THE
AGONY OF GITLIN
Oh
yes, this is going to be a fun week, as the countdown
to Tuesday proceeds amid much melodrama. Agony is always melodramatic,
especially when experienced by aging "radicals" of the sort
so aptly represented by Todd
Gitlin, chief popularizer of the Sixties
Mythos, and the establishment's chief "New Left" apologist
for the same old bull*h*t. They wheeled out this marginal
figure in the history of the American left during
the Kosovo war to explain to yesterday's hippies why dropping
bombs on Belgrade from 30,000 feet was a continuation of the
civil rights movement. Now,
in the pages of Salon – that online guide
to yuppie left-liberalism – he conjures moments from
his glory days to rationalize the decline of the Left and
his own betrayals:
"I'm
the sort of voter who ought to be flocking to him. I was the
third president of Students for a Democratic Society, active
in New Left politics thereafter, frequently critical of Clinton-Gore
politics from the left. . . . Oh yes: Along the way, I stayed
out of the 1968 vote – and therefore, in the light of
unforgiving history, did my tiny bit to help Nixon win, and
all for the best of reasons, namely, emotions in revolt, disgust
for Humphrey's pro-war position, and willful blindness about
the left's marginality and the political payoff that could
be expected for going it alone."
Taking
aim at the Nader campaign, he avers, with a weary sigh: "Here
we go again."
THE
ME PARTY
The
self-righteousness of repentant New Leftists, whether of the
liberal-left or the Republican Right, is invariably, relentlessly
self-referential. Notice how, in this Gitlinian capsule history
of the sixties, his own abstention from the 1968 election
led directly to Nixon's victory – as if Gitlin is somehow
emblematic of a whole generation, the Zeitgeist personified.
The smug fatuousity of his middle-aged wisdom is so much the
product of a disappointed idealism that, like any cliché,
it seems inherently untrustworthy. There is, after all, something
slightly suspicious about such a cavalier dismissal of Humphrey's
pro-war stance – but obviously this is easier for a born-again
warmonger such as Gitlin, leading "left-wing" apologist for
Clinton's war in the Balkans, than it might be for any ordinary
Joe. So this is the end of the road for the "radical" Gitlin
and his burnt-out comrades. this is what preoccupies
the graybeards of the Not So New Left – nostalgia for
Hubert Humphrey! How long before Gitlin confesses in
the pages of Commentary, or even the Weekly Standard,
that he is having "second thoughts," and joins the ranks of
the neo-conservatives – a political faction ideally suited
to the temperament and inclinations of a sellout like Gitlin,
since its goal is not any ideological principle but simply
access to power.
KNEECAP
LEFTISM
Gitlin
openly proclaims that the only role of the left is that of
supplicant:
"Of
course the parties are corrupt fundraising machines. Of course
corporate lobbies run amok. Of course the Democrats need pressure.
The question is, Whom do we want to put in a position to press?"
ROLLING
IN THE MUCK
The
smooth cynicism, so "postmodern" and self-conscious, is very
Nineties: we're all corrupt, rolling in the same muck, and
who does "Saint Ralph" think he is, anyway? This is the self-satisfied
moral corruption of a graying ex-"radical" who sees all integrity,
both ideological and personal, as a personal affront, dismissing
it as "moral fundamentalism" with world-weary disdain. But
this argument is made only to satisfy Gitlin's narcissistic
self-conception as the Wise Old Man of American leftism, and
not to persuade. Certainly it won't convince the sort of people
who are even thinking of voting for Nader; indeed, it almost
seems designed to have the opposite effect.
RISE
OF THE NON-HYPHENATED LEFT
The
same kind of curiously counterintuitive argument is marshaled
by Jonathan
Alter in the Nation, who writes that Nader's:
"nascent
leftist movement has virtually no support among African-Americans,
Latinos or Asian-Americans. It has no support among organized
feminist groups, organized gay rights groups or mainstream
environmental groups. To top it all off, it has no support
in the national union movement. So Nader and company are building
a nonblack, non-Latino, non-Asian, nonfeminist, nonenvironmentalist,
nongay, non-working people's left: Now that really would be
quite an achievement."
HE
WON'T PANDER
The
same kind of narrow identity politics that has decimated the
Left, and reduced it to a virtual appendage of the Democratic
Party, is invoked by Alter as a reason to oppose Nader, when
the Green Party presidential candidate's refusal to pander
to anyone is precisely what makes him attractive. The professional
victimologists and their "official" organizations, who see
Big Government and the Corporate State as their allies and
instruments, have nothing to gain from Nader, since he cannot
offer them power. But Alter's argument is not very convincing,
either, since it matters only to the leadership of these "official"
organizations, and not to their supposed constituencies. Does
Alter really believe that of the millions who will vote for
Nader this election, none are black, Latino, or Asian?
Does he really think that voters who consider themselves feminists,
environmentalists, and/or gay will not be voting Green this
year? But surely you can't be gay – not really –
if you don't vote the way the Human Rights Campaign tells
you to; and you have got to be some kind of oreo if you think
a real African-American would even consider voting
Green! The same goes for feminists, environmentalists, and
sandal-wearing vegetarian fruit-juice drinkers – these
freethinkers must consult with NOW and the League of Conservation
Voters before they cast their votes. It's an absurd argument,
and one that, to the extent that it reaches its intended audience,
is sure to heighten and not dampen the intensity of Nader's
moment in the sun.
RALPH
NADER'S CONSERVATISM
I
think much of the hostility to Nader from the organizations
and pundits of the Left is due to the unconscious certainty
on their part that he is not really one of them. As
David Brooks has pointed out, Nader has made a determined
effort to reach out to conservatives from day one of his campaign:
in the third paragraph of his acceptance speech at the Green
Party nominating convention in Denver, he made his pitch to
the right as well as the left, enumerating his program of
people power over corporate power and declaring;
"These
goals are also conservative goals. Don't conservatives, in
contrast to corporatists, want movement toward a safe environment,
toward ending corporate welfare and the commercialization
of childhood? Don't they too want a voice in shaping a clean
environment rooted in the interests of the people? Don't they
too want a fair and responsive marketplace, for their health
needs and savings? Let us not in this campaign prejudge any
voters, for Green values are majoritarian values, respecting
all peoples and striving to give greater voice to all voters,
workers, individual taxpayers and consumers. As with the right
of free speech, we may not agree with others, but we will
defend their right to free speech as strongly as we do for
ourselves."
GREEN
FAMILY VALUES
Nader
a conservative? His speech to the Green Party national convention,
in which he outlines his vision and his strategy, is rife
with references to conservative themes. In describing the
constituencies he wants to go after, he sees them as those
who are
"aghast
at how little time your frenzied life leaves you for children,
family, friends and community, overcome by the sheer ugliness
of commercial strips and sprawls and incessantly saturating
advertisements, repelled by the voyeurism of the mass media
and the commercialization of childhood, upset at the rejection
of the wisdoms of our elders and forebears, anxious over the
ways your tax dollars are being misused, feeling that there
needs to be more to life than the desperate rat race to make
ends meet."
REACTIONARY
RALPH
Nader
apparently spent a couple of hours trying to convince David
Brooks that his campaign ought to appeal to conservatives,
and readily confessed that he reads the Weekly Standard:
but Nader is reading the wrong conservative magazine. The
neocons, with their puffed-up pretensions to being the architects
of "national greatness," are not likely candidates for
the kind of decentralized and humanized society envisioned
by Nader. He should really be courting the paleoconservatives
at Chronicles
magazine, whose suspicion of managerial mercantilism and
appreciation for such reactionary enemies of bigness as Wendell
Berry, would seem more compatible with Naderism. For it
might have been Russell
Kirk, or some paleo-conservative reactionary – perhaps
even Pat Buchanan – who was speaking, and not the candidate
of the supposedly leftist Green Party, the last bastion of
the crunchy granola Left. In his first major speech of the
campaign season, Nader denounced the corporate bailouts, the
endless subsidies that flow to Wall Street like tributaries
merging into a mighty river of expropriated wealth, and pointed
out that
"Of
course, small businesses don't have such complex shelters
to avoid taxes. When small businesses get into trouble, they
are free to go bankrupt, unlike speculating, mismanaged or
corrupt big businesses that can go to Washington for a complex
bailout."
POPULISM
AND THE PLEDGE
But
of course the corporatist neocons would never sit still for
any of that "corporation-bashing," not to mention Nader's
positively Buchananite foreign policy: he denounces "the munitions
makers" in the tone and style of Senator
William E. Borah, warning against the seduction of our
sovereignty by promiscuous internationalists of dubious morality
and even less loyalty to this country. In a speech attended
by Brooks, Nader avers that our corporate elite is decadent,
out of touch, and no longer fit to rule, as well as being
obscenely rich: "The lords of the manor in medieval France
would have drooled with envy at such inequality," he opines:
These transnational entities are laws unto themselves, manipulating
governments and lining their pockets at taxpayers' expense,
he says, and then gives his line a Buchananite spin by angrily
remarking: "They don't say the pledge of allegiance at corporate
shareholder meetings!" Brooks notes, however, with some amusement,
that neither did the Nader rally begin with the pledge: would
that crowd of nose-ringed kids and graying hippies have stood
still for it? I doubt it. Of course, the pledge is a matter
of course at Buchanan rallies, where at least the attendees
know who and what they are.
THE
SECULAR MONK
"Could
there actually be a new populist movement forming that joins
left and right populists against both the corporatist media
and the corporate donors who now fund both major parties?"
– this is the question Brooks asks at the beginning of
his fascinating piece, and eventually we find out that the
answer is no. According to Brooks. Nader is a typical "left-wing
revolutionary" – a "secular monk," whose "faith is in
the earthly paradise that will be achieved the day after the
triumph of the masses. His answers to the problems of evil
and greed and commercialization are all legal and political.
Utopia comes with the right laws."
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