Left vs. Left
A puzzling conflict rages today. Admittedly, it has been going on for some time now, especially since every Western leftist should be in the course of wild eyed revelry since the Big Bad Orangeman is gone.
If you’re not on the modern left of the political spectrum, the quarrel might be hard to notice at times given that there are still issues that unite the loons. We all know them by now, and if you have forgotten them, simply approach anyone still wearing a mask outside of his house adorned with a new Ukrainian flag, and the Covid Zoro will be sure to tell you about how much they are swept up in the current thing. In Washington, just bump your way past the fences and walls and armed guards encircling the “cradle of democracy” and the “people’s representatives” and query Cory Booker who unleashed a string of obviously penetrating inquiries about the suitability of the next oligarch in black robes by celebrating her immanent confirmation with the poetry of the dead Maya Angelou. Is there, has there ever been, another female black poet… ever?! Blindly supporting a black woman who happens to have all of the same, indistinguishable views as those of the most liberal white people in the beltway is definitely a current thing.
Nonetheless, if you scratch the surface of all the virtue signaling, you’ll come to find that there are some deep, irreconcilable differences. And here in Chicago, we are getting an intense dose of them now. It is as if Chicago with all of its corruption and pretension cannot help but serve as the locus for the internal leftist slap fest.
Here, the old man Irish progressive kleptocrats are loosing their grip, or at least, they are losing the shield of career and legal invincibility. Forever Alderman Ed Burke and forever Illinois Speaker of the House Mike Madigan have been indicted on corruption charges. Patronage and pay to play schemes are not very effective when the corporations and unions you have traditionally shaken down are no longer around nor swayed by your entreaties. I doubt they’ll ever see a day in jail–Burke and Madigan will string out their trials until they’re dead–but their legacies are smashed. In addition, the city experiences gunfights like a country at war despite all of the gun control initiatives and despite all of the “outreach” of local and state government to “disaffected” communities. But why?! Reality is smashing the liberal establishment’s carefully crafted narrative that the balm of the state cures all ills.
Truth is, the new, woke corporatist left no longer sees a need to keep the vestigial organs of the old corporatist left around. The old left cannot keep up with all of the identitarian politics of the new left anyway. They try to, but they’re too old and slow. Now is the time for the threshing floor, wherein the chaff of the old is separated from the fresh, new wheat. In the progressive religion, that comes in the form of a black mayor who refuses to do interviews with white journalists. It comes in the form of forgiving student loan debt for the real victims here: Rich kids with useless degrees who are having to cut back their Starbucks orders, that is, unless blue collar workers subsidize their lives.
The rest of us–let’s refer to ourselves in this case as the (gladly) forgotten men–can only expect this leftist infighting to intensify as the crazies still look around like Joe Biden at a gathering with Barack Obama for a reason to stay united. The disagreements are just too great.
Best thing for the rest of us–the right, libertarians, anarchists–to do is to move away. Calmly, slowly at first, and then all of a sudden extricate ourselves from the room. Let’s recognize the value of the apolitical means of cooperation even with the otherwise unstable, but let’s also recognize that we can all move to New Hampshire, Alabama, Oklahoma, Columbia or Hungary when such cooperation is no longer possible.
We ought not impose upon the left for tickets aboard their sinking ship. Birmingham, Bogota or Budapest–they all seem lovely any time of year.
