Feature

Michael Davidow

By MICHAEL DAVIDOW, Radio Free New Hampshire

As November nears it represents our country's prime opportunity to adjust the direction established by Donald Trump. New members will join Congress and fresh governors will be elected. During the primaries leading to this event Zohran Mamdani's Democratic Socialists swept the board in New York City and succeeded in additional locations. Established Democrats are concerned that these nominees prove too radical to succeed in the general elections. That might hold true. However a stronger objection to them depends more on core values than on political calculation.

Throughout history socialists present themselves as practical thinkers. They remove the illusions from modern life. The authorities claim freedom but employment enslaves you. Employers assert liberty but the state directs you toward labor or confines you or enlists you in military service. Religious institutions promise freedom but defer true liberty until after life ends. Genuine freedom requires recognizing society's illusions and acknowledging the actual limitations imposed.

This claim to clear sight turns socialists into elitists as they view others as either selfish opportunists or misguided dreamers. While Mamdani's candidates reflect this mindset they refine it to the point of undermining it. They do not encourage voters to perceive our world in its full social and material intricacy. Instead they promote a view stripped of context cleansed by morality and shaped by theoretical requirements. This represents a hierarchical political outlook crafted by and for privileged academics featuring an inherent pretense of uplifting the people alongside an inherent aim of defeating opponents.

Their agenda assembles a collection of progressive slogans beneath the banner of an outlook called intersectionality which asserts links among diverse grievances. Gaza shares no inherent tie with transgender issues nor do transgender individuals demand the end of prisons yet intersectionality insists on the contrary and further declares that supporters cannot select among these causes. It demands total commitment from the Democratic Party's new allies and the presence of anti-Semitism within these positions receives little notice.

Perhaps victory at the polls will moderate this stance. Viewed broadly the ascent of New York's progressives simply reflects the familiar split in American politics between those who favor expanding resources and those who focus on claiming a larger share of existing ones.

That division once followed regional lines because easterners competed over fixed assets while westerners trusted that expansion could serve everyone but contemporary conditions have softened this contrast. Our nation stands fully developed now allowing an easterner to embrace growth and a westerner to adopt skepticism. This explains the reach of Mamdani's appeal from coast to coast. Yet his followers continue their deliberate work of separating and claiming rather than expanding and distributing.

They also challenge deeper patterns because faith in growth aligns less with the Republican Party than with longstanding Western traditions. Among major faiths only those rooted in Judaism advance a vision of divinely guided advancement. Instead of repeating cosmic patterns we mark distinct occasions that signal improvement such as beginnings releases arrivals and even endings. Anticipating the future with optimism forms a Judeo-Christian custom.

Science indicates that those who favor repeating patterns may hold the stronger position. Across immense scales our universe could fold back upon itself. The Big Bang might represent merely one among endless similar events. Yet in political terms societies built on repetition often remain unchanged. America embodies many qualities but stagnation has never defined it.

All that is solid melts into air wrote Marx. All that is holy is profaned and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. Viewed with clear eyes today's Democratic Socialists prove neither Democrats nor Socialists. They stand as Donald Trump's genuine successors an erratic intellectually inconsistent and animosity-driven movement aimed at harming others while advancing their own interests.

Davidow writes Radio Free New Hampshire for InDepthNH.org. He is also the author of Gate City Split Thirty and The Rocketdyne Commission three novels about politics and advertising which taken together form The Henry Bell Project The Book of Order and The Hunter of Talyashevka Chanukah Land can be found here. And his latest novel Interdiction can be found here.