The Left is Dying Because it’s Turned Into a Bonfire of Vanities

I read today that koalas in Australia were begging human beings for water — fleeing a burning continent. Can you imagine that level of fear and suffering? That kind of abject terror and subjection? Isn’t that, too, a kind of genocide? That’s a picture above — of a firefighter and a koala, standing side by side, watching their worlds turn to embers. It’s an aching, heartbreaking snapshot of a troubled age.

Now I’m going to say something controversial, uh oh. And yet there’s the left…obsessed with whether a movie has the right racial representation…whom to attack today for not using the right pronoun…which comic book hero is properly intersectional…which celebrity to cancel…and so forth…while the planet is on fire…animals are dying off by the billions…the global economy falls apart…half the world lives in despair and fear…and fascism wrecks what’s left of democracy. What the? How did it come to this? Wait — maybe that last paragraph drove you crazy, you think I’m mean and horrible, and you’re wondering: come to what?

Hello, this is planet earth calling. This was the worst decade for the left since the 1930s. It was routed everywhere across the globe: from America to Britain to Europe to India to Brazil and beyond. Why did the left get shattered? Because it got wrapped up in — let me put this gently — narcissistic BS: identity politics, gender pronouns, political correctness, cancel culture, and so forth. That’s going to offend some of you. So be it. I think many of you need to grow up — badly. It’s not my opinion — it’s grim reality. The left is, like I noted…losing, badly…almost everywhere.

The very mark of modern liberalism is bourgeois self-absorption, another form of malignant individualism.

It shouldn’t take a genius to see a fatal mismatch between the modern left’s childish, self-absorbed, narcissistic priorities…and the age’s desperate, terrible needs. Mommy! I need my very own comic book superhero!! Mommy!!!!! Tell me how special I am!! Meanwhile…the planet’s burning and life on it is dying off. What the?

Hello, this is planet earth calling again. Do you think those desperate, terrified koalas give a damn about your self-absorption…which pronoun you can’t live without…which celebrity’s getting cancelled on Twitter today…how intersectional Captain America is? Which one do you think is more important — your fragile ego, or anyone and anything else’s…actual existence? Hint: if the answer is you…you are still a child, my friend. You are the reason the left lost the battle for the last decade. I’m sorry to say it. You must care about something larger and worthier than yourself to have any claim whatsoever to being on the left. And none of the above — identity politics, cancel culture, comic-book leftism — is caring about anything bigger than…yourself.

The left got routed this decade because it was so self-absorbed in narcissistic nonsense — twitter warz, attack mobs, groupthink, ideological conformity, college-level extremism — that it stopped having big ideas. Without big ideas, it stopped being relevant to the world. There was nothing for it, really, to change…beyond pronouns and comic book heroes. Sure, it changed those. But who cared, really? And so the great, enduring projects of the left — genuinely expanding and improving democracy, economies, societies, civilization — stalled and went into reverse. There they are…turning to dust, while the left preens in a narcissistic bonfire of the vanities.

I can’t overstate the lesson.

The left needs to get real, now, and start mattering to the world, future, history, and the planet — or else it goes on dying. Yes, really. It’s that simple. What do I mean? The left needs epic, bold, big ideas about it’s fundamental aspirations again. I mean “big ideas” in a precise way: a) global, b) foundational, c) status-quo shattering ideas — again — to transform all of the following. The global economy. Democracy. The nation state. Personhood. The quality of life. Dignity, meaning, and purpose. The key word is “transforming.” It means “a permanent state of change.” Those are the agendas the left needs in the 21st century.

If you think about that for even a second, an alarming fact quickly becomes clear. The left has precisely zero ideas for any of those agendas right about now, on that scale. Big ideas for the next global economy, ecology, democracy, for personhood, for the nation state, for dignity and purpose….are just nonexistent. It had them, once — after World War II, before World War I, and so on. Today — it has none. That is why it is irrelevant and impotent. It literally has nothing to offer a troubled world except the mentality of an insecure teenager.

You see, the left can’t go on pretending it doesn’t need to have big ideas. Why not? It’s work isn’t even half done. We don’t have anything like a fair global economy, a reasonable distribution of resources, a just allocation of power, sane societies, a world in which everyone lives in dignity, and so forth, all the big projects of the left. What we do have, instead, are fascists on the march — and those poor koalas fleeing a burning continent — and all that’s largely because the left gave up on its work without seeing it through. What the? So how can we change all that? How do we have big ideas again?

Let me give you an example. How should the left go about reinventing democracy?

Remember those koalas? Why can’t they…vote, too? Now, that might strike you as an outlandish fiction — good, it means you’re thinking — sit with me for a moment, and let’s think about it.

What if democracy included…the animals…oceans…rivers…reefs…forests? They’re all living things, too. Their future is very much at stake, too. So why aren’t they included in “our” decision-making? Ethically, morally, it’s impossible to see why not. Future generations will regard the exclusion of the rest of the planet from what we conveniently call democracy as something very much akin to slavery. Because when we say that all those living beings and ecosystems aren’t part of democracy, that is exactly what we’re saying: they’re the precise equivalent, morally and legally, of our slaves, whom we are free to exploit and abuse and discard.

But how would we go about including the animals, oceans, rivers, reefs, and forests in democracy? It’s not that complicated, really. We give them the right to vote — by proxy, if nothing else. Now, you’re right to say that they “can’t vote.” Or can they? It’s pretty easy to imagine how any sane koala would have voted over the last few decades, isn’t it? For less emissions, and more green investment. It’s pretty easy to see how the oceans would vote, too: for less plastic and less pollution and less fishing and so on, and, again more investment in them.

In all the cases above, these parties would simply do what we tend to do: vote for our own nourishment. Probably, they’d be a lot wiser than us. I doubt the koalas would vote to destroy our cities. I doubt the oceans would object to a reasonable amount of shipping. I doubt the reefs would mind us marveling at their beauty. And so on.

If you want to get technical, we could simply convene a group of hundreds or thousands experts from all these domains — zoology, oceanography, climate science, and so forth — and put the question to them: how would their new constituencies, animals, oceans, and so forth, vote, if they could. Give it some kind of official sounding name, like the Post-Human Democracy Consensus. We could expand that, and create whole new industries and jobs, devoted to answering that question — how would these parties participate in democracy, if they could?

Legally, to make that happen, we’d need to give oceans, reefs, rivers, and animals personhood. It’s something we should have done long ago. Part of the reason that we can genocide them with shrugs and cute tweets is that they are not legal persons at all, and we are. So they enjoy no protections, rights, guarantees, or privileges. Like I said, they are the modern-day equivalent of slaves. But they shouldn’t be. To change that, to give them personhood, is again a task that would create whole new industries and jobs, this time in politics, lobbying, law, finance, and insurance.

Now. Like I said — that might all strike you as an outlandish fantasy. So what? That’s the point. So was the idea that women could vote…that black people could vote…that anyone who wasn’t a property owning white man could vote…not so long ago. And today we have something just a little bit more like a true democracy.

Sure, doing something remotely like the above will take the work of maybe a century, at least half of one. That’s the point. Sure, it will take thousands, probably millions, of people, working together. Sure, it will take furious, heated battle. Absolutely, it will require whole new mindsets and skillsets. That’s what a politics capable of changing the world is. That’s what a true vision and agenda is. That’s what the “work” of now really is.

The left has no ideas left at this level: ideas about how to reinvent democracy, the global economy, power, politics …anything…beyond pronouns and whatnot. But those are the ideas that it needs, badly, if it’s to matter ever again. Let me continue with democracy as an example.

The project of building a true democracy is far from done — and it’s about way more than who plays what comic book hero or what celebrity gets cancelled today. Those are adolescent concerns, and that’s being generous. Where does democracy really need to go? Democracy just means self-governance. And we are not granting that right or privilege to the planet and life on it. We are acting like its masters and lords — not its equals, abusing life on it like our slaves. Democratically, we have a very, very long way to go, before we can regard ourselves as having anything like a genuine global democracy — which means that every living being is regarded with respect, has dignity, and can live a self-directed life. Unless we do that, the planet just goes on…dying…and probably takes us with it.

See my point a little bit? Let me make it clearer.

How come everything I just discussed with you…reinventing democracy…isn’t one of the left’s big ideas to champion for the next century? Note, I’m not saying my idea is the right or best or only one. (And sure, there are plenty of brave and smart people working at the edges of such notions. But they are largely unknown — precisely because the left isn’t interested.) I’m saying that the left doesn’t have ideas of that scale anymore because it’s not… interested in them. It doesn’t care about them. And that’s because it’s obsessed with narcissistic BS. I want my representation in graphic novels, mommy! I want you to call me a special name today!! Me, me, me, mommy!! Children. The future demands more from you than entitled, self-absorbed narcissism. It is not just about you. It is about all of us. In the most expansive sense we can imagine. That is where any wisdom about tomorrow really begins. Remember that pic above?

Let me say it again. The left doesn’t have any big ideas left because it isn’t interested in genuinely changing the world for the better, in big and bold ways, anymore. The left doesn’t have a single idea, in fact, at remotely the scale above: a) global b) transformational c) permanent d) systemic. If you doubt that, go ahead and ask yourself if you can name one. The only one remotely close is the Green New Deal, and even that’s temporary and national, not permanent and global.

So what is the weak, feeble left of today interested in? It’s only really interested in itself. That is what identity politics really is. I am interested in me, you don’t matter. But that is not really leftism. It is the opposite. It is tribalism. It is the clan and the bloodline. Only I matter, and my position in the hierarchy within my tribe, and my tribe’s position in the hierarchy of all tribes. But those are the foundational beliefs of the right. They lead directly to bitterness, conflict, violence, selfishness, conformity, arrogance, entitlement, and a preening sense of moral superiority — all, increasingly, sins easy to see on the left, now.

It’s one of this last decade’s great ironic tragedies that the left grew mesmerized by the right’s foundational ideas — my identity is all I am, all I care about, all I hope to be!! — and still doesn’t know it. And it’s a damning indictment of the left that this kind of thinking has left it incapable of caring about the world, the future, history, humanity, or life.

Imagine all those koalas for a moment. They could care more or less about every single thing the modern left thinks is vitally important: what you “identify” as, what your pronouns are, who you date, how you dress, who you’re attacking on Twitter today for not telling you you’re the most important and special person in the world, and so forth. So too could the rivers and oceans and reefs. So too could the billions of shivering, starving kids, living in despair and ruin. So, too, could the billions living without money, water, food, sanitation, or education. “Mommy!! Me me me!!” is not the basis for a working politics now — or ever!!

The left’s concerns stopped mattering to anyone but a tiny fringe because the truth is they became profoundly superficial, selfish, narrow, and self-entitled. It is a bonfire of the vanities — burning itself down. That, my friends, is reality. The rest…is BS. I’d say I’m sorry for the reality check, but I’m not. I expect a fatal narcissism and stupidity from the right. But I expect better — call me a fool — from the left.

—Umair
December 2019