Yes and no. Their model of political action is that of supporting the good technocrats (Democratic Party progressives) against bad authoritarian politicians like Trump or Putin. The good technocrats have to first acquire enough support from the masses to be able to get power. Once they have power, they use it by incrementally improving things (what if the authoritarians win again and somehow reverse the progress that took the good guys 12 years to make in 2 months? we don’t think that far ahead here!) for everyone. They don’t have a class-based view of politics, at best they only think of some 50% of society as being bad and authoritarian but it’s fundamentally a moral divide rather than class conflict. They use ideological struggle and aesthetics as their tactics; liberal Mao would say political power grows out the barrel of a conversation or a post.
They realize that leftists are asking for something very different, but their disagreement with us comes down to their idealism: leftists want to do something impossible, authoritarian, and violent, when they could just vote. In their mind, since all they need is for people to be good instead of bad, it seems quite silly to go through all the trouble of making a revolutionary organization, parallel power structures, a secret army, an unsanctioned media apparatus capable of distributing agitprop to millions of radicalized proletarians, and all the other massive undertakings necessary for revolution. I mean, wtf is the point of doing all of that if at the end of the day, you’ll have a “new” society that will still fall into the same pitfalls of populism, authoritarianism, or other vague evils? Fundamental, qualitative change is alien to liberals. They see history as an eternal cycle where people are doomed to keep making the same mistakes, so the best we can hope for is incremental improvement to make those mistakes hurt a little less.
They don’t have a class-based view of politics, at best they only think of some 50% of society as being bad and authoritarian but it’s fundamentally a moral divide rather than class conflict.
Remember when Mitt Romney said something to the effect of “47% of the country will never vote for us”, implying that it was because they were all on welfare and therefore bought by the Democrats?
Dems basically assume the same thing, except for them it’s because 47% of the country is irrevocably stupid or evil or both.
Do these people realize liberalism is defintionally centrist?
Yes and no. Their model of political action is that of supporting the good technocrats (Democratic Party progressives) against bad authoritarian politicians like Trump or Putin. The good technocrats have to first acquire enough support from the masses to be able to get power. Once they have power, they use it by incrementally improving things (what if the authoritarians win again and somehow reverse the progress that took the good guys 12 years to make in 2 months? we don’t think that far ahead here!) for everyone. They don’t have a class-based view of politics, at best they only think of some 50% of society as being bad and authoritarian but it’s fundamentally a moral divide rather than class conflict. They use ideological struggle and aesthetics as their tactics; liberal Mao would say political power grows out the barrel of a conversation or a post.
They realize that leftists are asking for something very different, but their disagreement with us comes down to their idealism: leftists want to do something impossible, authoritarian, and violent, when they could just vote. In their mind, since all they need is for people to be good instead of bad, it seems quite silly to go through all the trouble of making a revolutionary organization, parallel power structures, a secret army, an unsanctioned media apparatus capable of distributing agitprop to millions of radicalized proletarians, and all the other massive undertakings necessary for revolution. I mean, wtf is the point of doing all of that if at the end of the day, you’ll have a “new” society that will still fall into the same pitfalls of populism, authoritarianism, or other vague evils? Fundamental, qualitative change is alien to liberals. They see history as an eternal cycle where people are doomed to keep making the same mistakes, so the best we can hope for is incremental improvement to make those mistakes hurt a little less.
Remember when Mitt Romney said something to the effect of “47% of the country will never vote for us”, implying that it was because they were all on welfare and therefore bought by the Democrats?
Dems basically assume the same thing, except for them it’s because 47% of the country is irrevocably stupid or evil or both.