A Middle Class Rebellion Against Progressives Is Gaining Steam
By: Joel Kotkin (Newsweek)
There is a growing disconnect between public perception of problems and public acceptance of political solutions. The public is being force fed a litany of threats, wrongs, injustices, and problems. The stumbling block is that general public agreement that a problem is a problem has been assumed to be a mandate to impose technocratic fixes onto the public. The public receives the blame for every issue but only an autonomous political technocracy has authority to address the issues. The public has no voice in addressing problems.
The technocratic political class has been gas-lighting the public. And now the technocratic political class has become abusive towards the public.
Critical Race Theory is symptomatic of the increasingly abusive relationship between technocratic government and the public. Where did CRT come from? Politicians have not campaigned on imposing CRT onto education. There hasn't been any legislation. There hasn't been any referendums. The public has had no voice concerning the imposition of CRT onto education. An unaccountable and autonomous technocracy decided CRT would address an issue, without any defensible justification, and imposed CRT onto public education. That technocracy gas-lighted the public with a litany of guilt and then abused the public because of that guilt.
The relationship between the public and technocratic government has become so abusive that now the public is increasingly rejecting that a problem is a problem. Denying problems has become the only way the public can protect itself from an abusive technocratic government.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A specter is haunting America, a great revolt that threatens to dwarf the noxious rebellion led by Trump. The echoes of a another potentially larger pushback can already be heard in progressive America. But it's not towards socialism, as many suggest. It's the opposite: a new middle-class rebellion against the excesses of the Left.
This new middle-class rebellion isn't rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left's critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on "systemic racism," coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending "climate emergences" are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.
And this new middle-class rebellion is being bolstered by a wide-ranging intellectual rebellion by traditional liberals against the Left's dogmatism and intolerance. Indeed, what we're about to see has the potential to reprise the great shift among old liberals that had them embracing Reagan in reaction to the Left's excesses of that generation.
In a way, this should not be surprising. After all, the progressive base is limited: According to a survey conducted by the non-partisan group More in Common, progressives constitute barely eight percent of the electorate. The report also found that fully 80 percent of all Americans believe that "political correctness is a problem," including large majorities of millennials and racial minorities.
Party line journalists may see President Biden as the new champion of the middle class, but every time he adopts central tenets of the new Left, he undermines his pitch. And this happens not infrequently: The Biden Administration has adopted elements of the "anti-racist" agenda, for example, by explicitly favoring Black farmers for subsidies, rather than focusing on all farmers in need. Race issues may be popular on college campuses and in the human relations departments of giant corporations like Lockheed and Amazon, but a recent Yale study found that language based on inclusivity around class was far more popular than one focused largely on race, even with progressive voters.
This is not the message coming out of the Biden administration, which has put a premium on diversity hiring and "equity," despite the fact that racial quotas, in hiring or in college admissions, are unpopular with three out of four Americans, including African-Americans and Hispanics; 65% of Hispanics, 62% of black Americans and 58% of Asians oppose affirmative action in college admissions.
Biden is similarly losing the middle class on immigration. Already many Latinos, particularly in Texas and Arizona, fear the loss of border control that accompanied the shift from Trump to Biden administrations. The crisis at the border has the potential to overwhelm the economies, health and welfare systems in heavily Hispanic border communities, which is sparking alarm among border state Democrats.
None of this is to suggest that minorities will vote for Republicans en masse in the near future, particularly if the party cannot transcend its embarrassing Trump worship. But the growing chasm between what people want and what Biden is offering could prove a potentially immense challenge that could undermine future Democratic gains.
Major pushback on how the progressive Left sees American history is also brewing. Americans by and large remain patriotic, including the poor and working class. This patriotism stands in stark contrast to the prevailing view among progressives, which casts America as the intrinsically and irredeemably evil spawn of slaveholders and racists. This simply does not constitute a popular program to the middle and lower classes, a gap that could become more and more meaningful—especially as the message of the Left spreads.
Take, for example, Hollywood, which used to promote the virtues of the Republic and the heroic struggles of diverse Americans. Now, dominated by people scared to contravene woke progressives, the big media companies have been pushing far Left plotlines and characters—and they have lost markets as a result. The devolution of the once glamorous Academy Awards into a minor, sparsely watched proto-spectacle reflects how much Hollywood's hold is fading.
Of course, it's not just Hollywood. Much more consequential—and potentially more disastrous for the Left—has been the attempted takeover of public education, and, with the support of the Biden Administration, attempts to inject critical race theory into secondary school curricula. This has created a mounting pushback in school districts across the nation, many of them voting to ban critical race theory altogether.
The progressive case also increasingly suffers from its own manifest failures in urban bastions like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, which have been losing residents and attracting far fewer immigrants while suffering among the poorest job recoveries since the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, there's a clear acceleration of growth in less dense, lower cost "boomtowns" like Nashville, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, Nashville, Columbus and Des Moines.
Democrats who wish to remain in power will need to address critical challenges like a steady rise in urban crime and massive homelessness; citing systemic racism won't clean the streets of New York, San Francisco and central Los Angeles from drug addicts, the mentally ill and the destitute. A failure to solve these problems will impact investment; Walgreens, reeling from thefts and disorder at its San Francisco stores, just announced its intention close 17 shops in the next five years.
But already these failures are beginning to incite opposition. Last month, Austin, the true blue bastion in Texas, overwhelmingly rejected a Council edict to allow camping on city streets. Austinites may want San Francisco's tech jobs, but they absolutely do not want its social rot. Equally revealing is the focus on crime in the New York City mayoral election, as well as recent surveys that found that violent crime has once again become the biggest issue facing the nation. At such a time, the progressive cry to "Defund the police" comes across as unpopular; the proposal is supported barely 18 percent of adults—just one in three Democrats and less than one in three African Americans.
But it's climate policy that may prove the most damaging aspect of the Biden agenda, and the one most likely to inspire a significant backlash. Policies pushing massive electrification are likely to accelerate the current surge in energy prices, and these will hit the household bottom line long after the stimulus checks have stopped coming. And this despite the fact that relatively few Americans—barely three percent, Gallup found— view climate as their primary concern and, according to one recent survey, barely one in ten registered voters would spend $100 a month on climate mitigation.
California provides a precursor for the emerging climate regime. Our state's fixation on renewable energy, along with the closure of natural gas and nuclear plants, has helped drive the cost of electricity and gas to the highest in the continental U.S. It has also systematically undermined key blue collar industries like energy, construction and manufacturing, which have stagnated or shrunk, while regulations designed for climate reasons have helped boost home prices to the nation's highest.
Democrats could risk losing congressional seats to Republicans if they continue to support progressive platforms ahead of the 2022 elections, according to prominent Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen.
Attempts to squelch fracking could also cause even more havoc in places like the Rockies, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma. In Texas alone, as many as a million good-paying jobs would be lost. Overall, a full national ban would cost 14 million jobs, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, which is far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession and has the potential to turn even vital smaller towns into instant slums.
You should not expect the middle class to take that quiescently. Indeed, they should not take it quiescently.
More pragmatic Biden advisors will hopefully try to shift course and focus on basic lunch pail concerns like health care, industry and improving worker skills. But they should expect a fight from on the relentlessness, well-financed Left fringe whose maximalist demands are likely to grow.
Without a Trump to unite them, the Democrats, led by a radical fringe unrepresentative even of their own party, may find themselves increasingly isolated. Only then, when reality asserts itself, can sensible alternatives, social democratic or conservative, again gain currency.
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Gas-lighting the public with a litany of guilt does not justify abusing the public because of that guilt. Unaccountable and autonomous technocratic government has become overly abusive. And the public is beginning to walk away from that abusive relationship.
Excellent article. But the Dems seem blind to the reality of their self inflicted demise.
But the current focus on "systemic racism," coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending "climate emergencies" are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.
Another 'article' screaming projection!
If they keep saying it enough it might come true.
Funny how California is going through a drought and all this piece can say is it is their climate policy that is to blame.
Talk about tone deaf.
Is this a word you were directed to spew over and over?
'Without a Trump to unite [read 'divide'] them, the Democrats, led by a [nonexistent] radical fringe unrepresentative of even their own party, is finding themselves increasingly isolated [read 'drawn into the GOP orbit].'
In actuality, what is brewing is a working class rebellion against the bourgeoisie ownership class supported by corrupted, bought-off petty-bourgeoisie trade unionism. Workers are rising to their feet. They are increasingly ready to be done with Democrats and Republicans.
Finally, the young got the message. They are the ones being screwed and they know it. And they won't be quiet about it.
I'm glad they've opened their ears. I'm not blue collar working class, but I'm working class just the same. I was raised in a blue collar household. It's time the middle class and et al, start working together to bring some real changes like making the rich pay their fair share and outlaw off shore tax havens
But, but, the rich just pass the cost on to us, doncha know....
Yep, that's how the current law works..
Yes. This is going to be huge. The ruling class feels the ground shaking beneath its feet; it is justly terrified, but is utterly incapable of offering even one workable solution to any of the crises which beset societies under the rule of KAPITAL.
Are you Nerm in disguise?
Remember Occupy Wall Street? OWS was a rejection of technocratic government that ignores the public. The Trotsky technocrats dismissed OWS as being pointless because there wasn't a call for activism and revolution. OWS wasn't confrontational; there wasn't rioting, vandalism, and looting. OWS rejected the Trotsky technocrats, too.
OWS is why the United States won't become Socialist. In fact, the more Trotsky technocrats claim unaccountable autonomous authority to centrally plan the country the greater will be their irrelevance. The public is walking away. OWS explains why.
There were plenty of complaints from the right about OWS such as the filth they left behind.
They were screaming bloody murder about how terrible the OWS people were.
I remember! It was what? 11 years ago?
I'm replying to your question with one of my own; I leave it to you to work out that for yourself.
Nerm_L: do you recall the 1982 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike? For younger participants, I'll provide a bit of history.
Within hours of the strike initiation, then President Regan took up a scheme concocted by the previous Carter [D] administration, and ordered their immediate return to work.
Regan threatened to fire those who did not comply. The overwhelming majority of controllers rejected his dictatorial fiat. Not only did Regan make good his word by firing 11,345 PATCO members; Regan also had union leaders arrested and in time imprisoned for leading a strike.
It was broadly and correctly assumed that Regan's administration received assurances from the AFL-CIO that it would not act to hinder PATCO's destruction. It was precisely the refusal of AFL-CIO bureaucrats to defend PATCO's from Regan's calculation for its destruction which strengthened the dictator's hand. This is to say that the betrayal of PATCO :
'... marked the collapse of the trade unions and their rapid transformation into agencies of the corporations and the state.'
This ferocious attack on the US working class intended to weaken the working class and correspondingly to strengthen Capitalist propaganda and lead to a restructuring of class relations everywhere. Ex: Prime Minister Thatcher's ravaging of British miners [1984-85] was patterned on Regan's malfeasance.
The Worker's League of the day made these points:
We now know the consequences of this campaign.
In the United States -- a country which, for more than 100 years witnessed the most violent worker strikes on earth -- class conscious strikes all but disappeared for decades. In this process, union bureaucracy, corporations, successive administrative regimes, company goons, police thugs, and criminal 'courts' collaborated to reduce the US working class [90% of the population] to the status of political slave/hostages. I'll return to this momentarily.
Now we'll discuss Occupy Wall Street. While some workers undoubtedly participated, this was not a worker movement. Like any number of other reformist movements, this one was soon co-opted by the pseudo-left/petty-bourgeoisie/Democratic_Party. The Democratic Party is a political graveyard where reform movements go to die. Occupy Wall Street had nothing to do with working class issues or such dynamics as were involved in the 1982 strike.
'OWS rejected the Trotsky technocrats ...'
Trotskyists never owned the 'Occupy' movement. It wasn't ours. Trotskyists never owned or led Occupy. Nowhere did 'Occupy' conform to Trotskyist standards. Moreover, 'Occupy' never intended to 'make' the US socialist. If you suppose otherwise, you've become victim to the propaganda of the right.
' OWS is why the United States won't become Socialist. In fact, the more Trotsky technocrats claim unaccountable autonomous authority to centrally plan the country the greater will be their irrelevance. The public is walking away. OWS explains why. '
Nerm_L: I'm going to stick out my neck and say that you haven't one clue as to what Trotskyism is. The above quote explains why. First, the internet doesn't know of your so-called 'Trotsky technocrats.' I turned off 'safe search' to get the broadest range of returns. When in the absence of objective knowledge, 'explanations' are invented, nothing is thereby explained. Second, if you're going to report on 'claims' made by others, you should document them. If not, you ought at the very least to name them even if you can't document them. I realize that this is problematic when the things making claims don't actually exist; but that's not my problem. Third, your post nowhere shows understanding of anything that Trotskyists would recognize as Trotskyism. That doesn't exactly encourage us to embrace your conclusions ... excuse me ... I mean your premises.
This article -- like so many that have been posted by you and others resemble a 'man bites dog' story in that they purport to have something significant to say while significant events are overlooked completely. Consider the continual [inventive] 'reporting' about what socialist are doing, how socialists are undermining our society, how Democrats and other pseudo-left outfits are socialists [effectively spitting on Trotskyists faces], and more.
I can tell you what we Trotskyists are doing. We're doing what we've done all along. We're documenting the history of worker struggles, extracting lessons from that history, and shaping Trotskyist doctrines/methodology with that history. We're putting in place independent, worker-led committees independent of both parties and of treacherous trade unions. We are forming an International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Committees . We are preparing the working class to lead a counter-struggle against a ruling class attack that has undermined working class social conditions and standard of living the PATCO strike.
What is now unfolding shows that the working class is refusing to be retained as the political/slave hostages to the ruling class. Why should it? I contend that the next great shift will be NOT to the right, but to the left. If you want to disagree, feel free to share what you've been doing as we Trotskyists have been doing what I just described.
And you think that 'Occupy Wall Street' explains anything? HA!
No wonder you came up with 'Trotsky technocrats!'
Critical Race Theory is a boogie man. It goes along "woke" as the most overused and abused terms of the decade so far.
The American people are, in a real sense unfortunately, childish. They get led around by whatever terms and themes they see flashed before their faces by the media. This is one of the reasons we can't get permanently rid of Trump. The media has to keep injecting "both sides -ism" into it and creating the flimsy argument that something the Democrats are doing is just as bad.
When the inevitable next inexcusable killing of a minority by a "rogue cop" occurs, then the white soccer moms will once again say how horrible racism is and wring their hands and all, and then a few weeks later start complaining again that minorities want too much too soon.
We just had the 100th anniversary of a massacre of people of color at Tulsa Oklahoma.
We hear far far more about critical race theory and how it annoys white people than we heard about the racism that led to that massacre.
I believe the most overused term is "systemic racism", and of course the tag line of white supremacy.
America was literally a white supremacist nation until 1964 when it became illegal , on a federal basis, to deny a black person a seat at a lunch counter or to rent them an apartment.
About a decade later the Trump real estate company was in court accused of discriminating against blacks in their apartment rental practices. The Trump company was fined and forced into an agreement to change their ways. If I remember correctly they ended up back in court again for failing to abide by the agreement.
Do you seriously believe that widespread racism has ended in America in the past 50 years?
The operative word that you yourself used is WAS.
Yes. Of course there are individuals of all races that hate and despise anyone of another race. It was and will continue to be as long as our species exists.
If you believe otherwise, I pity you, as you apparently can't see anything besides your own clouded racist view of America.
What do you think would have happened to the Black population if the BLM protests of 2020 had taken place in 1920?
The fact that nationwide BLM protests happened demonstrates the progress that has been made.
I would say you are dreaming except I have the feeling you know that you are wrong.
Are you denying that Critical Race Theory is real? Are you denying that CRT is being incorporated into school curriculum?
Where did CRT come from? Who decided that CRT must become part of elementary education? Why can't parents raise concerns and have a voice over what their children are being taught?
All of that is gas-lighting to assign guilt and undemocratically deny participation because of that guilt. The only option the public has is to ignore and reject that problems are really problems. The public doesn't have a voice in addressing problems because of the litany of guilt.
Notice that the public isn't pushing back? The public is walking away. The public isn't outraged and unified by the gas-lighting guilt any longer. The public isn't denying the Tulsa Massacre; the public is simply ignoring the Tulsa massacre.
The problem for the unaccountable and autonomous technocrats is that the public isn't being led by whatever terms and themes they see flashed before their faces by the media. The public isn't paying attention to the latest ginned up outrage. The public is walking away.
Why should the public pay attention to any of it? The public doesn't have a voice. Someone, somewhere will decide what needs be done and will impose their idea of a solution onto public. And that someone, somewhere won't be accountable to the public.
What are you so scared of ?
We can either confront racial discrimination now, and get it over with in a few years , perhaps, or ignore it now and have it fester for 50 or 100 more years.
White people were the dominant "racial" group during a PROLONGED era of widspread racial injustice and discrimination. Some of it still goes on. You think that will just be swept under the rug?
That broom is highly selective. One of today's political parties was founded upon widespread racial injustice, white racial superiority, and harsh systemic racism. Yet that history is not confronted; it's swept under the rug. Those who are wagging their fingers should clean their own house.
Why should the guilty be allowed to spew outrage over a past they sweep under the rug? Why should the public be outraged over 1619 while 1820 is disregarded as unimportant in the racial history of the United States? White people still dominate that political party and are using their dominance to sweep their own past under the rug.
Gas-lighting doesn't hide the fact of who is using the broom to sweep the past under rug.
Where would NT be without your odd conclusions ?
So true, they just want to whitewash history, like always.
We shouldn't bring up the past because it hurts all those racists' feelings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The reality is that the "left" are middle-class. The only push back anyone is seeing is from center-left progressives who push back against the excesses of both the left wing and right wing extremists. Extremism, whichever direction it comes from, should be resisted. It's why the bullshit narrative from right wing extremists about the supposed dangers of socialism coming from the left are in fact total bullshit. The "left" meaning the majority of those on the left, are not extremists and are not pushing our nation towards socialism, they are entrenched capitalists who accept that some social programs can enhance society without any risk that society as a whole will slide down some slippery slope into some right wing fantasy of Marxist socialism.
The author, Joel Kotkin, is obviously a staunch conservative just by looking at his other articles like "Environmentalism is the New War On the Middle-Class", "Generation Screwed", "A New World Order: A Map" that claims "tribal ties—race, ethnicity, and religion—are becoming more important than borders" or his book "The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle-Class".
Neo-feudalism is the theory that public life will become much like life in many feudal societies, such as unequal rights and legal protections for common people and for nobility. But this complaint mainly comes from those who have been enjoying unequal rights for most of their lives as white Christian males, who are now frightened that society will shift away from them and start giving unequal rights to other historically marginalized groups. They can't imagine a world where minorities will get preferential treatment such as affirmative action in job placement or college acceptance over white Christians for that to them would be unfair. Rarely do they admit that for the last several hundred years if not longer we have effectively had affirmative action for white Christians who have enjoyed their "unequal rights" and a different set of rules/laws for the "noble white Christian class" and treated minorities as serfs or worse. Now that we are actively trying to level the playing field we will inevitably get the whining cries from those having their pedestals removed.
As far as I'm concerned, I despise extremists of ANY ilk, whether it be political, religious, or whatever. The peace, order and good government of the world would be better off without them.