Illiberalism
Gilead
White Christian nationalism
Fig. 1. If one weighs by geography rather than population, Pennsylvania is very much a white Christian nationalist kind of place. Photograph by author, January 5, 2023.
Progressives have recently been howling about Samuel Alito. A justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, they argue, his—or, he claims, his wife’s—penchant for displaying White Christian nationalist flags[1] and, now, a recording of him expressing doubt that the left and right in the U.S. can ever reconcile,[2] suggest he should recuse from cases involving Donald Trump’s coup attempt.
Obviously, I’m not a white Christian nationalist. But there is one point I agree with Alito on: It is absolutely true that the left and right in this country cannot reconcile.[3] They have not done it in the entire history of European colonization in North America and they never will. Never.
Alito is correct that there are fundamental contradictions,[4] not always as to ends, but reliably as to means, that cannot be reconciled between left and right. We will never agree to the foundational premises of Gilead. They will never agree to anything else.
People who think otherwise neglect a longstanding history of sometimes violent conflict between left and right, most significantly the U.S. Civil War, but as well in labor unrest since the Industrial Revolution leading to violence to suppress strikes; the antiwar, counterculture, and liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s; conflict over just about anything having anything to do with sexuality and gender; the Black Lives Matter movement and the backlash to it; diversity, equity, and inclusion (which excludes cis-heterosexual white people); and most recently over Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the list (I’m working from memory) surely goes on. We don’t agree even on the need for social justice as conservatives sneer at attempts at social equality as “social engineering” that would interfere with “God’s plan.” Epistemologically, neither side is pure, but conservatives hold the empirical data preferred by many progressives in disdain as “temporal” rather than “permanent” (think biblical) knowledge. We can’t even agree on premises.
When we can’t agree on premises, there is no hope for resolution. Here, Alito, who is wrong on so many things, is right: There is no common ground.
That doesn’t make a “national divorce,” as suggested by Marjorie Taylor Greene,[5] feasible. But what it does mean is that one side or the other is certain to feel put upon by what they perceive as an authoritarian opposition. It does mean that some sort of divorce is needed, even if if would be the ugliest break-up ever, with national assets and liabilities to be divvied up, and even if it requires mass migrations.
And Alito is wrong to suggest that one side or the other will win.[6] Any such victory would be short-lived because both left and right are within a normal range for humans—sorry, but yes, both are—and within a very few generations, the differences that now beset the U.S. would again beset the split off countries as kids check in at different locations on the political spectrum quite regardless of what their parents think. That’s just how it goes.
That means that the divorce needs to be something more than just a formal break-up. It needs to be a new system of social organization, which I have not conceived, that allows greater mobility for people to live in the political communities they prefer and to move between these communities at will. There are, of course, challenges in this concept that, unfortunately, I have not worked out.
Robert Tait, “Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording,” Guardian, June 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/samuel-martha-ann-alito-recording
Neoliberalism
Democratic (neoliberal) Party
Joe Biden
Hunter Biden
Marshall Cohen and Holmes Lybrand, “Hunter Biden convicted on all 3 charges at federal gun trial,” Cable News Network, June 11, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11/politics/hunter-biden-gun-trial-verdict
- [1]Hannah Allam, “At center of Alito controversy, a flag celebrated by extremists,” Washington Post, June 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/02/alito-flag-appeal-heaven/; Justin Jouvenal and Ann E. Marimow, “Upside-down flag flew at Justice Alito’s house after neighbor dispute,” Washington Post, May 17, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/17/justice-samuel-alito-wife-upside-down-flag/; Conover Kennard, “Justice Alito Tries, Fails Miserably To Explain Flag Scandal,” Crooks and Liars, May 18, 2024, https://crooksandliars.com/2024/05/justice-alito-tries-fails-miserably↩
- [2]Robert Tait, “Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording,” Guardian, June 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/samuel-martha-ann-alito-recording↩
- [3]Robert Tait, “Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording,” Guardian, June 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/samuel-martha-ann-alito-recording↩
- [4]Robert Tait, “Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording,” Guardian, June 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/samuel-martha-ann-alito-recording↩
- [5]Jesse O’Neill, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests a ‘national divorce’ between red and blue states,” New York Post, December 29, 2021, https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/rep-greene-suggests-a-national-divorce-between-red-and-blue-states/↩
- [6]Robert Tait, “Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording,” Guardian, June 11, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/samuel-martha-ann-alito-recording↩