I don’t want to be “grim and joyless,” nor do I want to be part of a grim and joyless movement, so I get what Kevin Drum is saying. Progressives need to avoid being relentless downers. For one rather obvious thing, you can’t really be progressive if you don’t have some faith the future can be better than the past. For another, people aren’t attracted to negativity and sanctimonious scolds.
The problem, as least for me, is that the thing the Republicans have been most successful at in the decade and a half I’ve been in the blogging business is killing off my trust in my fellow countrymen and making belief in progress seem naive. It’s a combination of things that are getting to me, none bigger than the climate crisis. It’s also the way things have shaken out on the Supreme Court where conservatives now seem of having a strong majority for the remainder of my life. It’s the way the rules keep making it harder for people to vote. It’s the regression in enlightened thinking on not just science and education but race. It’s the Republican Party going from Bush Crime Family to QAnon Neo-naziism. It’s the monopolization of everything.
I don’t sit around freaking out that people eat meat or like NFL football or aren’t sensitive when using pronouns. I freak out because we’re like frogs in boiling water. So many people can see the problems coming from a mile away, but the challenges just keep getting steeper. You know, if people had taken climate change seriously early on, we wouldn’t be in so much trouble right now. If they’d listened when we said the GOP was moving toward fascism, maybe something like January 6 doesn’t happen. So, how can I not feel like I need to keep yelling, but this time even louder? There’s nothing funny or joyful about any of this.
It’s not about nitpicking people to death over their life choices. It’s about where we’re headed and the fact that things are not getting better.
I’d also like to point out, for the record, that there isn’t much joyful about QAnon or Trumpism or the Tea Party or Nazis. Sure, being part of any movement can bring some novelty, excitement or even solidarity, but it’s still all grim messaging about how everything is under threat. So, it’s not like joyless progressives are competing with some super happy charismatic movement that appeals to kids. If the kids like anything about conservative messaging its that they’re allowed to say whatever the fuck they want. I grew up in New Jersey, and that’s pretty much our state religion. I’m not in favor of hateful or belittling rhetoric, but I love a good insult. I’m all for off color jokes so long as they don’t punch down.
We all need more laughter in our lives, and I want to be a merry warrior. There are ways to do this, but not by being in denial about how serious things have become. On that, I take no joy in saying things are grim.
You’re mostly right, and Drum is mostly wrong. He seems to have moved from journalism to being another Matt Taibbi or Bill Maher.
It’s easy to be annoyed with the most humorless and hyper-woke factions of the left (and even easier to make fun of them if you’re the kind of humorist who likes punching down), but they are in general NOT mean-spirited people, and our adversaries in general ARE. As you say, the Repubs aren’t selling joy either, they’re selling fear, hatred, and basic meanness, and way too many Americans are ready buyers.
Grim may not be beautiful but we can’t afford denial.
It’s the same with the pandemic. I had followed a large number of voices on this, and in some respects the optimists had one chance with my trust when the fall/winter of 2020 came, and it was an abysmal nightmare. This allowed me to cross off certain voices and stop listening to their hopium bullshit (you can see my comments here how the tenor shifted as the pandemic raged). It seems like even though we keep losing thousands of people, our leaders and followers want to realize this as an “new normal”. But plenty of respected voices are saying that SARS-COV2 can never be what they want it to be; in other words, it either requires better tech than we have, or we need to reorient a lot of infrastructure. Or accept thousands upon thousands of bodies every year, and a continued drop in life expectancy. Pretty grim if you ask me.
Every.Damn.Time.We need a break, we get thrown an anchor. The climate, the court, covid–any of these would be a 5-alarm disaster all their own, but when you combine them with seemingly unavoidable fascism and a complete breakdown in good-faith governance from the right, I don’t see any path forward but straight into the event horizon.
In the first paragraph you surely mean that “you can’t really be a progressive without some faith that the future can be better than the past.” I think that is very true. And I think that if we have been reduced to grim and joyless scolds – there’s an argument that we have – it is because that faith in the possibility of a better future has been profoundly shaken.
I wish I had a good answer.
Yup. Profoundly shaken is right.
Terrific and thought-provoking meditation, thank-you. For folks who believe in an afterlife or a heaven, this is one of those times when it comes in handy. It allows for the belief that there’s an ultimate settling of accounts (or redemption, or reward for good behavior/punishment for bad behavior) that provides reason to carry on and confidence about the final outcome.
For those that don’t, there’s (among many others) Camus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
When (some) organizers teach about the qualities of good leaders, having a sense of humor and having reflected on death are two of the essential ones*. Humor because it’s evidence of perspective, that the world (society, the universe) is far bigger than we are. Reflection on death because we are all going to die; so what are you going to do with the limited (and unknown) amount of time you have left?
*Anger is another one.
I was watching Action News yesterday morning & they had a story about a local Sugar Shack in the Philadelphia area. I had seen Andrew Zimmern visit one run by Martin Picard outside of Montreal on tv. It looked like a lot of fun. So naturally I was intrigued. Then the woman who ran it came on & explained that it was a great way to learn where your maple syrup, your sugar, your leather, and your food comes from. Than she further explained how it could be used to further social justice.
This is what Kevin Drum was referring too. Does every thing have to be a teachable moment related to social justice. Can’t I just get some local fucking maple syrup.
Maple syrup eh? After Trump and his never ending criminality of some just stupid and some evil it would be nice if they published a small handbook for dumbasses like Trump to understand that, among a few others, one is not permitted to tear up papers you don’t like. Maybe we need an official paper shredder to handle that chore.
There’s no doubt that the GOP rode negative partisanship to disproportionate electoral gains. The GOP literally has no policy platform beyond “tax cuts” and “pwn duh libtards.” That’s it. So the GOP and Fox keeps doubling and tripling down on negative partisanship and fear-based politics and winning elections that they have no business winning.
Democrats seem to have taken this to mean that fear-based, negative partisanship can work for them, too. But I wonder if progressive politics doesn’t require some measure of optimism. If you don’t believe things will ever get better, then what is the point?