The Two Level Left, and Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet

The whole point of life, the universe, and everything for me is to conduct a proctological examination of the left and all its works, and in particular its manifold errors.

So here is James Bloodworth on UnHerd.com worrying about the divide between lefty thought leaders and the rank-and-file. For instance, the Bernie Sanders campaign thought they were going to inspire youngsters and non-voters.

Much like the Corbyn campaign in the recent UK General Election, the Sanders team was banking on a surge in the non-voter and youth turnout. Presented with a genuine alternative, those who would normally stay at home during the election cycle would be enthused enough by the radicalism on offer to actually get out and vote. Or so the theory went.

Only the non-voters and youth didn't turn out. And so the lefties apparently dissolve into an argument over whether the class argument of Sanders should trump the "identity" argument -- in all the various race, sex, and other identity groups on the left.

It's a bit difficult for me to understand the class vs. race argument that is represented by the argument on the left over "class reductionism." You figure out if you can understand this New Republic article. I suppose it is an argument between the old school Marxists that reduce everything to the class struggle and the newer types that have branched out into every kind of non-white-middle-class-male identity.

But I think there is an important thing to understand here, something that the lefties don't understand. And we shall, of course, use a three-layer theory to understand it.

The point is that Clients -- or Subordinates -- approach politics from a tribal solidarity point of view, and what they are interested in is loot and plunder for their tribe. This was what the working class was interested in back in the day and what black voters are interested in today.

But folks in the Gentry -- or Creatives -- approach politics from a moral point of view. They are not interested in loot and plunder. Oh no! They are above all that stuff, except of course that they will get the jobs running all the loot and plunder programs. No, what the Gentry is concerned about is bending the arc of history towards justice, and "hurl[ing] headlong... to bottomless perdition", etc., the racist-sexist-homophobes who "durst defy" their holy call for justice. (Little bit o' Paradise Lost there).

Do you think they are on a bit of a witch-hunt here? I wonder.

The point is that the intellectual lefties, and Jewish Marxists like Bernie Sanders, all imagine that they are the world's foremost moralists. Only they don't call it morality, but "social justice." So they experience politics not as a rather ordinary question of protecting the people against existential perils and rewarding their supporters with free stuff, but as a holy struggle for truth, justice, and the progressive way. That is the world, the "bubble" they live in in their yeasty gentrified neighborhoods from North London to Brooklyn. And everyone agrees with them.

So they don't understand the Commoners that just want to follow the rules, go to work, obey the law and raise a family.

And they don't understand the Clients that just want a reliable ward boss that keeps the loot flowing.

And they get flummoxed and gehet post-election stress disorder or Trump Derangement Syndrome when the world proves them wrong.

There's another little problem, of course. It was the problem that inspired the Frankfurt School after World War I. Although the workers may be defined by their class identity, they are in fact more defined by their national identity. In World War I the workers went dutifully into the trenches. In France, in Britain, in Germany.

And what President Trump is working hard on is getting blacks to identify as American rather than black. Of course he is.

But lefties and Gentry in general are all opposed to nationalism and the nation state. Because Hitler, or something. Thus their opposition to tariffs and borders and limited immigration. In this they are wildly out of sync with the Commoners and also the Clients who are a bit mixed up about their loyalties.

I read a day ago about a black guy that lived in a white neighborhood getting in trouble with the ladies at the church for his pro-Trump views. Well, yeah: he had been in the armed services and learned to identify as an American. Go figure.

All I am saying is that there is bound to be a disconnect between the educated Gentry that justifies its political beliefs by a moral calculus and its rank-and-file supporters in the marginalized sector. The marginalized sector is loyal to its ethnic group and to the politician that promises loot and plunder.

I could go on to say that the conflation of politics and morality among our educated Gentry is a staggering and criminal error, and that our modern wokerati to go down in history as the worst of the worst. For the idea that politics is anything other than force, and that politics can ever achieve a moral purpose other than by accident, is a common ruling-class conceit down the ages.

But that is a question for another day.