#20 - Is there progressive patriotism?

Speaker 0 00:00:01 What water America, to me, Speaker 1 00:00:25 We're greeting friends to stick flags together with Draka we're back with another episode of our podcast talking strategy, making history. And it's the day after July 4th, that we're meeting together. And the reason we got together today was precisely to reflect on the way in which July 4th triggers some thoughts in both of us about what's the relationship between America and left wing politics. Socialism that's, that's the, that's the question for tonight? And it's an interesting question because in the mainstream of American culture, the left is depicted as unpatriotic against America. Not really loving America, even by mainstream media will tend to have that. And even maybe people on the left tend to have that view. And I I've always thought that was wrong and paradoxical because I was raised in, in a communist cultural background in which, uh, the idea of patriotism was part of my upbringing, a certain kind of patriotism and the song we excerpted right at the beginning, Paul ropes and singing, what is America to me, that song I've known since I was born. Speaker 1 00:01:48 And, uh, that question has been in my mind because in, in a way of that song, but it isn't just that song. Think about Woody Guthrie. This land is your land. He wanted to make an Anthem that would answer the finality of God, bless America. And that would be sung in the schools. He wanted kids to learn his song and America, the beautiful, I discovered not that long ago, the, the poet who wrote that Catherine Lee Bates, first of all, she was a lesbian. She lived, uh, with her life partner. She was a history teacher at a women's college, and they lived together for many decades, but that poem America, the beautiful appears in a collection of her poems that were anti-imperialist. And then you look at the statue of Liberty and on the base is the, give me your tired, your poor, your huddle, masses, yearning to breathe free written by Emma Lazarus, who was a correspondent with Frederick Engels. Speaker 1 00:02:52 She was, she was that far gone in terms of her interest in what was happening in European, you know, Marxism one could go on and on Peter Dreier and I wrote a piece, that's gotten a lot of circulation with the, the sort of keywords for that piece of progressive patriotism. And that phrase now gets around a lot. And I, and maybe before we get too far, I just want to tell people who are listening to this. There's a, there's a Spotify playlist I created called progressive patriotism. And it's got a lot of examples of what I'm talking about, uh, right here for your, uh, listening pleasure, including the great speech by Frederick Douglas. What is July 4th to the slave, uh, which is a tremendous blast at, uh, white complacency and hypocrisy covering up the crime of slavery with the myth of American freedom. And yet even in that speech, Douglas does what, the kind of thing that I was raised with, which is even within that context of, in slave slavery, having built this country, there are elements in our declaration of independence, even the constitution, other elements of our culture, that foster a very different set of values that actually are, are radical and revolutionary under certain kinds of perceptions and usages. Speaker 1 00:04:28 So I've sort of constructed a lot of my own political practice and, and values around to some extent those ideas. But I have to make a confession when Trump was elected. I started to think, how did this happen? Because I've lived through the McCarthy period. I've lived through very dark times in this country, my own life, but McCarthy wasn't elected president by the American people. And Trump was chosen by almost half of the voters to be the president. So I start to think, how, how do, how do I come to grips with this? And I have the horrifying and, and you, you, you might be surprised the rocket that it came so late, like I'm 80 years old. And I have the realization and the realization goes like this pictures of people being lynched in the south, always show crowds of people, watching the lynching, smiling and happy at the site. Speaker 1 00:05:32 And I thought, wait a second. That's part of America, I've never been willing to fully face it. Those people smiling at the lynching, they've had children, millions of children. Um, and so maybe it's more correct to really understand the duality of America. This is not the bastion. We know that it's not the bastion of freedom. It was built on genocide and slavery, but even the, um, elements of, uh, American political history that radicals in the past have taken as good signs like the, a lot of the constitution, for example, the declaration. So the decoration of independence was written by Jefferson and the Marxist school that the communist party ran in New York was called the Jefferson school. Well, they wouldn't be able to call that today because now we know more, so much more about willing to face that Jefferson held slaves as you, uh, mm-hmm, <affirmative> almost half the people who signed the decoration independence. Speaker 1 00:06:42 So, uh, that contradiction is more in my mind these days than, than this sort of embracing view that I was raised with. Uh, but I'm not willing to give up part of that embracing view because I think we can build on it. And I guess part of what sustains me is realizing that so many significant cultural figures that shape what Americans think is our heritage were anti, the empire were anti-slavery were in favor of justice and represented that whether you're thinking of Walt Whitman or Frederick Douglas or mark twang for that matter, uh, as well as all the songwriters that I celebrate in, in that article on progressive patriotism. So, um, I don't know what political prac there, a lot of things we could say about what kind of political practice derives from, or would be contradictory to the kind of idea that I'm talking about. Speaker 1 00:07:51 But a lot of people yesterday were writing. I noticed articles left the left, should reclaim the flag, the left should reclaim patriotism. And I guess I'm speaking from that point of view, uh, to let the right wink embrace, you know, cover themselves with a flag and, uh, is, has always been criminal in a way. Uh, and they do it precisely to hide their crimes. Uh, that is why, uh, that people wrap themselves in the American flag. And that's always been the case, but we don't wanna wrap ourselves in the flag. We don't even wanna worship the flag. The flag is just a piece of fabric, but the idea that embodied in the American experience are some values, some practices, uh, that that can be part of, you know, an alternative future, a non-capitalist future might be remarkable to think. Um, maybe we can talk today, uh, a little bit as we go forward. Are there actual socialist, uh, elements in American history that people need to rediscover and, and foreground as we try to search for a different future for America? Speaker 2 00:09:09 So let me start, uh, I respond just kind of quickly to the, the first thing that you were talking about and the fact that, you know, the, the progressive patriotic narrative and tradition, um, that you were raised in. And, um, you know, that, that I've, I, I also would embrace and, um, you know, was raised around a version of that. It's hard to reconcile that with, um, in a, in a particular moment where the, the, the, the patriotic right wing or the nationalist right wing is so, you know, aggressive and egregious and dangerous. Um, and, and simultaneously, you know, there's a very good, healthy, long overdue reawakening of, you know, consciousness and discussion about the, the, you know, critical voices about American history and like, you know, stuff that, uh, generations of scholars and educators and, you know, cultural folks writers and so forth that, you know, worked on, uh, that's been mainstreamed in our schools like, Hey, well, let's, let's have a real conversation about slavery and not give kids like coloring books for, with like happy slaves and like make the watermelon red and, you know, well, you know, it is like, you know, finally that was overthrown and we've had generations of kids now, um, raised, um, at least in parts of the country with a much more accurate view of, of American history. Speaker 2 00:10:46 So, and so we're at that moment where that's happening in the culture. So one thing that I, I wanted to get your take on Dick and, and like that, um, you know, it seems to me was a kind of indicative incident of exactly this tension, just the fight in San Francisco over, uh, the mural at Washington, George Washington high school. Um, and for folks who aren't familiar with that, and, and like, I'm not asking you to take sides on this necessarily Dick and I don't know where I, it's a very, it's what they call authority issue. Um, but, uh, but for, for folks, not from California, maybe weren't following this, um, at, uh, a public school in, uh, San Francisco, uh, there's a, a mural that was painted in the thirties, uh, as part of the, uh, federal governments, you know, new deal, era investment in public arts as a, as a jobs creation program and a revitalization program, et cetera, um, was painted by a Russian art artist with like lefty leanings, um, uh, Russian ire immigrant, uh, and, you know, it's like one of these EPA era, like, I don't know what you call, I'm not an art history historian, but, you know, it's sort of like American version of, uh, socialist, realist, art, you know, like what workers and people being stand-ins for tides of history and so forth, great stuff. Speaker 2 00:12:11 And it's, so it's a, it's a mural depicting various stages in American history. Um, and particularly the life of George Washington. And, you know, it mainly depicts George Washington as a hero, um, kind of, you know, emphasizing the, the democracy building and the, you know, the, the break with old traditions and so forth. But then there's, there's a, a portion of the mural that depicts like, like white settlers walking over the dead bodies of native Americans, which is, you know, it, doesn't my reading at least is it's not celebrating that by any means. In fact, it's a sort of rare depiction in public art. That's like, Hey, um, <laugh>, you know, Hey America, you, you walked over some people who you murdered in order to like, do your things. So, um, but over the years that, uh, mural has become controversial with various groups of folks, um, including students, the makeup, the racial and cultural makeup of the student body has changed significantly. Speaker 2 00:13:23 It's far more, uh, I think it's majority minority now. Um, and there's different consciousness at least among the politicized students there. Um, so it became a political touchstone. The, the school board voted to remove the mural and apparently like, there's no way to preserve it or there's something. So it was gonna, I think, mean a destruction of the mural. I'm sure people will correct us. But then as part of the consequences of the, the recall, the successful recall of the San Francisco school board, um, that decision has now been reversed and they're going to preserve the mural. So I, again, without going into the back and forth on the specifics of the, the issue of the mural, I guess two questions, one is the story that you were raised in this left, uh, popular front kind of, you know, patriotism. It's not, it seems, you know, if we can use that mural as a symbol, it's not like it was, uh, ignorant or uncaring about the facts, the harsh facts of Amer America's past as a country, or ni necessarily naive about it, but at the same time, what, why, why do you think there's this clash with the sort of consciousness today or consciousness at other moments in American history? Speaker 2 00:14:42 Like what, what is insufficient about that kind of patriotism maybe that makes it like not, you know, always sustainable or always interesting to people? Speaker 1 00:14:53 Well, part of what may what's insufficient is in fact, because a lot of the efforts to, uh, artistically express this patriotism, um, did not deal directly. And honestly, with the darkest, uh, things, for example, there's a, there's a, another Paul ropes in performance called the ballad for Americans. It's a 10 minute pop Canata, uh, about the whole history of America. And there is some dark stuff in there about, um, about slavery and about, and about the industrial revolution and so forth. But Earl Robinson, who I knew was the composer of that. He always said, I really regret. Now, this is decades later, how little we dealt with there. Not even native Americans are not even mentioned in the storyline. So, uh, and the song, the house I live in, which is we heard the little excerpt from there's a like five different versions of that song that the, the lyricist of that song, the composer was Earl Robinson. Speaker 1 00:16:02 The lyricist was able, mial under the pen name, Lewis Allen and Abe mial was the guy who adopted the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was that subversive, you might say. And yet he wrote this very moving patriotic ballad that Frank Sinatra made popular and has been covered, you know, by dozens of other singers over the years. I think it's not as much a classic as it should be because the authors of the, of the, of the song were, were blacklisted. They were coms, they were, weren't just blacklisted. They were communists. Um, so it's got that sort of tinge to it. And I could go on about that, but the point is, um, so there was an under statement, just put it mildly. There, wasn't an ability to come to grips in a song that says, uh, we, we wanna claim America. Can you also include the, the ugly and still unreconciled features of the American history? Speaker 1 00:17:13 Uh, now it's not just that slavery is much more acknowledged. The 1619 project says that the American revolution and the constitution more in large parts shaped by the interest of slaveholders mm-hmm, <affirmative>, well, that's a difficult thing to come to grips with. And it's something that should be debated. You know, when, what I was thinking about the school story about the mural. So here's kids of color. They, they come into a world where they assume don't they, that the official representation of everything is intrinsically going to be racist. So their discomfort with that is UN is legitimate. It shouldn't be dismissed, but to me as a teacher, that's a moment of education where we really want to come to grips with that, not just say, take it down, but you know, what, how do we deal with it as an educational experience I'm using not just to represent all of these incidents where people want to take down, uh, and, and, and get rid of symbols, uh, that are seen as offensive sometimes that's necessary. But I would rather, you know, I, I would love to see a time in which not only schools, but everywhere we could freely discuss these things, the fact that these right wing folks, these politicians, and so forth, wanna shut everything down about critical race theory as they call it, uh, is just shows their bad faith. Um, and I, it should be easy to, uh, that view in, in for most Americans. I think it is, I don't think most Americans are walking around, um, wanting to not hear the truths that Speaker 2 00:19:01 They know Speaker 1 00:19:02 Or Speaker 2 00:19:02 So I totally disagree with that. I mean, that's a point to jump in on like that's, but I think that's your, the lesson that you learned, like the, that there were the people smiling in the lynching photographs, and then there was this, you know, plurality support for, or, you know, whatever, a big minority support for Trump and Trumpism. And, you know, as the book argues, the cruelty is the point, at least part of the point of Trumpism. Like in fact, there are loves loads and loads of people, very responsive to the argument, the right makes about critical race theory, because they have a lot of comforting myths about the United States that it disrupts because it implicates white folks and responsibility. And as you say, right, like it's the argument is that it's baked into the structure. I mean, it's so in so many ways, it is very, very threatening. And I think that the response is quite, uh, yeah, popular. I think it's winning elections. I think it's a big part of their frame and it's spreading all over the world, like all over the world, the right wing and even parts of the center left have totally adopted it Speaker 1 00:20:13 Well adopted some version of, yeah. Speaker 2 00:20:15 Yeah. Everybody has a version of it. Don't re Revis history. Like don't politicize the academy so much. There's, you know, it's all of a piece being like, don't go there. Don't, let's not talk about those things. Or, um, let's talk about them very quickly and move on. <laugh> Speaker 1 00:20:33 These are very important. Practical matters, like the whole issue of reparations and how that's going to play out, because I think it will have to play out the reason the communist party embraced Lincoln and Jefferson. And these, all these tradition in the thirties was because of the perception that fascism was a rising threat in the world, including in this country. And instead of, uh, their hard line revolutionary phase, which they, instead of keeping that politics, the CP and other people on the left said, no, we need a center left unified front against fascism, a popular front is what was called. And in that process, there was this cultural exploration, which I think was a creative thing where you get, um, all these writers and, and, and musicians and artists and painters saying, well, well, if we delve deeply into the American experience, what can we represent? Speaker 1 00:21:39 What can we find? And it wasn't, some of what's come down to us is, is the naive stuff that I've been pointing out. But, um, but I, it was too bad that the red scare wiped out. A lot of those people, they were unable to practice their craft and evolve it mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, so, so yeah, I mean, I, I think that's all back. My feeling is now we are in a kind of cultural phase that resembles the thirties a lot more sophisticated, a lot less, um, you know, naive or, uh, blind to the full reality, but still, and a lot more foregrounding. The leaders of this cultural moment are people of culture, not of, of color, not, uh, not white people, uh, but they're, you know, trying to reshape and in every area of culture, there's a reshaping that is quite political going on. Speaker 1 00:22:38 I at least that's how I perceive it a reshaping of well, well, because when, when there were, when I was growing up in the going to college and, and so on, the high brow view of culture was art for art's sake, politics destroys art, uh, and that was a reaction to the popular front. Um, and the best, the most celebrated writers were, no, I always think of Ts Elliott who was a right wing antisemite semi actually, but he was, he professed a purely artistic, uh, can, you know, view of things. And the other version of culture was commercial, purely commercial in which controversy was excluded to a very total degree. So now we're seeing, you know, those high brow, low brow, they don't exist really as categories anymore, people, uh, can have learned to, uh, immerse themselves in every brow, you know, and, and no. Speaker 1 00:23:40 Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of, a lot of ad mixing in of all kinds of critique and, and, uh, and, and shadings, some of which are phony and a lot of which are really trying hard to make breakthroughs, I think. And so, um, you know, you, that's, what I feel now is it's a much more politically, uh, tinged or politically connected, popular culture. And that popular culture is no longer marginalized by, by some high brow elitist thing anymore. You don't, that's not there anymore. Um, that's what I was getting at. You know, I wanted to mention Woody Guthrie because Woody is a white guy and Woody Guthrie's father, little known fact was a newspaper editor. Woody was seen, you know, as a, as a, as a Okie from, from the dust bowl, but he really was from a more middle class background. His father was a, was a newspaper editor, and it was a anti-socialist paper in Oklahoma. Speaker 1 00:24:45 The socialists were very strong in Oklahoma and Papa Guthrie, uh, devoted his political life to supporting Woodrow Wilson, not Eugene Debs and supporting the Democrats against the socialists in the state of Oklahoma. And Woody believed that his father had been part of a Lynch mob, Woody Guthrie coming from that background. And it's remarkable and interesting to me that he becomes an unashamed communist from that background and an anti-racist very forthrightly. So not only in his songs, but in his daily practice. Uh, and I don't know how that evolution happened. There's a lot of biography about Woody, but I think it's still somewhat mysterious how he made that conversion. Uh, but it, to me, it's all, that's the good sign. Maybe that's all, I mean, by a good sign, is that, um, that kind of, uh, realization out of one's experience out of reading books, as well as living experience can make, uh, a cultural figure, represent the forefront of, you know, a new America. That's what he wanted to be. Um, and, but, but rooted in America. So that's my romantic take on. Speaker 2 00:26:15 So I, I wanna go back, I wanna step back and, and then may, maybe we can get to that question that you raised at the top about, you know, what this means for politics, for strategy, for, yeah. For, for the left as a political force and, you know, the, the relationship between a socialist project or some kind of big liberatory progressive project and the, the nation and the nation state has been like a fraught one, a difficult one from the very beginning. Um, it, you know, in a sense is at the core of the split between democratic socialists and, you know, thelens tradition, um, is in part that the, the, what became democratic socialism and social democracy was like, if you're, if you're gonna do politics in the nation state, you've gotta be part of it. You have to accept it's, it's logics it's rules. Speaker 2 00:27:10 You have to, if you win, you've gotta be able to defend it. Um, you have to be able to show the population that, you know, you can govern the country and not, you know, in, in the interests of the people who lived there, et cetera. Um, so, you know, and that happened even in Soviet union, right? I mean, even with the rhetoric of international revolution, very, very quickly the Soviet union, the whole Soviet apparatus became about, you know, Soviet national interests and, uh, Soviet foreign policy, um, which was like Russian national interest, et cetera. So really at the end of the day, this question, like, you know, the, the highfalutin rhetoric about workers have no country and our ideology transcends the nation gets smacked around with reality. So, um, and so here in the United States, where especially, you could say as the country, you know, became, uh, you know, a powerful Imperial interest on its own and not just a part of the British Imperial project, um, at the same time, as you say, you know, relatively speaking, one of the most democratic and less hierarchical societies going on in the world, um, you know, at the same time, certainly since that point, it's been difficult for left just in the United States to reconcile, you know, a love of country, et cetera. Speaker 2 00:28:39 And I think what that's meant, I think, and I, I don't, I think the cause and effect is difficult to prove. I think that that's why there's a million books about this, but the end result is that we have, uh, a general understanding that left ideas are foreign and not American. And that's not something that the left in, you know, Italy has to worry about or so many other places nobody's like, ah, it's Unal to be a communist or a socialist or whatever. So, you know, there's no contradiction there at all. Um, and, and obviously we could do many episodes on the history of why that is et cetera, but the consequences of it are certainly that, um, the right is able to, or has been until, especially until Bernie incredibly effective at just connecting at people's minds, a, you know, progressive, even a left liberal, it's pretty much a socialist, it's pretty much a communist and that makes them, you know, not American and foreign and, and so forth. Speaker 2 00:29:47 So there seems to be in terms of strategic politics, like there there's a real urgency to being able to advocate for left ideas, socialist politics, not be pigeonholed as like, not part of the society, not part of the country, not American. And then also having to, you know, you know, having the moral obligation and the political obligation to be like real and honest about the downsides of both America's self-conception and its real world history that is like three balls to, uh, to sort of juggle that's very difficult. Right. That's right. Um, how do we do that? Do we have any examples of that, that we could look to? Speaker 1 00:30:37 Yeah. I think there's a, a number of different ways to do this. Uh, let me talk as a new lefty guy from the sixties first and say, uh, what, what the new left, what SDS the port Huon statement, what, and, and people like Hayden were discovering was a stream of thought that, that John Dewey represented who had been in fact, a leader of the league for industrial democracy from which SDS came, uh, and Dewey was a socialist, but he rarely said that he was a radical Democrat. That's how he would, I think of find. So the, the point I'm making here is the, the American claim for democracy, uh, never realized, but that's the point, it's a claim that is strongly made. So it's something that can be used as a fundamental demand on the society live up to what you say you are. And what does democracy mean? Speaker 1 00:31:50 Is democracy only the right to vote for? Who's gonna govern you in politics or does democracy extend to the community itself to the workplace, to the economic, uh, domains of life? Why is that walled off from the political and over and over again, American history that question's come up, uh, sometimes called socialists sometimes not necessarily with that label. Um, and that's part of the tradition that I think it's good for students to, to learn about and for people to look back on and to think, you know, what, what was socialist about the populist movement of the late 19th century, which was a very popular movement. What was socialist about the labor movement in the thirties, which was a very mass movement, um, and where workers occupied factories, what gave them the right to occupy automobile factories? Um, what, uh, what gives tenants the right to claim that they can, uh, that, that they shouldn't be evicted whenever the landlord wants to, uh, wants to get rid of them? Uh, what, what gives tenants the, the right to think that, uh, it's not just that they have a month to month or year to year contract to live in this space, but that this is actually their home. That's just more of a socialist idea. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that, that you have the right, you have the right to a home, an adequate home, and the landlord maybe should be done away with, but meanwhile, you have rights within that, that are not recognized by pure. So, Speaker 2 00:33:33 So that was an interesting contradiction between in, in, uh, Bernie's definitions of socialism when he was sort of challenged, like, Hey bro, you use this word a lot. What do you even mean by it? And, you know, he would start by saying, well, it's, it's like what they have in Scandinavia. Yeah. It is this foreign thing almost right. But oh, but it's also the new deal and Medicaid and the things you like in the American. And it's like, it, I, I feel, I felt like there's a contradiction there, a lack of co coherence, right. Because if you remember in his debate first debate with Hillary Clinton, right. When they talk like socialism came up as a topic and you know, I'll just never forget this. This is burned into my head, this argument, it's like, Bernie's like, Hey, socialism is like what they have in Denmark. Speaker 2 00:34:27 And then Hillary Clinton's like, Hey, I love Denmark, but this is America. And we love freedom, like, fuck Denmark, you know? And it was like this incredible clarifying moment about what, how different the candidates were, both in their patriotism and in their, you know, ideology in their politics. Because for Hillary Clinton, there's something about America that is, anti-socialist like fundamentally, right. And what Bernie's trying to do. And I think a little clumsily, if I could be so bold, right. Is, is, is to convey two, two things at the same time that like a, there are things we've done even here in America that are socialists that we like that are good and popular and successful. And yeah, we have this stupid, weird phobia about socialism in our political culture. And the rest of the world is like doing, you know, basic, uh, things that make perfect sense and make for a better society. Speaker 2 00:35:32 And, and yeah, that's associated historically with socialism there too. So, so, um, it's like finally trying to have that adult discussion in America of like, well, you know, yeah. Get like, there are great things about America, but it's not the best at everything. And there's other places that do things better. Like what a hard thing to have a debate at the presidential level in America, cuz it's usually just America is awesome. And now there's like, America's awesome except for the really bad things that we did that we're so sorry for land acknowledgement. I love black people, black lives matter, but America's awesome. And otherwise we're not really gonna question anything. Speaker 1 00:36:13 Well, I mean yes. And I appreciate it by the way that idea of, of a grown up, uh, adult kind of political discourse. I mean, even, I don't know if, if Hillary said this, but other Democrats, um, even Elizabeth Warren, maybe I'm not a socialist, I'm a capitalist. Well, you're not a capitalist. Capitalism is not, <laugh> defined by an ideology. Speaker 2 00:36:35 She might be, she might own stock. I Speaker 1 00:36:36 Dunno, she might. But you know, and we all might be from that point of view. No, but it's, it's childish, um, way of thinking and you know, Mike Harrington who we both admired and he thought a lot about some, some of these issues, fundamentally he argued didn't he, that there was an invisible socialism in a lot of what, um, since the new deal time has been proposed and even adopted the full employment act of 1946, that was a pretty socialist thing that the government was responsible for overcoming unemployment. If there was unemployment, the government was a, to be a source of creating jobs and that was passed by Congress in 1946, never been really implemented in any full sense, but it certainly did have some influence. Uh, the E went just before FDR died, he made a speech advocating an economic bill of rights, which, which could be read as a kind of socialistic document. I don't mind stuff not being called socialist. I mean, even the socialism is not something the port Huon statement actually advocate. We've talked about that. Uh, but, but recognizing that, um, beyond, uh, beyond the, the religion of capitalism, cuz there is a kind of theology of capitalism now, uh that's, that's not based on, on even the reality of the country, let alone what can work for people. And I think more. And Speaker 2 00:38:13 So that's where I think that that's where I think the, the other part of Bernie's stick and, and I'm constantly bringing up the other countries right. Is more honest <laugh> right. Because that, I mean this, I don't think that the like call finding another word for socialism deflects, anybody or deflects attention or anything like I think Speaker 1 00:38:35 The not anymore. Speaker 2 00:38:36 Yeah. And certainly not anymore. Right. So that's always been my thing, my defense of just going ahead and using the term, but where I am, you know, heretical and not doctrinaire and not a good, you know, Marxist soldier of the future is that I don't really mind so much when things that aren't technically socialism get called socialism or like lumped in with it. Like, you know, those memes that were going around that were like, do you like snow plows? You like socialism, you know, that are like just pushing back on the radical right wing anti-government nonsense. That's like mainstream, Republican thought that are just like against public snow plows or public prisons or public schools. So, and, and it's a, you know, it's an argument that just saying like, look, go, the government doing things is not always bad. Come on, relax. But you know, I saw a lot of friends of mine who are, you know, bonafide socialists who are like, that's not socialism, like socialism is about control of means production and blah, blah, blah. Speaker 2 00:39:36 And you know, that's just like a good liberal welfare state or something, something. And you know, I just, I don't care that much. Like it, if we're, if we're breaking, it's just similar to what the port Huon statement was also trying to do, just a break, the grip on American politics that the right wing has over our imagination about what is possible to do policy wise. Right. Um, and you know, we'll figure out the rest democratically in the mess of movements and policy making that there is this idea that like socialism is a, is a, is a, uh, you know, a kind of, um, and the, you know, the, the, the models of it very distinct, um, you know, I think has always been wrong, has always been a Speaker 1 00:40:24 Problem. And I, I could actually flip what you just said and say, um, and say that, uh, socialism comes not because people are persuaded that it's good, but because problems need to be collectively solved and people see a social solution as inescapably, better than relying on, you know, the con more traditional, conventional ways. So that's a very American, if you will, mm-hmm, <affirmative> piecemeal, um, kind of progress. So you have a public bank in, in, in North Dakota, um, that could be a model. And now there's actually efforts in the state of California, but under radar to create a public bank, well, a public bank is, you know, kind of obvious socialist type institution to create, uh, and it, and it would solve a lot of problems. And I think it should be put more forward on the agenda. Uh, similarly there's something called community choice, uh, in, in the delivery of electricity to communities and Santa Barbara is now has a community choice, electric distribution entity, which is a publicly owned utility that delivers electricity to all of us, but no one realizes how different that is, at least in theory from what the, uh, con Edison, uh, has, is able to deliver. Speaker 2 00:42:00 Well, I think one thing that says it all about the, the confusion about, about this stuff, right? And, and, and how, uh, you know, breaking this connection that people have in their head about Americanness and a particular kind of economics. You remember, like Sarah Palin, remember her being asked about, uh, uh, the state of Alaska's policy that all of its natural resources belong to the people of Alaska, right. And, you know, everybody gets a check of, you know, like profits from the sale of their natural resources. Um, you know, might be better economic policy to put that into infrastructure and schools and so forth. But, Hey, who am I say, point being <laugh> she, when asked about that, describes it as a, that's a very American thing for the people themselves to own the natural resources. Right. And I'm just sitting here like you, you're a, you're a moron who UN totally unknowingly defined Americanness as socialism and socialism as Americanness and God, God bless you, Sarah Palin. Speaker 2 00:43:09 Um, so can I, can I take a stab at wrapping us up, uh, just quick, um, you know, my, my own and, and, you know, Dick you'll remember, like when I came into graduate school, I wanted to write my thesis, my GRA my, uh, uh, master's thesis on patriotism and the left. And, you know, this, that was like the Bush era where the right wing was just a kicking our ass with patriotism and yellow ribbons and rah RA. And I saw parts of the left, at least kind of taking the bait and engaging in a kind of anti-Americanism that was, I just saw as not very helpful or not very rooted. Um, you know, like there's a way in which you can either make the United States into this, like holy beacon of progress that you can't, uh, criticize, or it can be the most evil institution that's ever existed. Speaker 2 00:44:09 And anything that goes on in the world is its fault. Anything bad is its fault. And that's another kind of just ideological mysticism about the United States, I think. Um, yeah, so I was, I was like reacting to that on the left and, and, and trying to like excavate and think about how can we have, how can there be a left that is patriotic, but also critical and all these things, you know, and I'd gotten there because of things like September 11th and then the war, the rock war, and, um, and, and so forth. So in terms of my own analysis, you know, I think I ended up at that moment. I think we converged, we sort of came to this. We, we were at the same place of, um, you know, believing in, uh, a forthrightly left forthrightly, progressive feminist anti-racist, uh, anti-capitalist patriotism mm-hmm <affirmative>. Speaker 2 00:45:05 Um, and I still have that. It's still there and it's UN shaken. You could say, even by the election of Trump, but what is, um, I think really important for the left strategically and politically is just really underline the real realization or the re realization or whatever you wanna call it that you had about the people in those lynching photos and the, the, the, the, the thread of violence, racial violence, mayhem, sadism runs through the history of this country and goes back before the country was even founded. Um, I, I really hate it that anti-Americanism also really lets Europe off the hook in a way, but mm-hmm, <affirmative> the, the thing that I think we can't ever go back to is, um, a naivete or, or, or conveniently forgetting how powerful that forces, how it can, it's a constant political threat. It can, can always manifest. Speaker 2 00:46:17 It can always be there. Um, and you know, both the far left you could say, and the center left, um, I think forgot that like really forgot that exactly what you said, but the, the people who lynched people, you know, really not that long ago, um, had kids, they raised those kids with the same values. They may not speak up politely, but they really got their chance to assert those old values by voting for a, a, an obvious racist for president. And so, yeah, we, the, no matter how patriotic we get, and we should have a patriotism, it, it should always be known that there's a real side to this country's culture. And this country's history that is, you know, every bit as maniacal as any of the countries, we like to vilify nationally as their national character like Germany or Japan or whatever. We have to watch something like in the closet we always have to watch out for. Speaker 1 00:47:20 And, and the Germans themselves were shocked by what became of them, given their culture. Exactly. Uh, you know, uh, but, um, I, that's why I, I told the Woody garri story though. His father was in that Lynch mob, but he, uh, wrote songs against that very thing, um, to say the least. So that's what I, I guess, hope is always important to have, you know, but it's not just hope with what kind of practice would enable people, uh, even with that kind of dark cultural, uh, or that privileged cultural heritage that they're trying to defend against change. How can those people, some of those people or their children take different paths Speaker 3 00:48:06 And a flag was still see passing on cars, a sea, it passing for war, a seat, passing for patriotism. We've all seen that before. I've seen it used as a weapon to brand some ass wrong. No one has the right a stand up and fight to say I belong. Cause our flag is still there for all the saints and the sinners. Yes, I flag is still there for all the losers and winners.