America isn't for spectators
On achieving our country, elite moral decay and the Democrats' original sin
Thank you for being here. Before we proceed, I’m excited to share that Rob Henderson linked my essay on female social control. He has had a profound impact on my development, and I respect him even more because he sent something out that critiques himself. You all sharing my work has led to this strong signal that I’m doing something correctly. I sincerely appreciate you all. Secondly, I had a conversation last week with
, , and , which you may enjoy.i. Multiculturalism prevents a shared national identity
As I’ve evolved away from political tribalism, I’ve noticed the extent to which achieving a national moral identity has become impossible. I’ve been thinking about the nature of being American for some time, and my movement away from being ‘Indian’ has helped me uncover how American I am.
Being an American legally is distinct from spiritual identity; one can become an American citizen without forming any attachment to the nation-state of America as a moral agent in the world, and every nation exercises agency through its elite. Our elites, however, have steadily corrupted and abandoned their responsibilities. We can’t look outward to blame Trump on others; he is a reflection and result of our shared spiritual poverty.
Many nation-states born in the modern era had to self-define as coterminous with a religion, an ethnicity, a language, or a combination thereof. America is one of a handful that identified its moral agency without appealing to any of these; that is both its strength and greatest weakness. The idea of America depends on a shared sense of civic responsibility and belief in the democratic process to deliver results. Both the left and the right have abandoned this in favor of their own tribal notions of democracy.
We privilege every identity within America without grappling with what makes it distinctive. As a result, we don’t appreciate what we have, and being American is a source of endless shame. But how many of the people ashamed of their American-ness would enjoy living somewhere else? They’re always threatening to leave or fetishizing Canada & Europe without considering the tradeoffs required.
Everywhere you live that isn’t home requires you to adapt and adopt the host culture, or you can’t have a hope of establishing community; in America, however, you can keep yourself closed off within your ethnic bubble and still call yourself one. This is one strong reason why there’s less and less support for the social safety net: if people don’t feel tied to their fellow citizens through a shared moral identity, they won’t feel the generosity required to help those they don't know when they’re in need.1
I suspect this is one reason even Democrats’ core racially-defined constituencies are enraged about deregulated immigration, and by the notion of government benefits given to people who aren’t technically American. If being American gives you no privileges over outsiders, then faith in the nation’s ability to provide erodes.
In a series of lectures from the 90s, the philosopher Richard Rorty took on the cultural left that had eclipsed the reformist and class-focused left since the 60s. He observes the corrosive nature of multiculturalism2, which escaped the academy’s lab like a virus created from gain-of-function research.
Taking Rorty’s critique further, I argue that the elite has utterly abandoned a cohesive identity in favor of multiculturalism, which is no identity at all. It is the balkanization of the American spirit to the extent there was one during the post-WWII period.
Multiculturalism cannot serve as the basis for a shared moral identity. Achieving our country, therefore, is impossible without defining the American spirit beyond our ethnic identities and the flagellation of the left about endless national sins. As Rorty observes, the left views America through the lens of original sin, whereby committing certain acts is deemed incompatible with maintaining self-respect.3
The left, therefore, remains spectatorial rather than agentic in achieving our country.4 This reflects the modern malaise of letting things happen to you rather than being an agent in your outcomes; it is ontologically feminine in that it receives and doesn’t act. The left is thoroughly feminized without any structure, while the right is the masculine id untempered by its counterpart.
But being a moral agent is “to be unable to live with oneself after committing certain acts”. In this case, Rorty observes that we have three choices: to commit suicide, indulge in bottomless self-loathing, or develop the integrity never to commit such an act again.5 It is the act of self-making that defines an American. If I had been born in India, I wouldn’t have the freedom to create myself.
Rorty observes via John Dewey’s work that “self-loathing is a luxury which agents — either individuals or nations — cannot afford.’ Sin, Dewey argued, cannot be an explanation for tragedy.6
ii. Hating America and hoarding wealth
The modern left has dismissed America morally and treats it as a means to an end. This isn’t a political decision, but a move to preserve their class position. As Barbara Ehrenreich observed in Fear of Falling, the professional middle class woke up to the fact that they’re just one group of several interest groups.
This led to the ‘discovery’ of the working class and the poor through the media. But these classes were the ‘imaginative product of middle-class anxiety and prejudice.’7 Ehrenreich is a towering figure of the class-first left and founded the Democratic Socialists of America. She is forgotten, however, because she didn’t retreat into gender and race-based analysis and didn’t hew to the feminist party line. Her being a female critic of the professional class renders her almost invisible in the current leftist ‘discourse’.
It was implicitly understood that the working class was white and backward, rather than multiracial and at the forefront of the class struggle; militant labor activism was threatening to the PMC’s position. The working class in surveys was hostile to the professional middle class and less sympathetic to black activism; the latter position allowed the PMC to dismiss their concerns based on their racism.8 The working class, as discovered in the 60s, was white and male despite it being the most racially diverse, and became more female as women without degrees were compelled to enter the workforce, while middle-class women could still opt out.9
This stereotype about the working class persists among the professional class. Blacks and Latinos are always defined in terms of race, despite most being working class; this allows the modern professional left to dismiss a focus on class as inherently racist. We saw Bernie Sanders being rejected as a closet racist for focusing on the material over the symbolic. Because older black people preferred the Democratic establishment, its candidates took on a moral authority that coerced your vote instead of earning it. That is emotional blackmail.
Taking Ehrenreich’s critique further, the material grievances of the working class had to be rationalized away as being born of racism instead of the chasm between professional-class workers and manual laborers. This is the legacy shaping the professional-class left today.
The self-interested left necessarily turned away from class struggle; why would anyone threaten their material position? But they couched it in moral posturing, so it’s impervious to critique. Rorty observed that the cultural left retreated to critiquing mindsets rather than the economic arrangements that benefit them at the expense of the working class.
Rorty correctly notes that the left refuses to hold two thoughts in their heads: that racism is real, but its remedy is class-based politics of material outcomes that lift all boats, not endlessly shitting on America for its sins and creating a race-based moral hierarchy.10
The right understandably wants to break things because the left seeks to follow processes without considering the quality of the results. I cheered on some of the wrecking. But in practice, neither of these approaches has ever built anything of value. Creating a cohesive society requires people to believe that the process is fair and that there is elite accountability for outcomes.
Elites have utterly abandoned their duty to the people, and that’s contributed to Trump’s rise. He’s the result of decades spent ignoring material facts on the ground and the unwillingness of the professional class to give up the opportunity they’ve hoarded.
iii. Democrats’ original sin: the racial hierarchy of morality and Kamala Harris
Democrats’ racial conception of morality is their original sin.
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