Jordan Chariton joins for a spirited talk on the fractured state of the post-Bernie left. Due Dissidence is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Bravo you two. For me this was a tough one to get through but very necessary. I thought while listening to it (I've thought this too about the presidential debates) that there should be a "no-interruption" rule, like "cut the mic after time" kind of thing. He put you both in a tough spot because he kept interrupting you. In any debate, this inevitably starts the "interruption escalation" in which the party who would prefer not to interrupt ends up having to do so, at least some of the time, because otherwise s/he/they won't get a word in edgewise, whereupon the party doing more of the interrupting, or doing it first, or doing it more first, interrupts more, and so on. This is a just an observation and not a criticism of how you ran the marathon. I'm not saying Due Dissidence should be the namby-pamby Munk Debates, which has a de facto no-interruption rule, but if I were doing the podcast gig then I wouldn't entirely ignore that model, either. I suspect you might disagree. That's fine too. I still got a lot out of this one.
When political arguments get contentious, we frequently hear it said, as Chariton said many times, perhaps as a way of turning down the heat between the agonists, that “we don’t all have to agree on everything” to move forward toward shared political goals. True enough. However, we do have to agree on basic principles and moral perceptions, for which certain important enough political phenomena or events, such as the Ukraine war, will furnish the necessary magnitude required for the instructive illumination of irreconcilable political differences.
For example, the very character of the Ukraine conflict unavoidably will entail that if, despite opposing Putin’s invasion, you also believe that NATO provoked Russia to the hilt, then you will not likely find sufficient common ground with someone who scoffs at the idea that NATO provoked Russia, and assigns responsibility for the war solely to Putin, to be able to work with that person toward ending the war. The disagreement is too fundamental to follow any moral or political logic under the sun. It’s better for the opposing parties in that case to simply acknowledge, perhaps after a certain good-faith attempt to see if each cannot persuade the other to see the matter differently, that they are political opponents (with more or less contempt for each other’s position, let’s face it), and take it from there. The analysis is similar with the question of DemExit, or under the banner of which party Cornell West should run, or whether he should run at all.
For whatever it may be worth, I do not think that Chariton’s ideas about Ukraine were so fundamentally different from any genuine leftist’s ideas that they should not be engaged - or, another way of putting it, that his ideas themselves were not on the left - although I also think he was slightly intellectually dishonest. He seemed to agree with the three prongs that Keaton proposed to end the war, but also seemed to acknowledge (at least backhandedly) that NATO provoked Putin, adding that Putin is a tyrant, etc. However, if I heard this correctly, he used quotation marks around the word provoked in a context (a tweet?) in which he was assessing the distribution of responsibility for the war, and he seemed to deliberately misinterpret Jimmy Dore’s comment that Putin “is not THE bad guy” as “Putin is not A bad guy”. Nonetheless, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I freely admit that I am totally ignorant of his journalism, which based on your praise of it seems to have some merit, and he’s obviously a smart, committed guy.
The larger point is that the left frequently is said to be "infighting" when it is actually "outfighting". What gets counted as "left" is not infrequently not left at all. Needless to say, the Democratic Party is not left, nor are its hangers on, and so on. And – again, needless to say - this is not just about labels. Labels, when used honestly, are shorthand for substantive positions based in principle and basic moral and political perceptions that, if those labels are to be applied correctly, will not describe anyone as left if, say, they discourage negotiations to end the Ukraine war, even if they happen to be the standard bearer of the Green Party.
One last observation. I do not think that engaging viewers and listeners through dramatic controversy is “sugar and fat”. On the contrary, it could not be more “broccoli”. Drama grabs us, justifiably, precisely when and because it exposes a conflict of substance, and when and because it reflects the stakes involved in determining which substance will prevail. Conflict over discourse, being the drama of politics, especially at a time such as ours when general political ideas and commitments are uncertain, is conflict over the perception of reality and the primary political values (apropos of identifying one's political opponents) that must be grasped accurately and pursued doggedly before any "more boring" social problems can be effectively addressed. This too often gets lost. If, for example, I say "DemExit", and you say "No way!", the significance of which course of action is pursued is obvious, as is the importance of talking about it in the context of the powerful narrative voices telling you to go with one course of action or the other. To be sure, this should be done with as much direct reference as possible to the boring “facts on the ground” of policy and local action (that’s the hard part), but it is not secondary, and there is nothing wrong with playing it up. It would be stupid not to.
Jordan Chariton is a moron. He made every logical fallacy in the book while attempting to argue with you guys. Bravo! for you not buying his bullshit. Jordon reminds me of an unfunny leftist version of Trump. He makes outlandish claims - lies profusely about his own record - and and has a really twisted sense of logic.
Bravo you two. For me this was a tough one to get through but very necessary. I thought while listening to it (I've thought this too about the presidential debates) that there should be a "no-interruption" rule, like "cut the mic after time" kind of thing. He put you both in a tough spot because he kept interrupting you. In any debate, this inevitably starts the "interruption escalation" in which the party who would prefer not to interrupt ends up having to do so, at least some of the time, because otherwise s/he/they won't get a word in edgewise, whereupon the party doing more of the interrupting, or doing it first, or doing it more first, interrupts more, and so on. This is a just an observation and not a criticism of how you ran the marathon. I'm not saying Due Dissidence should be the namby-pamby Munk Debates, which has a de facto no-interruption rule, but if I were doing the podcast gig then I wouldn't entirely ignore that model, either. I suspect you might disagree. That's fine too. I still got a lot out of this one.
When political arguments get contentious, we frequently hear it said, as Chariton said many times, perhaps as a way of turning down the heat between the agonists, that “we don’t all have to agree on everything” to move forward toward shared political goals. True enough. However, we do have to agree on basic principles and moral perceptions, for which certain important enough political phenomena or events, such as the Ukraine war, will furnish the necessary magnitude required for the instructive illumination of irreconcilable political differences.
For example, the very character of the Ukraine conflict unavoidably will entail that if, despite opposing Putin’s invasion, you also believe that NATO provoked Russia to the hilt, then you will not likely find sufficient common ground with someone who scoffs at the idea that NATO provoked Russia, and assigns responsibility for the war solely to Putin, to be able to work with that person toward ending the war. The disagreement is too fundamental to follow any moral or political logic under the sun. It’s better for the opposing parties in that case to simply acknowledge, perhaps after a certain good-faith attempt to see if each cannot persuade the other to see the matter differently, that they are political opponents (with more or less contempt for each other’s position, let’s face it), and take it from there. The analysis is similar with the question of DemExit, or under the banner of which party Cornell West should run, or whether he should run at all.
For whatever it may be worth, I do not think that Chariton’s ideas about Ukraine were so fundamentally different from any genuine leftist’s ideas that they should not be engaged - or, another way of putting it, that his ideas themselves were not on the left - although I also think he was slightly intellectually dishonest. He seemed to agree with the three prongs that Keaton proposed to end the war, but also seemed to acknowledge (at least backhandedly) that NATO provoked Putin, adding that Putin is a tyrant, etc. However, if I heard this correctly, he used quotation marks around the word provoked in a context (a tweet?) in which he was assessing the distribution of responsibility for the war, and he seemed to deliberately misinterpret Jimmy Dore’s comment that Putin “is not THE bad guy” as “Putin is not A bad guy”. Nonetheless, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I freely admit that I am totally ignorant of his journalism, which based on your praise of it seems to have some merit, and he’s obviously a smart, committed guy.
The larger point is that the left frequently is said to be "infighting" when it is actually "outfighting". What gets counted as "left" is not infrequently not left at all. Needless to say, the Democratic Party is not left, nor are its hangers on, and so on. And – again, needless to say - this is not just about labels. Labels, when used honestly, are shorthand for substantive positions based in principle and basic moral and political perceptions that, if those labels are to be applied correctly, will not describe anyone as left if, say, they discourage negotiations to end the Ukraine war, even if they happen to be the standard bearer of the Green Party.
One last observation. I do not think that engaging viewers and listeners through dramatic controversy is “sugar and fat”. On the contrary, it could not be more “broccoli”. Drama grabs us, justifiably, precisely when and because it exposes a conflict of substance, and when and because it reflects the stakes involved in determining which substance will prevail. Conflict over discourse, being the drama of politics, especially at a time such as ours when general political ideas and commitments are uncertain, is conflict over the perception of reality and the primary political values (apropos of identifying one's political opponents) that must be grasped accurately and pursued doggedly before any "more boring" social problems can be effectively addressed. This too often gets lost. If, for example, I say "DemExit", and you say "No way!", the significance of which course of action is pursued is obvious, as is the importance of talking about it in the context of the powerful narrative voices telling you to go with one course of action or the other. To be sure, this should be done with as much direct reference as possible to the boring “facts on the ground” of policy and local action (that’s the hard part), but it is not secondary, and there is nothing wrong with playing it up. It would be stupid not to.
Good show 👍
Jordan Chariton is a moron. He made every logical fallacy in the book while attempting to argue with you guys. Bravo! for you not buying his bullshit. Jordon reminds me of an unfunny leftist version of Trump. He makes outlandish claims - lies profusely about his own record - and and has a really twisted sense of logic.