Sesame Street is great and important. For children. As you pass puberty and move towards regular colonoscopies, your worldview should widen and expand. It should be capable of acknowledging the dark as well as the light, and making necessary adjustments to policy prescriptions and ideology. When I think of Sesame Street Liberalism, I admit to having a caricature in my mind: A white male or female born of economic privilege but moved by sympathetic narratives of racial, gender, and non-heterosexual sexual orientations, who has really never struggled too much in their own lives, but generally has a worldview that boils down to, ‘Why can’t we all just get along/I’m ok, you’re ok’ kind of Oprah platitudes. I think Ben Affleck might perfectly embody this label.
Now, it’s all good and wonderful to think folks should just get along and leave each other in peace. But the reality of the situation is that humans are animals, and the laws of the jungle still apply. If you were born in a two story house in a white, upper middle class neighborhood to upwardly mobile parents, you have to square with yourself: you really don’t know struggle. It’s easy for you to ‘not see race’ or suggest some kind of global group hug might eliminate all of the strife in the world. That’s because you had a nanny. And, PS, race exists. You are the person Langston Hughes wrote about in his poem about Northern Liberals. And PPS, you will never address your fashionably liberal social concerns unless you address root issues, which in this country, and—actually—all over the world, is capitalism.
Capitalism is highly concentrated in the US, but it’s ripples go far and wide across the globe. Capitalism rewards highly active consumers. It lionizes on inherited wealth and purchasing power, and only allows enough comfort to the exploited under class to keep them from revolting and to allow them to reproduce enough future workers to keep the system of alienation going. If the Sesame Street Liberal was serious about social justice, they would forsake their inheritance and become a foot soldier in the movement to abolish our capitalist prison.
Another perfect embodiment of Sesame Street Liberalism: McDonalds recently inverting their Golden Arches on Women’s Day to turn their iconic ‘M’ into a ‘W’ for ‘woman’. I’m sure some pampered, disconnected, middle aged upper class house wife might offer a polite golf clap to that gesture, but maybe it would be more meaningful if you paid your employees—many of whom are women—a living wage?
There is a difference between leftism and Liberalism. In a culture where there is real justice and equality, Liberalism would be fine and wonderful. But Sesame Street Liberals have jumped the gun becaus their privilege disconnects them from the struggles of people who are still outsiders in this system. They’re skipping scenes because they know they’ll make it to the end of the movie.
What we need right now is not this brand of Liberalism. We need militant leftism, which is capable of fighting for these beliefs in real time. Leftism is capable of winning these victories instead of simply sliding flower stems down the gun barrels of their oppressors and offering a loopy peace sign in response to the enemy order to fire on all opposing combatants.
Liberalism is John Lennon. Leftism is Che Guevara. Liberalism is Jimmy Carter. Leftism is John Brown. Liberalism is Oprah Winfrey. Leftism is Huey Newton. Liberalism is Joel Osteen. Leftism is Jesus Christ.
One of the worst parts of Sesame Street Liberalism—among so many other bad parts—is the arrogance, condescension, and apparently inherited sense of superiority. George W Bush played this cultural blind spot in order to obtain 2 presidential terms, and the Democratic Party stuck the stick in their own bicycle wheel when they sabotaged other candidates in order to put forward their own anointed candidate (Hillary Clinton, an icon of Sesame Street Liberalism, and Neo-Liberal capitalism) against the most transparently terrible (in all categories) candidate in our country’s history, and lose.
When you never have to worry about going a day without cable TV, air conditioning, or internet access—let alone clean water, housing, food, healthcare—you make lazy and arrogant decisions. When you get to the bottom line—and capitalism is all about the bottom line—the Sesame Street Liberal is only concerned about the condition of the real people as long as they get cultural cache from their support, and their own bottom line is not affected. Cut off the inheritance stream that daddy and granddaddy earned by exploiting laborers for years and years, and that’s when you’ll see what’s behind the mask.
Now, it’s all good and wonderful to think folks should just get along and leave each other in peace. But the reality of the situation is that humans are animals, and the laws of the jungle still apply. If you were born in a two story house in a white, upper middle class neighborhood to upwardly mobile parents, you have to square with yourself: you really don’t know struggle. It’s easy for you to ‘not see race’ or suggest some kind of global group hug might eliminate all of the strife in the world. That’s because you had a nanny. And, PS, race exists. You are the person Langston Hughes wrote about in his poem about Northern Liberals. And PPS, you will never address your fashionably liberal social concerns unless you address root issues, which in this country, and—actually—all over the world, is capitalism.
Capitalism is highly concentrated in the US, but it’s ripples go far and wide across the globe. Capitalism rewards highly active consumers. It lionizes on inherited wealth and purchasing power, and only allows enough comfort to the exploited under class to keep them from revolting and to allow them to reproduce enough future workers to keep the system of alienation going. If the Sesame Street Liberal was serious about social justice, they would forsake their inheritance and become a foot soldier in the movement to abolish our capitalist prison.
Another perfect embodiment of Sesame Street Liberalism: McDonalds recently inverting their Golden Arches on Women’s Day to turn their iconic ‘M’ into a ‘W’ for ‘woman’. I’m sure some pampered, disconnected, middle aged upper class house wife might offer a polite golf clap to that gesture, but maybe it would be more meaningful if you paid your employees—many of whom are women—a living wage?
There is a difference between leftism and Liberalism. In a culture where there is real justice and equality, Liberalism would be fine and wonderful. But Sesame Street Liberals have jumped the gun becaus their privilege disconnects them from the struggles of people who are still outsiders in this system. They’re skipping scenes because they know they’ll make it to the end of the movie.
What we need right now is not this brand of Liberalism. We need militant leftism, which is capable of fighting for these beliefs in real time. Leftism is capable of winning these victories instead of simply sliding flower stems down the gun barrels of their oppressors and offering a loopy peace sign in response to the enemy order to fire on all opposing combatants.
Liberalism is John Lennon. Leftism is Che Guevara. Liberalism is Jimmy Carter. Leftism is John Brown. Liberalism is Oprah Winfrey. Leftism is Huey Newton. Liberalism is Joel Osteen. Leftism is Jesus Christ.
One of the worst parts of Sesame Street Liberalism—among so many other bad parts—is the arrogance, condescension, and apparently inherited sense of superiority. George W Bush played this cultural blind spot in order to obtain 2 presidential terms, and the Democratic Party stuck the stick in their own bicycle wheel when they sabotaged other candidates in order to put forward their own anointed candidate (Hillary Clinton, an icon of Sesame Street Liberalism, and Neo-Liberal capitalism) against the most transparently terrible (in all categories) candidate in our country’s history, and lose.
When you never have to worry about going a day without cable TV, air conditioning, or internet access—let alone clean water, housing, food, healthcare—you make lazy and arrogant decisions. When you get to the bottom line—and capitalism is all about the bottom line—the Sesame Street Liberal is only concerned about the condition of the real people as long as they get cultural cache from their support, and their own bottom line is not affected. Cut off the inheritance stream that daddy and granddaddy earned by exploiting laborers for years and years, and that’s when you’ll see what’s behind the mask.
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