It's time for liberals to abandon MSNBC's 'sweet little lies'

At this point, I think it needs to be said that there’s a feeling among liberals and Democrats, and I would suggest especially affluent white liberals and Democrats, that liberal democracy isn’t really dead.

I would say there’s a deep sense of denial among these folks. They tell themselves that the dearly departed is much too dear to be truly departed. I would say there’s also a good deal of magical thinking in this denial, as if the criminals who shot their beloved will come to justice, and once they do, their beloved will rise again, good as new.

I think this needs to be said because liberals and Democrats keep telling themselves that democracy itself depends on the integrity of democratic institutions and democratic norms, and that without them, the country will manifest the founding fathers’ fear of despotism.

I think this needs to be said because the founding fathers’ fear of despotism is about to be made manifest, and that’s because the institutions and democratic norms that liberals and Democrats keep telling themselves that they hold so dear have failed absolutely.

It’s like the dead are not really dead.

Denial is natural, as is the impulse to seek comfort, and MSNBC and other outlets that are attuned to the tastes of privileged liberals are ready to capitalize on that impulse. I’m generalizing here, perhaps grossly, but even so, the tenor seems to be one of patronizing solace, as if to say: Don’t worry, the evil that’s coming won’t be too evil, and anyway, the evil that does come will be remedied by the next election.

MSNBC will offer these sweet little lies, because they know their audience, which is to say, they know that lots of liberals, especially privileged liberals, want to be told sweet little lies. These customers will demand to be treated like children, because their greatest fear is not the death of liberal democracy – it poses little danger to them, and anyway, they can deny it – but instead feeling bad about themselves.

That’s why, in the coming weeks and months, we will see on MSNBC and other places a preponderance of political coverage that’s about the breathtaking hypocrisy of Donald Trump and the GOP, about broken promises and about how any minute now, the American people are going to figure it all out. We will see this because their audiences want to see this and they want to see this, because seeing it will prove they are better than the Republicans, which, in the end, means they win.

This may seem like victory without fighting.

In reality, it’s decadence and moral decay.

Look, I’m sorry, but lots of liberals are soft. I don’t mean reasonable. I don’t mean complicated, practical or willing to compromise. I mean soft. I mean lots of liberals are motivated by self-regard, group-esteem and pleasure-seeking more than duty, sacrifice and the common good.

We saw it last summer. After Joe Biden’s poor debate performance, the Democratic Party stabbed in the back the best and most accomplished president of our lifetimes. Liberals could have rallied to push their man through to the finish, but chose instead to second-guess themselves.

We saw it again after the Democratic National Convention. It “was a joyful, inclusive reminder of what politics is supposed to feel like,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki as if fun were a required emotion in war by other means. I still don’t understand all the attention that was paid to “voter enthusiasm.” If liberals were not motivated by Donald Trump’s evil, I thought, nothing would motivate them. Turns out, I was right.

And we’re seeing it now. Many congressional Democrats seem to have lost the will to fight. They are not pursuing any changes to a horribly punitive new immigration law. Others are dressing up cowardice in the garb of “the people’s will.” Others still keep yak-yak-yakking about norms and institutions, as if they have not been totally corrupted. All that talk of higher-order things is looking more and more like appeasement, and that’s because, in the end, politics isn’t the point.

The point is feeling good about ourselves.

Lots of liberals are soft.

Liberals should recognize the stone-cold truth – that liberal democracy is dead. We had a chance to save it. We lost. It’s gone.

We are now entering a period in which fairness will be defined not by equity and justice but by who gets to do what to whom. Instead of being the instruments of liberty, the institutions of democracy will be the instruments of oppression. And there will likely be a new consensus in which it’s agreed: the in-group’s rights trump the out-group's freedom.

Kamala Harris campaigned on a message of “we’re not going back.”

But we are.

The country is going back to a time in American history in which democracy was not only illiberal but sometimes tyrannical. The next election won’t stop that, because the problem isn’t only Trump and the Republicans. It’s a mainstream liberalism that’s so mired in decadence and moral decay that it can’t or won’t acknowledge the war against it. It prefers fun and sweet little lies to the difficulty of political combat.

Soft liberalism had its day.

Time for the hard kind.

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