I’ve been thinking a lot about why I have found myself on the outs with many of my liberal friends as they supported Bernie while I supported Hillary. After all, I’ve been a liberal all my life. I voted for Dukakis. I loved Howard Dean. I marched against the Iraq war. I canvassed for Obama. What am I missing here? Why am I not feeling the Bern and why do they hate Hillary so much?
Now that the primaries are over, it’s instructive to me to watch who some of these Bernie supporters have moved their support to and what their politics really are. And one thing I’ve noticed is that many of them have moved over to Gary Johnson.
I’m not going to hash out the many reasons why Gary Johnson is a bad candidate for any liberal. We should all know those by now. If you care about things like minority rights and money in politics, Johnson holds the opposite view from you about almost everything. So how can a person who wants Revolution against the oligarchy be supporting a candidate who wants to allow unlimited political spending by the rich? It’s easy. If your politics are “savvy” instead of “liberal”.
Being “savvy” is about knowing in your heart that the “game is rigged” and scoffing at “neoliberals” who still think incremental change works. If the game is rigged, then you don’t need to do any actual work to fix things because nothing you do matters. If the game is rigged you don’t need to vote in off-year elections. If the game is rigged, you don’t need to study policy. If the “establishment” is for something, you just know it’s corrupt and so you don’t need to spend time or money advocating for it. If the game is rigged, you’re better off voting in a libertarian who may burn it all down, but at least he’ll leave you alone and not be corrupt like the game riggers. Or maybe you vote for an anti-vaxxer like Jill Stein because at least she knows the game is rigged. Or maybe you vote Harambe because the game is rigged. What you don’t do is vote for the establishment lady who says she agrees with you on most things, but since the game is rigged, she’s obviously lying and so if she loses it doesn’t change anything.
Another Bernie supporting friend of mine complained today about East Carolina University offering classes to help student “cope” and gain “life skills”. He scoffed at the stupidity of coddling kids. Several friends chimed in their disdain for the idea.
But to me, this idea is classic liberalism. We see a problem, we try to fix it. Sure, there may be dumb reasons why kids don’t come equipped to handle college life or “adulting”. But so what? We’re liberals. We want to help those in need. We value education. We value teachers and their ability to enrich the lives of our children.
But it’s not savvy. Nope. It’s hopelessly naive. Savvy says that kids are on their own. They are in debt (because the game is rigged) and so they should buck up and grow up because no one is going to help them and they should get used to the idea.
So I’m not savvy. I don’t think the game rigged. I think the game is hard. It’s thankless. It doesn’t always win elections.
But I’m a liberal, so I do it anyway.