I think the left's embrace of identity politics in the 1960s and '70s was disastrous for the working class. It was very bad for the labor union movement, it was very bad for any number of economic issues. Which is not to say that there wasn't a place for the civil rights movement. Of course there was. But identity-based politics went from being a necessary thing to being something that started to preclude some of the economic and other policy efforts that needed to be undertaken.
And similarly on the right. It's not just a matter of a cynical manipulation of the public by going for hot-button issues. There really was a sense among many ordinary people in the 1960s that something had gone culturally wrong in the country. Crime rates were going up, promiscuity was going up. There were changes that people found weird or disorienting. Whether or not they were right or wrong, they were unfamiliar and new, and therefore alarming.
This set of emotional complexes was turned into the so-called culture war, to the detriment of anything that would reform our economy, our self-government, or our foreign policy. Those sort of complex issues have been thrown by the wayside in favor of identity politics.
Nader: I think one additional thing is that the more we go down the abstraction ladder, to where people live, work, and raise their families, the more convergence there is. So they may be divided over regulation of the auto industry, but when you say, "If you've got a defective car, don't you think it should be recalled, and if it isn't recalled voluntarily, don't you think there should be legal requirements?"
van Gelder: Fair enough, Ralph, but on the question of women, I wonder how much of the disorientation Daniel was talking about was because women were adopting a new role in society and also in the family. Because that gets very far down the level of abstraction to where people live.
There's a need for people of goodwill across the spectrum to recognize the quieter voices on the right that are trying to work on this.
Nader: Yeah, very much so. I mean, one is that there's a lag. There were patriarchal traditions, less in some of the cities and more in the rural areas. But there was a tradition that the woman stayed home and raised a family, and when the wave of women's rights hit in the late '60s and early '70s, that was a very jarring impact, especially on women who were at home and raising families.
van Gelder: There are some other kinds of things too that are very tangible and very measurable, like that young black men are 21 times as likely as white men to be shot and killed by police. And yet, I don't hear conservatives calling that out. And when disparaging language is used to refer to public figures who are people of color, or to people like Michael Brown, describing them as thugs, I don't hear people on the right saying, this is not the kind of society we want to have.
McCarthy: Well, it takes a lot of careful listening. The problem is that the loudest voices on the right, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, are the ones who are least likely to reflect on what's going on here. So I think good work is being overlooked simply because it doesn't have a megaphone.
There's a need for people of goodwill across the spectrum to recognize the quieter voices on the right that are trying to work on this, because otherwise they get ignored.
I know a lot of grassroots conservatives jump to conclusions when they see quite legitimate criticisms of police overreaction to the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and things like that. A lot of conservatives think we're going to be accused of racism even if we don't side with the police, or if we aren't enthusiastic enough about the protests.
And there are of course racists who, for the worst reasons possible, support all sorts of brutal policies. But the average conservative isn't like that; the average conservative is looking at these things as archetypal confrontations, as opposed to seriously looking at the specifics, and that allows a lot of confusion.
van Gelder: What will it take to get the populist right and left to actually get together and get some things done?
Nader: Well, I don't think it's going to happen just because 80 or 90 percent of the people, left-right, agree on a direction for the country. I think the corporatist control of both parties and much of the corporate media cuts off that convergence at the pass. So my proposal is to have intermediate civic institutions whose only goal is to further existing public opinion, left-right convergence, on issue after issue.
We now have an agreement between Cato and Heritage on the right, and Public Citizen and Common Cause against corporate welfare. They all put out reports years ago! But that's not their priority when they get up in the morning. They have other priorities: A. Responding to where their funding comes from, and B. Pursuing very serious disagreements between left and right that take priority day after day.
So I think we need to have exclusive citizen nonprofit advocacy groups just focused on furthering left-right convergence policies that they make operational.
van Gelder: Dan, do you think this could work?
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