This thoroughly articulates why and I how I feel so thoroughly alienated from "the resistance." My only point of departure is I'm a bit more positive on Biden's anti-trust and economic investments. It seems like it was too little (though it was actually quite huge!), too late (many of the projects still stuck in the pipeline), and too incompetently communicated by a president Dems pretended was in his right mind and by professional communications consultants who are bad at their jobs.
Strongly agree with your analysis and would like to add a thought. I worked in and around climate activism for almost twenty years and to my mind it’s greatest weakness was what you describe here- a fixation on what/who is wrong without much if any focus on developing a compelling vision for what a decarbonized society would look like. When I tried to create interest in that the pushback was intense. A big part of this was funding. The people in charge of mobilizing funding and engagement were absolutely convinced that focus on the fear of a dystopian future that was being dictated by a powerful enemy- the fossil fuel industry- was the ticket to donations and mobilizing. Anything else was a time-and- money wasting distraction. In addition, foundation funding practices reward discreet, short-term issue campaigns and did not reward long-term strategic thinking. Nor did they effectively motivate joint efforts among the plethora of organizations competing for resources and attention, so campaigns tended to have a lot of inefficiencies and redundancy for the same short-term outcomes. I’m guessing community organizers have similar problems? I also agree with your overall concern about the need to really listen to people’s concerns to get us beyond internal division, but the money question is another one I think we need to address. Why progressive foundations do not reward greater effectiveness is an interesting question, but the more urgent question is how do we change that.
Oh yea this is spot on. Totally applicable to the broader organizing world. I suppose at some point I'll write something laying out all my beefs with the funding system we have but it's problems are pretty deeply entrenched at this point.
1) I think we briefly had a sort of popular front style positive program that hit its highwater mark in 2019: the Green New Deal/climate movement. People's interest in environmental activism was really catching momentum with the fall 2019 protest campaigns. However, it's my opinion that COVID smothered it in the crib.
2) I was surprised to see you threw class analysis in the camp you were criticizing. I don't see the difference between that and your rising tide program you're interested in. There's a lot of online nerds pretending to be Maoists, Trotskyist, Tankies, etc. but they hardly ever show up in person. In a sense they're not real. I can only guess that you're gesturing at the growing popularity of anti-billionaire rhetorics that seems detached from what you'd do by seizing their ill gotten assets (housing, healthcare, energy transition, etc.).
Overall, enjoy your thoughts Luke. I don't always agree with everything you say but I recall you being one of the first to say to my face (in a good way) that the "kids in cages" rhetoric around 2017/18 was bullshit. It was near the beginning of my transition from centrist lib to something with the S word in it.
Side note: Resistance isn't just from Star Wars. It's specifically from the recent Disney Star Wars trilogy, starting with the soft reboot/remake/diminished clone of the very first one. There's something metaphorical there.
Hopefully my perspective has something unique to add to this sort of conversation. I feel entirely alienated from engaging with, being active in, or supporting community organizing efforts for the reasons you laid out here.
Part of that is on me. I work in food service for a day job in lieu of being a career professional musician and educated political scientist (IR). I spend enough time outside day-work practicing or gigging on the side for networking, personal projects or auditions, and I otherwise spend “labor” time reading/researching topics of personal interest in the hope of eventually developing writing for with what’s left of my personal time. This doesn’t account for personal time doing other things.
For the brief time I poked my head into a local organizing effort (c. 2022, Piedmont NC area), it was a small group of disparate individuals who I sensed were not all particularly experienced in the task at hand (a noble effort pursuing justice for an individual who passed under the supervision of local police, where some older folks had legal experience, but that’s about it). I am extremely wary of how the “diversity and representation” crowd has almost entirely consumed Broadly Left organizing efforts, as I am diametrically opposed to their ideology and political focus (it’s bad enough in Classical Music culture as it is).
An example of a group I would be interested in supporting is Class Unity, a Marxist offshoot of DSA efforts. I’m convinced that the “diversity and representation” crowd is entirely reactionary, even if there’s sympathy for where their moral concerns ultimately stem from. They are yolked by a pernicious sort of secular Christian Moralizing and a bastardized amalgamation of New Left and Postmodernist philosophical influences that have generated a boutique and abstract “politics” that is incapable of generating material change or equity. Zizek puts forward a convincing argument that “a communist should assume life is hell”.
But I’m not a pessimist. I’m an optimist who cares about arguing for a life-affirming sort of condition that we are beholden to as a species, to create our own meaning in the mire. It’s possible to carve out a semblance of that in isolation, as individuals who have to travail the path. But to build beyond that requires the sort of stuff you’re talking about. If not currently at a national level, it has to be built ground-up as small and multitudinous cells that can eventually network on the sort of organizing premises you mention to spread wider among the margins. If you’re familiar with the Orange Order over in North Ireland, think of that but-not-reactionary, lol. It may be worth divesting from “diversity and representation” crowds when possible, and strategically engaging with them when it’s projects that are grounded in material politics or policy. That’s the sort of stuff I’d support.
I think you're spot on. For what it's worth I've completely divested my time from the "representation" crowd for the time being. Simply can't beat my head against that wall right now.
In terms of organizing, building small cells of people with a positive vision for their community is exactly what I do here in MI. And it's been really successful in bringing a pretty wide range of people together to win meaningful improvements in their communities, completely separate from the more ideological "woke" stuff (for lack of a better term). A pretty big plurality of my base is actually conservative evangelicals FWIW. They just want affordable housing and addiction treatment etc. in their own towns.
If you lived in Michigan I bet I'd get you involved :)
As a person more on the right, most of my life is in sheer bemusement for what tactics are being used. Let's note the new MAGA is now most of the working class, and take Climate as an example. Now you know the values, the approach the priorities of working people. And you know not everyone believes in Global Warming. But rather than grab a 10, 20, 30% of things everyone can agree on and we can actually do, like addicted gamblers, they grab for 99% or nothing. Then do it for 30 years, shouting at their own base...or the other base, I see them as being the same...all the while, not only losing entirely, but poisoning well.
And it has been said, here on Substack, that poisoning well so much that as much as people hate Trump, they have come to hate Blue more. That's pretty amazing.
Now everyone says mean stuff like that, so let's play the game well: IF you are an environmentalist, even Team Blue, everyone can get behind stopping litter, pollution. Everyone wants better ecosystems, locally and globally. Politicians want to win, they can make this happen, even if they see it as a token. Red and Blue come together, and as your state, from the organizers up, then build on their coalition and success, seeing, learning each other's point of view and thereby being less hostile to it and each other. Thus further understanding creates further gains, and the environment in this case, improves in places no one saw at first -- maybe city forests, garden allotments, produce transport, who knows?
In the end, we are one America, which is getting greener, where the parties seem to have come more together instead of further apart. One issue. Easy. Tangible. Visible. Zero uptake for this, zero wins, 40 years in a row. No change of tactics.
Now, if I were the suspicious type, I might try to ask how this can possibly be and who would possibly gain by such things.
MLK, William Barber and this type of resistance leader developed group activity that described the positive outcome desired but also has a short effectiveness. It requires a strong commitment to focus on positive outcomes. It’s hard to remember your objective is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators
And for all the moderates on this thread of whom there are none:
There are three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.
This thoroughly articulates why and I how I feel so thoroughly alienated from "the resistance." My only point of departure is I'm a bit more positive on Biden's anti-trust and economic investments. It seems like it was too little (though it was actually quite huge!), too late (many of the projects still stuck in the pipeline), and too incompetently communicated by a president Dems pretended was in his right mind and by professional communications consultants who are bad at their jobs.
Glad I’m not a Democrat!
Strongly agree with your analysis and would like to add a thought. I worked in and around climate activism for almost twenty years and to my mind it’s greatest weakness was what you describe here- a fixation on what/who is wrong without much if any focus on developing a compelling vision for what a decarbonized society would look like. When I tried to create interest in that the pushback was intense. A big part of this was funding. The people in charge of mobilizing funding and engagement were absolutely convinced that focus on the fear of a dystopian future that was being dictated by a powerful enemy- the fossil fuel industry- was the ticket to donations and mobilizing. Anything else was a time-and- money wasting distraction. In addition, foundation funding practices reward discreet, short-term issue campaigns and did not reward long-term strategic thinking. Nor did they effectively motivate joint efforts among the plethora of organizations competing for resources and attention, so campaigns tended to have a lot of inefficiencies and redundancy for the same short-term outcomes. I’m guessing community organizers have similar problems? I also agree with your overall concern about the need to really listen to people’s concerns to get us beyond internal division, but the money question is another one I think we need to address. Why progressive foundations do not reward greater effectiveness is an interesting question, but the more urgent question is how do we change that.
Appreciate your posts, Luke. Keep it up!
Oh yea this is spot on. Totally applicable to the broader organizing world. I suppose at some point I'll write something laying out all my beefs with the funding system we have but it's problems are pretty deeply entrenched at this point.
Two thoughts of many:
1) I think we briefly had a sort of popular front style positive program that hit its highwater mark in 2019: the Green New Deal/climate movement. People's interest in environmental activism was really catching momentum with the fall 2019 protest campaigns. However, it's my opinion that COVID smothered it in the crib.
2) I was surprised to see you threw class analysis in the camp you were criticizing. I don't see the difference between that and your rising tide program you're interested in. There's a lot of online nerds pretending to be Maoists, Trotskyist, Tankies, etc. but they hardly ever show up in person. In a sense they're not real. I can only guess that you're gesturing at the growing popularity of anti-billionaire rhetorics that seems detached from what you'd do by seizing their ill gotten assets (housing, healthcare, energy transition, etc.).
Overall, enjoy your thoughts Luke. I don't always agree with everything you say but I recall you being one of the first to say to my face (in a good way) that the "kids in cages" rhetoric around 2017/18 was bullshit. It was near the beginning of my transition from centrist lib to something with the S word in it.
Side note: Resistance isn't just from Star Wars. It's specifically from the recent Disney Star Wars trilogy, starting with the soft reboot/remake/diminished clone of the very first one. There's something metaphorical there.
Hopefully my perspective has something unique to add to this sort of conversation. I feel entirely alienated from engaging with, being active in, or supporting community organizing efforts for the reasons you laid out here.
Part of that is on me. I work in food service for a day job in lieu of being a career professional musician and educated political scientist (IR). I spend enough time outside day-work practicing or gigging on the side for networking, personal projects or auditions, and I otherwise spend “labor” time reading/researching topics of personal interest in the hope of eventually developing writing for with what’s left of my personal time. This doesn’t account for personal time doing other things.
For the brief time I poked my head into a local organizing effort (c. 2022, Piedmont NC area), it was a small group of disparate individuals who I sensed were not all particularly experienced in the task at hand (a noble effort pursuing justice for an individual who passed under the supervision of local police, where some older folks had legal experience, but that’s about it). I am extremely wary of how the “diversity and representation” crowd has almost entirely consumed Broadly Left organizing efforts, as I am diametrically opposed to their ideology and political focus (it’s bad enough in Classical Music culture as it is).
An example of a group I would be interested in supporting is Class Unity, a Marxist offshoot of DSA efforts. I’m convinced that the “diversity and representation” crowd is entirely reactionary, even if there’s sympathy for where their moral concerns ultimately stem from. They are yolked by a pernicious sort of secular Christian Moralizing and a bastardized amalgamation of New Left and Postmodernist philosophical influences that have generated a boutique and abstract “politics” that is incapable of generating material change or equity. Zizek puts forward a convincing argument that “a communist should assume life is hell”.
But I’m not a pessimist. I’m an optimist who cares about arguing for a life-affirming sort of condition that we are beholden to as a species, to create our own meaning in the mire. It’s possible to carve out a semblance of that in isolation, as individuals who have to travail the path. But to build beyond that requires the sort of stuff you’re talking about. If not currently at a national level, it has to be built ground-up as small and multitudinous cells that can eventually network on the sort of organizing premises you mention to spread wider among the margins. If you’re familiar with the Orange Order over in North Ireland, think of that but-not-reactionary, lol. It may be worth divesting from “diversity and representation” crowds when possible, and strategically engaging with them when it’s projects that are grounded in material politics or policy. That’s the sort of stuff I’d support.
I think you're spot on. For what it's worth I've completely divested my time from the "representation" crowd for the time being. Simply can't beat my head against that wall right now.
In terms of organizing, building small cells of people with a positive vision for their community is exactly what I do here in MI. And it's been really successful in bringing a pretty wide range of people together to win meaningful improvements in their communities, completely separate from the more ideological "woke" stuff (for lack of a better term). A pretty big plurality of my base is actually conservative evangelicals FWIW. They just want affordable housing and addiction treatment etc. in their own towns.
If you lived in Michigan I bet I'd get you involved :)
As a person more on the right, most of my life is in sheer bemusement for what tactics are being used. Let's note the new MAGA is now most of the working class, and take Climate as an example. Now you know the values, the approach the priorities of working people. And you know not everyone believes in Global Warming. But rather than grab a 10, 20, 30% of things everyone can agree on and we can actually do, like addicted gamblers, they grab for 99% or nothing. Then do it for 30 years, shouting at their own base...or the other base, I see them as being the same...all the while, not only losing entirely, but poisoning well.
And it has been said, here on Substack, that poisoning well so much that as much as people hate Trump, they have come to hate Blue more. That's pretty amazing.
Now everyone says mean stuff like that, so let's play the game well: IF you are an environmentalist, even Team Blue, everyone can get behind stopping litter, pollution. Everyone wants better ecosystems, locally and globally. Politicians want to win, they can make this happen, even if they see it as a token. Red and Blue come together, and as your state, from the organizers up, then build on their coalition and success, seeing, learning each other's point of view and thereby being less hostile to it and each other. Thus further understanding creates further gains, and the environment in this case, improves in places no one saw at first -- maybe city forests, garden allotments, produce transport, who knows?
In the end, we are one America, which is getting greener, where the parties seem to have come more together instead of further apart. One issue. Easy. Tangible. Visible. Zero uptake for this, zero wins, 40 years in a row. No change of tactics.
Now, if I were the suspicious type, I might try to ask how this can possibly be and who would possibly gain by such things.
MLK, William Barber and this type of resistance leader developed group activity that described the positive outcome desired but also has a short effectiveness. It requires a strong commitment to focus on positive outcomes. It’s hard to remember your objective is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators
And for all the moderates on this thread of whom there are none:
There are three executive orders (EO’s) that Trump has signed that are worthy of support by everyone across the moderate political spectrum
The first of these EO’s recognizes that open borders are politically unacceptable and that the age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their own country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay home and work there to improve their living conditions.
His second important EO addresses the insanity of gender identity which denies the reality of human sexuality and results in men invading women’s sports, restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. Women need and are entitled to privacy from men. Even more diabolical is the mutilation of innocent children (many who would grow up gay) in pursuit of the impossible because you can’t change your birth sex.
Finally his EO that corrects the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others is absolutely the correct approach. Who could believe that creating a new privileged class and a new discriminated against class would provide a solution to the problem? Not to mention that it’s clearly unconstitutional.
It would well serve both Democrats and independents to get behind these changes even as they choose to vigorously oppose other aspects of his agenda.