Yes, I agree the Left in the US is out of touch with the problems of living in the rest of the world. In the US we seem to be out of touch with even the problems of living in the US, whether you're on the Left or the Right.
I saw an observation yesterday that reverence for "the market" in the US is so deeply unquestioned at this point, that even on the Left there is a reluctance to criticize any "personal choice", no matter how loony, irrelevant, or destructive such a choice might be. "Personal autonomy" is a rising value on the Left. Not solidarity. A proliferation of personal identities rather than a broadening of coalitions. Resistance to "the government" telling me (or anyone else) what to do. Certainly if somebody is consumed by questions about their own gender expression and coming out as a new identity to their family, friends, and employer, they're not thinking about the projected quadrupling of the population of Africa by 2100, or the problems of daily life in Manila.
Perhaps it has to do with the US being the world's hyperpower — we suffer no discipline. All of the costs of our global dominance are borne by other people and other species. So we get to fiddle around with how to best optimize our own personal happiness and expression while the world burns.
One of many ways this plays out is the pledge by President Biden not to increase taxes on anybody making under $400,000 per year, a pledge followed by the current "Inflation Reduction Act" (which does not actually reduce inflation). There is no sense of shared sacrifice on the Left in the US. Somebody else will pay for it, or we'll just borrow more.
I'm not sure how to lure people in the US out of their little bubbles, to take an approach of wider solidarity with others around the world.
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Date: 9 August 2022 09:01 am (UTC)I saw an observation yesterday that reverence for "the market" in the US is so deeply unquestioned at this point, that even on the Left there is a reluctance to criticize any "personal choice", no matter how loony, irrelevant, or destructive such a choice might be. "Personal autonomy" is a rising value on the Left. Not solidarity. A proliferation of personal identities rather than a broadening of coalitions. Resistance to "the government" telling me (or anyone else) what to do. Certainly if somebody is consumed by questions about their own gender expression and coming out as a new identity to their family, friends, and employer, they're not thinking about the projected quadrupling of the population of Africa by 2100, or the problems of daily life in Manila.
Perhaps it has to do with the US being the world's hyperpower — we suffer no discipline. All of the costs of our global dominance are borne by other people and other species. So we get to fiddle around with how to best optimize our own personal happiness and expression while the world burns.
One of many ways this plays out is the pledge by President Biden not to increase taxes on anybody making under $400,000 per year, a pledge followed by the current "Inflation Reduction Act" (which does not actually reduce inflation). There is no sense of shared sacrifice on the Left in the US. Somebody else will pay for it, or we'll just borrow more.
I'm not sure how to lure people in the US out of their little bubbles, to take an approach of wider solidarity with others around the world.