Wishing it were easier to pitch a big tent

It’s a little depressing to look at how many hard it is to get all the different factions of the Democratic Party excited about helping each other. I wonder a bit if this is a case of scarcity pushing people towards fighting over scraps, and I wonder how much this is a case of Russians/Republicans using the internet to sow left-wing dissent.

At minimum, people ought to accept that each others’ problems are worthy. Is there really any question that blacks get a raw deal in this country? Or that people who are openly gay or trans are discriminated against? Or that women don’t get promotions and pay commensurate with their skills, productivity, etc? Or that unions are necessary in order to give workers an equal footing in negotiations over pay, hours, benefits, and worker safety? Or that many forms of pollution lead to statistically early death? Lack of an adequate social safety net is clearly a problem, and clearly one that can be solved, because countries that are less wealthy do a better job than we do — notably, they deliver life expectancy and lower infant mortality for less money per capita. They can afford it, so can we. Climate change? It’s happening. Slowly, but steadily, and it’s going to continue for decades-to-centuries after we finally decide to take it seriously; the only question is how fast it’s changing when enough of us finally get alarmed enough to really act. Education? College is stupidly, fantastically expensive, and to the extent this is Baumol’s Cost Disease, we should just subsidize it (other poorer countries manage to do this) and to the extent that it isn’t we should drive prices down by properly supporting public universities. Etc. These are all problems, and the Republican Party is on the wrong side of all of these issues. We shouldn’t pick just one, we should not be put off because we think labor is important but we’re a little nervous about the gays, or focus only on racism to the exclusion of college costs — there’s nothing wrong with wanting it all, we can have it all, and all of us deserve to have these problems addressed. There’s no mutual incompatibility between any of these issues.

And be a little more skeptical, say, when someone on Fox News tries to tell you that anyone who’s LGBTQ is a threat to the women and children. We’ve done plenty to make life unpleasant for people who aren’t “normal”; if someone’s out of the closet and you notice them, they must feel very strongly about it to put up with the social crap, and must have been truly miserable in the closet. This has nothing to do with your children, and everything with them wanting to live happier lives. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to con you into being mean to other people for no reason at all; ignore them, they’re evil.

Or, similarly, that someone might trot out some bogus statistics to try to make white people nervous about “black crime”. Some of these stats are flat lies, in other cases the data has been tortured into confessing things that aren’t true. In practice, most people are non-violent, most people are law-abiding (well, except for traffic laws, which everyone breaks very often, and traffic violence is actually a big deal). Don’t take the bait, anyone trying to convince you that blacks are a Big Crime Risk is just plain evil, ignore them, change the channel, turn off the radio. They’re trying to turn you into a racist and create dissent on the left.

There are bullshit artists trying to sow doubt about health care, too. One dishonest clown keeps trying to claim that Medicaid is worse than no health care at all, because people on Medicaid (as a population) are sicker than people who aren’t, never mind that if you’re poor and sick you’re much more motivated to sign up for Medicaid than if you’re merely poor, in which case that might seem like more of a hassle than it’s worth. This is what passes for serious statistical analysis on the right; these guys are sad, lying clowns, don’t let their obvious bullshit make you doubt the worth of providing health care.

And so on. There’s probably better examples but I’m a cis het white guy 1%er descended (father’s side) from a family with strong ties to Dartmouth, clearly I’m a traitor to my gender, race, ancestors, etc, it’s a wonder I get any of this right. The main theme is to not let one left-wing cause be split from another, and anytime you catch someone trying to do that, think about why. I honestly wonder how many of the alleged “hard-core Bernie-bros” that get noticed on the internet now are actually left wing or even American; disinformation is a real thing, and sowing dissent is a standard tactic. I supported Bernie, I sent him money, I like (or liked) his politics. But when he didn’t win the nomination, we’re done, support the nominee, got to stay focused on outcomes. I have several friends who did the same. Ask yourself *why* someone on the left would now be interested in prolonging the primary contest after we lost the general election. It makes no sense; the Republicans are uniformly terrible for everything Bernie Sanders has supported over the years, the Democrats are uniformly better, and we tried plenty hard in the primaries and Bernie didn’t make the cut. If we don’t unite, all of us, we lose ground.