In the many think pieces that filled my news feed last week on the subject of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, astonishingly few devoted any attention to the question of whether we are at risk of suffering another conventional attack on U.S. soil of a similar scale.
This seems like a question we really ought to be asking ourselves, since we are in a protracted war with a foreign adversary that has a long history of sponsoring international terrorism.
Trump is making a high-profile trip to Ireland this weekend to attend a golf tournament. The New York Times this morning notes that his arrival in that country has prompted "protests and praise."
Praise?!! I thought. I was outraged. How could the Irish let me down so grievously? I had my Byron quotes all cued up.
In Byron's poem "The Irish Avatar," he bemoaned the warm reception King George III found in Ireland on a state visit, even as he was oppressing its inhabitants:
The news out of Europe this past week has been dominated by headlines about the rise of the far-right—from the disturbingly strong showing of the AfD in one state election in a formerly Communist region of Germany, to gangs of black-clad, balaclava-wearing anti-migrant gangs roving the British coast to intimidate asylum seekers.
I always make the mistake of assuming at first that these moments will be clarifying and unifying for the left. I expect the response among liberals, leftists—and even center-right people who oppose fascism and racism and accept the basic tenets of liberal democracy—to be to realize that we have to work together and form a popular front against rising fascism.
Today marks 25 years since 9/11, and every commentator and newspaper editorial board will be penning obligatory pieces on the meaning of the attacks and the way they reshaped the world over the last quarter-century. Matt Yglesias, in a podcast episode this week on the subject, kicked off his reflections by quipping something like, "so—9/11 was bad." The joke being that this is such an obvious and universal sentiment that it hardly passes for a "take."
But of course—and however strangely—it's not actually a universal sentiment. One of the biggest political controversies of the summer revolved around a years-old remark from leftist bro streamer Hasan Piker asserting that "America deserved 9/11" (Piker later disavowed the comment as "inappropriate" and quibbled "I didn't say Americans deserved 9/11—I said America deserves 9/11"—which is an interesting and perhaps not entirely hollow distinction; we'll return to that later).
As I discussed in a previous post, Ezra Klein devoted a recent episode of his podcast over on the New York Times website to the famous "What's the matter with Kansas?" problem. As he framed it at the top of the episode: "One of the big problems in left-wing politics is that the very people who Democrats, liberals and socialists think should be the most excited about the big, new government programs intended to help them are often the least excited — and are often voting for the party that wants to cut government."
Why is this? Why are the people who seemingly stand to gain the most from expanding social programs in fact voting against them? Why is "socialism" suddenly most popular only among people with graduate degrees living in leafy-green college towns and suburbs; whereas people in rural and depressed post-industrial rustbelt towns voted for a man in 2024 who proceeded to slash food stamps and Medicaid for the poor, as soon as he was in office, in exchange for increased tax subsidies to the rich?
I think I'm noticing a pattern here.
In my role as public commentator, I'm always making these arguments that sound like they are in favor of the "Establishment" or "centrist" part of the Democratic coalition.
I appeal to electability. I say things like: look, people, regardless whether you prefer Medicare for All, or a public option, or just increasing subsidies under the ACA—none of it will make the least difference if Democrats lose every election and the government is run entirely by Republicans who proceed to cut Medicaid and axe even those few other health care benefits we currently have. So our first priority needs to be to win, then we can iron out differences between us later on.
In Walter Greenwood's classic proletarian novel Love on the Dole, the heroic martyred socialist Larry Meath—when pressed to justify his political views—never gets much further than explaining the principle of surplus value. The laborers are the ones who did all the work to produce wealth, he argues—so why should they get to keep so little of the proceeds?
This is why Robert Tressell called his own working class protagonists "ragged-trousered philanthropists"—they were charitably supporting a class of owners and capitalists in a state of idleness—and received only contempt for their pains. ("Is it not enough that you eat the bread of others' labor, but you must despise them as well?" as Ernest Crosby once asked of the bourgeoisie).
