Against Changing the World
Or, Why I am not a Progressive
As nuance is dead in our day, I must begin by stating that this essay is not an endorsement of the status quo.
Which, in a political context, is to say this is not an endorsement of the Republican or mainstream Democratic Party.
No, the Republican Party is sadistic and cult-like. And the so-called moderate wing of the Democratic Party is cowardly, out-of-touch, and ineffective.
Some would refute these descriptions. Their arguments would dissolve with the next news cycle.
Others would say that their side is just reacting to the other side, that this brush with fascism, this disdain for the concerns of everyday people, this is just temporary. To trust the party to lead the country through this existential moment and return us to our former glory.
But there can be no return—and I am not interested in a return—to a mythicized past.
Such a view leaves me politically adrift.
I’m not alone in that. Not with a third of voters identifying as independents and a third of potential voters sitting out.
But many of these political outcasts have come to call themselves progressives, identifying somewhere between the left wing of the Democratic Party, democratic socialism, and outright socialism.
And while this moniker—progressive—seems to unify those who believe, as I do, that every person deserves a roof overhead, clean air, food, and water, quality healthcare and education, and the freedom to express themselves without fear, while it may temporarily bring opposing ideologies under one tent for an election, it has belied very real, ultimately irreconcilable tensions.
One in particular. And that is the progressive insistence that these rights are guaranteed by—in a very real way, stem from—government. A progressively larger government playing a progressively larger role in the workings of daily life.
This may seem an odd time to split hairs about political ideology.
The political right in this country has already surrendered to this concentration of political power. Under the guise of draining the swamp, under the banner of a crackdown on illegal immigration or voter fraud or media bias, they have allowed a singular politician to dramatically expand the scope of government. This has happened to such a point that the masked federal agents who recently killed a U.S. citizen by shooting him in the back remained unknown to the public for a week. And seem likely to meet no consequences.
Naturally, many who identify as politically left decry these abuses.
But this is precisely why this is the time to talk about political ideology.
Because privately, many on this side, self-proclaimed progressives included, consent to and have consented to the same expansion of government by figures sympathetic to their causes. The individual policies are different—those saying otherwise, saying that it’s all the same, are deluding themselves to claim some sort of moral purity—but the underlying project is the same:
To make the whole country—the whole world—of their own design.
To “extend the sphere [of government],” as James Madison put it a quarter of a millennium ago.
Plainly, for a small number of people to decide what’s best for a large number.
Perhaps they would argue that this is necessary to counter the abuses of the past.
So says the progressive.
So says the Democrat.
So says the Republican.
Around and around we go.
The United States growing in power all the while.
For the state is a power-hungry entity.[i] An engine that runs, that in this country gains its power, on an illusory consent of the governed.
And in this way, it will never be satisfied.
But now the illusion has been broken.
The veil has been lifted.
It has become increasingly clear to everyone watching that our government has ceased to care about this consent.
Some call this the imperial boomerang: the way a powerful government fosters consent at home through an iron fist abroad only for the iron fist to come home. Which hurts, which is liable to kill, when you’re not expecting it, when your attention is elsewhere. Like a boomerang.
Some, many of the same, have identified this as a failure of late-stage capitalism.
To their credit, many progressives—at least in the democratic socialism and socialism camps—are actively trying to address this.
The only problem is that there’s no such thing.
Not in a sense of there being any fundamental change from some so-called early-stage capitalism. Because the trend toward accumulation, toward consolidation, toward state capture—by which I mean the corruption of the state to serve the interests of the few over the interests of the many—these trends are not unique to capitalism in a given time. They are inherent to capitalism.
In this way, saying that the problem is late-stage capitalism makes no more sense than saying that the problem is late-stage cancer.
No, the problem is and has always been cancer. It’s just that we’ve looked away as long as we’ve felt fine. It’s just that we’ve been willing to sacrifice the spleen, a piece of the liver, a lymph node. Native Nations, minority races, women, the poor, the disabled. The occasional children to a mass shooting. The land to a factory farm. The housing market to Wall Street.
The crisis feels bigger now. Feels like that boomerang has come back around. And the brain, the heart, the lungs, the white and striving middle class—the entire system of systems—all seem to be flailing.
As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “It’s been the end of the world for someone all along.”
Whether we believe the original story or not, we cling to a familiar tale.
Of a kid from humble beginnings saving the whole world. A carpenter crucified for others’ sins.
And while we were told that this was the Son of God and we are not, we’ve also been told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Told to ask at all times, ‘What would Jesus do?’
And we know that Jesus—our paragon of virtue—would save the world.
The nuance that this responsibility does not apply to us was always difficult for our eleven-year-old minds to comprehend. It still is.
So, the right thing to do is to save—at the very least change—the world.
So, we play out versions of this epic, in which the moral fortitude, the unflagging integrity, of a working-class hero rescues the undeserving from their plight. Versions of this epic everywhere we go.
At home.
At school and at work.
And in the actions of our country.
Along the way, some of us may become familiar with the arguments against this manner of thinking. And change our language a bit. So as not to come across as having some savior complex. So as not to be perceived as pretentious. As holier than thou.
But the world beckons.
The violence, the addiction, the loneliness gets to us.
The desperation, the inequality, the apathy nags at us.
And we accept the burden of changing the world.
After all, what choice do we have?
Because there are those who would destroy the world. Or at least pursue their own agenda so unabashedly as to shrug off any ill effect.
And they will not cease, so neither can we.
Except that in seeking to be their foil, we’ve embraced the same ideology. The same pathology.
Lecturing to avoid confessing. Speaking to avoid listening.
Which is to say that we are—that I am—just talking to myself.
Ever since I was little, I’ve been taught, and accepted, that I have the responsibility to change the world. Which sounds noble, if not a little daunting. Offering a guiding light, an inextinguishable purpose, however vague.
Except that such a mission offers no moment of pause for the question: what gives me the right?
We’ve arrived at a moment in which many people have ceased to believe that they themselves can change the world. But they still believe they have the right. And with this perceived right, their entire identity becomes bound up in the question of who they’ll vote for.
On much of the political right, this looks increasingly like that iron fist.
On much of the political left, this looks like massive subsidies in childcare, healthcare, education, housing, and all parts of the economy.
Perhaps this isn’t true with the most socialist end of that political left. I’ve never seen it.
But the socialists, too, end up devoting much of their energy toward a larger state which guarantees the rights and privileges, and carries out the plans on behalf of, the people.
In the best instances, it is a more accountable government that guarantees all this.
But what is guaranteed by government can be stripped away by government.
In this moment, the United States, the entire world, seems uncertain of the path forward. There is an acknowledgement that the world is changing and we all seem to be asking ourselves who we can trust with that power to change it. Asking ourselves where we can we concentrate our power.
In other words, who will represent us?
Or, how can we represent others?
Now, we, in the United States, perhaps throughout the West, see this global order shifting, perhaps collapsing, and we take it upon ourselves to change the world. To save the world.
But we should reject that concentration of power.
Stand with the unions.
Until they get too large.
And become an arm of the state.
Stand with the wildcat strikes.
Until they, too, choose their representatives.
And gain their legitimacy in the eyes of the state.
Stand with every person who strives, who struggles, who dares to assert their inherent dignity.
Until he or she or they or them or I or you come to ascribe this dignity to the state.
Until this person starts telling the next person
How to dress and how to talk,
How to lie and how to hawk
Useless things to clueless people,
Selling stories under a steeple
That looks faintly like a church
Offering comfort in this lurch
Between what was and what will be.
Because now the cost of liberty,
Now the price of being free,
Looks a lot like tyranny.
The lesson of this moment is not that we need powerful institutions to counteract other powerful institutions.
The Democratic Party, the lesser evil for many in our two-party system, seems to have been caught flat-footed after ten years of Trumpism. Organizations, universities, and businesses have been chilled into submission. Congress is nowhere to be found. Most state governments have bent the knee.
The judiciary has been the one institution that seems to have held as any sort of check to the reach of the federal government. But only sometimes. And only to a point. Because it isn’t long before the administration is interpreting the latest ruling its own way.
As Shakespeare put it, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
The state has been captured by the interests of the few.
That is the world order.
We, operating under the banner of this country’s flag, have consented to it, this concentration of power, because it has served us, ‘us’ growing to include minority groups whenever those groups have been sufficiently defused of their power—or willingness—to change this global order.
So, we—this elusive we that is the United States—have gone on rigging elections, securing cheap land, labor, and infrastructure for our corporations, invading territory, and still enjoying a vaunted place in many hearts and minds across the world. Perhaps best exemplified by our veto power in the United Nations Security Council.
And through lax campaign finance law, corporate subsidies and carve-outs, and broad powers of eminent domain, we’ve simultaneously become inured to our sunken place and seldom expressed anything but love for our country.
But the world is changing.
Truthfully, this is inevitable.
But we will not repeat past mistakes.
Rather than competing for a seat at the table—thereby tacitly endorsing there being one table at which all rules are made—we must build our own tables. Like they are in Minneapolis and Chicago, D.C. and L.A. Like minoritized and embattled and indigenous and forgotten peoples all over the world.
Rejecting the doctrine of might as right just as surely as the coerced consent of the modern age.
Rejecting not the interconnectedness of peoples and cultures but instead the global politics of atom bombs and surveillance states, technocratic minutiae and saviors in suits that has been forced on them.
We set out to protect our tiny corner of the world. A simple act of love and reciprocity that ripples across oceans and finds others willing to do the same. Like a seed finding a crack in a vacant lot. Which is all that’s needed. To change the world.
They can’t stop us.
As has been said before, as is realized again,
They lack the rope to tie us all up.
[i] By state, I mean any government, especially covering large geographic areas and populations. By government, I mean any small number of people that purports to represent a large number of people.