Matters of Importance
Forget Symbolism & Theory & Ideology-Your Challenge is Directly in Front of You
Nobody cares about Jan. 6th pardons or Elon’s arm movement or racism or sexism or any -ism. We care about basic things, like national defense and wealth and safety. If you want to gain political support you must abandon your theories and your symbols. They haven’t worked. How can you make us richer and safer?
Something has rubbed me the wrong way about the recent reporting about the Jan. 6th pardons, and Elon Musk’s arm gesture. When I get this feeling I know there’s something there. It used to take months for these realizations to settle, and now it takes days or hours. I meditate, take notes… and then I sleep for a night, or I go for a run or do some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The epiphanies I gain include no new knowledge. Instead they’re reformulations of a lot of assumptions I’d already made and conclusions I’d already reached. They’re rarely original (in many cases I’ve probably read something like them elsewhere) but they feel original to me. This kind of process is how I came to the conclusion that the left wing of American politics was increasingly privileged, and disconnected, and hypocritical-years before I heard most people making the points (this was far from the cliché in 2020, believe me). It’s how I arrived at the belief that those who want to suppress speech or ideas to counter “hate” or “harm” or promote safety were acting out of a (usually) unconscious insecurity about the brittleness of their own worldview. It’s how I came to believe that much of modern feminism was driven by entitlement and envy.
As I reflected on the two matters (Jan. 6th pardons and Musk’s wave) above, I realized something similar: these issues are not real. I don’t mean that they’re overblown (although they are) or invented. I mean that both the Jan. 6th pardons and Musk’s gesture are symbolic issues, regardless of how you interpret them or why you care. Then I realized that essentially everything that frames the progressive vision today is symbolic, abstract, theoretical. Let me explain.
Jan. 6th was a chaotic and embarrassing day for the United States. I do not think that it was an insurrection (it certainly wasn’t) and I’m fairly sure that a different group of political agitators wouldn’t have been given such stiff sentences given a different context. People were given sentences of more than a decade - despite not even being in D. C. at the time. A few dozen police were injured… and more than 1,500 were convicted, many given maximum sentences. To say that this reaction was unusual in recent American history is a gross understatement. First-time offenders were given sentences of many years for, essentially, trespassing, or pushing a police officer. I would submit that anyone who maintains that this group of malcontents was not super-zealously prosecuted hasn’t reviewed the details. Of course, we have the familiar dynamic of people wanting these people to have the book thrown at them while also maintaining that they didn’t have the book thrown at them. In other words: “I wanted maximum legal penalties for these people, despite prosecutorial norms, and I’m happy they got the sentences they got but I will continue to maintain that they did not receive maximum legal penalties” (maximum legal penalties in this case being rather unusual, given the records of the criminals). I’m not sure if I’m being clear here. People wanted crushing, remarkable sentences for these people while pretending that the criminal justice system was just operating as normal. Many of these people have argued to defund the police, or support lesser prison sentences for armed robbers and murderers. The contradiction is obvious and glaring… and remains unaddressed.
All of that is academic though. The point is: it doesn’t matter. The people claiming that release of these people will encourage violence have been living in a country without almost any conservative political violence for years. Obviously political violence per se is not their concern (or else they would be concerned about Leftist political violence as well, and many of them enthusiastically support that). The point is this: their concerns are symbolic. They’re not real. Releasing the Jan. 6th prisoners is a massive symbolic blow to the symbolic gesture of locking these people up in the first place. A bunch of suburban folks upset about an election result simply do not pose a serious risk of re-offense, and if you doubt me, I will bet you that almost none of the people released re-offend, in any way. Bet?
That was my realization: progressives regard politics as symbolic, as ideal, as abstraction. It’s not just a matter of slogans and flags. They really look on policy-making as a process of reifying their ideals. “I believe this is better, and so I want society to change in this way” regardless of the fallout and carnage.
Here’s an example: BLM was a movement which was very much concerned with the cause of addressing racism among American police (unfortunately they were concerned with this to the exclusion of almost any other police reform issue) and that was a worthy case… therefore black lives matter! The actual policies involved, the people affected, the cities left less safe after the imposition of police and prison ‘reform’-these things were simply not interesting to these people. They’d mostly moved on to other issues by the time they started being felt (and not by them), about which they were equally enthusiastic. All of those issues were symbolic too. Gender ideology is the grandaddy of symbolic policy areas, of course, disordering sports leagues and locker room safety and prison assignments-all because the idea of gender ideology was compelling. The principle comes first… and rather than policy coming second the policy effects of the principle are almost completely ignored or glossed over. It’s a very curious way to regard the world.
The Elon Musk flail/gesture/salute is an even more perfect example. If you haven’t heard of this issue then I rather envy you but the bottom line is: Elon Musk is not a Nazi. We know he’s not a Nazi. Everyone knows this. And if he was a Nazi then the salute wouldn’t matter! His Naziism would, and it would be apparent with every other tweet, and with the policies that he is currently supporting as his new role of DOGE czar. None of that is happening! It will never happen! It’s all a game, and a morality play of symbols. We understand this now. We’ve gone through waves of hysteria and symbolic concern and idealistic policymaking and we’re deeply suspicious of them. You need to stop.
Day one. It’s already started. ‘Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally’ claims the Guardian. ‘Elon Musk accused of giving “Nazi salute” at Trump inauguration celebration’ says the Independent. The activist media are positively priapic with glee that Donald Trump’s most powerful ally just publicly endorsed Hitler live at his inauguration.
Except of course that didn’t happen. And we know it didn’t happen because we do not have cabbages for heads.
Of course, people on the Left might say that dismantling DEI is a Naziish thing to do and to them I say: policies that you have supported and do support lead directly to the impoverishment of black families and the failure of black students and the deaths of hundreds of young black men. THAT is literally undeniable. Even if you say that those policies are better than the alternatives (which I do not at all concede) the facts are: THESE are the policies; THESE are the numbers; YOU support the policies. Shall we go around calling you racist because your teachers’ unions are apparently executing a massive conspiracy against the students of Baltimore public schools?
Let’s discuss the effect of minimum wage laws (the PROVEN, demonstrated effect) on black employment rates. Let’s discuss the mayors you vote for and the grievous issue of insecurity which too many black people suffer with. I can do this all day.
Freddie DeBoer:
It’s remarkable. The amount of human devastation in the deindustrialized spaces in the United States has been unthinkable. Entire communities where the most common source of personal income is disability payments, fentanyl addiction rates in the double digits, 60+% unemployment rates among workers aged 18-25, collapsing municipal services, a doom loop of people fleeing all of that destruction which in turn devastates the tax base even more. At an extreme, you have a place like Gary, Indiana, where the population is lower than it was in 1927, where the violent crime rate is 318% higher than the national average, where residents live scandalously short lives, where fully a third of all residents live below the poverty line…. You could do the same kind of analysis in Detroit or Youngstown or Akron.
Racism is racism. It is obvious. If someone denies that their gesture was racist, then it wasn’t. Why would they lie about a gesture given in the view of millions of people? Personally, I could absolutely believe that Elon was trolling the media with his gesture… but then it’s not a Nazi salute. It’s a gesture meant to whip the intelligentsia into a froth so they lose a bit more focus and credibility. ELON MUSK IS NOT A NAZI.
These issues only seem the way they do to certain people because those people have fully bought in to a symbolic and issues-driven (and detail-absent, and unrealistic) conception of politics. The only way I can fully illustrate my point is by providing an alternative. The alternative is not the converse in this case (which is a right wing that is also symbolic in their attitudes and driven by issues and memetic phantoms). It is rather the mainstream. You remember us, right? Here is my characterization of the mainstream, as directly and honestly as I can make it:
The mainstream does not care about your issues. Any of them. We do not care about the Green New Deal or BLM or equity or trans rights. We never did. We care about a common-sense border policy and a healthy economy and decent schools. We are not concerned with sex or race or sexuality… we’re just not. The mainstream is eclectic in terms of race and education and class and interest, but we all see ourselves in the same way: the guardians of common sense. Regular people doing our best, trying to make our way in a confusing and hostile world. You might not realize it but you’re just like us-you just have more money and time to waste on things like social theory, and more status to gain. Come back to reality.
If you don’t know what common sense is, ask one of us. We will tell you. In the meantime, we are the people you need to appeal to. Trying to besmirch people’s reputations or dig up controversies from a decade ago or attribute dark motives to someone simply won’t work any longer. You need to create popular and effective policies and implement them. Leave the world of ideas. Ask yourself: will this policy make my community richer? safer? Will this policy cause an increase of jobs into the U. S.? Will this policy improve our military’s lethality? THOSE are the questions you should be asking.
For too long, I suspect, the Democrats have approached society through theoretical lenses (which is ever the luxury of the educated and the soft). This isn’t a smarter way to view policymaking (the past 5 years have proven that) but it is a very different way. I encourage you to step away from it. If you really think that you have a handle on border policy exceeding that of a border patrol agent, simply because you read the New Yorker, then I have some bad news: you are an idiot. These theories are nearly all wrong, and the generations of earlier theories pushed by academic progressives (public housing, eugenics, Freudian analysis, frontal lobotomies, hypnotic recall, garden cities, command economies, etc., etc.) which all proved to be disastrous don’t dissuade them. “THESE policies are different!” you say.
They’re only different if they work. Beginning with a feminist impulse and then slashing the number of men in upper management (because feminism) will have disastrous effects for an endless procession of organizations. Encouraging the over-development of wind and solar power generation and then pushing grids to rely on those things may serve climate justice but it’s also crippled the economies of Great Britain and Germany and it would cripple us too. Those things have already happened. You pushed for policies and they were wrong. You were wrong.
Refer to my description of the mainstream. If you want us to switch to renewable power, then show us how it will make us richer or safer. If you can’t then we do not want it.
Pushed with great enthusiasm by activists who didn’t really understand the nuts and bolts of energy markets, the rush towards weather-dependent renewables carried risks that are only now being recognized. Intermittency—renewables’ propensity to flake out when the weather isn’t cooperating—turned out to create complications the climate movement hadn’t properly thought through. For all the hype, hydrogen and grid-scale batteries are far from being ready to take up the slack. Renewable-heavy grids, it turned out, only work if backed up by hugely expensive back-up power sources, usually reliant on fossil fuels. Wherever regulators pushed up the share of renewables in the grid, prices rose, price volatility rose, and grids became more fragile.
I’ve barely mentioned the inconsistencies in your commentary and your arguments (Read
, below, if you want those explained). I don’t have to. I’m merely pointing out that your aims and values are markedly different from those of the mainstream.
If you want to regain political power, you must bring them back into alignment with us. There’s no other way. Your media has lost its luster and your policy failures are simply too frequent and too grave. I’m writing a piece about the long line of pro-BLM Democrat mayors that have been recalled, investigated, and convicted in the past few years. You don’t have to consider those people right now either. Just ask yourself: were their goals to make their cities and towns immediately richer and safer? If riches and safety had to suffer in order to increase equity or reduce emissions or help the marginalized would they have assented to that? Then they’re out of step with the mainstream. I’m trying to be as plain-spoken as I can.
I can’t tell you whether Trump will help the mainstream. However, I encounter many people online who are sure he won’t, but they’re really upset about the effect of his policies on gender ideology or DEI or the imperatives of low-growth environmentalism. Those people are the reason that Harris lost the election. Remember: those things don’t matter to us. Forget conservative ideologues. Forget Charlie Kirk and project 2025 and Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement. None of those things are why Trump has power. Trump has power because he convinced a sufficiently large number of people that he would make them richer and safer. You must convince many people that you will make them richer and safer, and not through artificial promotions for women or set-asides for black-owned businesses or the construction of a vigorous new renewable energy grid. You’re thinking in terms of symbolism and theory again. What will you do to make America richer and safer? Not more equal. Not less heteronormative. Not more welcoming. Some of those things could help, certainly but we don’t trust you or your institutions to determine that. You have the hardest task of any political party in my lifetime. It may be impossible. Using the remnants of the progressive movement, which is turning on itself like an organism experiencing an autoimmune event, you must create a vision of wealth and safety and sell it to Americans.
It will be tough. I understand. Calling people racist will be, at best, a distraction and at worst a credibility-killing faux pas. You’ll have to stop thinking about groups (which are purely mathematical abstractions) and start thinking about families and individuals and communities. You’ll have to abandon your barely repressed disdain for capitalism and patriotism and religion and U. S. history. You must do these things because your opposition to them (even when hidden) has nothing to do with making us richer and safer. Am I making myself clear?
And don’t give my any nonsense about global effects or social justice or dismantling power structures either. After decades of taking commercial flights and enjoying your safe neighborhoods and jealously trying to bolster the value of your credentials you have no more authority to speak on these things. You ignored the effects of immigration (which were right in front of your eyes in many cases) and the suspiciously greedy, destructive spasm of #BLM. You ignored everyone who was victimized by policies you supported, because it was never about people. It was always about your theories and we’re frankly tired of them. We understand that you don’t feel the full effects of carbon taxes or racial quotas or maternity leave laws or minimum wages or gasoline taxes because you live cushioned by some degree of wealth and status but many of us have considerably less of those things. Please understand me: this isn’t about ideology. You were wrong. We got ample tastes of your policies and we didn’t like them. They hurt us. They made us poorer and less safe.
If you want to harness government or the economy to your ends, show us how your policies will make us richer and safer.
Or leave us alone.
"You need to create popular and effective policies and implement them. Leave the world of ideas. Ask yourself: will this policy make my community richer? safer? Will this policy cause an increase of jobs into the U. S.? Will this policy improve our military’s lethality? THOSE are the questions you should be asking."
Here's the thing: they've been asked these questions. They just always answer "Yes". They live in bubbles that lead them to honestly believe that their ideas are genuinely popular. They read only partisan outlets with partisan experts who endlessly assure them that their policies are effective (and if they weren't, it's only because those nasty conservatives are standing in the way and they need more money and power to finish the job). They see that all the rich people and businesses they admire support these policies, so conclude that these policies make them richer (I lost count how many times I've seen blind faith insistence that DEI is the key to recruit top talent, improve business decisions, and increase profits... despite them never having actually reviewed ANY research regarding those practices and their real world outcomes). Unlimited immigration and massive government spending are explicitly defended as increasing jobs in the US. Putting women into combat arms and trans in uniform are both claimed to be necessary to improve our military's lethality (despite every actual study strongly suggesting otherwise)... They believe it. Heck, I saw the claim that adding women to combat arms improves our military in a YouGov poll earlier today, despite another recent article discussing that the Army can't raise the fitness standard to what is actually necessary for combat readiness because too many female Soldiers wouldn't meet the higher standard.
They ask and answer the questions, but without any apparent need for evidence or debate. They treat their desired outcomes as self-evidently inevitable. Good intentions are taken as guarantee of good actions which must necessarily produce only good outcomes.
>First, a woman’s right to an abortion is one but many believe there should be some time limit put on its availability. So consider limiting it to the first trimester except to protect the health of the mother or when the fetus is not viable.
It needs to be longer for the under-18. Girls this age may have trouble figuring things out fast, and may be stuck in a backwards family with an exploitative boyfriend. In fact all three of these things usually go together. It is practically the retention of some girls into a quasi dominated state that would surprise a lot of people in this era.