What World Is Brian Buetler Living in?
Does today's left and center-left really have much more static impeding communication and creating self-righteousness than was the case in the past? I could be convinced, I suppose...
Does today's left and center-left really have much more static impeding communication and creating self-righteousness than was the case in the past? I could be convinced, I suppose. But I would have to see evidence…
I have long greatly admired and loved the work of Brian Buetler. My web-enabled brain immediately surfaces six pieces of his that I marked at the time as really liking a lot:
And now he is launching a SubStack: Off Message! Which has Matt Yglesias’s immediate and enthusiastic endorsement:
So I am definitely gonna sign up.
But there is something about the framing of the inaugural issue…:
Brian Buetler: Welcome to Off Message: ‘Refuge from a world gone mad: Many of my formative… experiences… date back to… George W. Bush years… in hindsight… a more innocent time… only by comparison to 2023… social media… propaganda… one of the country’s two major political parties has embraced a totalitarian kind of dishonesty, which back then it was only flirting with…. But… a bracing sense that most people had caught on to the malice and failures of the country’s leaders, were eager to rise against them, and confident enough in their righteousness that they were willing to air their internal differences without fear or favor. Or at least with less fear or favor than now…. That whole spirit is gone….
Today we see a great deal of sorting on the center and left into party-aligned media… factional progressive media… a party that suppresses misgivings about its leaders, too insecure… to feel comfortable grappling with internal dissent. You’re expected either to rage against Joe Biden for not endorsing all 117 items on a laundry-list agenda nobody's heard of; or you’re supposed to pretend not to understand that an old guy who stutters is a suboptimal spokesperson…. That doesn’t leave much space for those of us who aim… to see life steady, and… whole….
In all other realms it’s considered completely normal to grow frustrated with the management of entities (sports teams, businesses, non-profits) we loyally support. It should be acceptable in politics today as well. Of course, I understand…. It’s a scary time….. The impulse to paper over… differences isn’t mean spirited or illiberal; it’s risk averse. It’s driven by fear. I think that fear is misplaced. And that’s why I’m launching Off Message…. There’s a lot of pent-up frustration with how liberal political culture has changed over the past decade and a half…. If we can help, even in a small way, to rekindle that lost spirit, I'll consider it a success…
What disturbs me about all this? After all, “we have a choice between immediate surrender to the Russians, doing what I want, and total thermonuclear war” is a very standard trope, is it not? It is.
What disturbs me is the reaching for a lost golden age of harmonious, productive, respectful debate and discussion that never really existed. And where it did exist it was created not by “centrists” calling for a plague on both the houses of the politicians and the purists. It was created by people listening, questioning, and developing ideas. Dismissing somebody as “an old guy who stutters” when he has, in fact, played a weak hand remarkably well does not build bridges. And not putting forward your preferred alternative candidate seems odd—my preference would be for Governor Pritzker of Illinois as Democratic candidate in 2024, and send Kamala Harris to Sacramento to run a state with the understanding that gives her pole position for the 2032 (or 2028) Democratic primary race. And does accusing those who care deeply about issues and mourning compromises of having a “117 items on a laundry-list agenda” does not build a big tent all.
You want to build space for communication between the center-left House of the Politicians and the left House of the Purists? Start by treating each with respect, as having a logic behind and reasons for their behavior. Don’t start by sneering.
And don’t pretend things were (much) better at any date in the past.
After all, from my perspective, the “Brahmin” progressive left, as Thomas Piketty calls it, is the same as it has been since I was a we’un back in the 1970s: interested much more in striking smug self-congratulatory oppositional poses than in creating structures that enrich people’s lives.
And from my perspective, it is an unmixed blessing that the Democratic Party establishment has a slightly weaker tendency to go fratricidal over issues that are ultimately merely ones of personnel—especially when the gap between the benevolence, the far-sightedness, and, yes, the intelligence of the leading Democrat vis-à-vis his Republican counterpart has never been greater.
Things are as they are, and as they have been since people sneered at FDR for not being up to the job.
So where is this nostalgic attachment to the Spirit of 2005 coming from? Brian, is it possible that two decades of fighting the Long Defeat, as Galadriel calls it, have worn you down? And never forget that in 2005 Brian was 22:
It is certainly the case that, when you are younger, the sunsets are richer, the dawns brighter, and your back does not hurt.
I mean: Cornel West’s rather pathetic attempt to gin-up publicity by trying to throw the election to Donald Trump is a very pale shadow of what Ralph Nader succeeded in doing in 2000—claiming all the while that they were “Tweedledee and Tweedledum—they look and act the same, so it doesn’t matter which you get”; that what was really needed was someone who “takes enough votes away from them so they start losing some of these close elections”; that “the progressive forces… need a jolt… an arrogant, corporate-indentured Republican Party controlling Congress and the White House”.
Brian might claim that he does now want to make big claim about what was happening before he graduated from college, but merely that there was something special he saw around him in 2005 that he does not see around him now. Point.
But may I please ask for some data that what he is seeing is a change in the country, rather than a change in his relative place in it?
My view as a Brit transplanted to the US at the end of the1980s.
When I arrived, I couldn't tell the difference between the GOP and the Democrats when their pols spoke. I needed to know their party affiliation. They all sounded very similar compared to British politicians. After 30+ years, that is no longer true. The two parties are clearly very different, and that is not because I have learned to distinguish them, but because what the pols say is very different now.
Regarding a "golden age". I only know British political history, and was fully cognizant of what was happening by the late 1960s. British politics very very fractious in those days, with a lot of vitriol thrown at each side by the others and various institutions and media. Today, the Tory and Labour parties have policies far closer together than they did back then.
What seems to be similar in the UK and US (and AUS, and a number of EU countries) is a rather nasty trend towards fascism. Martin Wolf may be correct about the economic causes, although I think he cannot be entirely correct given the differences in the economic changes across the different countries. Something else is going on.
What we cannot have is the US and China both authoritarian in outlook, with India following, and the EU belatedly going in the same direction. This will not end well, with abundant examples from history to support this.
I don’t know Brad - Pre-McConnell DC really was different in my recollection. Things were well along sliding in the wrong direction but the imperative of governing was pre-vestigial, and the monetization of gridlock was in its teen years. Those were big differences.