) here, "The Trump White House: What Are The Scenarios?"
But, whatever we face, the Liberal Left will have to adapt. In particular, it will have to prepare for long years in the wilderness, re-organize itself as a vital and energetic organization, build bridges with those it had previously excluded, and, most important of all, seek a new Message...which, I suspect, will also be based on the same economic crisis which has already wounded us.
To take it one at a time:
1) Prepare for the worst—it is entirely possible that we will be excluded from power for decades. I hope that is not the case. I hope that the Liberal Left will be able to get its act together and retake power in a mere four years.
But, if this is not the case, that we need to be able to hang together as a movement, keeping our ideals alive, even as we move through long years of depression. (As an aside, and not to be too melodramatic, the Liberal Left may need to consider an underground. This, of course, is in reference to the Worst Case Scenario. It may be a good idea to have an branch of the Left that expects to suffer worst—it would be organized in cells, operate in secret, and be prepared for a long period of opposition.)
2) Organize —we need to get our act together as a political machine. We need to be as organized, and as disciplined, as the Right has been. We need networks of individuals and groups. We need to be one movement, united in our efforts, and open to all.
This means that various movements within the Liberal Left and which seek to take over the Democratic Party are incredibly important.
3) Outreach —Bluntly, the Left needs to reach out to white males, white women, and anyone else who felt left out of Liberalism’s grand narrative of the last half century.
The measures we would need to take would include but not limited to: a) muting the more extreme and virulent rhetoric of third wave feminism, offering men (at least poor ones) the same kind of protections and of other disadvantaged groups, crafting a Liberal narrative that included white males instead of demonizing them, and offering males concrete economic motivations to vote liberal (such as programs to advance their economic standing), b) reaching out to the sort of women who voted for Trump, discovering their motives, and then offering a more attractive alternative, and, c) abandoning identity politics to the greatest degree possible.
As importantly, the Liberal Left needs to open its doors to thinkers and doers of every sort. That includes Bernie Sanders and the people behind, the young men and women who are now facing so much difficulty in the world, and, yes, even the stray conservative or libertarian.
Or, even, people like us. We, who have no credentials, were not born in great wealth, and don’t have connections in important places.
4) Discovering A Message And A Goal -- What exactly do we stand for in his day and age? We were the party of the working class, but that fell by the wayside in the postindustrial economy. Then, we...or at least the Democratic Establishment...decided it was the party of the knowledge-worker in the Globalized Economy. But that’s failed, too.
So what do we become? What vision of the world do we offer humanity?
I would suggest that we embrace the very economic crisis that has nearly brought about our demise. The automation of the workforce has brought about our poverty and pain. Fine. Let us now advocate a society based on automation of almost all work. Let us assume that most human beings will have no place in economic of the future.
Instead, let us have the “Digital Athens.” Let us proclaim that our goal is society in which most people don’t work, in which they receive instead a basic income, and in which most hard labor is performed machines...leaving people to pursue lives devoted to the arts, the sciences, research, the humanities, the arts, beauty, sports, whatever.
Yes, we would have to admit that this is goal is utopian, and that it would not come quickly. But it is possible. And it would give us a goal and message which the Right, with its thinly disguised social Darwinism and elitism, could not match.
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