The fault is in ourselves

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

(William Shakespeare -- Julius Caesar)

                When I came out in the late 80’s/early 90’s and first encountered where Left-thought was headed due to the influence of post-modernism I was concerned but felt, at the time, that I lacked the intellectual chops to rail against it intelligently. Here I was, a high school graduate and former soldier, just starting my academic career and I was being taught by people who had imbibed fully the teachings of Foucalt and Baudrillard. I was trying to wade through post-modernist thinkers, struck by how truly awful much of their writing was and that which I could understand seemed to have very little to do with life on this planet with our species even though it was nominally a critique of how we build and enforce culture. So I picked up my keyboard and moved over to the world of the hard sciences where, at least, there was still an acknowledgement that such a thing as ‘facts’ existed in the world and one could be on some kind of firmer intellectual ground. That was two decades ago. My eyes have drank in countless words since then and they have percolated in my brain all this time. I have learned the art of intellectual discipline and no longer see myself as a hopeless rube with a mind that is still ‘colonized’ by the ‘hegemonic’. We on the Left screwed up. We blew it and we do so spectacularly. While I’m not going to let the Right-wing off the hook--this mess is as much theirs as it is ours--they are not my primary concern except that as a Liberal I need to ready and able to counter-balance Conservatives. As Liberals or Progressives or what-have-you, we have not been at all effective at doing so.

        We made two errors and they are entwined together. One is more philosophical although it has had a negative impact on our strategy and one is more strategic although its underpinnings are certainly philosophical. The former is epistemic relativism and the latter is identity politics. Before this post is finished I hope to demonstrate that these two memes form a double-helix which has served to direct the development of Left-leaning thought to its detriment. Epistemic relativism has given the Left moral blinders and caused us to turn away from most of what is noblest about Liberalism. What’s more, it has created a trap that Conservatives--who went to the same schools as Liberals until recently--have exploited; to wit, the idea that if you believe something to be true then it is True and so any reality that anyone believes must be ‘respected’. Identity politics has turned us into ideologically-driven blowfish, ready to puff up at a moment’s notice over even the most trivial of slights or slips. One result of this is that we are ready to call racism on a hair-trigger which has allowed racists to become immune to the accusation and, as the 2010 Republican primary showed, a badge of honor. Another is that in making being a woman, or a queer, or a person of color a matter of essence we have managed to meet racism and sexism coming the other way! Things in America specifically and the West generally have gotten serious. Deadly serious. More than at any time in the last half-century, America needs a strong and intellectually powerful Left to counter the forces of plutocracy, fascism and theocracy that are converging on the body politic. Political and intellectual movements cannot, by necessity, turn on a dime but if we are to be effective in countering what appears to be coming down the track we must try to change the memes we use--first in speaking to one another and, more importantly, speaking to the general public.

        I’ll take identity politics first. It is the more pernicious and the more ambiguous of the cases. I say that because while epistemic relativism has very little to recommend it, identity politics does make some sense. Identity actually matters. It would be entirely foolish of me to suggest that my experience of America, as a black, butch lesbian, is identical to the experience of my buddy, Ogre, who is a big bear of a straight, white man. The problem with identity politics was put very trenchantly by Nick Cohen in his book “What’s Left” when he wrote;

        To generalize, the idea that a homosexual black woman should have the same rights as a heterosexual white man was replaced by a relativism which took the original and hopeful challenge of the early feminist, gay and anti-racist movements and flipped it over. Homosexuality, blackness and womanhood became separate cultures that couldn’t be criticized or understood by outsiders applying universal criteria. Nor, by extension, could any other culture even if it was the culture of fascism, religious tyranny, wife burning or suicide bombing.

        Later, Cohen states that the Left--in breaking with our Enlightenment ancestors--adopted the position of the Ancien Regime which was that ‘ men and women have the ability to transcend their circumstances and culture.’ Think about that for a moment. The position of conservatism, certainly in America, is that women are women and, as such, are constrained by gender from being proficient at certain kinds of tasks; blacks are blacks and, as such, have certain kinds of talents (sports, entertainment) while lacking certain other kinds of talents (logic, rationality, mathematics). While conservatism must give a nod to the idea of individualism, it views those of us who are black or women who defy the stereotype as the exception that proves the general rule. To the degree that conservatism concerns itself overly much with issues of equality, its concern is for the exceptions and not for the general population that fall under the same stereotype. It was once the case that part of what separated liberals from conservatives was that liberals had a belief that bordered on religious that one’s gender, race, or other circumstances of background did not define what one’s capacities were and that if society leveled the playing field, the talents of those considered inferior would be loosed to the benefit of all. No longer. Now I am supposed to bring certain talents and skills to the table as a black woman but they are constrained by those two adjectives. We might, for good measure, add that my being a butch lesbian brings two more sets of expectations but those four adjectives pretty much define the axis around which my talents and skills can be located. So when people find out that I’m a physical science (biomedical informatics) major they are genuinely surprised. When they find out that my worldview is entirely naturalistic they are shocked. My commitment to rationality and reason upset the apple cart of their expectations of what a black woman ‘should’ be. Keep in mind I am talking about liberals and other people ostensibly of the Left.

        If conservatives were less likely to be ruthlessly and gleefully Machiavellian in their approach to politics, then perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad. However, American conservatives have taken ruthless politics to whole (and wholly terrifying) new levels. At the very moment where the Left needs to be able to stand tall and say that “this will not happen, not on our watch” we have lost the language of moral outrage and lost the courage of our convictions. We can stand up and call Bush a Nazi, but we don’t really mean it because Bush wasn’t really a Nazi. We can say chant “2, 4, 6, 8, we say no to racist hate!” but we should not mistake this for actually standing up against racism. We can write, read and discuss articles about ‘unpacking the knapsack’ until the cows come home, but this does not actually move us back to the idea that each of us are individuals who should be judged upon our actions and not simply representative members of some sociologically significant group or another.

        I have talked to many a liberal or progressive who, when asked about how this kinder, gentler, softer, ‘everyone’s reality is true if they believe it’ stance works when confronted with a Fred Phelps stammer and then quickly change the subject. Why? Because they know, deep in their heart-of-hearts, that if the only thing that we can stand on is that we don’t like what Phelps says or represents instead of what he says being actually wrong then, the tender mercies of their hearts notwithstanding, there is no good reason for someone on the sidelines to pick a pro-gay rights stance over an anti-gay stance.

        One cannot effectively fight a ruthless opponent if one does not believe--with a surety--that one’s cause is a righteous one. I think that we have theorized ourselves into a place where we believe our cause is the one we should prefer, but not that it is actually a righteous cause.