It's fitting that I read Tariq Ali's upcoming book, The Extreme Centre: A Warning,
the week political blogger-public intellectual Andrew Sullivandecided to walk away from blogging for the first time in 15 years. My
years of reading Sullivan's work, centered mostly on the concept of
finding grace within a constantly changing, chaotic world and
applying it to our public discourse with plenty of humility and self
reflection, weighed heavily on me – as they always do, for I count
Sullivan as one of my biggest influences in how to approach the task
of thinking in general – as I read Ali's words. For all the reams
of research and his desire for social progress behind them, those
words rang increasingly discordant as they continued.
Ali's
book is what would happen if the leftist id shouted impotently into
the void. This is no policy paper, for he doesn't have policies to
offer. He admits as such in the conclusion. He doesn't know where the
solutions to his diagnosed problems will come from, but he's hopeful
they will come from somewhere.
It is
in those diagnoses where Ali is most adept. He spends large chunks of
time explaining the history of the post-Thatcher United Kingdom and
post-Reagan America and the political race to recapture what made
those leaders palatable to their respective publics. He expresses
profound disappointment in those leaders' opposition parties often
moving closer to their policies than previous generations of liberal
parties would have dared. This activity is what provides the book's
title, wherein Ali posits that the parties of left and right meet in
the middle to form a giant, amorphous ruling class blind to the needs
of the lower classes while catering to the wants of the privileged.
The politicians of the formerly left-leaning Labour and Democratic
parties are now more concerned with amassing private fortunes than
helping their constituents. A large section highlights the highly
lucrative post-governmental “consultant” positions entered into
by Tony Blair's Cabinet and closest political allies that could very
well have been agreed to as longterm bribery for pushing policies
favorable to their future employers while still in office. He
provides background on the European Union, the rise of anti-immigrant
fury during the Great Recession of 2008, the beginnings of NATO and
related imperial adventurism of the United States, and most cogently,
the increase in recent decades of wealth inequality with more and
more money going to the already rich while wages stagnate or recede
for the middle and lower classes.
The
thing is, Ali might be correct on some of these counts, and he has
done a massive amount of research to back himself up, but he proves
himself incapable of convincing anyone to stop doing these things
because of his rhetorical tactics and inclination toward
sensationalism. Bankers are all swindlers and hustlers. The centrists
and right-wingers posing as liberals are “rap[ing] the public
sector” to make a buck for themselves and their money men friends
at the expense of the masses. He falsely assumes at every turn that
current economic conditions will continue exponentially until
oblivion is reached. He loses sight of the goal of politics,
convincing others to advance your preferred goals, in order to take
potshots to delight those who already agree with him. He removes
humanity from people in the financial sector, who have definitely
done damage to the economy, but probably not (only) because of
raging, unchecked greed or a planned attack on those lower down the
totem pole than themselves. They made choices they thought would
benefit people, of course including themselves, and those choices
were the wrong ones. The choice from there is whether to work with
those people to find a solution to make sure such mistakes are not
made again, not to employ the (excuse my less-than-family-friendly
language) “assholes and idiots” argument for anyone who disagrees
with you. When you go to that rhetorical well, it leaves those on the
other side in a spiteful mood, not really looking to help you – the
“I'll show him!” response in which they do exactly the opposite
of what you want. The “more flies with honey” approach at least
gets you to the table with these bankers, or rival politicians, or
defense contractors, or those against Scottish independence, or
whatever disjointed target Ali is raging against on every other page.
Because,
guess what, you might be wrong. Examine yourself constantly, your
preferred policies even more often, test them, make them work,
explain their tradeoffs and complicated uses in one-on-one meetings,
win over people, examine again, create change, repeat. It's a lot
harder than just being mad at people. Channel it. Do something with
it. You might still get nowhere, but at least you'll get to the
bargaining table, where anything can happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment