David Michael Miller
Every so often I feel the need to explain myself.
Since November (and to some extent before that), I have been writing things a lot of my fellow liberals don’t want to read. I’ve raised questions about the usefulness of the Women’s March and street protests in general. I’ve tried to make a numerical, if not moral, case for the need to try to win back some blue-collar white men who voted for Obama but then switched to Trump. I’ve questioned the political efficacy of identity politics. And I’ve gone so far as to mock “the resistance.”
There’s more to come. I’ve got blogs cued up that will question what the heck Hillary Clinton is doing, that suggest that the legacy media really doesn’t understand a big swath of America, and that criticize the left for being so quick to label people they don’t like as “racists” or “misogynists.” I’m sure you can’t wait.
There are two reasons I’m doing this.
The first is that it’s just too easy — and boring — as a Madison writer to pander to the liberal base. It is well established that Scott Walker is not liked in this town and that Donald Trump is a really bad president. How many times do you need to say that? Stating the obvious over and over again is about as much fun for a writer as playing the same note is for a musician. Walker bad. Trump bad. Single-payer good. Got it. Now what?
Trump is awful, but we know that. The far more interesting question is how a man like that has gotten as far as he has. Moreover, that would have been true even if he had captured the Republican nomination but lost the general election. Trump is a symptom of something that’s gone very wrong in our country — and just being angry about it is as useful as getting mad at a relative for coming down with cancer. Better to try and understand it and to fix it.
Second, while it’s the way of politicians to be obsequious, it’s the job of writers to challenge people and get them to question their assumptions — to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And in Madison, who’s more comfortable than an educated white liberal? I think it’s the job of a blogger to be more than a little contrary, to barbeque the sacred cow now and then. Anyway, as a rule, liberals take themselves sooooo seriously that it’s easy to get their goat, kill it and roast it over hot coals for dinner. I would be less than honest with you if I didn’t admit that I enjoy that meal more than a little.
The only innocent victims in all this are the Isthmus editors. They have been long-suffering and supportive of my writing. But people generally read things that will reinforce what they already think. Given Isthmus’ base readership, writing stuff that challenges liberal beliefs and cultural customs doesn’t exactly light up the web site clicks. The fact that they stick with me even as I drift away from liberal orthodoxy into an unknown political land with no discernable following makes them mensches in my book and probably enemies of the people in some of yours.
Don’t get me wrong. I still identify as a liberal. I would use the bathroom with an “L” on the door. I still vote for Democrats if for no other reason than they’re far better than the other guys.
But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the established liberal-conservative and Democratic-Republican axes are falling apart. Established orders are failing everywhere. Even in France, which finally ended the global run of right-wing populist victories, Emmanuel Macron is the first president elected from outside of one of the legacy party structures. There’s some new dichotomy developing. Better yet, maybe it won’t be a dichotomy at all, but a total scramble.
Because the problem, in my view, is that our sides have become all too well defined. There are virtually no liberal Republicans anymore and no conservative Democrats. We’ve separated ourselves on the landscape, both literally and digitally. We even get our news — and therefore our perceived reality — from our own sources. My news is real and yours is fake.
It seems to me that rather than doubling-down on our ideology and digging in deeper, the thing to do is to eschew ideology altogether. Stop defining the other side as evil — or, for that matter, recognizing that there is an “other side” at all. Sometimes in politics, clarity is bad. Here’s to hedges, compromises, half-measures, deals with the devil, and ideological inconsistency. I think all that is good for my country — if not for my readership.
Editor's note: Oy vey. This article was corrected with the correct spelling of mensch.
