A Town Hall On Capitol Hill
The 2024 Edition
Part 1: Attacking our Nihilism
“Today we’re going to play a short game,” my professor spoke to my class. It was early in the school year, this past September. He wanted to ask us a question.
Is this world going to be better in the next 20 years?
He told us to step to either side of the room, depending on whether we thought yes, or no.
I stood on the side that said yes, along with one other. The entire rest of the class stood on the side that said no. One of my friends looked at me and laughed. She thought I was joking. Other students and colleagues of mine were shaking their heads. My professor raised his eyebrow and asked me why I thought the world would be better.
***
Everyone thinks the world is burning. Everyone talks about how these are trying times, and that we’ve never been so divided, so violent, there’s never been so much death, or hate, etc. I told him and my class this: The world has never been more peaceful, and people healthier, wealthier, more literate, and more prosperous.
We talk about how the world sucks now? I would have been gassed to death had I been born 80 years earlier in the wrong part of the world, just for existing. A couple decades before that, I would’ve been lynched had I been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Medieval times? Probably burned at the stake, and the rest of my village alongside it.
(As a disclaimer, I only used these examples simply because I am Jewish, these same examples could be used for pretty much anyone. You could be some white German man and crucified because you happened to be a Protestant Lutheran in Catholic Bavaria.)
We tout the civility and supposed superiority of the ancient Greeks and Romans, while it was customary for them to loot cities they captured, then kill every man, sexually assault every woman, and enslave every child. And that was against their fellow Greeks and Romans, people they viewed as civilized. Wonder how they treated people they viewed as Barbarians?
Nowadays, in almost every corner of the world, the child mortality rate has dropped to practical nonexistence, and war is something so alien that many probably don’t know what ‘conscription’ even means.
(Another disclaimer, people can say that the Russo-Ukrainian or the Gaza war prove this false, but I think that sentiment only solidifies my claim. Do you want to know what the deadliest war of the 21st century has been at the time of writing? Neither of them. It actually was the recent civil war in Ethiopia, where genocide was carried out against ethnic Tigrayans by ethnic Amhara militias and Ethiopian Government Forces, the leader of whom, President Abiy Ahmed, is a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. War is so alien that you probably aren’t even aware of the ones going on. Wanna know how you likely know nothing about them? I’ll come back to that later…)
***
My professor nodded, and then turned to the other side of the room. He asked them why they thought it was going to get worse. Some students mentioned something about Donald Trump and how he was probably going to win in 2024. Other students talked about injustices throughout the world, but mostly ones in the United States.
(A third disclaimer, sorry, this is not meant to minimize any sort of struggle anyone has now, my statement was simply in regards to my answer to the question, that yes the world will be better in 20 years than it is now)
I’ve long been frustrated by the fact that so many people now love to talk about how much the world sucks, despite the blatant fact that there actually has never been, in our entire known history, a better era to live in.
This nihilism I believe is incredibly dangerous, not least because it makes society miserable, but also because it gives us the idea that this world is not worth defending. I believe our world is worth defending— against authoritarians, against hate, and against those who wish to destroy it in any other way.
What struck me was when one of them raised their hands, and said that he thought the world overall would be better than now, just not in the next 20 years. After he said that, most of the rest of them nodded their heads and agreed.
How interesting, I thought, because he had basically just confirmed what I was saying, but just in a way that was more palatable for the rest of the students to agree with. Politicians do this all the time. It was okay though, I felt like I was at least getting somewhere.
Part 2: How White Men Co-Opt American Politics
I originally came to university because I wanted to hear about different perspectives on political ideas, and was excited to see what new things people could teach me. It turned out a lot of these “diverse and inclusive ideas” were just all the same ideas stated in a different way.
My college is very left-wing, but also very white. I wasn’t surprised then, at how many leftist white men there were, but I was surprised at the hypocrisy they were engaging in, which they apparently weren’t aware of at all.
They preached about saving the working class American ethnic minorities from oppression, or women from gender discrimination, or LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, and how “they are aware of their privilege”, and blah. Blah. Blah.
And every time I heard the same thing in every class by some other white kid, it got me more and more upset. It was not only because it was all the same blanket statement that had less and less meaning the more it was said, but also because they, by definition, are literally the only ones who don’t get it— who shouldn’t be talking.
*Ironic though, that here I am as a straight white man, writing about this huh? You are right!
So, let me talk about this phenomenon through my experience as a cis straight white man.
Being a straight white man is surprisingly complex, not hard, but complex. If you are literally anyone else, of any different race, gender identity, or sexual preference, you have someone to unite against— cis straight white men. In other words, me. Given historical situations, in which there are a lot, I understand why.
This does affect straight white men psychologically though. It gives them, from what I’ve seen, a few main choices of how to be politically:
Completely dissociate. Say things like, “I’m not political, I’m a humanitarian,” or talk about how they don’t really know much about politics so they can’t really get into it, or maybe say “the two sides should just compromise” bullshit. These are (very loosely speaking) your Libertarians, Centrists, Neoliberals, and corporate center right people. Not necessarily complacent, just not politically charged in the way the other two are.
Become the Enemy. I’m going to be honest here, it’s not hard to become the bad guy when everyone says you’re the bad guy. If you’re a white man who struggles socially, for example, it's easy to blame ‘wokeism’ as a potential source of these problems. Young versions of these guys like to think of themselves as Alphas and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Old versions of these guys can’t turn their TV channel off of Fox News because they don’t understand how to physically work the remote.
Become the Savior. These are the people who are often the loudest in academic settings I’ve been in. The line of reasoning here is that they feel guilty for the injustices inflicted on others, and so they feel like it’s their duty to put an end to it. These guys will say they love female authors yet have only read Joan Didion and JK Rowling. They’re like the “nice guys” who hold open a door for someone and then wonder why that alone didn’t get them laid.
There’s something that unites all three of these things— they are all completely human responses. Before I talk about it any more, it's really important to recognize that. Another thing to note is that obviously these aren’t the only three ways of thinking, but in my experience they have been the primary archetypes.
I will say this: I believe that the third option (Become the Savior) is the most dangerous. Why?
Someone who dissociates leaves the floor open to others. If they don’t want to talk, there’s probably someone else who will. By dissociating you aren’t helping anything, but you aren’t going out of your way to actively hurt anything either.
Becoming the enemy is dangerous, yes, but these white republican men who love the America First ideas of isolation and Donald Trump, are fully aware that they are acting in their best interest. The more extreme of them will never openly admit it, but at the very least they know they actively like the idea of policy putting down others, with the more moderate of them voting simply with their own farm or family in mind.
For the more moderate of them, with no other experience to compare it to, it’d be hard to change your mind about someone who openly campaigns about helping you, praising you, and says that their policy will make your life better.
For the more extreme, those who are increasingly reactionary and want to ‘Make America Great Again’, these people are likely disillusioned on a personal level as a result of feeling like they have little or no personal respect, and aren’t very loved by wider society. The human response to not feeling loved or respected is to seek power. (Think of many white working class people calling themselves “The Forgotten America,” for example.)
Then there is The Savior. Often they are white liberal and leftist men, who seek change for the better. This doesn’t sound bad at all, but there is a catch. The savior feels a sense of righteousness in their goals, and so feel like they deserve special treatment because they went against the grain and voted seemingly out of their interest.
Two things make this a very big issue. The first is their sense of self-righteousness, which makes them truly believe that their opponents are not just people they disagree with, but morally in the wrong. Because they view their opponents as evil and inhuman, any attack on them is justified.
Expect a lot more political violence to come out of young white leftist men. Just as much as those from the extreme right.
A second thing is their outright hypocrisy. They claim to be voting out of their interest or the good of others, but as a white man, I know that being a leftist is actively in the white man’s interest too. This is because one can use the benefits of being a white man in American society to co-opt leftist movements while shedding the guilt of those privileges simultaneously. They’re always talking constantly, saying the same few things and expecting people to fawn over them because they are “good white” and somehow not a N@zi.
And who is often in charge of left wing movements? Usually an old white man. In the US it was Bernie Sanders, in Britain its Keir Starmer, France its Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Canada bucks the trend by having a young white man named Justin in charge instead. Good on you Mr. Trudeau. Of course there are exceptions, like in Mexico with Claudia Scheinbaum, although it should be noted that the leader of her party is still Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the previous president and resident old man.
(Most right wing movements in Europe, for example, are actually led by women and people of color. Rishi Sunak of the British Conservative Party, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Alice Weidel in Germany, and many such others. They do it to make themselves more appealing, a purposeful tactical decision to cleanse right-wing white men of their own form of guilt too, but in this case it's of voting for these parties)
In spite of all of that, the biggest problem of left-wing righteousness is the idea that they have all the answers. That is incredibly dangerous. They point out problems with our nation, and then simply say that if a leftist were elected, somehow everything would be magically fixed. Our country would become so much better and all corruption would be attacked and dealt with so the workers can march in the streets hand-in-hand.
Like I stated in my first piece I’ve written on Substack: Anything that is simple is extreme because it ignores the complexities and nuances of reality.
This kind of thinking didn’t come out of nowhere though, it has been actively encouraged by academics and intellectuals, whose ideas are seen as worth more than others. They make some on the left believe that they, solely, are on the side of truth; the side of solution.
Part 3: Be Conscious of Academia
Academia claims that it has all of the answers. This is because people tend to favor those who shout things confidently, who have shiny degrees and gone to prestigious institutions, over those who don't, regardless of whether what they are saying is actually smart or not.
People also naturally like authority. If Democrats and Leftists are baffled as to how so many Republicans want dictatorship, I’d say look no further than the technocratic circles that already dominate— who’s kids then get admitted to Ivy League institutions through Legacy, and continue the family dynasty. We already have blind respect for authority simply because they are “experts” with a PhD, and while many are credible, their resumé alone shouldn’t be what gets us to trust them.
The Bush family is one of these families, and George W. Bush, for example, went to Yale for his undergraduate years, followed by Harvard Business. Did I mention he had a GPA of about 2.35?
“I’m no economer, but something doesn’t seem entirely fair here”.
I’m not saying that all experts and those who are highly educated are stupid and should be ignored, but our near blind following of those who are deemed educated highlights the very human tendency to want to follow a leader.
According to Robert Reich in an article from the Guardian, “Republicans elected to the Senate over the last decade are more likely than their Democratic counterparts to have attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Stanford.”
Note how I literally just quoted an academic, Robert Reich, and you likely immediately believed it. Gotcha! (The statistic is correct though I just wanted to mention that irony)
I also mentioned this statistic to show that not all Academics are left-wing either. So how does it feel Republicans, to know that the “liberal brainwashing” is making your politicians?
But I will say that colleges, universities, and other forms of higher education can be very politicized.
On my first day of college, half of my professors, on day one, immediately started with having us discuss left wing political thought, and one of them assigned an excerpt from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto before passing out the syllabus. In that moment, I could see where all the Republican dog whistling of college liberal brainwashing came from.
Before people rebuke this by saying I’m studying Political Science so that’s to be expected, all of those classes I mentioned were my liberal arts required courses, not my political science ones. My political science courses have actually been some of my least politically partisan classes thus far.
(My school isn’t trying to convert me into a Communist, the administration itself is actually very business oriented with their systematic buyups of the Boston Theatre District, and I’ll be honest they aren’t very popular with the average student. Also, my school is much more left leaning culturally than the average university, so most professors are probably not as into Marx as my professors are.)
But there is something to be said of a pattern among many professors and academics, so why are they so left-wing?
I believe it's a mix of different things. Many Capitalists and Libertarians will say it’s because they are drawn to utopian visions which closely align to socialist principles. They are so used to their ideas being treated as better because they have a degree, that eventually they start to believe that they themselves are the ones who would be the best leaders. Large technocratic government works well with a socialist system, and as a result many Academics lean left.
While I’m sure there is a little bit of truth to this, I actually think it's much simpler. To put it bluntly, Academics and Intellectuals don’t get paid very much. This is a big deal, because there’s a massive contrast in being worshiped by many as experts, while at the same time being paid less than a wide range of other jobs less respected. It makes them feel like they are deserving of more. I personally think they are too.
What this culminates in, I believe, is the fact that professors and thinkers lean left only because it is actively in their interest to do so.
Just a thought experiment— if these people were paid hundreds of thousands if not millions a year, how likely is it, do you think, that they’d still support higher taxes on the rich, as well as other socialist principles?
Academics are humans, they still often vote and act with their best interests in mind, just like most others, so we as a society need to be aware of the fact that they aren’t perfect. Not all academics or experts are always correct, and they don’t always have the answers, even if they say they do.
And depending on which Academic is talking, the policies they promote and the perceived elite classes they critique often vary.
Part 4: So Who Are the Elites?
Republicans and Democrats alike complain about their respective perceived elite class that dominates our nation and the world. Who these elites are though, contrasts between the two of them.
Progressive Democrats claim them to be wealthy business owners of large corporations. This includes some of the most powerful men in the world, like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, both of which happen to be right leaning politically.
Republicans and Rightists more often consider cultural institutions to be of the elite, like Academia and Media, that are paid off by wealthy corporate sponsors like big Pharmaceutical and Tech companies. People they especially despise are wealthy media and tech moguls, as well as billionaire investors. Billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, and others, are included.
(In this way, their reluctance and sometimes outright refusal of covid vaccinations can make sense, since pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer were already widely distrusted by Trumpist circles)
The kicker here is that everyone is right. All of these people and companies exercise an unhealthy amount of power, and should be more regulated in terms of taxation, who they are allowed to sponsor, and just how much they can invest in and how many sectors they can grow their companies into.
For those wondering why Republicans like to target certain wealthy people like Bill Gates and George Soros, it simply comes down to the fact that Bill Gates and George Soros support Democratic policy. They largely ignore those like Elon Musk because he supports Republican policy.
For Democrats, Elites are targeted slightly differently. Although they largely hold wealthy individuals accountable, most moderate Democrats, and even some progressive ones, fail to truly understand the power of conglomerates that are beyond the control of just one person. The biggest example of this is the media.
Many perceived left-wing media outlets have inherent biases that go beyond specific party lines. CNN for example, is sponsored by health insurance companies, and if you watch closely you will never see this outlet openly support the abolition of private health insurance. It’s also why their coverage of Bernie Sanders was very limited. They instead favored support of more centrist and center right democrats who believe that health insurance should still remain a mostly private venture.
On this issue, I fully agree with Leftists and Democratic Socialists, who criticize these news outlets for this biased journalism, and it's why many truly leftist news sources are often independent, since it’s against the interest of a sponsor to fund them.
MAGA Republicans criticize the media too, and they're pretty well known for it. The reason why I don’t mention them is because they need to be aware of their double-standard in the right-wing media outlets they’ve created. They are extremely biased, much more so than mainstream media, and still accept sponsors from private donors. Because of this, their attacks on media conglomerates I take with little credibility.
Do you remember when I was talking about the Ethiopian civil war, and why it wasn’t documented or discussed in party politics? Well, neither Republicans nor Democrats had a real stance on who to support or really cared who won, so why mention it?
The lives lost in Gaza and Ukraine both fall along some sort of American political line, so the media deems they are worth discussing. Gaza is especially contentious, so news outlets make a lot of money reporting on it.
These people deserve assistance, but it pains me that leftist Americans can obsess over these conflicts and throw millions of dollars in support, march in the streets, and talk about it daily, while simultaneously ignoring:
Genocide against Tigrayans in Ethiopia by the Ethiopian Government and Fano
Genocide against both Dinka and Nuer, as well as ethnic minorities in South Sudan
Genocide against Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar by the Government’s “People’s Defense Force”
Genocide against Uyghurs in China by the CCP
Genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the hands of the Tutsi M23 militia
And much more, including extreme gang violence in Haiti, mass displacement of Armenians at the hand of Azerbaijan, mass deportation of millions of Afghan refugees by Pakistan, discriminatory violence against Muslims in India, and military provocation against Guayana by Venezuela.
That's just off the top of my head.
All of it is happening right now, or has happened within the past few years.
So I fully understand when people complain about the media, and its lack of coverage of world events. I fully understand the anger many feel about liberal left hypocrisy, or right wing self-centered America First policy.
Who we see are as the elites, which issues we think are worthy of fixing, and what we see as right and wrong, falls alongside partisan party politics, not truth. Until we as a society can understand this and work to increase equality and equity through indiscriminate policy, the American elitist and oligarchic circles will remain.
Injustice will remain.
Part 5: What Does This Mean for November and Beyond?
Humans have always found it easier to find the darkness over the light. It's a survival instinct, as we are biologically evolved to find what can kill us before what can feed us. As the presidential election draws closer, I’ve heard plenty of people throwing their hands in the air and giving up.
Please. I beg you not to.
Two things about this presidential election:
I am one of the only people I know who thinks Donald Trump will lose the election. Take this with a grain of salt, but that’s what I believe. If I’m wrong I’m sorry. I only think this because Donald Trump has become inherently divisive, and division doesn't win elections. Unity does.
Donald Trump didn’t win in 2016 because he divided America. He won because he unified a populist movement, as an outsider, against the corporate duopoly of neoliberal Democrats and Republicans.
Another thing to note is that people have to understand and accept the fact that they, and others, will almost always vote in their interest, or at least their perceived interest.
One of the first things I’ve learned as a Political Science major is the art of framing, and how you can make one policy envelope as many different interests as possible. That kind of thinking exists for a reason. You can’t change the fact that people will vote in their own interest, but you can help them find where their interests align. That’s the goal of Democracy, and its greatest strength.
And for far beyond in the years to come:
The world isn’t perfect, but it’s far from being the worst. It’s okay to say that you enjoy your life, and okay to think that you have hope for the future. People are so afraid to admit that they think things will get better, because believing that somehow discounts the issues that are happening in our present.
It doesn’t.
Spread hope to those around you, and make them believe that this world is worth defending.
Because like what happened in my class many months ago, all it takes is for one student on the other side of the classroom to say that maybe things will improve. The others will nod and realize it's okay to think that too.
And they’ll vote for what they believe in, because once they feel our world is worth defending, they will strive to make it better.
Showing up matters, even when you don’t feel like it does. It's my first election, and I hope to inspire more to share their voice too.
Find hope where others feel hopelessness.
Believe in that hope for the future.
Make the future you believe in.
And if you haven’t registered to vote yet please do so here.
Archer Sage, you are exactly that, sage at an age when most are not. this was brilliant, I wish the world could reas this and think on your words.
Thank you, Archer. This is what we need right now. The way you analyze from all sides so brilliantly and factually, seeing the big picture truthfully and without emotion, is incredible. I love you.