I think Bari Weiss’ new Tablet piece is an illustration of the kind of confusion a great many liberal Democrats feel these days.
For example, Weiss puts her finger squarely on the fact that leftist Democrats such as AOC are either anti-Semitic themselves or fully at the service of other anti-Semitic leftists. But after discussing that for a while, she reverts to reflexive Trump-hate [my emphasis]:
…[M]any smart, well-intentioned people are confused. Or rather: Looking for someone to explain why an emerging movement that purports to advance the ideals they have always supported—fairness, justice, righting historical wrongs—feels like it is doing the opposite.
There is also the X factor of Donald Trump, which is impossible to overstate. Understandable hostility toward him has prevented many Jews from seeing the problem on the other side. To even look away from the obscenity in the White House for a moment strikes many, as they have told me, as irresponsible or beside the point.
I share with the majority of American Jews’ disgust toward Trump and Trumpism, which has normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society. That truth doesn’t detract from another: There is another danger, this one from the left.
This way of thinking isn’t just an idiosyncrasy of Weiss’. It is typical of someone in the throes of a strong cognitive dissonance that he or she cannot easily resolve. She hates Trump, but hates the danger on the left as well. What to do?
In the second and third paragraphs of that excerpt, Weiss exhibits her Trump hatred. As is typical of the writing of Democrats, including others who think of themselves as old-style liberals, Weiss doesn’t seem to feel the need to give a single specific example of how Trump has demonstrated these terrible qualities she’s writing about. We are to take them on faith. Surely, we already know – the science, as they say, is settled. It’s a tautology that: (a) Trump is an “obscenity” (b) he is worthy of disgust (c) he has “normalized” bigotry and cruelty; and (d) that said normalization has “crippled” American society.
I think part of the reason Weiss says all of this is that she’s writing mostly for other Democrats who happen to be Jewish, although they’re not the only people who read Tablet. It’s telling that she says “I share” their supposed disgust for Trump; so she is saying “Hear me out, I’m one of you, not one of those dread Trump supporters.”
And it’s especially interesting to me that she says all of this despite the fact that the rest of her article is a lucid warning about the dangers of the far left and Critical Race Theory – which happens to actually be a huge and influential purveyor of “bigotry and cruelty” today, and to also be the force that has in fact “normalized” these things and is currently “crippling American society.”
Weiss follows up her warning about the danger of the left with this, which makes it clear she thinks the left is more dangerous than Trump, and that Biden would not be able to stop them:
And unlike Trump, this one has attained cultural dominance, capturing America’s elites and our most powerful institutions. In the event of a Biden victory, it is hard to imagine it meeting resistance.
So the only logical conclusion is to vote for Trump, right? After all, if the left is the bigger danger, and Biden won’t counter that danger, isn’t voting for Trump an obvious solution? But of course she can’t say that or even think it; she is focused on being able to fight “wokeness” from within the Democratic Party, and with Biden as president.
Good luck with that, Bari. You’ll need it.
Weiss follows that up with a recitation of liberal ideals. This is also interesting, because that list clearly tracks to the ideals of the right these days – only Weiss probably doesn’t know it.
She also (even after being booted off the NY Times because her type of liberalism no longer exists there) doesn’t seem to understand that she’s reciting ancient history, as far as the Democrats are concerned. It’s been a game of pretend for a long time, as the ostracism of Joe Lieberman many years ago should have made crystal clear:
[The ideals of America as a whole used to be] liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy…
…[T]his liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.
She adds:
American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.
I hate to tell Weiss, but adhering to that sort of “American liberalism” today makes her what’s known as “a conservative.” And I regret to inform her that the “new ideology” isn’t “vying to replace” that sort of liberalism among the Democrats. It did replace it quite some time ago. And the left has taken over nearly every cultural institution, including the press (as she obviously experienced at the Times).
So it’s late and getting later.
If Weiss and other old-fashioned liberal Democrats could take over that party, I would applaud them. But I don’t think there’s any chance of it happening, unless they are trounced in this election – and I’d give it only a very slim chance even if that were to happen.
The rest of Weiss’ rather long piece is quite good. It mostly describes things with which readers of this blog are very familiar, and which I’ll just summarize by saying that she discusses the philosophy and goals of the anti-racism movement and Critical Race Thoery, and how that plays out in society and also within the non-Orthodox Jewish community.
It’s pretty apparent that Weiss wrote the piece to appeal to those Jewish Democrats who can hear her and who might not know what’s been going on with the left and what it signifies. And that’s fine. But by demonizing Trump (which perhaps she must do, not only because she believes what she says but also because she thinks the readers to whom she’s appealing believe it, too), she is cutting off the only avenue to buy time for any kind of reversal of the dangerous and alarming trends on the left that she sees and describes so well.
Weiss does not see her own blind spot. Voting for Trump is a bridge too far and she cannot get there – although some people (such as Dave Rubin, for example) have. But I submit that, for now, it’s the sole option open to her and to other “liberal” Democrats.
And time’s a-wasting.
CLARIFICATION AND ADDENDUM:
I want to be very clear: the phenomenon that Weiss describes is neither specific to Jews nor limited to them. It is rife among virtually all liberal Democrats today. Weiss is primarily addressing Jews in her article, but Jews share her sentiments only insofar as they are liberals. American Jews trend liberal, particularly secular and Reform Jews, but Orthodox Jews vote majority Republican, and the more extreme Orthodox groups are more likely to vote Republican. The recent voting behavior of Jews in presidential elections has been at a ratio of a bit more than 2:1, Democrat/Republican.
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