Solidarity and Hope

Last night, I spent a few hours thinking about the events of the day. I can't say I was exactly shocked to see Elon Musk giving a Nazi salute at a US presidential inauguration. It's Elon Musk. He's been telling us who he is for a good while now. That bit wasn't shocking, but to see it as a presidential inauguration was surprising. For the first three quarters of my life it was unreservedly recognized as a sign of being an enemy to democracy and the United States, as a nation. Had it been a podcast appearance, a conservative political conference, I wouldn't have been surprised. At the inauguration? Yes, I was surprised, and angry. Call me crazy, but Nazi salutes inspire a sense of incandescent rage in me. There's something about the systemic, industrialized extermination of thirteen million people in the question for an ethnostate that I find hostile to human well being, and to do anything which would celebrate that? Call me crazy, but by itself it inspires my rage. 

How much new is there to learn about the depths of depravity the right and it's leadership are willing to sink to in their quest for more power and more wealth? Not a lot really. There are things to learn from the reaction to it though. We can now say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, our major press will literally not call someone a fascist or Nazi, under any circumstances. "Was it a Nazi salute?" would be comical if not for the havoc we've seen play out by the serialized denial of plain reality. It's been making the rounds plenty, which threatens to undermine it's power and message, but the Orwell quote is relevant, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Someone who willingly makes a Nazi salute is telling you what they believe, and what their intentions are, as horrific as it is. Someone who'd do so at a presidential inauguration, even if it were in the name of provocation and not identification, is no less dangerous in their ignorance and stupidity. They are in fact giving a speech and able to demonstrate a Nazi salute at an inauguration, by invitation, and it suggests the qualities an administration finds valuable are themselves dangerous. This is, after all, one of the most powerful elected offices in the world, and one third of the division of power within the US government. That it is the third with most direct control of the military is not insignificant by itself, and made more significant by the history of Nazi Germany.

A common refrain among those of us who consider ourselves in opposition to fascism and it's continued accrual of power is, "Have you learned nothing?" We ask it of the press, the Democratic Party, each other individually. As the day wore on, seeing the responses, seeing the reaction, particularly the way people who do consider themselves in opposition to fascists and fascism were reacting to, interacting with each other, I couldn't help but think a lot of us, certainly the contingent which is most vocal on social media, have failed to understand how the state of play, the conditions in which we wage that fight, have changed significantly enough it requires a change in some fundamental ways we think about this conflict.

Broadly, there are those of us who believe structuring a society to further uphold, entrench and enhance the roles of sexism (I, personally, think of patriarchal gender roles as part and parcel of sexism and misogyny), racism, xenophobia, and the equivalent of class war perpetrated by the ultra wealthy against everyone else is not just a bad idea, but anathema to a healthy, stable nation and society. To my way of thinking, this isn't just a moral concern, though there are obviously moral dimensions. We're seeing it's a practical concern. It is at odds with national, cultural and individual stability. I don't look at US history and see a collection of troublemakers ruining the society that was doing just fine. I look at our history and see waves of human beings refusing to continue to accept their dehumanization and marginalization based on arbitrary categories created so the wealthy and powerful can keep their hold on both wealth and power, by whatever means are necessary at any given moment. Systemic and institutionalized discrimination are counter to stability, because human beings will always, at some point, reach the point they are not willing to be devalued in their humanity as the result of fantastical excuses unconnected to reality. The most unstable periods in our history come from the refusal to answer the call to recognize the humanity of one group of people, in defense of the privilege others experience resulting from that dehumanization.

This is what I broadly think of as The Left, those of us who believe these are immoral and/or practically ineffective ways to structure a nation and society, if the goals are stability and human flourishing. Generally, we on the Left are not having disagreements about whether these are problems. Disagreements on The Left, tend to be about priority and solutions. Which of these problems is paramount? Which solutions are likely to produce the best outcomes? What are the outcomes we're trying to reach? What strategies and tactics are acceptable? These are the basis of the schisms among the population we think of or refer to as "The Left." We broadly agree on what the problems are.

It seems to me, because a fascist movement has taken power in government, and has a growing social and cultural power (clearly aided by the press), those of us who aren't fascists or sympathize with fascists have a common cause. I think we could all agree it is preferable to have the opportunity to fight about how to create a society not based on the most wealthy and powerful exploiting the rest of us and/or punishing our existence to further expand their wealth and power. 

I can't force anyone else to do anything or to change their perspective on anything. Since roughly 2011, I've spent more hours and energy attempting to do this than was probably advisable. I have risked and sacrificed to do so. It has been through very hard experience I've come to understand just how useless an endeavor it is. Simultaneously, I look at what's happened, and I somehow still have some kernel of hope that we will collectively figure out how to do better. I can concede it may not be rational to have such hope. Even a kernel of hope is better than hopelessness because I've been there too, and I know this to be true. 

Even as I've dedicated time and energy to a number of these conflicts within The Left for a number of years, I don't see the efficacy of continuing to focus on them, right now. It's clear those schisms and conflicts have been exploited by fascism, in order for it to rise to the naked, blatant occupation of power it has. It's also clear solidarity is our best hope. The right has coalesced around Christian white nationalist/supremacist identity. Whether one sees this as a manipulation of the wealth which is also funding it or as the sincerely held beliefs of those with that wealth is in a practical sense less important than the fact that we face an enemy whose solidarity crosses class and gender. As much as greed and ambition cause rifts, fallouts, and exile among their members/movement, that solidarity is their greatest weapon, and it seems pretty clear to me that in the face of it, the factional nature of The Left has rendered it effective in countering the right. We are where we are for thousands of reasons, and this might just be one, but looking at the landscape as it exists right now, this one currently stands out. 

I can honestly say I've never been or witnessed people I care about beaten by police, peppered sprayed, arrested or threatened with arrest (when no law was being broken) in a city we'd think of as red or conservative. I know with certainty, prior to Unite The Right in August of 2017, the self professed "progressive" governments of both the state of Virginia and the city of Charlottesville were made well aware of the mountains of evidence that the organizers and participants were planning what amounted to an act of terrorism, meant to intimidate and at whatever possible opportunity, harm, anyone who didn't subscribe to their white nationalist world view. I am also clear that when the economy collapsed in 2008, it wasn't just conservatives on the right turning to any microphone they could find to claiming that the grass roots movements which formed to push for legislation insuring nothing like the collapse and wholesale looting of middle and working class savings could ever happen again, were just asking for "free stuff." I have been a teenager attempting to help insure other people my age had all the information they needed to prevent the contraction or spread of AIDS assailed, demonized and experienced sudden structural boundaries to that effort, and told "this is all just too divisive," by people whose children were at risk and/or would have considered themselves left of conservative. I've watched school board meetings where the children of people I cared about and respected deeply were denied access to an equitable, quality education because  nominally "progressive" people were worried about property values related to the rating of their schools.  

I am a cis, white, straight male. This has afforded me many privileges. There are people who I'm sure would say that because of this, it's easy for me to say we on the left should focus on building solidarity. I also went through 90% of my life with undiagnosed autism, and 85% of it with misdiagnosed PTSD, so I know what it is to live in a world which says you cannot be afforded the same right to safety and security other people have, without changing things about yourself that force of will are simply not going to change. With the right treatment, which takes the right diagnosis, PTSD can be managed. Autism can't be managed. It has be worked around and/or with, and there is little recognition that the space to do so benefits anyone other than the autist, despite the number of us who've made great contributions to society. I'm aware that this is not the same experience as sexism, racism, homophobia or the many other forms of discrimination we live with and are raised in and on. It is also still dehumanization grown from an inability to accept, much less embrace or recognize, the diversity of the human animal that is factual reality. Ableism and stigma against mental illness are society wide. Every movement we have is shot through with them. Whether or not we want to admit this, it's true. There are things I was never able to be or do, and other things I can't do anymore or again, for reasons the majority of the people I encounter can't understand, and it is painful to be confronted with so regularly. It would, at this point, be incredibly self destructive to put myself in the position to have to deal with or confront violence of any significance. On that front, PTSD has cooked by brain. Even without the exposure to serious, significant violence, it's not a coincidence that suicidal ideation is so common and successful suicides are higher than average among neurodivergent people or that people with disabilities (including neurodivergence and mental illness) are sixteen times more likely to be killed by police. It's akin to living everyday, being repeatedly asked, "Why can't you be a real boy/girl?" but there are no fairy godmothers to wave a wand and whisk away the thing that makes you different, if you just demonstrate how good you can be. No matter how good you are, tomorrow comes, and with it, more reminders of how much of the world you live in doesn't think you're a real boy/girl. I know what it is to be reminded of this by even the most caring and well meaning people, and how exhausting and frustrating it is. If you think that being white, cis and straight is enough to protect someone like me, I suggest you dig around in the history of fascism, and authoritarianism more broadly, to get a handle on how they tend to see the disabled. I'll give you a hint... it's not good. 

I say all of this because I'm not unaware of the difficulty of building solidarity, and what it asks. I don't look at this, the realities I've personally experienced, and say lightly that I am going to do my absolute best to find a way to exist and contribute that does not aggravate the schisms already existing on The Left. I say it, knowing this, because it is the thing which is most strategically sensible, for me personally, and I think for all of us who don't appreciate living with a fascist menace overhanging the future of our lives. We'll all have different tolerances, for different things, no doubt. For me, this is going to take the form of moving on. There's nothing gained from arguing with self professed Leftists who want nothing more than to create online conflict between the various factions of the Left. Some of them are sincere in what they're advocating, and how. Plenty of them are essentially grifters in the attention economy. One of the great things about Bluesky in the year before the Great Twitter Exodus, was that there was very little of this. I'm going to try to repeat that experience by ignoring or blocking them when they show up. 

I do not make solidarity for myself alone though. The depth of ignorance in the general public about the issues of civil rights for people with mental illness and/or neurodivergence is considerable. It's a chasm that won't be bridged in my lifetime. I have no doubt this will mean making solidarity with people whose views on the rights of people like me are appalling. Where I can make solidarity on the grounds of trans liberation, I will. Where I can make solidarity on the grounds of anti-racism, I will. Where I can make solidarity on the grounds of the liberation from patriarchal gender norms, I will. Should I be able to make solidarity on the grounds of labor rights, I will. It is because we all deserve this. We all, also deserve liberation from the conditioned ignorance which creates this reality, this status quo which steals from us the ability to access the fullness of our humanity and bring it bear in the lives of those we live with and those we love. Hopefully, along the way, some of the people involved in all this learn a bit more about what equity looks like for people who are neurodivergent or live with mental illness. 

Additionally, and likely controversially, I'm interested in building solidarity with basically every faction of the Left, except what currently constitutes the Democratic Party. I do not view the Democratic Party as the institution and those who have voted for it or even volunteered etc. These are two separate entities, to my way of thinking, and it is the Party as an institution, it's elected and professional class I'm talking about here. Unless there is some kind of major, shockingly significant change in leadership and strategy, there is no positive, no upside to continuing to treat it as anything but irrelevant. As I said, there are thousands of reasons we are where we are, and along with the Left being unable to create a sustained solidarity, there is the is blinding obviousness that the Democratic Party is either so intensely incompetent or so hopelessly inured to the ultra wealthy, it could not be less effective at preserving democracy and the rights of the people it claims to want to represent if it became openly fascist. A party that lost two of the last three presidential elections to the worst candidate in US history, as that candidate has openly embraced fascism and white Christian nationalism, and refuses to do anything more than blame the public in the evaluation of that failure, is not worth propping up. 

The most generous reading of this failure would say the Democratic Party has been trying to to avoid a civil war, but even in this, it failed to prevent someone who very clearly wants to turn the US into a fascist authoritarian state from becoming president. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say this. What we've been witnessing is the lawlessness that is the desire to obtain and hold power, by any means, which is exactly why it is lawless, why it has no respect for anything other than the achieve of power, including the people who are the nation or the documents which are the structure of its laws. It is why they are oppositional to democracy. This is, I believe, the thing most Americans have been desperately trying not to even entertain as a thought or possibility, much less fully acknowledge. It is plain as January 6. Should they be excised from or prevented from continuing to obtain power, even through what we would think of as legal and fair means, the cavalcade of billionaires, grifters and zealots that are the leadership of the American right would foment a civil war at the first opportunity. With the fall of the USSR, and therefore no other world power to draw their need to conquer, to dominate, it has turned inward. This is what we've been experiencing, the same principles of power which gave rise to colonialism, to our intelligence apparatus and our capitalists working hand in glove to topple democracies in other nations, have now turned their full attention to the citizenry, wealth and resources of the US. The US is now, fully, a satellite state for the billionaire class and Trump is the figurehead because his rapacious insecurity and simple mindedness is both easy to manipulate, and impenetrable to things like shame, guilt, much less self reflection.  

The Democratic Party essentially gave it's opposition this victory, without the war, and the history of fascism and authoritarianism do not suggest this will be less costly in number of lives lost. I can agree with all of the criticisms of the media, and that their coverage has created lopsided expectations, but in the final analysis, what good is being one of the most powerful institutions in the nation if it cannot develop a strategy which takes this into account to prevent a fascist from the presidency? It is a failure of epic historical proportions. Nominally, all of our governmental institutions, including the political parties exist to protect the Constitution. We can have disagreements about how well the Constitution works, but the proof of the failure of the Democratic Party to achieve its most basic, important function is undeniable. It has offers no leadership, no strategy, no ideological or practical framework worth the time or attention of those of us who will be burdened with the consequences of that failure. Maybe starving it of time, attention and money will cause an internal rebellion and some genuinely responsible, thoughtful, strategy minded individuals will be able to take in a new direction. Maybe, enough people will start to realize it's sheer, brutal inefficacy and begin putting the time and energy into another party. I don't know what will happen or what the answer is, but it could not be more clear that the Democratic Party is unwilling or unable to meet the moment. 

This is what I understand to be my responsibility to be. If we're all very lucky, it will be for the next four years, and if we are lucky, we can take up the old conflicts within the Left, and begin to once again argue and defame each other over what the right solutions are, instead of fighting to prevent the nation from being dedicated to more fervently, despotically and brutally enhancing and growing it's need for brutality and dehumanization. I don't think we're going to be so lucky as that, but hope is the fire that sustains. You all can and will, whether I approve or not, do what you feel you should.