You Can’t Win Newsletter - Don’s Note - Mid-June

Upcoming Episodes

Our next Monday episode is probably our most “out there” one, with a special guest denouncing podcasts as a medium. I expect it to be divisive. This is fine - one of the goals we’ve had is to have our friends with different viewpoints on to discuss things. And by different viewpoints I mean people like our friend who is a walking encyclopedia about Albanian socialism. Love that guy. We’ve also had some fun bonus episodes about Tom’s life overseas in Italy, India and Thailand, you can sign up for the Patreon to download them. Other than that, let us know what sorts of topics you’d like us to look at.

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Politics Takery - Bernie’s Apple Pie Socialism

Bernie Sanders gave a speech this week on his vision of American democratic socialism. A bunch of pundits said it was a bad idea for him to distinguish himself in that way, which doesn’t even make sense from a cynical marketing perspective. Bernie has the Unique Selling Feature that his opponents do not, and in a broad competitive field that’s a good thing. If it ends up being a battle of the bland then Bernie loses every time. Plus right now Bernie is building up his army of people willing to phonebank and do the other grunt work - mobilizing huge numbers to head to the polls is a longer game. The first debate hasn’t even happened yet.

It’s an unmitigated good to me when a significant national politician talks up socialism, even when they mean fire departments and not communism. I think ideology matters, and that extends around the world. It’s probably better for humanity that Chinese politicos need to appeal to Marxism even if a fair number of them don’t fit the bill. I don’t have a problem voting for the lesser evil and it’s nice to see social-democratic forces emerge here and there.

What did I dislike? Well, Bernie’s speech was an attempt to wrap socialism in the flag. He talks about the threatened American Dream and a pantheon of great presidents. He does the old Noam Chomsky trick of referencing people that pundits pretend to like so they can’t dismiss him out of hand. The fact that Harry Truman killed a fair number of people to try to stop Korea from becoming socialist morphs into a quote about not fearing socialism. The thread that connects different freedom struggles across the years becomes the defining feature of America. It’s the audacity of hope again. Which makes sense if you are trying to become the most powerful American and knock out a few reforms. Most Americans who vote probably consider the country basically good. The whole “99%” rhetoric, which appears here, appeals to the idea that only a small sliver of evildoers is ruining the country, which is otherwise pretty great.

The idea that socialism is as American as apple pie has a long tradition at the right-wing of the broader workers movement. It’s one of the reasons the CPUSA disintegrated as a major political force. It was also rejected by radical movements who saw events like Vietnam as the product of much deeper problems with nationalism and colonialism. It masks the crimes of large numbers of Americans by attributing them to aberrant leaders. A nationalist left entails all the risks that nationalism brings with it.

Still, American radicals should be happy to have a figure like Bernie around to complain about. He might not be around for much longer. As G.A. Cohen once said: 

It is true that I was heavily critical of the Soviet Union, but the angry little boy that pummels his father’s chest will not be glad if the old man collapses. As long as the Soviet Union seemed safe, it felt safe for me to be anti-Soviet. Now that it begins, disobligingly, to crumble, I feel impotently protective towards it.

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Life as a Content Generator

The other day I saw someone struggling about what to do with their life and I spontaneously thought “I’m glad I don’t have that problem.” Which is funny, because for a long time that’s something I would ruminate on, and I guess I’m not as worried about it anymore. Just plugging away each day. Writing a bit when my mental health is better, relaxing as much as I can when it’s not, keeping up with the debates online, keeping up with the pod with Tom… things could be a lot worse.

So what’s next? Well, I’m starting to work on a book proposal, which seems like a big undertaking. I’m reading through some of the contemporary “state of the left” books and getting the lay of the land. There seems to have been a mini-boom after the Sanders/Corbyn phenomenon and the resistance grifting. Now I’m more interested in telling some jokes but I’d like it to jive with my actual opinions and what people are already talking about out there.

Anyway if you have ideas of books I should be checking out, let me know. We might try to talk about them on the pod a bit. And I might even try to review a few of them for publication as a way to scrounge up some cash. God bless.