I was born at the very end of 1933, just too late to be around for FDR’s first victory. If you will give me that one, then I have been alive for a total of 23 presidential elections. They divide naturally into three sequences of nine, six, and eight: FDR, FDR, FDR, FDR, HST, DDE, DDE, JFK, LBJ is the first; RMN, RMN, JEC, RN, RN, GHWC is the second; and WJC, WJC, GWB, GWB, BHO, BHO, DJT, JB is the third. The Democrats won the popular vote in seven of the first nine elections, in one of the next six, and then in seven of the final eight. In all, since 1932, the Democrats have won the popular vote two thirds of the time during my life.
Inasmuch as I was 19 years old before I saw a Republican in
the White House – and a RINO at that – it is perhaps understandable that I grew
up thinking the only serious political question in American presidential
politics was what sort of Democrat would be president. During the terrible
middle years, from 1968 to 1992, I was primarily devoted first to being the
father of two young boys and then to 15 years of immersion in the theories of
Karl Marx, and although I was “political” during those years, parenthood and the
study of Marx made a deeper impression on me than the larger events going on in
the public world.
None of this has anything at all to do with what was and is
happening politically but it has everything to do with how I have internalized
and reacted to the events of the past 87 years. I grew up believing that unions
were the wave of the future, not relics of the past. For me, the Civil Rights
Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War were experienced as signs of
the fundamental health of the American polity and harbingers of better times to
come. My rational evaluation of modern American history is quite different from
this, but I realize now that my emotional response has been powerfully affected
by the accident of what was happening in America when I was growing up for
those first 20 years or so.
All of this is by way of saying that the Trump presidency
and the Republican Party’s response to his loss in this last election has
deeply shaken my quite irrational confidence in the basic political health of
the American electorate. It is just as well that I have declared a one-week
moratorium on comments from the usual group because I really do not need to be
told about all the bad things that were done by Roosevelt, by Truman, by
Eisenhower, by Kennedy, by Johnson, by Clinton, or by Obama, or about the terrible
things that will be done by Biden. I know all that. I am talking about the way
in which the accidents of my time of birth have shaped my emotional responses
to the world, not about my mature political judgments of that world.
12 comments:
RN and GWHC? shurely shome mishtake.
Htank Oyu :)
When Reagan was elected, I (and most of the people I knew) thought that that was the last spasm of a dying order. That now strikes me as my greatest piece of political naïveté. How did we fail to see that this was the dawn of triumphant neoliberalism? The defeats of the air traffic controllers in the U.S. and of the miners in the UK cleared away that piece of stupidity. Later, most of the people I knew made noises about leaving the country if Reagan was re-elected; none did. I didn't know anyone who was fooled by the Clintons, though some were by Obama. Then like most people I thought that Clinton would win decisively in 2016. There was no way that the American populace (not the ones I knew from growing up all over the U.S., from Virginia to Hawaii) would go for that grotesque, narcissistic braggart . . . As the political philosopher John Dunn said, no one lives long enough to understand politics.
I could match that with a series of mistaken expectations for liberation in South Africa. We must keep fighting because every victory, no matter how small, changes the lives in material ways for large numbers of people. Perhaps that is the most any of us can hope for.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eo0eWhgXEAAnU8O.jpg
(PS: it's not just COVID-19)
As prompted by your recent blog post, I am going to make my first comment today. To introduce myself, my name is Chris, and I am a Political Science student at UW - Madison. The first book I read for a college class was your In Defense of Anarchism, a book which has continuously provided a framework for my understanding of politics since.
My political engagement began during the 2016 presidential primaries. Thus, Donald Trump has been a mainstay in my perception of American political life since its beginning. His presence has brought with it a continuous sense of cynicism, and I feel that I have just been numbed to the nonsense. While your political life has been marked by continuous optimism for a better future, what little faith I possessed at the beginning of my political life has been worn away. Even given Trump's defeat last month, I have a hard time feeling optimistic about anything other than a competent response to the ongoing pandemic.
But when I step back and look at politics from a larger perspective, I am substantially less of a pessimist. I believe in the inevitability of progress, I see the small victories amounting in meaningful ways, and I feel substantially more hopeful than I do when confronting the day-to-day of American politics. I will be interested to see whether the end of the Trump administration will allow for some of that macro-level optimism to seep back into my daily engagement, or if the damage to my political hope is permanent.
Welcome to the blog, Chris. I cannot even begin to imagine how I would feel about politics if the presidency of Donald Trump were my introduction to the subject. It will take great courage on your part not to lose hope, but to fight for what you know is right. The most important thing for you to do is to find comrades in the struggle with whom you can make common cause. The second most important thing you can do is to find some way of fighting politically for what you believe in that you enjoy because then you will keep doing it even when success is rare. I do not much enjoy going to demonstrations although I have done my share but I do enjoy raising money out of my computer for organizations and so a good deal of my political action has taken that form. I must warn you though that 60 years from now when you are approaching my age you will still need courage and still confront forces of darkness. That, alas, is the human condition but there will be successes along the way that will cheer you and allow you to feel that your efforts have been worthwhile. Keep struggling and stay safee until the vaccine reaches you.
I see that William of Ockham has gotten star-billing in one of the Op-Ed pieces of today’s Washington Post. The author invokes Ockham and his razor to debunk Trump’s claims about election fraud. Not a scholarly piece, but it might get some of its readers to look up and learn something about the principle of parsimony. (It would also be nice, I think, if one of the Post’s writers would explain to its readers what begging the question means.)–Fritz Poebel
Here's a modestly uplifting anecdote for you, Bob: I've taught Frankfurt's book on bullshit in my intro courses since it came out in 2005, because it's terrifically written and adds something new to epistemology. Students have always enjoyed it, and during election years I've asked student to write essays about it applying it to ads from their preferred candidate, to identify when and how pervasive bullshit is in political language; they've always done this with enjoyment and skill. 2016 was depressing, because for the first time students understood Frankfurt's arguments but weren't particularly engaged with them, in the sense that they were passive. They said, in effect, "well, sure, everything is BS and nobody means what they say and it's all a power struggle. What else is new?" This was despair-inducing. This year, I was struck by the fact that students not only engaged with Frankfurt's arguments, but were really seized with how problematic it was that BS was widespread; they saw it clearly as not just an epistemic problem but a moral one. This gives me hope about younger folks.
Apologies -- anonymous at "December 13, 2020 at 4:39 PM" should have been pseudonymous, i.e., Marcel Proust. I thought I had left an identifier, but apparently not.
Professor Wolff, hope you've been following Jimmy Dore on youtube over the past few days. He's been on fire.
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