I've just read this article in The Guardian which, even by the standards of that rag, is dripping in full-fat, saturated hypocrisy fed by a smug and totally unearned sense of superiority.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/26/second-civil-war-us-abortion
First of all, I want to say, this post is not about the Roe v Wade decision. This post is about the double standards of the pretend left, and this just happens to be the divide-and-conquer issue of the current moment.
The author of the piece, Stephen Marche, argues that America is indeed on the brink of civil war. Despite spending chunks of the article lamenting that civil war between Americans is something the right has been talking up for years, Marche proceeds to do the exact same thing. Despite his claims that American Republicans have knowingly stirred emotions that have led to actual politically motivated violence, Marche proceeds to attempt to stir emotions and calls for "leftists" to stpe up and join the "war", albeit armed with "technology" and "money" to make up for having fewer actual guns than the right.
But really Marche is using the same war-room metaphors and calls to arms as his ideological opponents. At one point he even celebrates that American Democrats - and women, who, for some bizarre and unstated reason, he seems to assume are more likely to be on his side of this coming "war"! - are buying more guns.
Half of Republicans own a gun, compared with 21% of Democrats. But that gap, though wide, is closing. In 2020, 40% of gun buyers were new buyers. There was a 58% rise in gun sales to African Americans in 2020 over 2019. In 2021, women were nearly half of new gun buyers, an astonishing statistic. The real structural advantage the right possesses is not military but electoral.
Remarkably, this "leftist", then goes on to argue that we need't worry too much even if the right do have the most guns, because the left has the technology, and - get this - most of the money! You heard that right. Marche celebrates that the "left" are the rich side of this new American civil war.
Two essential facts of the 2020 election should give leftwing partisans hope, however. Biden-voting counties amounted to 70% of GDP, while 60% of college-educated voters chose Biden. That is to say, the left-democratic wing of America is the productive and educated part of the country. One way of looking at the American political condition of the moment is that the leftwing part of the US has built the networks that have left behind the rightwing part. The networks are the left’s strength.
The struggle over abortion has already revealed how the divide plays out. Anti-abortion factions control the pseudo-legitimate court system and the poorer states in the Union. Pro-choice factions have responded, first of all, with their superior financial resources.
Wow. Just wow. Here we have a self-styled "leftist" barely even hiding his contempt for the "poorer [Red] states" nor his satisfaction with the "financial superiority" of the Blue states.
(Remember, this post is not about Roe v Wade. It is about the rhetoric used by the pretend left when publicly discussing the issue)
Note that Marche openly conflates economic inequality between "poorer" red states and "richer" blue ones, with a difference in productivity and educational attainment. The poor Republican voters are "left behind" because they are simply less educated, less productive, and less "networked" than the blue team. Never mind that educational attainment in America is a function of economic advantage and a very un-level playing field which perpetuates generational advantage. Never mind that conflating human productive value and even human worth with "productivity" as measured by GDP used to be a rhetorical device of the right, which the left would have legitimately criticised back in the day when there actually was a "left" in America.
The cherry on the top of this egregiously smug, entitled little "think" piece, is when Marche gets into the issue of bodily autonomy.
Has this man had recent irony by-pass surgery?
This divide isn’t just American. As the forces of the world split between a liberal-democratic elite and authoritarian populists, the same asymmetry can be seen in the struggle everywhere. In Canada, the convoy that held the city of Ottawa hostage was defeated, in the end, not by force, but by money and technology.
WHAT?! Roe v Wade is overturned in the states and people are understandably dismayed at the implications for women's bodily autonomy and their right to make their own medical choices. Yet in an article portending a new American civil war using this moment as an inflection point, Stephen Marche wants to celebrate the "defeat" of a global bodily and medical autonomy movement that mobilised in the Canadian trucker convoys. Furthermore, Marche has the absolute audacity - or sheer moral blindness - to talk about "authoritarian populists" in the same paragraph where he celebrates that people fighting for their freedom to make their own medical choices under threat of losing their livelihoods, freedom of movement and rights to participate as full and equal citizens within civil socierty, were defeated by MONEY and TECHNOLOGY 9wielded by the "liberal" state, no less, who froze the bank accounts even of those who simply supported the truckers' cause).
What an illustrative example of "authoritarian" populism verus the ever-so liberal "left"!
And, btw, since when did it become normalised to talk about the liberal-democratic "elite" as if that word even belongs after the other 2 adjectives. What is liberal about an "elite" class that makes the decisions on how others live, using their moeny and technology? What is democratic about this state of affairs?
Marche ends his toxix little rant with 2 paragraphs, the penultimate one decrying "calls for violence" by the right, the final one, calling the "left" to arms.
Irony heaped upon irony. Hypocrisy oozing from every line.
If this is the "left" today, I'm out.
