Perhaps progressives have always been this way and I just couldn't see it from the inside, but the hubris has become pretty staggering. There's just zero theory of mind - anyone that disagrees must clearly be bought off, somehow, or part of a conspiracy, or simply rotten to the core.
The problem with a highly moralized, Good People vs. Bad People theory of politics is that it has no mechanism to deal with conflicting interests - the very core of politics - even among the (according to them) Good People. The concept that the interests of biological and trans women might occasionally be at odds, and that a compromise may be needed, is met with hands-over-ears "I can't hear you!!"
The thing is that a lot of transgender rights *are rights* we've had for a long time, that went unquestioned until very recently. Any less than the *2024* status quo is a false compromise.
It seems like the parties are ripe for some sort of re-alignment, as in the progressive and new deal eras. Democrats are theoretically a working class party that struggles to gain support of actual working class voters. Republicans are theoretically a free market party that is increasingly falling in love with "slopulism" ideas and dumb conspiracies. No idea what a re-alignment would actually look like, but this is really weird time for American politics where nothing the parties do makes much sense to me.
I don't think Republican is inherently free market. In fact I see the GOP as a highly contingent marriage of convenience between very different, orthogonal segments of society, that happened to have "worked" at one point.
"This nation really can’t afford to keep ping-ponging back and forth between an unpopular Democratic party and a mad rightist personality cult every two to four years."
Makes me wonder how democratic countries like Iceland are consistently ranked as the most stable, peaceful. Denmark, Singapore are politically and economically stable, with trust in their governments, low corruption. Same in New Zealand.
Could it be that what many claim is America's strength - its diversity of people and ideas - makes it difficult to find common cause and stability? And if so, how does a diverse country like Canada seem to maintain more stability? (Not perfect, i know, but better.) It's a conundrum.
Presidential system is inherently disadvantaged. There are research on this showing that parliamentary systems are correlated with higher HDI and better growth (though I doubt causality study has been conducted). In fact, the US is among the very few relatively successful and prosperous presidential systems.
Interesting. I must admit i am also Israeli American. The parliamentary system in Israel is a mess. The multiple small parties that are needed to craft a government create tremendous instability. The current coalition does not represent the majority of Israelis leading to the instability.
Obviously there are different sub types too in terms of electoral method. And there's no one size fit all, but generally speaking you want some kind of Japanese/German/Taiwanese dual voting system to avoid too much fragmentation.
And to state the obvious, if there is no strong centre in your electorate then no voting system can magically create a functioning democracy.
Amen to this. It feels like the Democrat party is being dragged around by the nose by the leftists and hardline progressive factions. I don't mind progressives who have common sense and understand that unpopular positions are ones that should not be leaned into or die on a hill for, but all of these leftist and hardline progressive don't care. Every time I see some progressive influencer with a large YouTube following nod approvingly to some insane or moronic thing Hasan Piker says or does or goes on his livestream, my skin crawls.
To me the idea that the moral arc of history bends towards justice is an argument FOR standing down and compromising, not an argument to stick to your guns. If the moral arc really does bend towards justice, we will get another chance eventually. In the meantime, be patient, accept that the time is not yet right, and take the L.
To extend the "arc" metaphor, sometimes people think they are close to the end of the arc, but actually they are closer to the beginning. They need to stop taking actions the world is not ready for yet, they won't work and are counterproductive.
Your observations here capture a lot of what troubles me about the self-righteous habits of mind on the left at a time as fraught as now when we need to "read the room" of public opinion on a national scale and respond accordingly. We need less wishful thinking about the moral arc of the universe and realize that many of our values, no matter how deeply held, will always be contested in a pluralistic democracy.
The abortion issue you cite is a good example. I support a woman's right to choose, even beyond the boundaries set in the Roe decision. That is my personal view. But I now see that the Roe decision was probably as good a compromise on this issue, at least on a national level, as we will ever have in our lifetimes. But when Democrats in Congress responded to its repeal in the Dobbs decision, they didn't limit their attempts to restore Roe, but offered "Roe plus" legislation in response, trying to elevate the better-than-Roe regime in blue states to the status of a national standard, settled in their thinking that they were farther along now on their self-defined moral arc.
Sometimes the compromise positions on hot button issues like abortion (the Roe decision), immigration (securing the border and better controlling the asylum pathway to temporary residency) and trans rights (distinguishing between respect for trans children and limiting their right to participate in teenage sports) are the right political decisions for the moment, when one accepts that, in a democracy, no one gets all that they want all of the time, or even some of the time, but can settle for what they can live with now and contest for what they hope for later with the humility that comes from understanding that everyone else has a vote in this as well.
I think it's a mistake for the broad left to regard this as being about compromising on key moral issues, either with republicans or with the general public. It's actually about improving on our own ideas, being willing to revise your moral view of the world based on harsh experience.
Progressives and liberals are both part of the Democratic coalition, which prides itself (generally) on being liberal and educated. One of the hallmarks of being an educated person is that you're willing to adjust your ideas based on events. You out try your theories in the real world, see if they work, and when something doesn't work you look for what to fix.
In the 2010s, a lot of progressive liberal ideology was very compelling in theory. There was a lot of (solid or not) academic research behind the big ideas of the Democratic movement, and the Obama and Biden coalitions had a rare opportunity to put a whole bunch of these liberal and leftist ideas into practice. There were all kinds of notions about equality and fairness and how society would be organized, ideas that were previously only in the realm of academic theory all abruptly made into policy all at once.
In the end, some of these ideas worked, and some of them didn't! Progressives and liberals alike need to be using this time to look at what we can improve about our theories to better prepare them for the next time we have power in the real world. Did our approach to health care actually work? To crime? To education? To self-identification of transgender people? What aspects of the 2010s liberal coalition created backlash and why? When we lost an argument, why did we lose? What went wrong? This isn't just about moving towards the mythical 'center', the correct answer might be some completely different direction. But if an idea generated enormous public backlash when we tried it, it's likely that something was wrong with the idea or its presentation. How do we fix it next time?
I think a lot of what voters want to see change Democrats. They want to see a party that recognizes some of its past mistakes and has learned from them. This doesn't mean self-flagellation or compromise or weakness, it just means updating our narratives from what they were in the the 2010s. It means taking the things that are wonderful about progressivism or liberalism, while improving on the areas that didn't work.
I don't think we can reach some kind of grand compromise with fascists by capitulating on your key issues. Make one compromise with them and they'll just move to the next issue down the line, taking your rights one by one. Instead, we should, focus on making our ideas better and learning from our mistakes, purely from our own sake. Because we want to win the argument and learn from the places we went wrong.
Your comments on immigration (at least at the beginning) seemed incomplete, but the history goes to prove your point of 'no arc'. Immigration status changed in very restrictive ways in the 1920's federally that wasn't changed until the 60's and then with 'unintended' consequences.
The second point is that movements against slavery, for women's suffrage, etc. suffered through many decades when there were advocates, but no progress and lots of negative progress, often enforced by courts.
Perhaps progressives have always been this way and I just couldn't see it from the inside, but the hubris has become pretty staggering. There's just zero theory of mind - anyone that disagrees must clearly be bought off, somehow, or part of a conspiracy, or simply rotten to the core.
The problem with a highly moralized, Good People vs. Bad People theory of politics is that it has no mechanism to deal with conflicting interests - the very core of politics - even among the (according to them) Good People. The concept that the interests of biological and trans women might occasionally be at odds, and that a compromise may be needed, is met with hands-over-ears "I can't hear you!!"
The thing is that a lot of transgender rights *are rights* we've had for a long time, that went unquestioned until very recently. Any less than the *2024* status quo is a false compromise.
It seems like the parties are ripe for some sort of re-alignment, as in the progressive and new deal eras. Democrats are theoretically a working class party that struggles to gain support of actual working class voters. Republicans are theoretically a free market party that is increasingly falling in love with "slopulism" ideas and dumb conspiracies. No idea what a re-alignment would actually look like, but this is really weird time for American politics where nothing the parties do makes much sense to me.
I don't think Republican is inherently free market. In fact I see the GOP as a highly contingent marriage of convenience between very different, orthogonal segments of society, that happened to have "worked" at one point.
"This nation really can’t afford to keep ping-ponging back and forth between an unpopular Democratic party and a mad rightist personality cult every two to four years."
Makes me wonder how democratic countries like Iceland are consistently ranked as the most stable, peaceful. Denmark, Singapore are politically and economically stable, with trust in their governments, low corruption. Same in New Zealand.
Could it be that what many claim is America's strength - its diversity of people and ideas - makes it difficult to find common cause and stability? And if so, how does a diverse country like Canada seem to maintain more stability? (Not perfect, i know, but better.) It's a conundrum.
Presidential system is inherently disadvantaged. There are research on this showing that parliamentary systems are correlated with higher HDI and better growth (though I doubt causality study has been conducted). In fact, the US is among the very few relatively successful and prosperous presidential systems.
Interesting. I must admit i am also Israeli American. The parliamentary system in Israel is a mess. The multiple small parties that are needed to craft a government create tremendous instability. The current coalition does not represent the majority of Israelis leading to the instability.
Obviously there are different sub types too in terms of electoral method. And there's no one size fit all, but generally speaking you want some kind of Japanese/German/Taiwanese dual voting system to avoid too much fragmentation.
And to state the obvious, if there is no strong centre in your electorate then no voting system can magically create a functioning democracy.
Amen to this. It feels like the Democrat party is being dragged around by the nose by the leftists and hardline progressive factions. I don't mind progressives who have common sense and understand that unpopular positions are ones that should not be leaned into or die on a hill for, but all of these leftist and hardline progressive don't care. Every time I see some progressive influencer with a large YouTube following nod approvingly to some insane or moronic thing Hasan Piker says or does or goes on his livestream, my skin crawls.
To me the idea that the moral arc of history bends towards justice is an argument FOR standing down and compromising, not an argument to stick to your guns. If the moral arc really does bend towards justice, we will get another chance eventually. In the meantime, be patient, accept that the time is not yet right, and take the L.
To extend the "arc" metaphor, sometimes people think they are close to the end of the arc, but actually they are closer to the beginning. They need to stop taking actions the world is not ready for yet, they won't work and are counterproductive.
I was told that Catholic Ireland allowed abortions only after young when went house to house and explained why it was important to legalize it.
Your observations here capture a lot of what troubles me about the self-righteous habits of mind on the left at a time as fraught as now when we need to "read the room" of public opinion on a national scale and respond accordingly. We need less wishful thinking about the moral arc of the universe and realize that many of our values, no matter how deeply held, will always be contested in a pluralistic democracy.
The abortion issue you cite is a good example. I support a woman's right to choose, even beyond the boundaries set in the Roe decision. That is my personal view. But I now see that the Roe decision was probably as good a compromise on this issue, at least on a national level, as we will ever have in our lifetimes. But when Democrats in Congress responded to its repeal in the Dobbs decision, they didn't limit their attempts to restore Roe, but offered "Roe plus" legislation in response, trying to elevate the better-than-Roe regime in blue states to the status of a national standard, settled in their thinking that they were farther along now on their self-defined moral arc.
Sometimes the compromise positions on hot button issues like abortion (the Roe decision), immigration (securing the border and better controlling the asylum pathway to temporary residency) and trans rights (distinguishing between respect for trans children and limiting their right to participate in teenage sports) are the right political decisions for the moment, when one accepts that, in a democracy, no one gets all that they want all of the time, or even some of the time, but can settle for what they can live with now and contest for what they hope for later with the humility that comes from understanding that everyone else has a vote in this as well.
I think it's a mistake for the broad left to regard this as being about compromising on key moral issues, either with republicans or with the general public. It's actually about improving on our own ideas, being willing to revise your moral view of the world based on harsh experience.
Progressives and liberals are both part of the Democratic coalition, which prides itself (generally) on being liberal and educated. One of the hallmarks of being an educated person is that you're willing to adjust your ideas based on events. You out try your theories in the real world, see if they work, and when something doesn't work you look for what to fix.
In the 2010s, a lot of progressive liberal ideology was very compelling in theory. There was a lot of (solid or not) academic research behind the big ideas of the Democratic movement, and the Obama and Biden coalitions had a rare opportunity to put a whole bunch of these liberal and leftist ideas into practice. There were all kinds of notions about equality and fairness and how society would be organized, ideas that were previously only in the realm of academic theory all abruptly made into policy all at once.
In the end, some of these ideas worked, and some of them didn't! Progressives and liberals alike need to be using this time to look at what we can improve about our theories to better prepare them for the next time we have power in the real world. Did our approach to health care actually work? To crime? To education? To self-identification of transgender people? What aspects of the 2010s liberal coalition created backlash and why? When we lost an argument, why did we lose? What went wrong? This isn't just about moving towards the mythical 'center', the correct answer might be some completely different direction. But if an idea generated enormous public backlash when we tried it, it's likely that something was wrong with the idea or its presentation. How do we fix it next time?
I think a lot of what voters want to see change Democrats. They want to see a party that recognizes some of its past mistakes and has learned from them. This doesn't mean self-flagellation or compromise or weakness, it just means updating our narratives from what they were in the the 2010s. It means taking the things that are wonderful about progressivism or liberalism, while improving on the areas that didn't work.
I don't think we can reach some kind of grand compromise with fascists by capitulating on your key issues. Make one compromise with them and they'll just move to the next issue down the line, taking your rights one by one. Instead, we should, focus on making our ideas better and learning from our mistakes, purely from our own sake. Because we want to win the argument and learn from the places we went wrong.
Your comments on immigration (at least at the beginning) seemed incomplete, but the history goes to prove your point of 'no arc'. Immigration status changed in very restrictive ways in the 1920's federally that wasn't changed until the 60's and then with 'unintended' consequences.
The second point is that movements against slavery, for women's suffrage, etc. suffered through many decades when there were advocates, but no progress and lots of negative progress, often enforced by courts.