How yesterday’s radicals became today’s neoliberals
Are you familiar with Kurt Vonnegut? He is the author of several books, with Slaughter House Five, probably being the most well-known title. He is, without a doubt, one of the highly influential writers of his generation.
When I think of Vonnegut, I think of two things: one, the fact that he left a bad impression on my father at a house party hosted by my father’s close friend Abby Hoffman in the 1970s and two, the outstanding quote which is the title of this article. Before I discuss the significance of this quote and why I find it poignant as it relates to the current political scene, I will quickly describe what my father found disappointing when he met Vonnegut.
My father, the late Ira T. Landess was a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist, so he was particularly sensitive to issues that were psychological in nature. What troubled my dad when he met Vonnegut was the callous way that he, Vonnegut, described his son’s mental health problems. The young man seemed to have had some form of psychosis. According to my dad’s description, Vonnegut had a sort of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” attitude about the matter. “Why can’t you just pull yourself together?” was his message to his son. He was unable to realize and appreciate that the younger Vonnegut was genuinely suffering and needed help. He was apparently incapable of empathizing with his own flesh and blood.
Other than my recollection of my father’s description of his encounter with Vonnegut which happened before I was born, the second thing that I am reminded of when Vonnegut’s name is invoked is a brilliant quote that I think can be applied particularly well to what has happened to the so-called radicals of my generation. His simple, profound quote where he warns, “Be careful who you pretend to be.” That is actually the shorthand version of the slightly more detailed quote that is the following, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” It’s from his book entitled, Mother Night.
When I relate this to the “radicals” of my generation (I was born in 1978), I see people who have unknowingly become neoliberal monsters. They are living proof of the massively harmful effects of “lesser-of-two-evils” voting on the human psyche.
After hiding under the cloak of the Democratic Party, for lack of their own platform and institutions, for over three decades they have lost their way to an outlandish degree. They have thoroughly betrayed what they previously upheld as their core values and did so long ago. The Biden administration and “Covid” was just the elephant that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. (If you hang out with me for a while you’ll notice that I like to combine sayings.) By now, they closely resemble the people they used to unsuccessfully attempt to “wake up” through protest — callous, disinterested and pre-programmed.
Just like the term hypermodern chess is misleading as it actually refers to the chess innovations of the early 1900s, neoliberalism is not exactly new anymore. It has been seeping into the culture and the collective consciousness for over three decades.
Neoliberalism is the flip side of the coin that has neo-conservatism on the other side. The two supposedly rivaling ideologies have interfaced quite well since the new millennium began and have become largely interchangeable. The two supposedly opposing forces have managed to play “good cop/bad cop” quite effectively within the framework offered by our status quo political system. I use the term “New Neoliberals” to refer to the people who have been thoroughly conditioned by over a quarter century of neoliberal propaganda and policies. Many of these “New Neoliberals” come from backgrounds of leftist organizing around various social issues and have naturally become the attack dogs of the social movement into which they have melted. By nature of who they are, they unwittingly exceed garden variety liberals in their commitment to the neoliberal agenda. They generally do so while retaining a false image of themselves as still being “radical.”
Bill Clinton, inaugurated on January 20th 1993, was the Dr. J of neoliberalism to Barack Obama’s Michael Jordan. (Clinton introduced a brand of high flying excitement that his successor would later turn into a perfected winning formula.) One will seldom ever hear it mentioned, but we should reflect from time to time on Clinton’s rather aggressive foreign policy. He bombed Iraq 6 months into office. He bombed Iraq again in his second term. He bombed Sudan. He bombed Afghanistan. Let’s not forget the “humanitarian bombing” of Kosovo.
Domestically, his hallmark was to pull the Democratic party to the right. “The end of welfare as we know it”, the pro death penalty, the “three strikes and you’re out” Democrat.
Isn’t it also fairly common knowledge that Clinton was an associate, let’s be real and say frequent customer, of the notorious child rapist and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? With all of the evidence pertaining to that, why is he still walking the streets?
After the Neo-Con Bush Jr. took his turn at the helm (enter the Bad Cop) for 8 years, it was time for Barack Obama, the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, to take the stage. He was supposedly there to right the wrongs of two terms of conservatism, but upon being elected he promptly extended the Patriot Act which was the hallmark of the previous administration’s overreach and self-aggrandizement. Bush despicably introduced The practice of drone bombing. Obama escalated that murderous program. “Radicals” in fear of undermining their lesser of two evils investment never called him out for his militarism. Sure, there may have been small pockets of dissent, but nothing on a major scale.
Despite his image as a goody two shoes, Obama bombed seven different countries and demonstrated the foreign policy of a war hawk. What twisted irony that the first POTUS of African descent authorized the NATO assault against Libya, the African nation doing better on UN indices than all others on the continent. Libya was doing better than Russia and Brazil by some measures and Obama was content to annihilate that sovereign African nation. Turning a blind eye to atrocities such as the bombing of Libya is where many former “radicals” lost their souls. If one is going out of their way to vote “lesser-of-two-evils”, genocide is not supposed to be on the menu.
These two, two term administrations — that of Clinton and that of Obama — both demonstrated rabidly belligerent foreign policies and Democrats turned out to be quite okay with all of that. So-called radicals went along for the ride. They stayed in line. They chose not to rock the boat, and instead went along with “Rock the Vote.”
They never discuss the war crimes and all around hawkishness of the Democratic administrations for which they voted. From their collective point of view, the proper way to regard these events, is to ignore them. To pretend they never occurred is easily the best option. (Here, when I say “they”, I mean both “ordinary Democrats” and the “radicals” who lumped themselves in with those “ordinary Democrats.”)
This mindset was perfected by the time of the Biden Administration. For the duration of Biden’s one term, the Democrats took a completely hands off approach. They treated him like a gentle Grandpa in a rocking chair as he sponsored dehumanizing medical mandates, took us to the brink of World War III in Ukraine and sponsored genocide in Gaza.
So-called radicals, would-be revolutionaries, pretended to understand that the liberation of the human race had to derive from The People ourselves and would never be issued to us by means of an intrinsically corrupt political system. In the minds of real rank and file activists, voting was supposed to be near the bottom of the totem pole in terms of the means by which meaningful political change can be achieved. Yet, at a certain point, this action that was supposed to be something that we did with a healthy cynicism and tempered expectations —voting — became our primary means of political expression. The language of solidarity and direct-action was gradually replaced with the language of neoliberalism. After years of going along to get along, “lesser-of-two-evils” voting “radicals” started blending in with the crowd a little too well. Hence, exactly what Vonnegut warned about: “Be careful who you pretend to be.”
For years, they justified lesser of two evils voting as an attempt to maintain a holding pattern. If their “lesser-of-two-evils” candidate prevailed, it would “buy them time” as they simultaneously fended off predatory capitalism/the oligarchy/neo-feudalism on the one hand while creating a veritable Utopia on the other — clean, safe environments abound with opportunity and enrichment for all people of good will. That was the theory at least.
Yet, when their supposedly “lesser-of-two-evils” candidates win, the lesser-of-two-evils voters behave as though they are satiated. They de-amplify their messages. They don’t want to be accused of detracting from their lesser-of-two-evils candidate turned elected official, because they don’t want to lend power to the other side (The Red Coats aka The Republicans). In doing so, they silence necessary critiques that should be brought forth resoundingly against unacceptable policies (irrespective of party affiliation). Policies enacted clearly against the interest of The People — domestically and globally.
They habitually claim that when their “lesser-of-two-evils” candidate gets elected they will then pressure that official to do the right thing — that never happens. The pressure applied has been negligible. Realistically, they not only do not apply pressure they do the opposite instinctively and, well armed with an arsenal of excuses, provide political cover. When their candidates are elected, they take a hands off, kid-gloves approach. They elect candidates who betray them and then, not only fail to challenge the betrayers, but actually go out of their way to defend them. They consistently turn a blind eye, not just to mistakes, but to heinous atrocities. This apathetic approach has a wearing effect, resulting in moral and spiritual degradation.
While I think human beings are at least somewhat hypocritical by nature and that the human condition lends itself to hypocrisy to some extent — the hypocrisy of The New Neoliberals is acute, pronounced and absurd. Their very consciousness has become a carnival of hypocrisy. They will often become contortionists to rationalize untenable positions. Let me offer a quartet of examples from recent history, to highlight the hypocrisy showcased by these “New Neoliberals”:
- They championed dehumanizing medical mandates during covid — it was “my body my choice” as it pertains to abortion, but that slogan was thrown out the window when the government chose to mandate heart attack inducing, cancer-inducing, autoimmune disorder inducing inoculations that were falsely marketed as “vaccines.” Anyone who supported that agenda, tacitly or overtly has demonstrated an impoverished concept of human rights and human dignity. They gleefully supported the violation of the Nuremberg code (to which no nation was actually a signatory) and had not a care in the world about the terrible precedent being set.
The very same people who were so hypervigilantly concerned about Covid-19, then turned around to be precisely the people who would readily shun the vaccine injured and for the most part deny their very existence.
- Genocide in Gaza — when Democrats do genocide, it’s genocide-light. You know, like Bud-light or Marlboro-light. Genocide under a democratic administration is the low calorie version.
Remember when Biden lied about seeing footage of beheaded babies? If a more despicable lie has ever been told, I’d like to hear about it, as that would be hard to imagine. (It was reminiscent of the Nayirah testimony used to propel the U.S. into Operation Desert Storm where the claim was made that Iraqi soldiers remove babies from incubators and allowed them to die on a cold floor.)
While I am certain, if surveyed, we would find a wide range of opinions if we asked Democratic party voters about their views regarding Israel/Palestine — I would like to narrow in on one particular subgroup within the Democratic Party to highlight my point. That group consist of the people who took to the streets, social media and elsewhere to protest with apoplectic rage against the genocidal actions of Israel that were directly being sponsored by our government and the Biden administration. Many of those people, said they would withhold their vote from the Democratic Party on account of the atrocities that cost the lives of so many innocent Palestinian men, women and children. After protesting furiously for one month or maybe two, they piped down and fell in line and returned to the poll to vote for the Democrats with total equanimity having forgotten all about the rage they had just experienced.
- War with nuclear potential in Ukraine — the peak contradiction of the 2024 election cycle was the fact that the Democrats were to the right of Trump, the “right wing fascist”, when it came to war in Ukraine. What started out as silent acquiescence during the aggression of the Clinton and then Obama administrations, became seething hawkishness under Biden. “Total victory, nothing less!” is what they declared about the absolutely unwinnable proxy war they are sponsoring.
Tax dollars winding up in the hands of neo-nazis, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, a potential nuclear outcome, a potential World War III scenario — they were absolutely unmoved and unfazed by all of it. “Putin must be stopped” was what they repeated like parrots. Calls for peace were shamelessly mocked.
- Censorship — whatever its shortcomings or contradictions may have been, classical liberalism upheld the first amendment right of free speech (which is of course coupled with anti-censorship) as a value. Senator Joe McCarthy was a Republican. Liberals used to reflect on McCarthyism as a road we can never go down again.
It was the “liberals”, however, (well groomed by neoliberalism) who spearheaded “cancel culture” and various censorship measures in the name of biosecurity during Covid. Like a snake who has shed its skin, they have jettisoned free speech as a value entirely.
They react as though discourse itself is oppressive to them. Increasingly prone to emotional outburst, they respond to every flat-footed critique as though they have been completely undermined. Their tendency to overreact indicates the burdensome cost of sustaining a contradiction over a prolonged period of time.
Can the “radicals” who have sold out to neoliberalism return to their roots? Can they rejoin Team Humanity? As far as I’m concerned, not as long as they continue to hallucinate, supplanting the radical image of who they were, or imagined themselves to be, in place of the New Neoliberals they have truly become.
(Featured Image: “Kurt Vonnegut” by Miserlou Behind The Aperture is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
