Why I am a liberal

I've never been of the Right.

I grew up in the times of Ronnie Raygun. Greed was good. The world's financial centers were awash in newly-gained wealth from massive deregulation. It was also the time when you began to see more and more people living rough on the streets. The South Bronx was a blasted heath. "Trickle down" was pissing on those of us who weren't working on Wall Street.

I come from a strong union family. My sainted mother walked the picket lines a couple of times as a member of the ILGWU, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. When other Cuban-Americans were making their deadly deal with Reganites, my household was a firmly Democratic one. It is one of the many things for which I thank my parents. They fled Fidel Castro's dictatorship, but that didn't make them rabid fascists.

So I was always on the left side of things. Much more so during my younger years. Noam Chomsky? Give me all his books. Michael Parenti? Where is he speaking next near me? Pacifica Radio? Here's my donation. As a bit of rebellion, I even asked, "What was so bad about Che?"

My disillusion with the Left began with Noam Chomsky.

As I said, I scooped up all his work. But then I began to notice a few things. 

First, was his anti-Zionism. Now, I may have been of the Left, but as such I was a firm Zionist, as expressed through the socialist kibbutzim. And I was a Zionist because I grew up in the Vatican II Church, and was thoroughly taught of Catholicism's ancient and modern crimes against the Jewish people. I immersed myself in the history of the Holocaust, and knew that whatever the rights and wrongs, Jews needed a state of their own. They could not rely on the Western societies to protect them, societies in which they had lived as citizens, and then had abandoned them. His derision of "the Holocaust industry" was simply disgusting to me.

But it got worse. 

One of Chomsky's targets was the massacre of Indonesian Communists under the country's dictator Suharto. He came to power in 1967, displacing the independence leader Sukarno, who was seen by the military as too cozy with the Communists. By some estimates the military slaughtered 900,000 Indonesians in this purge. That is an awful fact, and worthy of condemnation. And yes, the United States covertly supported this massacre. It was the Cold War, and we were often not on the side of the angels.

If Chomsky had focused his attack on that crime, that would have gotten no argument from me. But he did an inexplicable rhetorical gambit. He compared the Indonesian killings to the Cambodian genocide. The Khmer Rouge came to power, in part, due to US actions in Southeast Asia. So there's a comparison to be made. But Chomsky's argument was not that both were a result of American Cold War politics. No. Instead, he downplayed the Cambodian genocide. He did this because that genocide was getting all the press in the United States, while the Indonesian massacres were ignored. He downplayed what was happening in Cambodia because it conflicted with his excoriation of the US, as this was being done by Communists. He questioned the numbers of deaths being reported, saying they were inflated. He acted as an apologist for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. He acted as nothing other than a Holocaust denier.

That was when my disenchantment with the Left began. And, in a way, I do have Chomsky to thank for it. Not only because of his vile stances; but because in his lectures he always said we had to think for ourselves. And I did. But I bet he didn't mean that I should discount him.

The fact is that the Left has as many issues as the Right, but not as much power. And by "Left", I don't mean the center-left. I don't mean progressives, by and large. I mean those people who value ideology over results. Who will burn it down if they can't get all they want. Who keep threatening to withhold their votes because normies like me won't bend the knee. Who call for accelerationism. Who think if things get bad enough, the Glorious Revolution will finally erupt. 

These people are of a kind with the Right. Against liberal democracy. Against pluralism. Against racial and gender justice if it conflicts with their goals. Bernie Sanders is tiresome not because he has some valid points to which he returns again and again, but because he holds on to those points as being superior to any other considerations. 

Why am I a liberal? Because I know that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Because I'd rather move the football and gain a down than punt after attempting a Hail Mary and failing. Because the community I serve doesn't need revolutionary fervor but decent human lives. I don't care about slogans, I don't care about chants, I don't care about drum circles. I'm the child of immigrants; if you don't give me results, why should I bother with you? Liberalism, imperfect as it is, is the best vehicle to achieve the things we want. Few revolutions have ever done so. Whether of Right or Left, they degenerate into Auschwitz and the Gulag Archipelago, or the Jacobin Terror.

I used to consider myself of the Left. But no longer. Not for many years. The Left as it exists today is as much a welter of sociopathy as the Right. Both have a hatred of American democracy, and democracy in general. Yes, I'm that liberal that both of them abhor. And I'm proud of that.

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