Let’s be grateful to Susan Sarandon for exposing just how vapid and callous the left-wing #NeverHillary argument is. Speaking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC on Monday night, Sarandon, a Bernie Sanders surrogate, said she was unsure if she could bring herself to vote for Hillary Clinton in a general election. Hayes was shocked, but Sarandon posited that a Trump presidency might be preferable to a Clinton one, because it would hasten the revolution. “Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode,” she said. (Emphasis added)
A summary of Michelle Goldberg's article:
"In this way of thinking, the real enemy of progress is incremental reform that would render the status quo tolerable. ... The cost of electing a Republican provocateur is human misery on an inconceivable scale, inflicted on people who lack Sarandon’s many resources. ... Its tolerance for human sacrifice. ... The major barrier to such a revolution is not a populace that needs to suffer more in order to reach Sarandon’s superlative level of wokeness. It is the structural obstacles to democracy systematically erected by Republicans and Republican-appointed judges: the widespread erosion of voting rights, the unlimited flood of money into politics unleashed by the Supreme Court, and the epic gerrymandering following the 2010 census that makes it nearly impossible for Democrats to win back the House, even if they win a majority of votes. These things will get worse, not better, in any Republican administration, making the possibility of a peaceful electoral revolution all the more remote." (Emphasis added)
One
of the problems of "progressive" politics' underlying class warfare
ideology, as cataloged in Preliminary Notes on the Effect of the Class Warfare Paradigm (Item 9), is that it can only work
through revolution, not the "incremental reform" which is democracy's
methodology. And the too-rapid change of revolution, as serious thinkers
since Burke(1) have concluded, wreaks catastrophic damage on society,
particularly on its weakest members. (Note the Beatles' critique(2) in "You Say You Want a Revolution") Limousine liberals such as Sarandon
promote a "progressive" ideology whose hidden premise is "a populace
that needs to suffer more in order to reach Sarandon’s superlative level
of wokeness." Since democracy's tender-minded methods haven't worked,
increasing the sufferings of the wretched of the Earth will produce an
aroused angry mob which will sweep all the evil and corruption away,
allowing a wonderful, paradisal world to flower in the ruins.
Such magical thinking is scary. The
actual result of totalist revolution is, typically, real social harm. The revolution Burke meditated on eventuated in the Terror. Michelle Goldberg describes
a Trump ascendancy as eroding civil liberties and diminishing the humanitarian
safety net:
Sarandon posited that a Trump presidency might be preferable to a Clinton one, because it would hasten the revolution. ... The results of a Trump presidency ... might just include the widespread persecution of undocumented immigrants, the appointment of Supreme Court judges who will jettison Roe v. Wade, the end of any federal action on global warming, and a ramping up of American war crimes. We certainly won’t see any expansion of family leave or early education. Based on what we’ve seen of Trump so far, we can expect him to use the powers of the federal government, including NSA surveillance, to target and humiliate his personal enemies, especially women.
A Trump presidency would actually be much worse than that. Trump, in his recent interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times,
showed that he does not comprehend the system of global alliances
the United States has developed, does not understand international trade, is unaware of the importance of the military bases the US has around the world, and
is ignorant of nuclear protocols. Commerce would suffer, unemployment would rise, the stock market would plunge, and the various brushfires abroad which diplomacy restrains or prevents would proliferate. The resulting Trump recession would
likely dwarf the Bush recession we are still recovering from.
-*--
(1) In the Reflections, Burke argued that the French Revolution would end disastrously because its abstract foundations, purportedly rational, ignored the complexities of human nature and society. ... society should be handled like a living organism, that people and society are limitlessly complicated, ... - Wikipedia
(2) Excerpts from lyrics:
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world ...
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out ...
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
For people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait ...
You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow ...
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