Here is Digby in a long post about Trump not leaving and wreaking havoc. She writes, in the context of Trump saying he wants to veto the Covid-19 "stimulus" package unless a $2,000 stimulus check is sent all Americans:
...If Trump wants to wreak revenge on his “disloyal” Republicans by agreeing to send badly needed money to Americans who are suffering from his and the Republican’s malfeasance I couldn’t be happier. However, it’s very likely that this will do nothing but blow up the bill at the last moment, resulting in some very bad outcomes. Had he involved himself in the negotiations and pushed hard for relief he just might have won the election and helped people sooner. But he preferred to pretend the pandemic was over instead. The stable genius blew that one bigly.
Digby uses all her deep intelligence to tell us (a) this will all fail anyway, so why leverage anything in this dire moment; (b) let's make this about Trump personally instead of seizing a moment Trump, by whatever his motivations, has given us.
Meanwhile, Eric Levitz in New York Magazine rips into Jimmy Dore (calling Jimmy a grifter, when Jimmy has said don't give him money during the pandemic, unlike The Young Turks, who just pocketed a couple of million from Jeffery Katzenberg, and still begs for dollars from people like me), and then says we can't demand the hugely unpopular Nancy PLousy bring Medicare for All Single Payer to the floor for a debate and vote.*
Levitz, however, exposes his own defeatist thinking in one of his big points, in a subhead, which he calls: "The case for pessimism of the intellect." Levitz then tries to walk part of the way back his counsel of defeat and despair, but one cannot finish Levitz's long column without concluding Levitz's view is simply: "Nothing good can be done."
What is remarkable is Levitz has to ignore his own contradictions: He first says there is no way a lot of Congress critters in the Democratic or Republican Parties will vote for the M4A/single payer bill. Then, he says they will vote for the bill for performative purposes, knowing the bill will die in the Senate. But, will the bill die in the Senate, if it passes the House? Wouldn't that make some news if the bill did pass the House? Levitz doesn't even try to argue when there would be a better time than now, when we are in a pandemic where 15 million have lost employer-based health insurance. Nope, it's just, Because something can go wrong, it will go wrong; and therefore, just stay quiet.
The problem with those of us in the professional-managerial class is WE are often uncomfortable confronting our bosses or institutions that control us. We in the knowledge-worker class are too afraid of losing what we have. We are forever crouched in a defensive position about what unexplained bad things could happen, instead of leveraging moments where people are positioned by circumstances to agree with us on important public policies. Levitz himself tries to make a case the support for M4A among the population is fragile, but that pre-supposes there is no organized political party pushing for it. People opposed income tax cuts and yet they passed. People actually opposed building a longer wall along the Mexican-US border. Somehow, agitating and performative acts galvanized enough voters to make Trump president and the proposal got to be "mainstreamed."
The defeatist attitude and way of thinking among people such as Digby and Levitz is also an extension of the old saw from William Hocking from nearly 100 years ago that a man--yes, sexist times back then--can be "so very liberal, that he cannot himself take his own side in a quarrel." Now this self-defeating sentiment has extended itself to what passes for the left in American politics, and even intellectual Marxists at Jacobin magazine, which adds to my own despair about the discourse.
We need to recognize this moment. Trump, in his flailing loser status, has provided our nation the biggest opening to get people $2,000 stimulus checks--and all Digby, Eric, and Jacobin's Ben Burgis want to say is, "Well, yeah, great, but it's not worth doing anything or pushing our congress critters about." Note how each of them spouts the reactionary or do nothing line, while still trying to impress us how much they supposedly care about fighting for the $2,000 stimulus check or M4A.
Well, you know what, people of the professional-managerial class? For all your saintly, cynical worldliness, and fear of expressing hope in a manner that may leave you looking foolish with the wine-and-cheese crowd you hang with, each of you suck at negotiations. And you suck at negotiation because you never had to negotiate anything worth your life--unlike Jimmy Dore, who had to negotiate and maneuver to get health care when he was going bankrupt from so many tests, while doctors tried to figure out why his bones were disintegrating and breaking. People who read this blog, well, the few who do, know about my heart issues over the years, and how I had to maneuver through life, and suck up to increasingly ridiculous employment situations, to ensure proper medical coverage for my family and especially me.
And yeah, I know Jimmy would have ripped me for my view that Trump is a compromised Russian dupe (Jimmy calls Trump's relations with Russia a political hoax, which the DNC concocted to avoid their own responsibility for Trump defeating Clinton in the Rust Belt and winning the presidency in 2016). Jimmy would also have ripped me for still loving Bernie and AOC. But he is damn right here, and, as he continually says, this is not about him. However, for too many of our commenters in media and even on the Internet, it is as I said in a recent post about the failures in our discourse, when I said "too many of us don't know how to separate snark from substance, personality from policy, and trivialities from materialities." Just look at how Eric Levitz opened his column. He didn't argue the policy. He just ripped into Jimmy Dore personally, as if the salient issue is not about a political strategy or substance-- just some guy on the Internet supposedly looking for money. Then, look again at how Digby couldn't help but focus on Trump being a grifter and vengeful against Republicans, rather than evaluate how Democrats must step up and leverage Trump's threat against the Republicans to fight for what she claims she wants enacted, which is the $2,000 stimulus check. Not even a separate post that talked about Democrats leveraging the moment. It is more important, in Digby's mind, to preen on and on about Trump's personality.
It is outrageous Dems can't directly seize this moment of Trump's Covid-package veto threat to get more money into the hands of Americans. It is pathetic how Democrats, in the wake of Trump's actual veto of the military budget, cannot seize the moment, and then say out loud, "Hey, America! Did you know where 60% of the budget goes to, after Medicare, Social Security an internet on the debt? The military. The Empire. And did you know we spend more on the Empire and military than the next 8-10 nations combined? That's six of every ten bucks! And that is why you don't get nice things--unlike Europeans we supposedly 'defend' under NATO. Unlike Israel, which is getting nearly $40 billion from us under a current ten year deal. Unlike Japan. Unlike most nations that call themselves civilized."
Last Friday, Irami Osei-Frimpong provided a great analysis of the Maslow formulation about people's motivations, and Irami turns upside down the entire set of Maslow's premises which he offered in a theory in 1943--a theory I have had to learn in my education classes this year in my quest to be fully certified as a high school teacher. It is worth watching Irami's discussion, as Irami makes clear people must place freedom first, and by freedom he means the ability to see a doctor and not worry about paying, and other similar examples. He also makes the point that people who receive material benefits through a top-down or tyrannical system are going to always say challenges to that system are not worth the risk.
This moment has exposed not only liberals, but much of the so-called left-wing opining in social media and corporate-sponsored and owned media. Not all of the liberals and left, thank goodness. However, enough have been exposed so that we should be very wary of what is going to happen over the next two to four years. These people are not to be trusted in their strategic political judgments. They will always counsel caution and accept defeat-before-we-start.
The People's Party cannot come soon enough. #Forcethevote.org.
* Briahna Joy Gray, a professional-managerial class refugee, refutes Levitz type thinking in Current Affairs on this topic. Briahna makes clear why a floor vote is great from a substantive and strategic point of view.
