While the American Right has morphed into an autocratic personality cult, assembled around an increasingly deranged Donald Trump, the Left is fighting its own internal battle. So far, the Democratic Party has managed to contain the Leftist revolt against reason to a small number of congressional representatives and city officials. Recently, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman lost their seats in Missouri and New York, during Democratic primaries, after mouthing antisemitic bromides against Israel, and articulating extreme positions against law enforcement and the free market.
One still must wonder how long sanity will prevail. To put it differently, it’s possible that American culture no longer has the infrastructure necessary to maintain political movements of humanistic liberalism. Algorithmic social media is an easy scapegoat here, but it is undoubtedly true that fewer Americans obtain their news and commentary from reading, instead opting for TikTok videos and Twitter soundbites that reduce complicated issues to slogans, and simultaneously squash complicated people into cartoonish enemies. To that point, Ta-Nehisi Coates has declared that the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of the most intractable problems of modern times — a collision of politics, religion, and territorial claims — is “simple”.
“It’s possible that American culture no longer has the infrastructure necessary to maintain political movements of humanistic liberalism”
Likewise, criminal justice is “simple” if you believe that diverse police forces in modern cities, like New York and Chicago, are nothing more than heirs to slavery patrols. During the 2020 primary, meanwhile, Joe Biden displayed bold honesty when he told a voter demanding a prohibition of fossil fuels in the first term of a Biden presidency to “vote for someone else”. Then again, climate change and environmental science are simple if it’s feasible to “ban” oil and gas over just four years, or anyway to do without causing immeasurable human suffering along the way. Springsteen himself seems to understand the need for pragmatism. When he took the stage in Atlanta, after all, he didn’t talk about those things that divided Americans. Rather, he underscored the importance of civil rights, and looked forward to a middle-class economy that served “all our citizens” equally.
I think it’s clear, then, that there’s a linear relationship between rejection of nuance and negation of human beings. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, anti-Israel protestors ripped posters and flyers showing the faces of Jewish hostages off walls and telephone poles in London, New York, and other cities. Students and faculty at prestigious universities in the United States, including Columbia and Georgetown, praised the Hamas “resistance” and defaced campus property with red triangles, the Nazi symbol for political enemies. In May, a spreadsheet went viral identifying popular authors, some of whose work is apolitical, as “Zionists”. The point, anyway, was to encourage the blackballing of authors from book festivals and other events.
Literary agents, many speaking anonymously, have claimed that it has become difficult to earn publishing contracts for authors who support Israel or write about overtly Jewish topics. Matisyahu, a Jewish American singer/songwriter who favours Israel and addresses antisemitism in song, had three performances cancelled after several venues were spooked by the risk of protest.
At the American university where I teach, the only acknowledgement of the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre came from a student group denouncing Israel’s “genocide” against Gaza. There was not a single reference to Jews murdered, raped or abducted by Hamas. That’s unsurprising. Israel, according to prevailing wisdom on the far-Left, is something of a headquarters of evil — a colonialist project and an apartheid state. Its citizens, in turn, alongside anyone who expresses solidarity with them, are readymade villains. “Zionist” now functions as little more than an antisemitic slur.
A popular theory of psychology posits that the way a person reacts to one thing is the way that they’ll react to everything. The ignorant and antisemitic reaction to October 7 portends that American Leftists may well react with similar revulsion toward knowledge, nuance, and compassion to future crises, both foreign and domestic. With the Republican Party already tolerant of death threats against everyone from librarians to hurricane relief workers, American politics could yet transform into a high volume, kinetic duel in which conversation is impossible, and the threat of violence always poisons the air.
Recent philosophers of liberalism now read like letters from an ancient age. In his 1998 book Achieving Our Country, Richard Rorty argued that the Left should return to “piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy” as opposed to obsessing over “systems” and “power”. The measured use of government to improve people’s lives — echoing the great liberal achievements of the 20th century, from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare — would not only create a fairer and freer society. It would also allow liberals to tie their aspirations to hope, rather than the bitterness of the perpetually morose cultural Left.
During Covid, for instance, extending the child tax credit succeeded in reducing child poverty, even as its expiry provoked little protest. In the same vein, Leftist activists on social media love to demand “Medicare for All” — yet never seize the opportunity to advocate for a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act, or push to lower the entry age to Medicare, as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden suggested during their respective presidential campaigns. They may not offer the same online thrill, in short, but aiming for realistic achievements could significantly improve the welfare of millions.
Robert Putnam, author of the sociological classic Bowling Alone, believed that the practical method to achieve Rorty’s ambition was to reverse the decline of community, and cultivate a nation of joiners. As Putnam argued, the more people associate, in civic clubs, religious institutions, and indeed bowling clubs, the likelier they are to build empathy and solidarity, engineering healthy democratic politics in the process.
With both Left and Right so embittered and self-righteous, it’s difficult to imagine anyone replicating the legislative successes of previous decades. Civic virtues themselves — from civility and humility to logic and empathy — now feel like the relics of a bygone era.
The image of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center, and Bruce Springsteen’s soulful artistic response, also feel like long lost history. The singer/songwriter connected the liberal values of pluralism, individual rights, and communal improvement to the heroism of the first responders. Coates, conversely, wrote that the first responders were not human. In political culture, the latter view is winning.
Given that the principles of liberalism were essential to the construction of a free and prosperous society, one with the capacity to correct injustice, an increasingly cynical and angry America may want to borrow Springsteen’s optimism. “Blow away the dreams that tear you apart / Blow away the dreams that break your heart,” he belted out in Atlanta over the weekend. “And I believe in a promised land.”
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SubscribeInteresting article, thanks. I think that Bruce probably *thinks* he’s a liberal. But he is stridently supporting the party of censorship; the party of government coercion and control; the party of segregation (when’s the last time you heard the term melting pot? we’re more like a rendering plant now, thanks to the left, separating out all the parts and focusing on the differences between us rather than focusing on what makes us all the same); and the party of the demonization of those with whom you disagree. All of these things reveal his true affiliation: the elites, the establishment, the oligarchs, the 1%. Not surprising, really, as he’s spent the last 30 years hobnobbing and sipping champagne cocktails with the coastal elites instead of gulping mad dog 20/20 with the Jersey street rats.
Indeed. Not so much sold out rock concerts as sold out soul.
Nah, the real liberals have joined Trump, RFK. Tulsi and Elon and an zing wave of private individuals leaving the democrat plantation. The Boss may wake up someday and join the freedom movement.
Writers words.
a presidential nominee who recently referred to the United States as a “garbage can”.
Actual words:
“like a garbage can for the world”
This is just pathetic. How can I regard this article as some objective observation of contemporary culture? Not to mention the usual hysterical nonsense about Trump. Why, Unherd, are you doing this?
“the principles of liberalism were essential to the construction of a free and prosperous society”
And a trusted, non partisan media?
It’s got to the point where the legacy media is not merely distrusted but, for many of us, there’s a belief that the truth is the complete opposite of what we’re being led to believe.
Been that way since the 90s.
A liberal who wants a welfare state and open borders and free trade with china ….and then complains that car factories are closing down, and that white and black working class men start voting the wrong way….to close the border, bring back jobs
Judging by his politics he should have been born in Vietnam.
What a stupid reply. So anybody who is left of centre is automatically a communist in your eyes?
You’re no better than the sole who lazily label anybody slightly conservative as a f***st
The issue is that he’s supporting a government that’s not democratic. Somewhere along the line the Democrats jumped the rails and decided to believe in nothing but following votes. They would pledge allegiance to Satan if they thought it would get them two points in swing states even if it invalidated their message everywhere else. And no I’m not saying that trump is good. He’s just a better option if you believe in things like freedom of speech. Even for the deplorable.
Bruce Springsteen is a fraud and this hagiography does nothing to change that. The only truism is that he represents the new wealth – insanely wealthy while writing sappy songs about people he neither remembers nor likes, imperiously wagging his finger at those others who don’t believe as he does, and having lost all connection to what liberal values are.
Channeling Woodie Guthrie on a Madonna budget.
I thought the article was about Springsteen, but it turned into a political rant, he was a great songwriter with something to say, agree with him or not. They don’t make them like they used to
I wonder how many of the American leftists who idolise Mehdi Hassan are aware that during his time in the UK he was once taped describing non-Muslims as cattle. Imagine if a Catholic or Jewish journalist did that – their career would be over.
As a Canadian who ranks Bruce as a great poet, you all might remember that the cover of Born in the USA clearly shows him pissing on Old Glory- not a particularly noble statement.
Even for the leftists who know, it does not matter. They see the world through the oppressor/victim binary and Muslims are always, always, always victims. This will change, in the US at least, when Muslims push back against the gender madness and other leftist dogma, at which point they will, much like the Jews, be white adjacent if not outright white. According to Census Bureau, they’re already white.
Its not hard to find Jewish journalists saying nasty things about white people or Christians. many such cases
Let’s be honest. Bruce Springsteen is kind of an idiot. Entertaining after a few beers, but otherwise a non starter. Better music can be found elsewhere without the pretension to political insight.
Attention, readers! This article that purports to be about America and Bruce Springsteen, is in fact all about Israel. Clever packaging around the same old propaganda.
I wonder, when he goes down to the well tonight, and drinks till he gets his fill, whether he sits around thinking about it, but he probably will
I watched a clip of Springsteen singing the other day and it was woeful.
yeah
i need someone to sort this one out for me.
I think you got it.
Springsteen is a great rocker, and of all the song-writers who have been compared to Dylan he’s the only one who came out looking good. That was back in the 70s and 80s.
Subsequently, he has made the mistake of partisan endorsements. That means that anyone and everyone can and will say anything they want about him. And claim to be an authority!
To me it seems that the most patriotic thing about his music is the sincere affection he showed for the ragged characters, the “teenage tramps in skintight pants” or Madame Marie, who got busted for telling fortunes better then the cops do, or the friends who “danced all night to a soul-fairy band”, who populated his best songs and the world that we all lived in back then. If we just opened our eyes and looked.
Of course playing in front of the E Street Band didn’t hurt!
Leonard Cohen is better than both of them by far.
I’ll take 1970-80s Tom Waits and Randy Newman over any of them, thanks.
FFS. The song “Born in the USA” wasn’t a patriotic anthem. It was a protest song.
Not patriotic, sarcastic. Not protest, honest expression of the human condition.
There is no such thing as ‘Israeli’ suffering in the context of history. Nobody disagrees with the assertion that Jews as a body of people had historically suffered grievous persecution in European and ‘Europoid’ Christian cultures. But the expectation that that recognition should lead one automatically to support a cause that requires the Palestinians to be massacred, subjected to terrorist acts, ethnic cleansing, etc. is inherently racist and is naturally an ask not to Coates’ taste. Let those who caused the ‘Israeli’ suffering make room for them.
To consider the word zionist is a slur is to do violence to the language. If it is a slur, it can’t be any more than the word Communist is a slur in some circles. Zionists are disapproved of not because they may be Jews, but because of what they do, as are the Mafia, not because they may be Italians, but because of what they do.
It’s not like the music of Bruce Springsteen is exactly devoid of cynicism or reflections on the (entirely predictable) failure of the American Dream. Maybe it would be nice for people across the American political aisle to be more civil to each other. But what’s the point when both sides are repulsive and everyone can see it? I don’t think any rational person wants either Trumpism or Bidenism to triumph.
Regarding Israel, I don’t know why the author feels the need to implicitly cheer on the policies of Netanyahu’s regime when so many Israelis themselves clearly despise the man. At times it feels that there is more scope for honest debate concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within Israel itself than in the United States.
Anyone who cites that Tony Dokoupil / Ta Nahesi Coates interview and then bewails the decline of nuance is either a moron or they’re simply assuming that you don’t know what they’re talking about.
Dokoupil didn’t get reprimanded for wondering why the book didn’t reference “October 7. Two intifadas, or indeed any loss of Israeli life”. He did put that point to Coates and Coates answered it.
The thing that got him reprimanded was suggesting that, in the absence of this “nuance,” the book read like something you might find in an extremist’s backpack.
Now, as a believer in free speech, I think interviewers should be free to say whatever they like, however stupid it is. That’s what keeps Piers Morgan off the dole.
But in a world obsessed by the “invocation” of “tropes,” an “extremist’s backpack” means only one thing – suicide bomber.
What Dokoupil was saying was that Coates’ decision to report his own observed experience of discrimination in Israel/Palestine without reference to exculpatory context made his book into an incitement to terrorism.
That argument is monumentally stupid.
Reprimand or no reprimand Dokoupil wasn’t “exercising the mundane obligation of his profession” he was making a very public ass of himself by setting an absurd standard for criticism of Israel and he got dunked on by Mehdi Hassan among many others.
Since that dunking was richly deserved I don’t think it makes much sense to build your hand-wringing decline of the West thesis on top of it.
Was looking forward to reading this unti I realised it was the usual pro-Israel push from UnHerd. When a country has support from the MSM, and many of the biggest nations in the world, are they really part of the alternative? Love UnHerd but their pro-Israel stance is laughably biased. So much for nuanced and reasonable debate?