Mother's Day message to young people

wondering what to do three years on from Bernie 2020

If you are like so many people angry, disillusioned and disappointed by American Left politics after Bernie, you might think that you have to join a group (won’t name them them, but you know what they are) or go to graduate school to maintain a community and network of like minded activists and Leftists. You don’t have to do this. I respect institutions in politics, but not the liberal institutions that US Left party politics have built. Hunkering down with others of your age group and your political and fashion proclivities actually makes you vulnerable to the most pernicious forms of in group psychology and conformity.

Why?

The cool kids of the Left have adopted all sorts of cool positions and insider language that has allowed them to quietly threaten those who won’t go along with the discourse that they are imposing on us all. For the older people like Adolph Reed, Norman Finkelstein and successful celebrities who make a living without the good will of the very on line so called Left, these attempts at bullying are irritating and dispiriting, but not livelihood threatening. For those of you who are young, just coming up in the world, ambitious and angry and smart and politically charged by the failures of the US Left, expressing the slightest doubt about the cool kid positions seems extremely dangerous.

There are the temptations of the Right and a very affected Trad thing that might seem appealing for a minute if you want to wear Chloe Sevigny’s wardrobe from that Mormon Show, but self-styling is not the way out of our political dilemma either.

First of all, the cool kids of the Left will not form of a party built on mass mobilization. And that is what we need if we want to defeat behemoths like Blackstone and BlackRock, not to mention capitalism itself. Second of all, coolness and cool new words are never about inclusion: they’re always about dropping people old and young from the in-group. Maintenance of the in-group is much more important to them than actual political struggle or political victories.

So what should a young person do?

I think getting a job outside of the liberal professions is not a bad way to spend a few years of your lives. If you have to go to graduate school or enter journalism, or become a content creator or a curator, or get a tech job with the latest startup, Odin help you, do it, but wait a few years. Get a normal job. Most jobs will discipline you and not make you believe in a vocation or in their HR Wellness program. That’s good. You can handle it. Jobs suck. That is what they do, but your job can suck a little less if you are not walking on egg shells all the time around your coworkers or cohort.

Have you noticed how bad the mainstream media outlets have become? It’s not your imagination. There has been a degeneration across the board in the quality of thinking and writing. There is a suffocating fear in the air. Is there anything you can do that leaves you with a little dignity? Find it and try to do it for a living.

The rage for ideological conformity is fading a bit, but the liberals and their ‘radical’ kin still have a lot of power in the liberal professions. Evade being dominated by them for as long as you can.

Physical discipline is not a bad thing either. Do something physical everyday. You don’t have to be a gym bro, but Big Ag and Big Food and Big Pharma want you to be weak and live in your imaginations, that is, in Big Social Media, Big Video Games and Big Streaming’s imagination. You can’t escape the spectacle completely, but doing something physical really does help inoculate you against Big Demobilization.

Maybe you went to a small liberal arts college. Maybe you majored in the liberal arts at a liberal state school. You can still move out of the Madison, WI, Minneapolis, MN, Seattle, New York-Los Angeles continuum of overpriced housing.

Keep your mind alive. Be an ordinary, skeptical, thinking person. For the moment, these two strategies may be the best maintenance work for Leftism that we can do.