Pronouns Over Policy

What is the message of today’s Democratic Party and of the Left in general? Yes, we know “Trump sucks,” and Hillary should have won, and the GOP has been taken over by right wing extremists and religious zealots that are going to turn the nation into Gilead, the fictional theocracy from the The Handmaid’s Tale. Hillary Clinton is busy setting up a new money-sponge, complete with a nifty new name, Onward Together. “Together,” we might surmise from past performance, doesn’t include anyone she deems a deplorable or doesn’t worship the ground she walks on. Bernie Sanders is running around making commencement speeches and peddling the same hackneyed pap, including this completely un-self-aware lulu from a recent speech at Brooklyn College:

We must never allow demagogues to divide us up by race, by religion, by national origin, by gender or sexual orientation. Black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, Christian, Jew, Muslim and every religion, straight or gay, male or female we must stand together. This country belongs to all of us.

Really? We must never allow division?

What else do we call today’s obsession with identity politics? What else do we conclude that the Left is doing when we see black students demand separate, no-whites-allowed spaces on college campuses, What else do we conclude when seemingly everything is about race, or ethnicity, or respect for (one but not others) religion, or sexual orientation, or gender? What else do we conclude when liberal academia has produced a list of sixty-three genders and has invented or advanced a passel of gender-neutral pronouns.

Lest anyone think that I’m picking on minority groups that have suffered significant and unwarranted bigotry, allow me to remind you that libertarians, myself among them, were at the fore of marriage equality and of equality in general even before the Democratic Establishment deigned to proclaim itself their champion. But, in an era of massive government dysfunction, horrific (and growing) debt, a collapsing health care law, “complicated” (to say the least) global politics, stagnant economic growth, too-low labor force participation, ticking-time-bomb entitlement programs, and so forth, what is the Left doing?

The Left is promoting “Resist.” Or, more specifically, Clinton has offered the Left a four-banger roadmap for the Trump era: Resist, insist, persist, enlist. Cadences of a Southern preacher there, and great for marching down the streets, protest placards held aloft. But, what are the policy proposals? What is the Democratic message about the big issues of today? What new ideas are being offered to the voters, other than “Trump sucks?” We got that one already, and yeah, there’s a good bit of truth in it, but as I’ve noted on these pages many times, Trump’s election is not an aberration, or a one-off, or a skew data point. His was one of more than a thousand GOP victories over Democratic incumbents. That doesn’t happen without reason, and that doesn’t get reversed without changes.

But, the only changes I see from the Left are a mix of doubling down on the same failed messages of the past few years and a broad, non-selective “resistance” to anything the GOP looks to do. I see no serious policy talk, other than on social issues (where the absolutists have been given free rein and have started scaring more reasoned folks away). What I do see is an abandonment of the sausage-making that is the legislative process in favor of being told what to think by Comedy Central and a passel of wild-eyed harridans on far-left “news” channels. What I do see is the selfsame, divisive identity politics that Bernie Sanders claimed to oppose in his Brooklyn College commencement speech. What I do see is safe spaces, Facebook virtue-signaling, Twitter snark, endless and ever-more-stratifying PC identity politics, and a response to the relentless stream of Islamic-terrorism mass murders with platitudes, group hugs, candles, and temporary Facebook picture filters (all while making sure that nothing is said that might offend anyone). And, of course, pronouns.

Pronouns are only a small part of the landscape, but they are emblematic of the progressives’ approach to politics in 2017. Consider the movement to supplant the third-person-singular “he,” long understood to be non-gender-specific by anyone who wasn’t looking to take synthetic offense, or the awkward concession to the offended “he or she,” or “he/she,” with the grammatically incorrect “they.” Yes, language evolves, and yes, gender equality and women’s rights are much younger than the non-gender-specific use of “he” (which dates back to the 14th century), but is this what’s most important to the progressives?

Perhaps. Controlling language is a means of controlling thought. Change the way people speak and you change what goes on in their heads. Establish that certain forms of speech, certain words and certain phrases are disrespectful, insulting, or taboo, and you put those who aren’t all-in on that idea on the defensive. Even if it’s just a little bit, it puts your political opponent back on his heels and lets you control the debate.

Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak. — Erica Jong

To what end? Why would the Left seek such control and manipulation if not for the advancement of policy ideas, ideas that it could simply market directly instead of relying on language games?

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. — George Orwell.

Politicians, and not just the elected ones, are, first and foremost, about power. There are a few exceptions, a few outliers who believe that government should be reined in and shrunk, but they don’t get very far, because their colleagues are more focused on power and control than they are, and are thus better able to grab and wield it. The goal isn’t about making changes and improving society in the manner they deem best, the goal is about power itself. This is why government keeps getting bigger, no matter who we put in office. This is why the Republicans talk a great game, but don’t ever seem to accomplish anything in that direction. And, it’s why, we might surmise, the Left focuses on identity politics, on the language of class, race, and gender, and on pronouns. It’s not about the stated goals of justice, fairness, and protection of the oppressed. It’s about power.

Why not pursue power through policy ideas, you might ask? For that, we can look to the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxism and critical theory. Whereas policy ideas invite debate and allow people to reject those they disagree with, dislike, or find wanting, critical theory (which, simply put, involves criticizing everything without putting forth specific alternatives) doesn’t promote a level playing field. It doesn’t allow for reasonable people to disagree while respecting each other. It’s about beating down the opposition, about establishing a position of supremacy, and about manipulating others into self-defeat and voluntary subordination. It’s a zero-sum war, where Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals is the battle plan, and where the opposition is deemed an alien “other” rather than fellow citizens who merely disagree on some matters. Alinsky, we must remember, didn’t merely offer up a means for winning the battle of ideas. He believed that self-imposed restrictions based on morality and ethical behavior were impediments to success, not virtues that good people should aspire to. Alinsky wanted to tear down American society so that it could be supplanted with a Marxist utopia (and history tells us how wonderful those utopias are). To repeat, this isn’t about policy differences, it’s an all-out war on individual liberty and what we’ve long called the American Way. It’s why progressivism today favors pronouns over policy.

How do we respond to this? In terms of the new language demands placed on us, how do we determine what’s “fair,” innocuous, or polite, and what’s manipulative, controlling, unjust and combative? We must each judge for ourselves, and do so while remembering, always, that there is purpose and ill intent behind controlling the words we say and think.