Thread by @matthewstoller

I think a core problem with the left/Dems is discomfort with the idea of a person as a spiritual being with innate dignity. We define the person as an instrument of production or as an object encrusted with oppression. It's a rejection of the Enlightenment project.

The disinterest in power or governing is pathological, a result of refusing to see the problem of politics as mediating conflict among free individuals without excessive intrusion into their sphere of liberty, which has a spiritual root.

Economic equality on the progressive side isn't about liberating the person to be free and it's not about guaranteeing political equality, which is actually the root American tradition of egalitarianism. It's about creating not equality but sameness.

There's a romantic utopianism, whether it's that of 'technology and globalization' or 'global class struggle,' but it can never be achieved without more bureaucratic ordering because the bureaucratic ordering is the point. The goal is constant endless constant revolution.

I got an email today with a line that really struck me. "Where leaders embrace rationales for learned helplessness, and punish those who think better things are possible."

The lack of curiosity is the point. It's not corruption, it's deeper.

All of the excuses, from money in politics to political betrayal, are the point. Better things aren't possible because politics as a means of self-government doesn't exist, cannot exist. We are defined by either production or oppression, not agency.

It's why most of the demands of the activist left are as amorphous as the pledge from the Biden administration to restore the soul of America. These are not political claims rooted in a view of a good society, they are not a political agenda, because politics cannot exist.