That is the message coming in loud and clear from the likes of Dissent these days. I can't imagine a more hopelessly deluded and impotent political position.
On the one hand, liberals like Walzer and Gitlin surely want reforms like single-payer, robust funding for education, higher taxes on the rich, a WPA-like public works program to create jobs, etc.
But when it comes to the question of what it would take to actually achieve these reforms, the Dissent liberals are content to sit back and claim either (1) that "the country isn't ready for them", or (2) that we simply need to ask those in power more politely. In either case, Walzer, Gitlin, et al. are committed to a never-ending apologia for whatever the Democrats do.
Thus it was no surprise to read that the headline for Walzer's contribution to the Dissent forum on Obama's first year was titled "It Could Have Been Worse". Can you imagine a more conservative assesment of the status quo? The message Walzer is articulating is clear: resist the urge to be realistic or sober about Obama's first year. Just keep whispering to yourself the lie that the Democratic Party is a progressive force in contemporary politics. Keep consoling yourself with the fantasy that simply voting for Democrats, supporting "consumer organizations" and so on will be enough to win the reforms people are demanding. But don't expect Walzer to even be too involved in those activities. His conception of political action seems to consist solely in writing tepid, apologetic opinion pieces for Dissent. The less one actually does, the more one implicitly endorses Walzer's politics.
Monday, February 8, 2010
"Don't get too upset...and keep supporting Democrats"
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Dissenting
Dissent, the social-democratic Left magazine founded by Irving Howe in the 50s, has recently come under the ownership of UPenn Press after having been independently owned and operated for more than 55 years. Tough times for print media coupled with economic calamity left the magazine with no choice. The editorial staff has not changed at all, indeed they reassure their readers that nothing about the magazine (least of all its politics) will change. I suppose that means I will continue to be unlikely to resubscribe any time soon.
I read Mitchell Cohen's "editor's page" in the newest Dissent yesterday, where he says that although Obama was frequently called a socialist by moronic Republicans, he clearly is not one. Nonetheless, Cohen says, everyone at Dissent wishes he was. I assumed that the implication I was supposed to draw was that they are socialists and would welcome a socialist leader. Fair enough. But then I read later on the issue an article about Latin America in which Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia were described as suffering from the politics of "social resentment" and consequently were failing to adequately "develop". At this point I felt as though I was reading "Reason" magazine or The American Spectator. I put the magazine back on the rack.
There is enough interesting and smart writing in the magazine that usually, I find myself unable not to at least take a look. But I am always amazed by how tepid (well... support for the 67' war and mixed support for the Iraq War aren't exactly tepid, but...) some of the politics are at the same time that the magazine's leadership is always paternalistically anointing itself the 'smart Left', the 'critical Left' or the only game in town Left of the Democrats.
