Why We Have to Fight, Part 1

I’m seeing lots of posts from folks on the center-left about how people in rural PA or Michigan or Tennessee or Texas don’t like some part of the Sanders or Warren agenda. 

It’s one thing to worry about the electoral consequences of these proposals. I will address that question another time. But I’m concerned that people who should be on our side are overstating the electoral problems in part because they think it’s somehow illegitimate for us to put forward ideas that aren’t embraced by almost everyone. 

This is a long-standing problem among liberals. There is a strand of liberalism that is afraid of political power and will do everything it can to avoid exercising it. This same strand of thought makes it hard for liberals to bear disagreement. 

That strand is connected to another that vastly overestimates the power of argument-—as opposed to numbers and organizing—in politics. 

Robert Frost once said that a liberal is someone who “won’t take their own side in a fight.” These two strands of liberal thought are why Frost’s dictum is sometimes true. 

The right today has no problem exercising power. Indeed, their fascist heritage leads them to worship power for its own sake. The initial goal of a large share of Trump supporters today is not to maintain white supremacy or patriarchy but to attack those of us who call them into question. They appear to hate white progressives more than hate anyone else. (Their long term goal, however, is precisely to maintain white supremacy and the patriarchy.) 

We need to get over this fear of conflict and disagreement and the exercise of power. We need to understand that we can’t challenge white supremacy, patriarchy, and oligarchy without getting people who defend them good and mad. And we have to focus our arguments not on those who will not agree with us in the near future but on mobilizing folks on our side. And to do that we must identify our enemies clearly and plainly. 

Not every political struggle has to be one in which there are friends and enemies. But we are in a struggle for the future of this country and the planet. Our opponents stand against freedom and equality for everyone. And if we let them hold power, we risk climate disaster.

We do have to be strategic. But this is not the time to shrink from a fight.