After every election, an accepted wisdom emerges. And very often, it’s entirely wrong. The recent U.S. election is a case in point.
Take the shibboleth that young people stayed away from the polls in droves. Actually, the youth turnout rate went up nearly six per cent.
And then there’s the idea that the Democrats lost because they didn’t connect with evangelical Christians on their own terms, with a faith-based politics to rival the Republicans’… even if deep down, they don’t believe it.
Douglas Rushkoff takes a good hard swing at that idea, and knocks it out of the park:
Can’t the Left just eat its principles for as long as necessary to get in office, and then go back to the business of applying reasoned and substantive policies? Wouldn’t it be better to develop a more benevolent religious narrative than the triumphalism currently passing for foreign policy? Especially if it’s a myth that has some sort of half-life, and dissolves itself once people feel safe enough to let go of it?
Alas, no…. Progressives can’t pursue their values by abandoning them. Instead, they must come to acknowledge and bolster the faith they do have – in reason, observed truth, and, most of all, in the innate ability of all human beings to make rational decisions. Sure, they can mine the parables of Jesus for their basis in social justice and fair play – and the inspiration and motivation such stories can provide. But they must not surrender the very foundation of an Enlightenment-inspired society to the expediencies of pandering to fear and superstition.
