The Left Sees Signs Of Hope, Too

Today Thomas Edsall has one of his trademark, humongously long, “thoughtful” pieces on “politics, demographics and inequality” at the New York Times:

One Thing We Can Agree on Is That We’re Becoming a Different Country

The overall theme of the article is summed up in an email Edsall quotes, from a political scientist at USC, Dennis Chong. Chong wrote to Edsall about what he terms “a demographic realignment of political tolerance in the U.S. that first became evident in the late 1980s-early 1990s.” What Chong sees is this:

“In a striking reversal,” Chong wrote, “liberals are now consistently less tolerant than conservatives of a wide range of controversial speech about racial, gender and religious identities.”

Edsall’s article goes on at considerable length describing this, for him, somewhat paradoxical situation. However, in the final paragraphs he gets to the nub: This situation--the increasingly illiberality and even authoritarianism of the Left--contains signs of hope. It’s just that the signs of hope are for normal people--not the Left.

Edsall turns to two stalwarts of the Left to get their views on what’s ahead. It’s basically gloom and doom--for the Left. In fact, Edsall’s final paragraph describes the “social and cultural changes of the past four decades” as “cataclysmic”. What he’s saying is that the social and cultural changes brought about by the Left have been cataclysmic for the country, and that there is a reckoning coming. Edsall sees Trump as a foretaste of what may be coming. The white liberal elites are like hamsters on a treadmill, just trying to keep pace with the ever evolving demands of wokeness, to maintain their status. They’re motivated by raw fear of slipping off the Prog bus--whatever that happens to be. It’s hard going, and in the meantime the normals are getting woke in their own way.

I asked William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings who has written extensively about Democratic Party conflicts, what role he sees white liberal elites playing in the enforcement of progressive orthodoxies. He wrote back:

You ask specifically about “white liberal elites.” I wonder whether the dominant sentiment is guilt as opposed to (say) fear and ambition. Many participants in these institutions are terrified of being caught behind a rapidly shifting social curve and of being charged with racism. As a result, they bend over backward to use the most up-to-date terminology and to lend public support to policies they may privately oppose. The fear of losing face within, or being expelled from, the community of their peers drives much of their behavior.

For some white liberals, Galston continued:

...

Instead of guilt, Galston argued, “this behavior is just as likely to reflect leadership that lacks purpose and core convictions and that seeks mainly to keep the ship afloat, wherever it may be headed.”

“Amidst this sea of analytical uncertainties, I am increasingly confident of one thing: a backlash is building,” Galston wrote.

The policies of elite private schools reported on the front page of The New York Times will not command majority support, even among white liberals. As awareness of such policies spreads, their conservative foes will pounce, and many white liberals who went along with them will be unwilling to defend them. The fate of defunding the police is a harbinger of things to come.

Jonathan Haidt, a professor at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, contends that a small constituency on the far left is playing an outsize role:

Progressive activists make up 8 percent of the U.S. population, and they are the ones who frequently use terms like “white supremacy culture” and “power structures.” This group is the second whitest of all the groups (after the far right), yet they give the coldest “feeling thermometer” ratings to whites and the warmest to Blacks. In this group there does seem to be some true feelings of guilt and shame about being white.

Haidt contends that “the animating emotion” for acquiescence to the demands of this type of progressive activist by those with less extreme views:

is fear, not guilt or shame. I have heard from dozens of leaders of universities, companies, and other organizations in the last few years about the pressures they are under to enact D.E.I. (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies that are not supported by research, or to say things that they believe are not true. The vast majority of these people are on the left but are not progressive activists. They generally give in to pressure because the alternative is that they and their organization will be called racist, not just within the organization by their younger employees but on social media.

How do things look now?

In a word: Terrible--if freedom to express one’s views means anything to you. For four decades the Left was free to marginalize and exclude dissident voices--but now they’re behind the curve and the Wokesters are coming for them. They fear they may be about to reap what they sowed, and the only ones feeling sorry for them are--themselvesd:

It’s not too much to say that the social and cultural changes of the past four decades have been cataclysmic. The signs of it are everywhere. Donald Trump rode the coattails of these issues into office. Could he — or someone else who has been watching closely — do it again?

The world as they thought they knew it may be on the edge of a precipice. And their only hope seems to be Zhou.