We Must Make Democracy a Living Force Again

Resistance is Not Nearly Enough!

I lived for 30+ years in Massachusetts before moving recently. And, while it’s a great state in many ways, and is one of the most reliably Blue, it also remains one of the most racially and class-segregated states in the nation. Seems like a contradiction, right? But when you look at one of those Red/Blue maps, you see a good sized blue dot for the Boston area and a few lesser blue dots in a few of their cities. But otherwise, that map is a sea of Red.

I myself lived in a small commuting town of 13,000 where there was very little affordable housing despite state laws that supposedly would incentivize increasing that housing. Our schools were terrific. Our public safety services exemplary. Our town was about 95% white and around 85% in the top 10% of income nationwide.

But communities in nearby majority minority areas, whether urban, suburban, or rural? Very different. Income disparities, health disparities, public service disparities? All amply represented.

We must come to Terms with being Part of the Problem

This is the problem we highly educated white liberals have, and that we have inhabited for most of our lives. Many of us, and the Democratic Party itself, resisted the Reagan Revolution and Trickle-down economics starting in 1980. But as Republican capture of our economic and tax policy solidified, the Democratic Party bought into neoliberal globalization. And then most of us worked our way into what became a privileged strata to become ‘professionals,’ ‘knowledge workers,’ and ‘managerial elites.’ We ‘made it in America,’ building status and financial security for ourselves and our families.

At the same time, consumed with our own efforts to ‘get ahead,’ we migrated together into privileged, segregated enclaves, where the wellbeing of racial minorities and ‘working families’ largely fell off our radars. After decades of this increasingly splendid aggrandizement, we became so comfortable with our privilege that we began to further explore and elaborate democratic principles that could parse finer definitions of personal identity and a host of related concepts that eventually became known as the journey of becoming and being ‘woke.’

But, in the meantime, millions of Americans — victims of Neoliberal Globalism and having lost their livelihoods, homes, health, safe communities, respect, and trust in government. The elite focus on being ‘woke’ became a ready accelerant to ignite a firestorm of political and cultural resentment and backlash.

And then we were all shocked by the emergence of Donald Trump and ‘Make America Great Again.’ I can remember how incredulous I was about that slogan. I too thought, “Well, yeah we have problems, but we’re still pretty great — and Trump is just a carnival barker with delusions of grandeur, etc.”

Well, that’s not what the majority of voters thought by Election Day in 2016. And they still don’t. It was devastating then. It’s even more devastating now.

And you know what? The truth is that we liberals have been living in a bit of an ‘artifical’ reality. It’s not that our experiences aren’t as real as anyone else’s. It’s that our lived reality has given us an unreal sense of our world and our places within it.

Mere ‘Resistance’ is Futile unless focused on “Bettering the Lot of our People”

So, I’m just going to say it outright: we liberals have essentially been a bulwark of Neoliberalism, the ultra-rich, and the oligarchs for 40+ years. We happily became the managerial and intellectual elite that is the ‘administrative state’ that supports this entire inequitable class system.

This is what our particularly untethered American brand of ‘Cowboy Capitalism’ does to people. Featuring an especially poor ‘safety net’ and a ‘by-your-own-bootstraps’ value system, it breeds and feeds on a ubiquitous underlying fear — a sense of insecurity and vulnerability — of the consequences of not ‘making it.’ Reaganism supercharged this — producing the polarized societal consequences with which we are now plagued.

We educated elites still fail to acknowledge the reality of our unthinking complicity in creating the current crisis, let alone take any responsibility for it. And neither have we been able to commit ourselves through the Democratic Party to any serious attempts to remedy and reconcile the consequences for the vast majority of our people.

As a result, most of the people voting for Trump/autocracy are voting against us perhaps as much as for Trump. They are voting against the privilege we locked-in and against the indifference we developed to the general welfare — to their welfare.

Please read that again. And let it sink in.

It’s really important to understand that many of our fellow Americans see us as self-interested elites — and about as far from potential allies — people or a party they can trust to stand with them —as one could be. Millions upon millions believe Trump and Vance when they say that it is the social systems and institutions that we have come to dominate that must be completely crushed and rebuilt around a set of ideas and values that can Make America Great Again.

Trump and his Muskreants are getting so far in destroying the institutions that provide ‘public goods’ to the vast majority of people in large part because we and the Democratic Party have neglected those institutions, those obligations, and those people for so long that tens of millions of voters — and therefore HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of our fellow Americans — have so little connection with these things that they hardly know what is happening.

So we have to realize that what is before us is much more than the unreflective, one-dimensional (dare I say, myopic) ‘resistance’ that most of ‘our side’ is building. Before us is the imperative to wage at least a five-part effort:

1. Loudly, prominently, and unceasingly acknowledge and repent for our own role(s) in bringing about this disastrous moment in our history. This may be the hardest struggle of all;

2. Make immediate, meaningful efforts to ‘get on board with’ the vast majority of Americans who are NOT part of our privileged elite and to devote ourselves to the creation of an egalitarianism that ‘centers’ their wellbeing;

3. Make this ‘centering’ of our non-elite’s wellbeing so real and so momentous that it jump-starts a rebuilding of trust with our fellow Americans that has been squandered and lost over the past decades. I’m increasingly inclined towards a renewed egalitarian agenda built around the “Abundance” agenda¹ that centers the wellbeing of all of our fellow citizens and non-citizens.

4. Fight and defeat the authoritarian and fascistic ‘solutions’ of Trump, Musk, and the other reactionary lunatics surrounding and coaxing him. They have successfully sold the imperial presidency and reactionary white Christian Nationalism as the best paths to ‘Make America Great Again.’

5. Commit to helping to resource a generation-long or -longer struggle to revive and meet our mutual obligations to the common good.

One of our most revered modern leaders, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, described this mission simply — but powerfully and presciently — almost 100 years ago:

“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”

Word.

---

A note to readers:

I’ve been writing this newsletter for about 18 months now and it’s a labor of love. But it’s also a project to understand what’s happening and what to do about it.

Even if you are just a casual reader, you will note that I’m not a reporter or a bombasticator. I am an analyst drawn to understanding and clarifying political currents, signals, and strategy.

I’d love to engage with more readers. I think I often appeal to people trying to get a handle on the dynamics behind political developments or actions.

So, I’d be very grateful for any feedback and if you would share my posts with others.

‘Liking,’ and/or ‘Re-stacking’ are really helpful and encouraging.

Commenting is just nirvana. All of this thinking and work we all put in is about connecting, supporting and learning from one another, and working for the common good.

And, of course, if you are able, a monthly or yearly subscription helps me to cover the expense of acquiring journal articles, books, and access to other paywalled Substacks that I find essential for my research and writing.

But this newsletter will always be available for free regardless of ability or willingness to pay

Thanks!

Jon

1. See, e.g., Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance; as well as a lively and growing literature on the subject referenced therein and elsewhere.