Writing About Writing: Addressing Democratic Violence in the Age of Trump
Joe Biden is, by almost every metric that matters, a scumbag. Look into any deleterious piece of major legislation over the last 40 years and you’ll find him on the wrong side of history. Were it not for the “D” next to his name he would stand alongside such iconic political scoundrels as Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Ryan. And yet, that pesky “D” is there, single-handedly providing Obama the political cover necessary to choose Biden as a running mate without risk of scrutiny from anyone except well-read political activists on the left, who in the pre-social-media-boom-era, had little say in the national conversation.
Thus, the gruesome twosome ushered in eight years of ambivalence from the mainstream left enabled by a tacit assumption that we could trust Obama to do right by us with little-to-no oversight. Meanwhile, the specter of a racist populist right was enough to scare many otherwise thoughtful people into becoming Obama-defenders out of fear that to do any less would only empower the nascent Tea Party movement. Taken together, and coupled with The Onion’s dogged framing of Biden as the charming gaffe-prone backyard-beer-having Uncle Joe, the average Democrat was left with a sense that Joe Biden was Obama’s charming salt-of-the-Earth sidekick. He might be clumsy, he might a little cringe-y, but he was a dedicated public servant with a heart of gold who you could always trust when the chips were down. That Biden’s personal life was dotted with periodic tragedy only helped cement him as a sympathetic figure, undeserving of any suspicion or trepidation.
Years of war mongering, harassment of rape victims, sadistic carceral-state championing, banking wet work, friendships with the most depraved ghoulish humans to ever work in DC, unnerving handsiness with female colleagues and children, and general anti-progressive ideological commitments - washed away in a tide of satirical goodwill and absolution by association. After all, patron saint of the resurgent Democratic Party, Barack Obama, would never choose a VP who was functionally, philosophically, and politically dedicated to right wing policy agendas and amoral power grabs.
Which brings us to the present day and the trouble with covering someone like Biden for a general audience. The systematic descent of the Democratic Party over the last 70 years from left-leaning party of white America on the verge of embracing true intersectional leftist ideals to right-leaning socially-inoffensive PR courtesan to neoliberalism has been so gradual and prolonged that almost no living self-identifying Democrats were ever politically conscious at a time when the party wasn’t sliding to the right while paying lip service to the left. That the party has been careful to remain just left enough of the Republicans has imbued many loyal Democrats with a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where the increasingly destructive policy of the Democratic Party is ignored for the small rush of hope given by their moderately kind words. This is compounded by the openly cruel Republicans who make the deprivations of the status quo seem tolerable by comparison.
The upshot is that many proud Democrats are hostile to any substantive criticism of the Party, much less any wholesale dismissal of the Democratic Party as a force for good in the world. This can be explained partially as a defensiveness in response to a perceived attack on identity - no one likes to feel that they are being called suckers or that they’re complicit in atrocities - but it’s also an intellectual reaction. So potent and enduring is the propaganda of the Democratic Party and nominally liberal media outlets that, for many who consider themselves of the left, there would seem to be an irrefutable material case for the inherent goodness of the Democratic Party in spite of any perceived, or noted, flaws.
This makes covering the party, and electoral politics in general, a difficult task if you intend to reach anyone still immersed in the potent lore of Democratic heroics. To say any of the above to an audience of Democratic voters is to all but guarantee losing them within the first paragraph. Every single letter of every single word thus far could be accompanied by a link to a primary source document, data set, or exposé backing up every single idea expressed and it still wouldn’t make a difference. People, after all, do not actually form their beliefs in reaction to facts or historical truths. For the most part, people only react to emotion and narrative and then selectively use facts to support whatever conclusion they come to.
The narrative painted above is one that would prove utterly intolerable to any proud Democrat and no amount of sourcing would change that. Nor would it make it easier to reach a moderate or undecided audience, though for decidedly different reasons.
Too much of the above relies on a higher-than-average baseline knowledge of US political history, and politics in general as a form of power regulation and application. It’s not that the ideas would necessarily seem controversial or offensive to a moderate or uninformed audience, it’s that they would appear too wonky, too steeped in jargon and unfamiliar, to be strongly received one way or the other. The only audience liable to pay much attention or bother reading more than a dozen sentences is one primarily composed of people already curious about, or sympathetic to, the above perspective.
In attempting to cover the moral attrition of the Democratic Party, or the particular amoral power lust of any its senior members, one has to reckon with the fact that doing so in plain language significantly reduces the odds of reaching anyone outside a narrow spectrum of disillusioned left wing voters and burgeoning radicals. If a writer wants to speak to a wider audience or influence the average Democratic voter, they must, in one form or another, strategically select which lies of omission are necessary while planning to dole out truth sparingly over an extended period of time. Simply laying it all out there may win over the rare soul, but by and large, speaking bluntly about politics from a more informed position is most directly effective for communicating with those already in your ideological orbit.
The indirect impact, however, of this sort of contentious truth-to-power approach is more complicated to parse. There has been a dearth of real leftist media in the United States for decades, with any interested parties needing to go out of their way to find anything resembling rigorous leftist thought and analysis. To that end, then, there is a deep need for more writers willing to educate themselves on leftist perspectives and history as a means for providing leftist coverage of current events and introducing leftist concepts to public discourse. Moreover, the small yet growing leftist movements not just in the United States but around the world, can be supported and partially sustained by hearing from confident voices outside their immediate surroundings championing the ideas and values they believe in.
People need to feel that they are not alone, that they are others out there fighting these fights and considering problems and opportunities through lenses similar to their own. Besides which, staking out ideological terrain in the public sphere anywhere along the political spectrum requires strong, loud, and sure-footed voices who are comfortable speaking plainly about ideas that are otherwise poorly represented in the wider discourse. There can be no leftward movement without stable beacons in the outskirts serving as ideological safehouses for people venturing beyond the safety of familiar political narratives and perspectives.
Of course, it’s crucial not only to connect with those feeling disenfranchised or questioning of the mainstream political consensus, but also to reach those who feel perfectly comfortable with the existing consensus but who have yet to realize their deepest values and beliefs are not actually being reflected by the dominant paradigms. Growing leftist and justice-based political movements means, in part, reaching people otherwise indoctrinated with status quo ambivalence or even hostility toward seemingly radical ideas of political engagement and policy development. That process, more than any other, is subject to the whims of circumstance and historical moment. People who feel comfortable with how things are, regardless of the actual material conditions of their lives, are always going to resistant to any ideas that might jeopardize that comfort.
All of that said, choosing to speak bluntly about ideas that fly in the face of received wisdom can, in certain contexts, be an effective way of winning people over and expanding their awareness, just as in other contexts it can be alienating and stultifying. While such strident expressions of political analysis are often initially regarded with skepticism or indignation, they also frequently plant a seed of doubt that over time can lead people to question and challenge the political beliefs they’ve been fed by seemingly respectable sources their whole lives. Sometimes the confidence of someone asserting a position that at first seems outrageous is what’s necessary for breaking through the calcification of political obedience and ideological stagnancy.
Then there are the times perceived radical thought can have the opposite effect. A transgressive voice in the midst of comfortable narratives can jar someone into second guessing familiar perspectives. Too many such voices, however, and a person is likely to shore up their defenses and tune out the specifics of any ideas being expressed, instead perceiving the transgressive opinions and perspective as a monolithic power grab from a competing outside entity. Counter-narratives rarely break through if they’re seen as part of a hidden agenda or trend-driven bandwagon and a sudden influx, no matter how organic or sincere, can be easily be perceived as such by people outside a burgeoning zeitgeist.
Naturally, it’s impossible to know the context that each person brings to any particular piece they read or narrative they’re exposed to, but it’s a variable that’s especially relevant if you plan on being a consistent presence in political discourse. This concern is somewhat diminished for people such as book writers who have slightly more control over the context their work is being received in since the gaps between publication and author events lend a more deliberate and less volatile pace than other more frequent forms of writing and communication. Yet for everyone else these theoretical contexts that shape people’s perceptions must, to some extent, shape how you think about and approach your own work in pursuing regular public political engagement.
Too long spent with any one approach and your reputation will precede anything you do such that your audience becomes entirely limited by the association your namesake has to your work. You can quickly go from subversive culture critic to predictable crank simply by remaining consistent in your work and your audience will be shaped accordingly. Too much jumping around – proselytizing one day, Socratic debate the next, full-throated vitriol a week later – however, and you become an erratic provocateur, someone not sought out for their intellectual rigor or ethical commitments, but for their stimulating wildcard rants and missives. Perhaps the worst and most damning approach is to simply dedicate yourself solely toward addressing the middle and moderate political class, effectively reducing yourself to validating the status quo by providing through unnecessary nuance or generous indulgence an intellectual legitimacy to debates that are not worthy of being had.
This last approach will ensure that while you are taken seriously by various power brokers operating within the mainstream consensus, your every political thought and expression will be pedagogically inert. By staying within “respectable” boundaries of discourse, you are limited to the most trivial denunciations of enemies and hollow support of allies. There is only so much progress that can happen without confronting the infrastructure that enables the loudest, most horrific expressions of political violence, and that infrastructure is often well defended and rarely perceived as being as corrupt and overtly cruel as the actions it enables. To focus solely on the middle and moderates is to resign yourself to dancing around the unavoidably radical truths that lie beneath the surface of modern politics. Your audience will be as expansive as your impact will be negligible.
The task for anyone wanting to affect political change on the left is to draw attention to the above ubiquitous infrastructure, best characterized by Edward Said as, “the normalized quiet of unseen power.” This is an inherently fraught practice as directing attention in such a way means calling into question many deeply ingrained assumptions about the way our world operates, often in ways that are in direct conflict with existing moral perceptions.
These structures and unseen powers are often the only able to survive precisely because they have made themselves feel as natural a part of the world as our soil and air, and to the degree to which they’re noticed, they have sold themselves as necessary for holding back the tide of evil, convincing the populace that the existing manifestations of institutional authority are dedicated to principles of justice. Accompanying this narrative is a dogged insistence that any ethical compromises these institutions or structures makes are merely practical concessions in service of an unassailable commitment to stability and enduring progress. To question such authority would seem then, to many, to threaten the wall holding back the tide, a prospect so terrifying as not to be worthy of even remotely entertaining.
That such questioning is in fact essential for dismantling the affable artifice that feeds the beast is the case writers and activists must make, either explicitly or implicitly, when attempting to introduce seemingly radical ideologies to the general public.
Within the existing narrative that the United States possesses ethical institutional authority, it is the Democratic Party that has framed itself as the standard bearer of justice and progress, its methods as essential to resisting the rise of fascism. That the Democratic approach was in fact the exact political program that over the course of 8 years produced the current far right takeover of government, just as Clinton’s policies and approach produced Bush, is contorted into parable detailing just how terrible the world would be without Democrats, instead attributing credit to the party for providing a “reprieve” between right wing extremist administrations.
The political failures of the Democratic Party to hold onto power or use it for good are not perceived as failures but instead treated as testimonials to the nefarious deftness and underhandedness of right wing politicians to which Democrats were nigh powerless to resist in the face of insurmountable odds. That this narrative has no material or factual basis is irrelevant - it is emotionally compelling and exonerating of an institution that has for many become symbolic of the only true hope for change. It is also a seemingly intellectually sound explanation for current events that requires only that one had not payed close attention to the political developments of the last 20 years, which the Democratic Party leadership has accurately assessed that many have not. After all, how many self-identified well-read liberals earnestly believe the 2016 Democratic primaries to be more contentious than the 2008 ones? Memory is short and easily manipulated, particularly regarding people and institutions one regards as allied.
Introducing new perspectives and facts to counter this narrative requires developing a story more compelling and resonant than the existing one. But finding emotional footing secure enough to combat such a deeply ingrained view of the world is difficult when there are few, if any, cultural touchstones that have not been co-opted by one of the two parties. How do you develop an emotional connection with people around a new set of ideas when the existing emotional vocabulary is already associated with the very things you’re pushing back against?
Which brings us back to Biden. What is one to do when an individual, combined with the institution he represents, has been integral to the rise of fascism throughout the world and the writhing, halting collapse of global ecology, yet is seen as an ally and defender of justice? There are transparently worse actors on the political stage and no one could legitimately argue that the Democratic Party have been the primary force behind the worsening state of the world, and at the same time, we would not be where we are were the party actually committed to the ideals and principles they claim in pursuit of electoral victories.
There is an urgent need for greater numbers of people to recognize just how dangerous and malicious a force the Democratic Party is and has been, but how do you make that case when the other branch of the political duopoly is openly calling for the creation of concentration camps? Even if the Democratic leadership is complicit, and in fact laid the groundwork for this outcome, it remains a hard sell to argue that they should be treated as a foe when Republicans are openly championing fascism.
To be clear this is not a philosophical or theoretical hurdle, it’s a practical one. It’s not just that it’s morally offensive or socially alienating for the liberal population to regard the Democratic Party with fondness (though it is those things, as well), it’s that such rose-colored perceptions present a political barrier to doing anything that could actually halt, or reverse, the momentum of fascism. Undoing the damage done since Reagan, and rectifying the injustices present since the creation of the United States, requires the sort of ambitious, people-led politics and justice-based policy programs that the Democratic Party is, structurally, designed to fight against.
A generally favorable view of the Democratic Party among those on the left, to the point of unquestioning deference and admiration, presents, in many ways, a greater problem than any developments on the right. This is because unlike the right, which is not made up of people potentially committed to radical paradigm shifts in service of justice and ecological sustainability, the left is almost entirely comprised of people who care about such things but have been captured by an institution - the Democratic Party - that is working in opposition to these goals. If right is trying to tear down then the left is trying to build, except the Democratic Party has millions of people believing they’re building when in fact they’re tearing down. That manipulation of good will and intent is exactly what makes the Democratic Party so dangerous and also why people like Biden remain so untouchable. No matter how many women he sniffs or gropes or harasses, no matter how openly vile and malicious his policy record is, no matter how heinous and amoral the company he keeps, he has been ordained a Good Man by a party that has grown its power by selling destruction as restoration to people who have never known anything different. His cruelty and moral indifference are treated as foibles because, for many on the left, it is impossible to imagine that there is a structural alternative to accepting such things with a shrug and a sigh.
World history is not over-burdened with examples of just governments or humanitarian revolutions, and those that exist have been enthusiastically scrubbed from the public record or propagandized away by the powers that be. Nor is there is a long, storied history of culture reliably steering societies in better directions. Mostly, culture has had a symbiotic relationship to politics and community life wherein it equally reflects and influences both in a mercurial process that can only sporadically be intentionally steered in any one direction. For those wishing to play an active part in building a better world or elevating politics to be more accountable to the people, there is only a historical record suggesting isolated and erratic ups and downs, where things improve and worsen in fits and starts, too many moving parts and unknown unknowns for any single cohesive strategy or plan to claim responsibility for the success or failure of a movement or government.
Returning then to the core of the questions posed above – how do you address the full breadth of brokenness in the world when it means disparaging many people’s sole source of political hope – there likely exists no definitive answer. But there do seem to be partial answers, or at least general commonalities between successful movements of the past. One of those commonalities is the consistent public effort by those seeking change to speak radically and uncompromisingly about their beliefs and values, to not be afraid to name names and make enemies nor to be afraid to declare their commitment to ambitious ideas or seemingly impossible outcomes. The revisionist political idea that progress comes through gradual iteration and evolution, rather than through the leaps and bounds achieved through moon shots and revolutions, is pernicious but ultimately flimsy in the face of movements that confidently embrace the principles of equity and justice without concession to status quo civility or norms.
Covering Biden then, and by extension the Democratic Party, is at once a process fraught with complexities and strikingly simple in its implications. If one wants to tailor their actions and language to best suit the particular perspectives and views of everyone in their audience, then there are an almost infinite number of variables to consider, any one of which having the potential to undermine any point being made. Approaching writing from this angle often means resorting to ever more nuanced and detailed messaging, moving away from any clear-eyed analysis and deeper into a morass of political uncertainty and empathetic concession.
If, however, one wants to, on aggregate, move the needle within their sphere toward a more effective engagement with the principles and values they believe in, the path forward becomes clear: Proudly and unapologetically communicate your perspective and understanding with the urgency and moral fortitude you feel it bears. There is nothing more, or less, any of us can do.