Why is the American left not as effective as the European left? [View all]

[True Blue Door]

Whenever I ask this question, there are always a torrent of responses that attribute the American left's relative weakness to external causes: Mainly the wealth, power, and ruthlessness of the (pseudo-)American right. But such explanations only illustrate the real answer - the left in the US has an almost entirely negative self-definition, as a political space where the destructive ideologies of the right are rejected without necessarily having any unified vision of what to do with that space.

This is why the multi-generational failure of the American left to establish lasting foundations of governance in this country is almost universally excused as a product of Enemy Action: "They won't let us do the things we should do!" And for some reason it's usually just left at that, with no further examination. The laziness and childishness of this attitude should be immediately obvious, as well as the fact that it's an excuse for failure rather than a productive thought process toward achieving better results.

It also can't escape notice that it's essentially false: Contrary to myth accepted by both the left and the right, principled left-wing politicians are not rare in America. What's rare are principled left-wing legislative accomplishments, because the American left doesn't reward leaders who do things - it punishes them, because action intensifies attention, which (under the previously mentioned negative self-definition) causes unreasoning and unprioritized obsession on flaws.

A left-wing legislator who just sits quietly between symbolic speeches, but never once passes or in any way tangibly affects a bill that actually does anything, will not be punished by the left for their laziness. But a legislator who fights actual battles, and causes legislation to be passed that moves the country in some tangibly leftward direction, will not be rewarded for it - they will be tarred with the difference between that legislation and a perfectly ideal conception of what it should be, as if that ideal were a real thing and the bill they passed were a movement to the right for not living up to it.

This is an illustration of the quixotic, monkish, fantasy-based solipsism in American left-wing politics. It's a mentality that is self-satisfied with inaction - because inaction doesn't disturb the tranquil contemplation of ideal absolutes - while the rigors of actual governance are resigned to right-wing politicians and moderates. Think about this scenario:

Let's say that only 40% of the people have healthcare. The left says 100% of the people should have healthcare. Every once in a while, left-wing politicians introduce legislation (that never leaves committee) providing healthcare to 100% of the people. The fact that these bills never pass does not register with them or their base - the mere symbolic act of advocating them is considered an achievement in itself, sufficient and perfect, because the reality that no one is actually getting healthcare because of them is considered immaterial. None of these politicians are penalized by their base for doing nothing to actually create healthcare for real people - in fact, they're rewarded for "standing firm" in the face of reality.

Now suppose a pragmatic liberal politician gets a bill passed that increases the percentage of people with healthcare from 50% to 80%, and this is the first time in, say, thirty years that anyone has significantly increased the proportion of people with healthcare. Any remotely sane progressive would be over the Moon at this accomplishment, doubling the provision of healthcare to the American people, right? But in the negative psychology of the American left, that's not what just happened: That bill did not just double healthcare, it cut it from 100% down to 80%. And thus the liberal politician who just saved millions of lives is not a liberal at all, but some kind of Republican Lite or corrupt Betrayer who "sold out" the remaining 20% in some kind of smoke-filled backroom deal with cigar-smoking Mayflower descendents.

And...this is not an exaggeration of how left-wing politics in America thinks. It's the exact picture. I'm not saying that everyone on the left is guilty of this, or guilty to an equal extent, but it is the general environment. The American left operates like a set of monastic orders, not a political movement. It retreats from the world and from messy reality, content in impotence, seeing it as preferable to guard ideas from the dangers of practical trials than to participate in a "profane" and "corrupt" system that can't possibly do them justice. Needless to say, this is a perfect recipe for self-inflicted under-representation and irrelevance - more perfect than anything the other side could possibly design.

It is, in essence, a Loser Factory: A set of attitudes and cultural prejudices that turn humanistic ideals against themselves, and make people who could do the most end up doing the least. It takes away vital public support from politicians who try to achieve things, making them instead targets of the very people they try to serve, and make useless rhetoric machines incapable of political accomplishment into heroes. There seems to be no analytical ability to distinguish between real liberal achievers and people who legitimately deserve the title of "sellout," and the result is that the latter are empowered because insultingly pitiful fig leaf accomplishments still feed more people than Noam Chomsky monographs recited to empty committee rooms.

While the left is characteristically fractious everywhere, in Europe it actually has an interest in governing. Relative to our version, it definitely rewards its leaders for winning elections and passing legislation, instead of treating these accomplishments as grounds for suspicion. There are all the same ideals and kaleidoscopic interest groups, but except for the most impotently and irrelevantly radical of them, they don't jealously withhold their ideals from practical politics like some kind of sacred idol - they try to demonstrate their ideals in practice so that other people can see the benefits, and build networks of political support to continue and grow their programs.

When a left-wing leader is elected in Europe, their first order of business is coalition-building to navigate their agenda into effect. They find out who's who and what's what, and figure out how to make something happen. In the United States, it's more like "Well, I'm going to be a tireless advocate for thus-and-such, and if they won't listen, that's their problem." There's no recognition that being a politician (they despise the very word, let alone the concept) is their job, not being a motionless totem pole to symbolically represent their agenda. If you added 20 exact copies of Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives, they still wouldn't do anything, because zero times twenty is still zero.

That's why in America the issues we support, that have the backing of huge majorities of the people, are treated in politics like a radical agenda: Because our left doesn't merely disbelieve in the union of ideals and practical achievement, it won't allow it. Achievement, for all intents and purposes, is the enemy. Achievement is a distraction from basking in moral perfection. So leaders who want to achieve cannot count on support from the left. It can be had briefly, but it cannot form a stable base. There is nothing to gain over the long-term by trying to form a solid political alliance with the left in America - it doesn't reward those who serve it, and does reward those who sabotage it. Like a battered wife, it only feels at home in utter powerlessness, and resents anyone who challenges its comfortable resignation.

The worst part isn't that the American left likes to elect weaklings - it's that they turn against leaders who prove to be strong, almost like clockwork. If you go to any of the more stridently ideological discussion forums and tell the people there that President Barack Obama is a liberal progressive, they're absolutely scandalized by this statement. In their world, opening up healthcare to tens of millions of more Americans, opening the military to gays, preventing war with Iran, using Executive Orders to advance all sorts of labor and environmental objectives, etc. etc. - these things are not liberal achievements because (as with the 100% vs. 80% example above) there is some divergence with a perfect, ideal system that never existed.

Obama halted the march to war with Iran in its tracks and opened up diplomacy, but because the US still wages war somewhere, on some level, he's Dick Cheney. We have Obamacare, but because it involves mandates and private health insurers rather than a purely public system, it's the same as doing nothing and letting millions die from lack of healthcare. Then there's the ever-present "What has he done for us lately?" which never seems to acknowledge the existence of the other two branches of government, like if Obama were a true liberal President, he would magically overcome a bottomlessly corrupt GOP Congress by the sheer force of his progressive piety.

The attention paid by the American left to a subject tends to be inversely proportional to its own influence over it, so Congress - which we can affect much more quickly and effectively than any other aspect of the federal government - gets short shrift in these conversations. When it decides (usually erroneously) that the White House is failing to meet its obligations, does the American left then say "Hey, there's a midterm election coming up, let's take over Congress and force the Executive branch to the left from another branch"? Of course not. Because achievement is the enemy.

An achievement-oriented, left-dominated Congress would be extremely effectual - far more so even than having a liberal President - and yet that goal makes a vanishingly small element of political activism and conversation on the left. It would be so effectual that the other two branches, even if in the hands of the radical right, would be constantly on the defensive: A right-wing Republican (but I repeat myself) in the White House would have to practically automate the process of vetoes, and would frequently be overridden; and the Lawless Five on the Supreme Court would have to be in session 24/7 to strike down all the progressive legislation, probably resulting in some Constitutional amendments passing to override them or at least check their radical judicial abuses of power.

So, in summary, this is why the American left is far less effective than the European left:

1. Self-absorbed and insular, waiting for the country to come to it rather than acting as bold missionaries for its values.

2. Flighty and abstract, obsessing on symbols and feelings while treating objective judgment and logic as profane.

3. A negative self-definition that unjustly concedes the moral substance of American culture to false right-wing definitions.

4. Rewards dereliction by political leaders who fill the void of accomplishment with ineffectual symbolic advocacy.

5. Punishes leaders who produce tangible achievements by obsessing on flaws as measured against nonexistent fantasy programs rather than against the preceding state of affairs.

6. Virtually ignores Congress - the most effectual branch of government to control - in favor of obsessing on the Executive Branch.

7. Instinctively prefers the personal freedom of being inconsequential over the moral dangers of governing effectively.

If you see any of this in yourself, address it and you will - by however small a measure - make the country a better place, make better decisions as a citizen, and probably be more effective as an activist.