The American political left as a cultural formation, and the Democratic Party as an institution, have sunk into a style of oppositionalism that contains no opposition. They speak in a vernacular of protest because they speak in a vernacular of protest, out of habit and as a cultural identity, but they have no idea what they’re protesting. They’re very angry about the, you know, stuff. Something something Trump something something.
At three o’clock, the nurse brings pudding. Comfortable and wealthy people, many decades into their experience of affluence and safety, are putting their bodies on the line to oppose fascism for a couple hours before the driver takes them back to their mansions.
Before I get into the ideological incoherence of the latest stupid spasm, let’s go back a bit. After the 2014 death of Michael Brown during a confrontation with a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, college campuses slid into a year of protest. At the University of Missouri, students occupied a campus quad in support of a supposed hunger strike against systemic racism, demanding the resignation of the president of the university system.
As they protested against the university administration, student protesters were supported by … university administration. As a report to the university’s oversight board would later say, “the University, at the campus administration’s direction, provided electricity and heaters to the protesters for their safety and comfort.” Famously, a lunatic media studies professor protected protesters from embarrassing media exposure, screaming for “some muscle” to remove student journalists who entered the quad.
Students protesting against the system were nurtured, pampered, and sheltered by the system. Their cosplay assault on an institution was wrapped in a warm hug by an institution that welcomed the performative attack. Don’t worry, kids, the university administration assures you that the university administration is also opposed to the university administration.
Similarly, when students at Amherst College in Massachusetts launched the bitterly revolutionary “Amherst Uprising” in 2015, they soon decided to forcibly occupy the college’s Frost Library. They were joined in their forcible occupation of campus property as a protest against the college administration by the college administration, including college librarian Bryn Geffert, who slept among the protesters:
For those four days in November, the Frost Library was the epicenter of the movement. In addition to being the physical center of campus, the library became its charged focal point; approximately 1,200 students occupied it at the peak of the protest. The Center for Humanistic Inquiry, a new faculty center located on the library’s second floor, became Amherst Uprising’s media center. The Outing Club brought sleeping bags; faculty and staff brought food. A weekly open mic usually held in a dorm was moved to the library. Administration members, including Dean of Students Alex Vasquez and Geffert, spent the night. On his part, despite the disruption to the library’s normal daily functioning, Geffert was supportive of the events that took over the library: “I was actually gratified that the students chose the library,” he told LJ, “and most of my colleagues felt the same way.”
When the students met with the hilarious AWFL president of the college, she so enthusiastically agreed to their ideological premises that they figured out there was no need to occupy anything, and they gave it up. The targets of their protest were almost more enthused by the thing than the protesters were.
Liberal authority credentials itself by its performative oppositionalism. To borrow from the gonzo journalist Tom Wolfe, liberal authority is self-mau-mauing. It theatrically attacks itself, play-posturing against the bases of its own power. It sustains its authority by protesting against authority, giving in to demands that it grow its authority to curb the authoritarianism of the authorities, who are opposed by the authorities. If you sit in against a progressive administration, they show up with pajamas and happy faces and treat it as a sleepover. They’re against themselves too, you guys, can we send over some pizzas?
Living as anti-authority authorities who protest against authority to protect their authority, leftists embedded in institutions become gelatin. You can’t attack them, because your fist squishes into the blob.
1.) I hate these authorities!
2.) “Yes, yes, we do too.” – The Authorities
And so, over the weekend, we were treated to the hilarious spectacle of United States senators rising up and taking to the streets to march against the federal government, arm-in-arm with wealthy celebrities.
The oppressed have the courage to rise, I guess. The protests went like this:
“Why are you protesting?” Response: “Um…”
The protests against kings took place on Saturday. On Friday, President Trump signed a memorandum directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to pay TSA employees without bothering to wait for congressional authorization. Democrats blasted Trump for not ignoring Congress and unilaterally appropriating federal funds himself more quickly.
Then they went to their rally against presidents acting like kings.
They demanded on Friday that he spend federal funds without waiting for congressional appropriations, and then they demanded on Saturday that he respect the Constitution and not act like a king. And yes, some of the “No Kings” protesters support the Cuban regime, and marched with hammer and sickle flags, and called for communist revolution. No, they wouldn’t see the irony if you tried to discuss it with them.
There is, of course, nothing to be gained by pointing out illogic and inconsistency from leftists, which is like telling someone they forgot to include the eggs as they cooked using a recipe that doesn’t mention eggs. But notice, yet again, that it’s all just noise, that none of it means anything, and that protests are a thing they do because that’s what they do. The automaticity and the mindlessness are the core of the thing itself.
I just spent several days at a conference for people on the political right (not CPAC), complaining to others about the Republican Party and listening to conservative activists complain about the Republican Party to me. It’s a perpetual source of disappointment, and a club for elected officials who generally don’t feel like doing anything. But all of the many faults of the Republican Party, and of conservative activism, pale beside the emptiness of the Democratic Party and the American political left. Progressive performance is a brittle shell around literally nothing, a performance by a cast that doesn’t have a script and doesn’t remember if there’s actually a playwright. At this point, the Democratic Party more or less doesn’t exist. It has all the energy and power and intellect of … Jane Fonda. Just bring it coffee and try to keep it moving, because if it falls asleep it won’t ever wake up.
