220 The #Resistance Worked Actually and Now More Than Ever We Must Resist Trump
1/22/25
The day after the day after Day One. Again as we saw in Chapter We are all Nietzscheans Now
Sam Seder “Mr. Fun 1/21/25” at 1:23:40 From the “Bestest Leftist” “We have to pick our battles. Actually what a lot of leftist podcasters the last weeks. Sounds a lot like what Cenk has been calling for. You can’t take the power back without talking to Trump voters and helping them realize their mistake.”
“Trump Administration will make one thing crystal clear we’ve got to get money out of politics before we can do anything else. There’s only one way we can do that and that’s agreeing to the point and living to fight another day on everything else. Like Sam said HOW do you get money out of politics NOW in THIS ENVIRONMENT? They own the Supreme Court they own the Congress
Sam then read a letter by a very worried trans person and what they’re going through now with Trump’s batch of anti trans EOs. Sam replied he’s looking into legal actions that they may be able to take and that “I’m sorry you’re going through this.” Then total deadpan he said: “I’m sorry if this offends any Trump voters.”
FN:
Can’t find the link to the full stream right now. Maybe it shows up later
End FN
I agree with Sam this argument from “The Betest Leftist” is a pretty bad not to say very bad argument-he actually called it “dumb” and I don’t disagree with that either-Sam was careful to say he’s not calling the person dumb just this particular argument. And this is dead right. And it’s important to debunk this as it IS a pretty widely shared argument. The irony is that while leftists on social media have all this smoke for the establishment liberals and centrists within the Democratic party, these leftists post 11/5 narrative have reacted the same way as many of these Dem leadership types: that we have to put “mere cultural, social issues” on the backburner as it somehow alienates large numbers of swing and “independent” voters.
This argument has the convenience of not just being wrong but harmfully wrong-believing it is harmful and it leads us to some really bad, counterproductive, and downright self defeating strategies.
To be clear I’m a fan of Tony Michels-I really like his podcast and think his show is very interesting and effective. What he understands unlike many liberals and progressives is aesethetic-I think the aesthetics of his show are very effective. For a long time going back to Rush Limbaugh the Right has been MUCH better than the Left in terms of political aesthetics
CF: Geoff Waite. My position vis a vis Wait vs Nietzsche is as I touched on in chapter We are all Nietzscheans Now pretty complex. But one large part of the book-it is a book with a very wide application to say the least-is the Left has a very weak aesthetic game. Again it’s complex as Waite probably wouldn’t consider me to be on the Left-and in his terms I’d probably agree. But in today’s US context I do consider myself on the Left-which in itself may not say much considering how far Right the Overton window has been pushed the last 68 years-again 1965 remains the nadir of American liberalism.
End CF
But I’m a little uneasy when he talks about the idea that “there’s no Left or Right just up or down.” He’s RIGHT to refocus on class as many of us liberals are sort of discovering a new.
FN: I’m on liberal who has advocated a strongly progressive, not to say radically progressive economic agenda for years; when I ran in the NY2 Congressional primary in 2008 on a platform of a JG, a UBI, and an expanded and increased EITC. If I ran again-maybe I will run again-I’m also going to run on the expanded unemployment benefits we had during covid. What has changed for me post November 6 is the Elon Musk Effect-for many years I was sort of lukewarm on the Left’s focus on political economy-wether or not media consolidation is a bad thing as they insisted what can we do about it anyway? While I don’t go as far as Kyle Kulinski is insists simply that “billionaires should not exist” I do see the problem with people like Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos. During Trump’s first term Bezos was kind of a GOOD BILLIONAIRE OWNER as he chose NOT TO influence WaPo’s editorial decisions. But now that his material interests have changed we see the threat more clearly when all the major papers are owned by billionaires.
Indeed even regarding political accountability that has failed so specutlarly to hold Trump accountable it’s a lot harder to hold a billionaire accountable as they get due process like anyone else but their huge resources enable them to run the clock in a way that regular people can’t.
End FN
So like Michels and if you haven’t I’d encourage you to watch his show. But the idea that it’s not Left vs Right but Up vs Down I think is only half right. True we need to refocus on UP vs Down so I agree BUT I disagree that there is no genuine political fight on the Left vs Right dimension. This becomes clearer if you coneptualize this as not just two different dimensions but two different axis-there’s the Y axis of up vs down that Michels rightly says has been negltected. So far so good. But it’s WRONG to say just ignore the X axis of left vs right.
Now let’s be clear Michel is basically himself a good liberal liike myself LOL. But there is a danger in the idea that we should “not take the bait” and “ignore distractions.” Trump’s EOs against trans people or ending birthright citizenship might seem like a distraction to YOU if you aren’t among these groups of marginalized people but it’s far from a mere distraction for them. Trump’s attacks on BC could be cataclysmic according to the Cato immigration scholar-find link in Chapter Nietzsche.
When you look at the arguments of folks like The Bestest Leftist or Cenk Ugyur that we should focus solely on “money in politics” and on EVERYTHING ELESE WE SHOULD FIGHT ANOTHER DAY you may not be exactly dropping them out of the car on the side of the road and wishing them luck hitchiking back home but you’re telling them to get in the backseat and be quiet-if they talk too much this will offend the MAGA people allegedly we need to win so we can take back power.
This is wrong both morally and from the standpoint of poltical tactics. Indeed a big part of why I believe it’s harmful is it’s a terrible political strategy. To be clear the very premise that we need Trump voters-which is something that Michels also repeatedly claims-is badly mistaken. This is another flawed premise the Center and the Left have glommed onto post Novemer 5-there’s this implicity assumption that Trump and his MAGA movement are this political juggernaut and this is NOT THE CASE quite the opposite.
Here we’ve got to look again at the election numbers. I will for simplicity round the numbers down. Trump got about 77 million votes while Kamala got about 75 million-both are rounded down. Compartively in 2020 Trump got 74 million Biden had 81 million. Ie Trump gained just 3 million since 2020-MAYBE that covered population growth-while the Democrats lost 6 million votes. So they lost not because the country went hard MAGA but because the Democrats lost 6 milion votes.