The Clintons: frozen in time | Orientalism on the left
In this week's newsletter, I've got (1) a note on what it was like to watch the Clintons kick off their national speaking tour in New York last week (2) a piece on how some of the pro-Maduro leftists in the US represent a kind of gringo leftist Orientalism (3) A short note on how fixating on electability is a foolish way of looking at things (4) some reading suggestions.
The Clintons: frozen in time
I saw Bill and Hillary Clinton kick off their national speaking tour at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan last week. Bill still has a preternatural ability to couch complex policy questions in pleasant and humane parables, although his rambling style has become less charming as he seems at times to nearly forget what he’s talking about mid-sentence. The style of the event — Hillary and Bill seated on comfortable chairs alongside a moderator and before a mostly quiet audience — played to Hillary’s strengths. Unencumbered by the obligation to try to make her voice boom at a podium, her cerebral side shone through as she delivered punchy, nuanced and personally revealing responses to all manner of politics and policy questions. Watching them reply to questions side by side, one gets the sense that Bill likes to hear himself talk and sees conversation as an art form, while Hillary takes listening seriously and sees herself as providing a service when she speaks.
Overall, there did not seem to be a particular agenda to the questions other than to allow fans hear the Clintons speak at length about the major political questions of the day. Both of them have penetrating minds, and it was enriching to hear them share their thoughts in an environment free of the pressure to provide sound bites. Undoubtedly, the country would be much better off today had Hillary defeated Trump. But given the opportunities of the current political moment, the overall feeling I had was gratefulness that they’re no longer in control of things, and that a new generation of Democrats now has the potential to reverse much of their legacy.
George W. Bush is the modern president most closely associated with the notion of “compassionate conservatism,” but really it is Bill Clinton who deserves that moniker more than any other. From pursuing free trade to embracing mass incarceration to slashing welfare to deregulating the financial sector to reticence on gay rights, his tenure was fundamentally a conservative one, overlaid with a patina of folksy communitarianism and made softer by a booming economy and an era of relative peace after the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the talk, Bill (and Hillary) showed skepticism of non-moderates and sought to bring attention to the success of centrist Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. When asked about Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in the Israeli elections, Bill chose not to offer any criticism or even concerns about the zealot’s role in expanding Israeli apartheid, but instead praised him as “highly intelligent” and politically savvy. He emphasized that Israel is a “vital democracy,” and said that when considering the “bigger picture,” if the Palestinians had not rejected the (very bad) deal he got Israel to agree to at Camp David in 2000, they may not be in the situation they’re in right now.
There were few signs that either of them had reconsidered their political assumptions in light of Hillary’s loss, the rise of populism across the world, and the ascent of an influential socialist wing in the Democratic Party. Hillary warned against “being an attack dog” and embracing “extreme” politics in comments that were implicitly directed as much at the left as at the right. Both Bill and Hillary repeatedly focused on misinformation and “not knowing the facts” as one of the greatest threats to the Democratic Party at the polls. Hillary talked about how partisanship had made it difficult to have “civil” debate. Moderator Paul Begala — a former Clinton adviser — mourned the loss of the ability of Democrats and Republicans to “come back together” in times of crisis, like after 9/11, and Hillary eagerly explained how she worked with Bush after the attacks.
In the abstract, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those points. But they’re also old tropes of centrist liberal thinking, and at this point they should be considered, at the very least, highly limited in their utility. Is the collapsing center a sign that the population has gone mad, or does it maybe suggest that the post-Reagan neoliberal consensus was more fragile and less rewarding than commonly thought? Is civility really the antidote to the ascent of a white nationalist right? Have facts ever dictated people’s political convictions, and will they ever? Should Democrats not be ashamed of walking in lockstep with Republicans on the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, on second-class citizenship for Muslim-Americans after 9/11? Their standards for good government have not aged well.
Bill and Hillary both talked a lot about dealing with politics as they really exist today, about being close to the people. Well, times are changing, but they seem intent on looking backwards.
Orientalism on the left
I believe that the US leftists who are striving to cover up the crisis in Venezuela are Leftist Orientalists whose fabrications hurt their own ideology and the people of Venezuela.
A certain set of leftie journalist-activists like Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal have been sharing remarkably misleading anecdotes about homelessness in Venezuela and using photos and videos of things like grocery stores filled with food and well-stocked malls in affluent parts of Caracas to argue that there is no humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
This is misguided on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s true that food supply shortages in Venezuela have declined and that these days grocery stores in Caracas are not lacking basic items as they were in prior years. But … that doesn’t mean there isn’t a colossal humanitarian crisis.
The economy is in a tailspin and inflation is so high that most people can’t afford most of what’s in those stores. In 2018 consumer prices rose 1.3 million percent — prices for goods were doubling every 19 days at the end of the year. There are still reports of shortages of medicine, basic medical supplies, running water, and electricity. Malnutrition is rampant; malaria, once eliminated, is now spreading rapidly; AIDS-related deaths have tripled. What else would explain why, according to the UN, around 3 and a half million people — about 10 percent of the population — has left Venezuela in the past few years, and thousands are leaving every day, often with no money or belongings?
One way that the pro-Maduro leftists try to dodge these claims is point out that US reporting on Venezuela can’t be trusted. I’m the first to say that much of the US mainstream press is unacceptably deferential to the US government’s line in its political reporting on Venezuela, and is hostile to the project of Chavismo. But anti-Venezuela bias is different than inventing something from whole cloth, and inventing something as easily measurable and widely observable as an economic crisis is quite obviously not plausible. The exact same things are being reported reliably by British/European press, Al Jazeera English, the United Nations, and countless others. Personally I also know several people on the ground in Venezuela from across the political spectrum who confirm that food shortages have lessened but the overall situation is still horrendous.
The pro-Maduro leftists are operating from a place of fear and insecurity. Their spin comes from a concern that crisis coverage stains the global reputation of socialism and makes increasingly aggressive US intervention more likely. But rather than go through the work of introspection and forming counterarguments, they're going the route of denying the very suffering of the people they claim to be in solidarity with.
Their propaganda represents a kind of gringo leftist Orientalism, where they employ imagery and narratives of the subaltern to advance their own ideological goals. Whereas standard Orientalism involves construction of the Other to define the Western self and rationalize the material logic of empire, the leftist Orientalist uses representations of the Other to advance and rationalize leftist projects as defined by leftists from the West. Both use representations of people from the Global South as props for their programs.
This is not to suggest moral equivalence; anti-imperialism is a virtuous position. But that end does not justify dishonest means, nor does it mitigate the racialized exploitation at play.
This stuff isn’t just wrong, it’s also ineffective. Leftists are better off coming up with moral arguments against intervention that don’t rely on siding with garbage leaders or saying a crisis isn’t really all that bad. After all, there are always going to be garbage leaders and horrendous crises - worse ones, in fact. Self-determination arguments and reminding people of the dark history of US interventionism is more to the point, and more sustainable.
And admitting that a leader who rules in the name of socialism is incompetent or nasty is actually good for the left. The left must be critical of its own projects, be clear-eyed about what works and doesn’t, and recognize that defending bad leaders is both bad politics and unethical. Using other people as martyrs for your cause goes against everything that the left is supposed to stand for.
I think the wisest course is to back the Mexican/Uruguayan position on Venezuela — come up with a negotiated agreement that results in revamping the electoral process and hold fair elections. Venezuelans should be able to decide for themselves what their future will look like.
Fixating on electability isn't focus — it's anything but
In this column the New York Times' Frank Bruni exemplifies a belief among liberals that defeating Trump must take priority over everything else, and that one must work backwards from electability. He sees this as focus. But in reality, it's the opposite.
Nobody knows what electable means. It's worth repeating: A racist reality tv star won the GOP nomination and the White House, and vanquished multiple political dynasties to get there. In the process, a democratic socialist became the most popular politician in America. The midterms saw moderate liberals flip GOP seats and also saw some liberal politicians over-perform in pro-Trump states.
Electability is not only unknowable, it's often a byword for maintaining the status quo. Estimations of electability hinge on intangibles like "likability" and "authenticity" that disproportionately penalize women and minorities, and are often grounded in the political assumptions of yesteryear.
Focus can be found in demanding that candidates have clear, compelling messages for the electorate that provide an actual alternative vision to Trump. Nobody could summarize Hillary Clinton's 2016 vision in a sentence. Anything but Trump / Never Trump is setting the bar far too low.
What I'm reading
A new data point in the debate over whether Bernie would've won in 2016: Bernie Sanders' Fox News town hall wasn't a debate. Bernie won anyway.
Ilhan Omar never stood a chance.
Cars dominate cities today. Barcelona has set out to change that. Elizabeth Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic Party.
The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes.
The making and unmaking of Brazil's democracy.
Bernie Sanders and the Center for American Progress are feuding.
This Isaac Chotiner interview in the New Yorker is (unsurprisingly) awesome. Bret Easton Ellis' conflation of affect and substance was actually a great lesson in why people need to be able to separate media culture from what's actually happening in the news. If Twitter or socializing with annoying people is destroying your ability to be empathetic, then cut those things out, don't dismiss the actual issues at play or think that it gives you permission to boycott the ethics of citizenship. Chotiner and The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan are some of the best interviewers in the game, and I wish more journalists had a fraction of the doggedness they display in their interviews.
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