De Turbo Blog

Reminder: Identity politics and economic justice are not mutual exclusive.

Previous elections were ruined, and lost to Trump, for a big part, by the Clinton campaign making the whole thing about identity (’you criticize me just because I’m a woman’ & ‘Bernie Sanders voters are just naive white college kids’). But now, after the elections, many democrats blame identity politics for the loss against Trump. That’s also not right. It’s very important that Obama was the first president and that a woman came so close to the US presidency. Those are real victories. The problem with Clinton was that she had very few to offer aside from that. She rolled mostly on identity and that was problematic, because aside from being a woman, she was Bill Clintons wife, a famous New Yorker, a very white woman, and longtime member of the political establishment.

Identity politics is not a bad thing, but it’s not a complete political program. It needs the backup of a longterm view on at least world politics, the economy and poverty.

The political center is blaming everything. Everything except these pale years of economic austerity and deregulation, that Clinton wanted to continue. Identity politics is the next bogus culprit.

Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

I posted this today on twitter (click here to see the tweetstorm). This is the full list. Let me know if I’m missing a crucial piece?

1. Hillary’s Millenial Problem

@emmettrensin: There is no pathology here. Only politics. It’s maddeningly simple.

2. Divided by meaning

This brilliant piece by @chrisarnade on the philosophical differences between Trump voters and Clinton voters.

3. When Truth Falls Apart

How the audience doesn’t trust any media anymore, by @MariaBustillos. Not The New York Times, nor Fox, nor twitter.

4. Would Progressive Economics Win Over Trump’s White Working Class Voters?

It’s not easy to recover from years of faux-liberal politics, says @rortybomb.

5. I’m with the banned

This was hilarious, and frightening. @pennyred with the biggest Trump-trolls at the RNC.

6. The Obama Doctrine

A huge (HEWGE) article on Obama’s foreign policy with a glimpse on what Hillary will do. Probably more intervention.

7. Why many political journalists don’t get politics

This one by @BrianBeutler on how political journalists can only see politics as a spectacular game.

8. Withering on the Vine

These elections were also the twilight of liberal politics. Thomas Frank of the @thebafflermag wrote brilliantly about the politicians whose minds refuse to leave Martha’s Vineyard.

9. Are Polls Ruining Democracy?

Jill Lepore of the @NewYorker wrote this great, historical essay on the problems of polling.

10. The Trump-Putin Fallacy

Today at Lippmann House, the headquarters of the Nieman Fellows in Cambridge, we had a coffee with Per Wästberg, the chairman of The Nobel Committee for Literature.

Wästberg is 82 now and has a marvelous career. He’s a Harvard grad from the fifties, a human rights activist who got kicked out of Africa for fighting the apartheid regime, editor of the big Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, writer of about forty books (essays, fiction, poetry) and longtime ambassador for Press Freedom. He was quite open talking to us. Some things he said:

According to Glenn Greenwald it's because the media (like The New York Times and NPR) still think their work is objective. They don't like writing that Trump calls for hatred and violence, because that's seen as opinion, activism, and bias.

It took me about four hours, but I’ve read the lengthy Atlantic profile on Obama’s foreign policy in The Atlantic: The Obama Doctrine. It's great fun to read how Obama deals with China (important!), Russia (not so important) and ISIS (no direct threat).

This is a summary: Obama doesn't want the US to do stupid shit and get involved with things that don't directly affect the US, which is probably smart these days. Also: he had to keep off the Washington elite and the media that wanted him to do more (bombing, mostly) all the time. The liberation day for Obama was the moment when he decided not to do anything after Assad crossed the red line of using chemical weapons in Syria.

Slightly more concerning is Hillary, who's more about powerplay and dominance and pressures Obama to show more teeth. That's probably good for the polls, but bad for the world. Obama doesn't only want to stay out of Middle Eastern conflict because that's good for the US, but also because that's good for the world.