Life or Death
Pragmatism in politics feels like another way of saying we are ok with a total, fundamental lack of moral clarity and moral purpose to guide us. I don't understand how liberals/centrists (and even conservatives/republicans) fail to grasp the ethical argument for electing Bernie. I have hope that the clarity of the moment might sway some, but it's astonishing how deeply capitalist ideology has us in its grips, which is to say we desire a "return" a "status quo," and thus a continuation of injustice and malfunctioning and accommodation to the gods of capitalist profit over the needs of ordinary people. Biden's absurdly defeatist message gives mental relief while Sanders message is simply feared and cannot be accepted or tolerated.
While what I hear and see in Sanders's campaign, or movement such as it is, is a plea to our fundamental goodness, a demand for systems of justice for all, and basic, common sense plans that will help the needy and, ultimately, the world as a whole. So even granted the "pragmatic" difficulty of implementing these goals given the present state of the Congress etc., how can it be possible not to see their ultimate rightness?
Perhaps this just points to my own blindness. To a certain extent, I can put myself in the mind of those I disagree with; I can ventriloquize their opinions and reactions. When I was watching the recent Biden/Sanders debate, I could imagine the various reactions to each of their statements and styles of delivery from different points-of-view. Yet it seems that I can only end up back in my own head, finding each counter-viewpoint unpersuasive tested against my deeply held opinions and beliefs. Which isn't exactly testing my beliefs to their limits, I suppose. It's not that I don't radically doubt my own assumptions and beliefs at times, or know, even, that if I might well be quite mistaken with regard to certain particulars.
Yet I remain confident in one thing - my fundamental sense of right and wrong, which is at base what must guide our lesser opinions on this or that particular. That is to say, while there might be better or worse ways to implement free public higher education, different methods for oversight, time to implement etc., it seems clear to me that debt-free education would be an enormous good and putting young people in enormous financial strain is bad and must end.
The thought came into my head yesterday - our fundamental, collective sense of reality has been fracturing for some time now. Not just truths at some varying level of cultural acceptance. Not agreed upon norms. But reality, life as it is lived moment to moment, is itself was no longer holding sway. And perhaps I came to that thought, based as it was on a kind of seeping existential dread of the great unknown, because another deeper and ultimate reality is breaking through via this biological, virological disturbance. A quite literal, physical threat of destruction is forcing our collective hand, forcing reality itself back into view. The virus is a moral and ethical reckoning because it is a reckoning with the unassailability, the unavoidable truth of life and death. Of life or death.
While what I hear and see in Sanders's campaign, or movement such as it is, is a plea to our fundamental goodness, a demand for systems of justice for all, and basic, common sense plans that will help the needy and, ultimately, the world as a whole. So even granted the "pragmatic" difficulty of implementing these goals given the present state of the Congress etc., how can it be possible not to see their ultimate rightness?
Perhaps this just points to my own blindness. To a certain extent, I can put myself in the mind of those I disagree with; I can ventriloquize their opinions and reactions. When I was watching the recent Biden/Sanders debate, I could imagine the various reactions to each of their statements and styles of delivery from different points-of-view. Yet it seems that I can only end up back in my own head, finding each counter-viewpoint unpersuasive tested against my deeply held opinions and beliefs. Which isn't exactly testing my beliefs to their limits, I suppose. It's not that I don't radically doubt my own assumptions and beliefs at times, or know, even, that if I might well be quite mistaken with regard to certain particulars.
Yet I remain confident in one thing - my fundamental sense of right and wrong, which is at base what must guide our lesser opinions on this or that particular. That is to say, while there might be better or worse ways to implement free public higher education, different methods for oversight, time to implement etc., it seems clear to me that debt-free education would be an enormous good and putting young people in enormous financial strain is bad and must end.
The thought came into my head yesterday - our fundamental, collective sense of reality has been fracturing for some time now. Not just truths at some varying level of cultural acceptance. Not agreed upon norms. But reality, life as it is lived moment to moment, is itself was no longer holding sway. And perhaps I came to that thought, based as it was on a kind of seeping existential dread of the great unknown, because another deeper and ultimate reality is breaking through via this biological, virological disturbance. A quite literal, physical threat of destruction is forcing our collective hand, forcing reality itself back into view. The virus is a moral and ethical reckoning because it is a reckoning with the unassailability, the unavoidable truth of life and death. Of life or death.
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