Self-Censorship and Progressive Orthodoxy

I'll start with a caveat: I'm not seeking to make any equivalencies (false or otherwise). I have no desire to turn this into a game of what-about-ism; the fact that the right wing has major problems (to say the least) does not mean that the left is free of them, and it does not negate our own bad habits. I could write ad infinitum about my criticisms of Trumpism, and they'd be much less polite. These are some thoughts I've been mulling over for some time and have discussed at length with other progressives, and anecdotally speaking, we tend to be in agreement about it, even among those whose social media presence would suggest otherwise. It's the elephant in the corner of the room that nobody wants to talk about openly.

The far left has a tendency to turn on its own, and the moderate left does not engage for fear of being ostracized, allowing the far left to evolve without any real feedback from other progressives. The left as a whole allows itself to be policed by its most vocal faction, which determines progressive orthodoxy and takes it to its most extreme iterations. While we are inclusive and intersectional in some ways, the far left tends to be intolerant of dissenting opinions and mandates a strict set of beliefs that we as a group are obligated to follow. We have no desire to listen to or engage with those who disagree with us even on microscopic levels, let alone those whose beliefs do not align with ours at all, and we assume the worst from people. That is a big problem, not only in terms of being fundamentally unfair, but in terms of our ability to build alliances that we need so we can make meaningful change.

As a researcher, I constantly strive to fact check the ideas I put out there and locate and untangle my own biases and assumptions, of which I have many. I feel frustrated by the ever intensifying echo chamber of my Facebook feed, and the resharing of fake or misleading news that seeks to exploit our worst fears at a time when we need to focus our efforts.

Black Lives Matter march, New York City, 2014 - all photos are original

Morality and the Progressive Left

A couple of days ago, I posted about morality through the lens of materialism. My partner pointed to a couple of sentences that he felt were incomplete and warranted some unpacking:

Progressives are a highly moral bunch, whether or not they see it that way. Whereas many conservatives believe in piousness, progressives believe in enforcing what they see as human rights through government intervention. I'm not lending my opinion here, other than to say that neither religious piousness nor human rights contain objective moral truths, which I think I've already adequately demonstrated cannot exist except under circumstances most of us would find uncomfortable.

The left wing in America tends to see the intersection of politics and morality as something that fundamentally belongs to the right, while compassion and humanity belong to "us." We see moral mandates from the far right as unforgivable impositions on our freedoms. But the left wing in America is indeed highly moral; we are motivated by what we see as human rights and a need for equality. We too mandate that our version of morality is that one that has to be followed. In principle, it is actually the left as a whole and not the right (evangelicals excluded) that is more highly motivated by morality, as we prioritize social responsibility.

But morality cannot be objective (except under conditions that few progressives would support, as I explained in the aforementioned article), and therefore, it cannot be correct. Morality is informed by culture as a whole, and within it, factions of that culture. Are free healthcare and higher education human rights? In my opinion, yes. Is that objective truth? No. People are, indeed, entitled to their opinions--even offensive opinions--and moral opinions cannot be factually correct or incorrect in and of themselves.

From that perspective, there are inherent problems in determining the boundaries of say, cultural appropriation, as objectively right or wrong, and you wander into an even more volatile minefield when you try to identify it in particular situations and determine what is tolerable. I don't know what percentage of the country believes that cultural appropriation is an issue, and within that, what percentage of people of color believe that cultural appropriation is an issue--I wasn't able to find any studies on the matter one way or another--but my instinct is to say that it's probably not the majority (with the caveat that I don't have any actual data to support that thought). Whether that's an instance of society needing to wake up to a problem that hasn't been addressed yet, or if it's an inevitable overreach of identity politics, does not have an objective answer. That being said, realistically, we have to create and agree upon moral boundaries, or else an ethical society cannot exist; however, in doing so, we must also operate with some self awareness that our convictions aren’t universal truth and disagreement is inevitable and perhaps even necessary. Furthermore, if majority agreement on moral boundaries is a prerequisite for determining a moral code, then many of the opinions that we hold as truth begin to break down.

Women's March, January 2017, Los Angeles

Dissent and Identity Politics

Perhaps the most contentious and polarizing aspect of progressive dogma is identity politics, and the extent to which it should be a centerpiece (if not the centerpiece) of our collective ideology. I don't think that there are many progressives out there who would argue that racism (or any kind of minority oppression) isn't a real problem that needs to be addressed. In fact, a majority of our country feels that we need to do more to uplift our black population, including 36% of Republicans. The question among the left is not whether or not there's a problem, but how it manifests itself, and how we tackle it.

I often see arguments in which people invalidate others’ opinions on the basis of being a member of a privileged gender or race. In other words: white men are not entitled to express a dissenting opinion about identity politics; they are, however, allowed to be allies in agreement. If they disagree with some minute aspect of the way that identity politics are applied, they must be motivated by their own privilege and unconscious bias, and any opinion can be immediately disqualified. And they are certainly not allowed to bring up any complaints about injustices they may experience, which may actually be valid and important.

Unconscious bias and opinion formed by privilege are real in many cases, but completely disregarding issues that pertain to white men is not a productive approach, because privilege alone does not make one immune from having problems that need social and governmental assistance. Poverty certainly impacts people of color disproportionately by a long shot (at about twice the rate), but white people living in poverty outnumber black people living in poverty more than four times over, and in states like West Virginia, the white poverty rate is nearly 20%. This is, of course, due to the fact that there are many more white people in America than there are black people, so naturally the numbers are going to skew white. In principle, progressivism seeks to defend and uplift the poor, but many on the far left deny that a problem even exists for the majority of people in poverty, or they’ve deprioritized it to the extent that it’s rendered invisible. But it is possible to identify both racism's impact on poverty rates and poverty that is not race-specific as issues that must both be addressed. The reason that Republicans are so hyper-focused on the opioid epidemic right now is that it’s a problem that is disproportionately affecting poor white people who largely voted for Trump, and poor white people feel that they need a champion that they aren’t finding in the most vocal factions of the left; an oversight that the right wing can exploit. But just because the opioid epidemic is largely a white problem doesn’t change that it is a real problem that deserves our attention. To poor white people who are struggling to put food on the table for reasons out of their control and losing their friends and family members to drug overdoses, accusations of privilege and microaggressions tend to ring hollow, and it is possible to understand and be sympathetic to that perspective without compromising our beliefs.

Feelings vs. Critical Thought

A problem that is ubiquitous on all sides of the political spectrum is assuming that the things we feel to be correct are indeed reality, particularly when they're anecdotally supported in meme form, without doing the research and critically evaluating what can be ascertained factually, and if things can be ascertained factually, if the reality supports our assumptions. From that perspective, it's easier to understand why Trump supporters quite frankly seem to be indifferent to the factuality of Trump's talking points, when the things he says feel like they're probably true. (Again, no equivalencies implied.)

A couple of nights ago, a friend of mine and I got into a debate about whether or not Bernie Sanders' proposal for universal free higher education was fiscally possible, if we made the other changes to taxation and education that he suggested. I ran some numbers on a sheet of paper and showed why I believe it is not (I will spare the details). I am in complete agreement that higher education is a right and that we need to fix our tax system to make the super-rich pay their fair share. My concern more generally is whether or not we think critically about individual policy proposals and evaluate their plausibility when they come from politicians that seem to share our values.

My friend seemed somewhat horrified that I said I'd be interested to see the impact that the new $15 hour minimum wage would have, because saying so implied that I might be skeptical of it (I didn't say I was). He presented the argument that this is working out very well in Seattle. Fact check: Seattle's $15 minimum wage won't fully go into effect until next year, and at least one study is showing that the wage increases that have gone into effect are severely exacerbating income inequality by reducing low wage worker income significantly because companies are cutting hours to compensate for increases in labor costs. I can't vouch for the legitimacy of the methodology used in that study, or claim that this is the only study, or say that it has controlled for all sorts of factors--but that's the point. I too feel that we need to raise the minimum wage and that a mandated $15 an hour sounds like a good solution, and that this is in theory economically supported because of inflation vs. wage stagnation, but realistically, I haven’t done the level of research that we should demand of ourselves before we feel entitled to educate others, and I haven't read up on alternative proposals.

(At this point, it may seem that I've outed myself as a moderate Democrat or a closet Republican; I assure you, dear readers, that I'm downright radical by 2008's standards.)

Look at this snowflake right here.

What is the Solution?

In this article, I’ve outlined a few problems that I believe exist on the far left:

1. Unwillingness on the part of the far left to tolerate dissent among its own allies, and attributing all dissent to bigotry or ignorance.
2. Unwillingness on the part of the moderate left to engage with the far left for fear of being ostracized, or come to the defense of others who are being ostracized, which results in the far left becoming more insular and extreme in the application of their beliefs in a way that is not representative of the entire movement.
3. Unwillingness to consider alternate opinions from people who don’t agree at all.
4. Deprioritizing problems that impact people who are not members of minority groups.
5. Equating assumptions and feelings with fact without vetting information or thinking critically, making us prone to perpetuating misinformation.

If we tackle these issues and encourage open discussion and self-criticism, we stand a much better chance of regaining political control and winning future elections. Ideally, we should start from the assumption that the people who disagree with us are rational and well-intentioned, and that their opinions do not stem from ignorance or bigotry until proven otherwise (with obvious exceptions in extreme cases). We do ourselves a disservice by turning the looming specter of bigotry into a shield from which we can protect ourselves from the discomfort of thoughts that challenge our worldview.

We have to fact check ourselves before we share information, and be willing to (politely and diplomatically) fact check others' information as well. We must consider that if our opinions are evolving in perfect lockstep with the Democratic party platform and/or the people who surround us, that we may be more influenced by group opinion than we're giving ourselves credit for. If you believe something to be true, do not take a single op-ed as evidence that you are right; research differing opinions and consider their merits. By doing so, we strengthen the backbones of our opinions and policy proposals by battle testing them.

In short, we have to resist the impulse to find comfort in echoing the opinions of the people around us and allow ourselves to be offended from time to time, and if at all possible, open to considering counter-arguments. If we allow ourselves to fall deeper down the rabbit hole without any counterbalance or room to fact check and disagree, we will only weaken our cause at a time when we desperately need to be a unified force that is ready and willing to accept moderate allies whose opinions do not perfectly fit progressive dogma, without shouting them down or mandating complete agreement.