A significant undertaking is ahead of us: a vast and volatile ocean of the unknown. The world as we wanted and hoped it could become is no longer possible. But by accepting that and leaving behind what we know, we can create new opportunities and worlds.
“The left,” by any definition, has failed, and while there are many others who may be moderates and liberals who have failed too, so have we. If we did not fail, our present would not be what it is. When confronted with such a failure, to move forward, one has to have the courage to question all one knows to be true. Our strategies and tactics for messaging, organizing, and base-building, all must be interrogated, and new, or now forgotten, ideas must be tried.
Once we recognize we have failed, we must work to see the new paradigm we live under in the United States. The ideological paradigm of “left and right, " rooted in the French Revolution seating of the French Assembly (with those more conservative on the presiding officer's right, and those more revolutionary on the left), is gone. It is more than just oligarchy and authoritarianism, even though they are part of this paradigm; it is an attempt to reshape the entirety of the world order back into one of “divine” kingship and so-called “natural orders,” where some are more deserving of humanity than others. We are in a place that is no longer about politics as we know and understand, but power and wielding it to one's end.
Before undertaking this journey, we must re-orient ourselves by accepting we’re experiencing a type of warfare. That this very moment, it is closer to asymmetrical, a combination of state violence, militia/non-state threats and actions of violence, and organized psychological warfare are being waged upon the peoples of America.
There are two other things essential to recognize in this moment. The first is the distrust in the media ecosystem, which is also a different ecosystem than it was even four years ago. Not only do people not trust the news, but there is also a chaotic information ecosystem that has hollowed out local news. The second is American literacy rates, with about 50% of American adults having a sixth-grade reading level. The two biggest indicators of who people voted for in 2024 were level of educational attainment, and how closely people paid attention to the election.
We must also understand the anti-status-quo sentiment among the American people—things just haven’t been working for them. And because of that, and the relationship many organizations seen as “the left” have with the Democratic party, which has become the status-quo party, people may view left and base-building organizations as just that, the now former status-quo.
We’ll continue in part 2, where I’ll talk about what actions we can take to learn what we need to do to prepare and chart our journey forward.
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