What is Revolutionary About the American Left?

What is revolutionary about the Democratic left? Its supporters love to claim that they are a revolutionary “movement” that is about much more than electing Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as president, and Sanders himself sometimes claims that his election would be a revolution. What does this mean? What is revolutionary about the Democratic left? What is it that excites its members? One thing is certain: the policy proposals of the Democratic left are not revolutionary. They are incremental changes to the status quo.

Unrevolutionary Proposals

The left’s policy proposals amount to a restoration of normal American politics and policy.  To see just how unrevolutionary the left’s ideas are, let us review a few of the proposals from the campaign web site of Bernie Sanders, the darling of the left.

Medicare for All

One signature issue of Sanders’s campaign is Medicare for All. He would expand Medicare to cover everyone in the United States.  This is hardly revolutionary. It is an expansion of an existing program, and the reasons for the expansion are the same as the reasons for the initial creation of Medicare.

Medicare was established in 1965 because it had become almost impossible for old people[i] to get health insurance.  Old people were starving or eating cat food because they could not pay their medical bills. So, we established Medicare, and it has become the most successful anti-poverty program in our history. Today, again, the cost of health care is driving millions of Americans into poverty.  Health emergencies are the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and every day, more of our people cannot afford adequate health insurance.  To solve this problem, Sanders proposes that we expand a very successful program to cover more people. That is not revolutionary. On the contrary, it is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always characterized American politics at its best.

Free College

Another signature issue in Sanders’ campaign is free post-secondary education at public colleges and universities. This is completely unrevolutionary. In fact, we used to have it, but under prodding from the Radical Right’s anti-tax crusaders, we gave it up. When I attended the University of California in 1958, the tuition was free, and the fees were $140 per semester. State universities in other states were just as inexpensive.  That was also the period of the GI Bill under which military veterans could have even these modest expenses paid by the federal government.

In the years since, radical rightist anti-tax crusaders have persuaded us gradually to reduce the states’ support for higher education and shifted the burden more and more onto the students. We have gone so far in that direction that Sanders’s proposal now seems revolutionary to some people, but it is not. It is merely a restoration of the normal, American way to pay for the higher education of our people.

Green New Deal

Sanders has adopted the idea of a Green New Deal from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Under this rubric, he proposes large investments in green energy projects that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help to save our planet from global warming. At the same time, in theory, the projects would create millions of good jobs.

The Green New Deal sounds revolutionary, but in fact, it continues our long-standing policy of promoting the development of energy sources.  We have always believed that adequate supplies of energy were crucial to the development of our economy, and the Green New Deal merely redirects our energy policy toward promoting new energy sources that fit our country’s current needs in a time when the use of fossil fuels is endangering our country and its economy.

Today, we spend enormous amounts subsidizing the fossil fuel industries, as we have for many years. The Green New Deal proposes that we continue to subsidize energy production but that in doing so, we should focus our subsidies on green energy rather than fossil fuels. Today, the climate crisis has given rise to new needs, and we must shift our policies to meet them. Again, that is not revolutionary. It is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always made our country successful.

Why Are Moderate Proposals Seen as Revolutionary?

Why are proposals that are clearly in the main stream of American politics seen as revolutionary departures? One reason is that we on the political left like to describe our proposals that way. We like to think of ourselves as saving the world rather than merely making modest changes in our current policies. So, we describe what we are doing in revolutionary terms. Moreover, it is hard to mobilize millions of young people to work for a political campaign with the goal of tweaking the status quo. So, we call ourselves a revolution even when we aren’t really one.  We exaggerate as Bob Dylan did in the 1960s.

The political right also exaggerates the radicalness of leftist proposals, but they exaggerate in order to frighten people away from supporting such proposals. Ronald Reagan did that when he spoke of “socialized medicine” in his campaign against Medicare in the 1960s, and Pres. Trump used the same kind of language in his State of the Union speech on Feb. 4, 2020. Thus, both the left and the right tend to paint the left’s policy prescriptions as more radical than they really are. For the right, they are changes to be avoided at all costs, and for the left, they are changes that we must fight for if we are to have a better society.

However, there is a deeper reason why things like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal are seen as revolutionary when they are not. Since the 1970s, the Radical Right[ii] has shifted American political discourse so far to the right that policies that would once have been seen as main stream policies now seem to belong to the radical left. Radical rightists have promoted the idea that government is never the solution. Government is the problem, and the solution is to shrink government as far as possible and to rid ourselves of the idea that the agencies of government can ever produce results that are superior to those produced by the free market. We can see these ideas in the current administration’s opposition to environmental regulations, in its preference for private school vouchers over public schools, and in its opposition to Medicare for All.

The idea of shrinking government is of course very popular with the extremely wealthy because it can be used to justify reducing the taxes that wealthy people must pay and to increase the profits from their businesses. For that reason, the wealthy have been generous in supporting rightist think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, political actions groups like ALEC or the Freedom Caucus, and politicians like our current president. The money that has been spent on such groups has allowed them to issue a torrent of propaganda that has driven American political discourse to the right, and as a result, moderate ideas now seem radical, and American politics is dominated by the interests of the extremely wealthy who make up our ruling class and who fight to prevent the adoption of policies to solve the pressing problems of our time. The extremely wealthy fight against such policies because they will require an increased role for our government, and that means higher taxes on the members of the ruling class.

What is Revolutionary about the Democratic Left?

This brings us to the heart of our question: what is revolutionary about the American left? The answer is that the American left wants to alter the balance of power in our country to limit the power of the ruling class. The left understands that the domination of our politics by a wealthy elite is preventing us from solving our society’s acutest problems. We could have a decent health care system, but we don’t. We could reduce our dependence on fossils fuels, but we don’t. We could improve our educational system, but we don’t. We don’t do any of these things because our political system is paralyzed by the wealthy elite that governs in the name of keeping taxes low so that rich people can keep their money. The Democratic left wants to change the balance of power in this country that is preventing us from solving our most pressing problems.

The conflict between the monied elite and the rest of us is a perennial one in American history. The Jacksonian Democrats, the Populists of the 1890’s, the Progressive movement of the early 20^th century and the New Deal of the 1930’s all made claims similar to those of the contemporary Democratic Left, and the conflict has swung back and forth. The 1920s saw an increase in the power of the ruling class until the Great Depression brought on the New Deal. Ruling class opposition to the New Deal brought on the election of Ronald Reagan and the rightist era we are now living in. Perhaps, the current election will see a swing back to the left.

We can think of this struggle as our ongoing attempt to fulfill the ideals of the American Revolution. Our Founding Fathers declared that we were all created equal and that we were endowed with inalienable rights, but the republic they founded was never a full expression of those ideals. it included slavery; it subordinated women; it often excluded anyone who was not white.

Among our people there have always been those who saw how imperfectly our ideals were realized. The abolitionists insisted that slavery was wrong; the women’s movement insisted that women, too, were people with inalienable rights; black people today insist that black lives matter; many people today insist that healthcare is an inalienable right.  Through the struggles of these groups, we have gradually and haltingly moved closer to realizing the ideals of our founders, and the struggle of today’s Democratic Left is the latest incarnation of the movement toward realizing our ideals. The struggle of the Democratic left is a continuation of the American Revolution.

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[i] I am old, and I hate euphemisms like “seniors” or “elderly.”

[ii] I use the term “radical right” rather than “conservative” advisedly.

Bombshell: Systemic Sexism and Individual Decisions

A Movie About Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is an important problem in our society today. The #MeToo movement has made it clear to all of us that sexual harassment is very widespread, and we are being asked to act to eliminate or at least reduce it.  Bombshell is a useful movie in this context because it presents the moral issues involved in sexual harassment in high relief.

The movie is about the lawsuit brought by Gretchen Carlson against Roger Ailes of for sexual harassment at Fox News. The lawsuit affected other women at the station, and one of those was Megyn Kelly. She had to decide whether to join the suit, which she ultimately did, and much of the movie’s plot revolves around the process she went through to reach that decision. Bombshell is powerful and disturbing because it raises difficult and uncomfortable questions. The performances by Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson and Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly are marvelous as is John Lithgow’s portrayal of Roger Ailes.

Writing this article has advanced my own education. I started to write it because seeing the movie was a consciousness-raising experience.  It brought home to me strongly that our society has systemic features that trap women – even powerful, successful women like Carlson and Kelly - in situations where they have to make decisions that they should not have to make. Our system forces them to decide whether to give up their ambitions for professional advancement or to cooperate in their own degradation. That is what happened to Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

Sexual Harassment at Fox News

Carlson and Kelly were journalists at Fox News, and Ailes was a founder of the station and its director for many years. Fox News was rife with sexual harassment. Women there had to conform to Ailes’s idea of sexiness, and he took advantage of his position of power to exploit them sexually in various ways. Some gave him oral sex, while others simply did “the twirl” to allow him to appreciate the beauty of their bodies. Kelly said in an interview that he tried several times to kiss her, and she pushed him away. She said that the last time she pushed him away, he asked her when her contract would end(!) Ailes’s behavior was apparently not motivated primarily by sexual desire. It was a display of his power. He needed the women to show that they knew that they were entirely at his mercy and that they had to find ways to please him and demonstrate their loyalty to him.

Power, Culture and Sexual Harassment

Bombshell shows us how sexual harassment depends on both individual decisions and underlying systemic bases. On the individual level, a person in power has to decide to use that power to harass subordinates sexually, and they have to decide to allow themselves to be harassed. However, such decisions can only occur in a system that gives some people power and allows them to use it to degrade others.

What was systemic about the situation at Fox News, and what was individual? The individual part is easy to see. Roger Ailes was a man who took advantage of his power to harass women, and they went along with the harassment in order to advance their careers. A different man might have behaved differently, and in fact, not every employer is as bad as Fox News was under Ailes. Moreover, Carlson and Kelly knew what the game there was, and they went along with its Faustian bargain in order to advance their careers. Not all women choose to do that.

To see the systemic part, we have to take a broader view. We have to see that in our society, large organizations are usually run by men, which means that in most organizations, women are subordinate to men and are therefore vulnerable to harassment. We also have to see that our society generally accepts the exploitation of subordinates by their superiors, even when it is clearly illegal.[1] The exploitation is not always sexual, and the exploiter is not always a man.[2] However, in a society where most positions of authority are held by men, they are usually the exploiters, and since women are usually in subordinate positions, they are often exploited.

Moreover, we must recognize that our culture favors sexual exploitation in other ways, as well. We idolize powerful men, and often, we say that power is an aphrodisiac. It seems “natural” to us that a young, attractive woman will be drawn to an older, powerful man, and when a powerful man marries a young, attractive women, we call her a “trophy wife.” When the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted during the Clinton presidency, no one in our society had any difficulty understanding how Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton emerged. Some people disapproved more than others, but everyone understood the relationship.

Our daughters recognize this situation, and they learn to work within it.  They learn to maximize their attractiveness to men and to interact with them in was that flatter their egos.  Young women are aware of this dynamic, and they have mixed feelings about it. Once, I asked a lecture hall full of college students how many of the women among them had let men explain to them things that they already knew. All of the women raised their hands, and one of them said that she didn’t really like doing it but that it was hard not to do it because, “the guys ate it up.”

A woman’s vulnerability to sexual harassment is increased by the premium we place on being “nice.” A woman in our society is supposed to avoid face-to-face conflict and to smooth over interpersonal interactions. So, when she is confronted with sexual harassment, she feels pressure to pass it off smoothly and to avoid embarrassing the man. She avoids making waves.

This situation puts ambitious women in a bind. We admire ambition and the restless striving that it drives.  We admire people who “make something of themselves” or who overcome difficult obstacles to become successful.[3]  However, an ambitious woman inevitably runs the risk of finding herself where Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly found themselves.  Roger Ailes used the power that our system had given him to force Carlson and Kelly to decide whether to allow themselves to be sexually harassed or give up their hope for advancement at Fox News.  They chose advancement. They allowed Ailes to harass them sexually because he could give them success in their careers, and indeed, he did so.  Both Carlson and Kelly went along with Ailes behavior for several years before they finally objected, and Carlson’s suit was originally motivated not directly by the harassment but by the fact that after all she had put up with, Ailes demoted her show to a bad time slot.

The Tragedy of Carlson and Kelly's Story

This brings us to the core of our topic: the relationship between systemic sexism and individual decisions. We hold people responsible for their individual decisions, and from that point of view alone, we can say that Carlson and Kelly knew what they were getting into. They decided to pay the price of success, and they can’t really blame anyone else when they had to pay that price.

However, we can now see why that point of view is wrong.  The women in Bombshell faced choices that were inherently illegitimate. No one should have to face the choices that they faced. They had to choose among the alternatives that were offered by Ailes because he controlled the conditions of advancement at Fox News. He had power, and they did not.[4]  The system at Fox allowed and encouraged him to offer the exploitative deals that he did offer.  The women had been trained to work to please men, and it exacted a high price for failing to go along with Ailes. 

So, they did what most of us do most of the time. They went along; they didn’t make waves; they allowed themselves to be coopted by the system; they accepted its benefits.  They were trapped in a system that forced them to make certain decisions, and like most of us, they were not heroes. They allowed the system to corrupt them. They became complicit in their own degradation until finally, they found the courage to fight back.

The tragedy here is not merely that the women were harassed. It is that they were forced to cooperate actively in their harassment. They had to become agents of the system that oppressed them. A survivor of the extermination camp at Treblinka, who had been a sondercommando, recounted that at a certain point in 1944, the supply of Jews to be gassed ran low. For several days, no trainloads of victims arrived, and the sondercommandos worried because they knew that if there was no more work for them, they would themselves be killed. Then, an SS sergeant came into the room where they were and said, “Tomorrow, the trains are rolling!” The survivor telling the story said, “You know what we did? We cheered. I die a little every time I think about it.”

The women at Fox News did not have to become murderers, but they did have to support and cooperate with the system that oppressed them.  Once we see that, we cannot unsee it. Once we see that we have a system that causes women to become complicit in their own degradation, we have only two choices: we must allow that to happen, or we must accept a responsibility to work to change the system. For me, only the latter is possible.

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[1] At Fox News, the Board of Directors did not discipline Roger Ailes until a lawsuit was brought against him.

[2] For example, the character of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada and the character of Alma Coin in The Hunger Games are both ruthlessly exploitative.

[3] We have ambiguous feelings about ambitious women. Sometimes, we disapprove of ambitious, competitive women who strive for success in ways that we think of as masculine, but that is not an issue in Bombshell. The movie accepts the legitimacy of Carlson and Kelly’s ambition and focuses on the story of what happened to them along the way and on the way that they ultimately stood up for themselves in a hostile environment.

[4] When Carlson and Kelly arrived at Fox News, they were not the powerful women that they have since become, and they were more vulnerable than they would be now.

Winning Against Racism in American Politics

The Role of Racism in American Politics

     In the light of the recent massacre in Pittsburgh, we should look at the role that racist and nativist groups have come to play in our political system, and we should ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the role of racism in our politics. Today’s Republican Party depends on an alliance between racist and nativist groups on the one hand and conservative, business groups on the other. That alliance was not created by President Trump, but, in his presidency, his party has exploited it very effectively.  

     From the point of view of the business conservatives, the purpose of the alliance is to mobilize racist and nativist votes for candidates who will pass legislation that is friendly to business interests. Such legislation includes tax reductions and elimination of environmental and safety regulations. From the business point of view, the alliance has been quite successful. There are now no limits on financial contributions to campaigns; environmental protections are being eliminated; and business has received a big tax cut.

President Trump's Role

     In this alliance, President Trump’s role is to keep the troops fired up. He travels the country fulminating against immigrants, Muslims, the news media and occasionally, Jews (aka “globalists”). He reminds his constituents that their problems are caused by foreigners, by people of other races and by globalists. He makes sure that his constituents do not notice that, while he claims to want to return power to the people, his party actually works for corporate America.

     I do not know whether Mr. Trump is a racist, but he knows how to communicate with people who are and how to fan their fears and hatreds while maintaining a convenient, rhetorical distance. He doesn’t advocate violence. Oh no, not he. As long as this continues to be a winning strategy, his party will continue to maintain its alliance of convenience, and racism will continue to play a big role in American politics.

How Can We Fight Racism in Our Politics?

     We who think that this strategy is abhorrent cannot win by fighting it directly. Telling people that they are racists doesn’t get us anywhere. The people who really hear what we say already agree with us, and the people who support Mr. Trump know that we have been deluded by “fake news.” We can win only by providing our own, coherent, compelling moral vision that offers people alternative ways to see their problems and alternative ways to solve them. Here is one approach to creating such a vision. Here is another approach. Here is a third approach.

Vote For Democrats to Level the Playing Field

You Have a Lot at Stake in November

     You have a lot at stake in the election this November. If the Democrats win, we can begin to restore a level playing field for you and for everyone. We can restore an economy that benefits all of us instead of an economy that benefits the wealthy few at the expense of the rest of us.

Governments Have a Responsibility to Level the Playing Field

     Our Declaration of Independence says that “the pursuit of happiness” is an inalienable right and one of those for which “governments are instituted,” This means that our federal and state governments have a responsibility to prevent the greed of a few powerful individuals from blocking the pursuit of happiness of the vast majority of our people. It means that our government should assure that we pursue happiness on a level playing field, but recently, that field has tilted more and more.

How the Playing Field Has Been Tilted and What We Can Do About It

     As taxes have been lowered for the rich, state support for our colleges has gone down, and the colleges have had to make up the lost revenue by increasing the tuition that the students must pay. Students have to borrow money to pay the high tuition, and young people who go to school to learn a trade or profession now graduate with heavy debts. Our state government could act to reduce the cost of post-secondary education, and Democrats support such action.  They propose to increase state funding for community colleges, and they propose to allow young people to refinance their loans at lower rates. Republicans oppose those ideas. So, if you want to reduce the burden of your educational debts, vote for Democrats in November.

     On a level playing field, health care would be available to everyone at a reasonable cost. Most people would not struggle to pay for their health care, and illness would not be the most frequent cause of bankruptcy in our country. Democrats are proposing a practical plan reduce the cost of health care in Wisconsin by making Badgercare available as a public option. Republicans oppose this idea. So, if you think your health care is too expensive, vote for Democrats in November.

     A level playing field includes the opportunity for a secure retirement, and most Americans depend partly on Social Security in retirement. Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Democrats want to maintain them. So, if you think that hard-working people like you should have a secure retirement, vote for Democrats in November.

Vote For Democrats If You Want a Level Playing Field

     Our government should act to level the playing field for everyone, but under the current administration, it has done just the opposite. So, if you want a level the playing field on which we can all pursue our individual goals, vote for Democrats in November.