Cutting Through: Happy 2021
Hoping to learn some lessons from 2020
2020 is a year we will all want to forget, but few of us will be able to. Yet for every trial and tribulation, there is a silver lining, and there is reason to hope that the calamities of 2020 will be powerful examples of that.
On a global level, we can hope to have learned dual lessons from the selfishness and bumbling incompetence of Donald Trump and his minions, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and the Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser, and Special Adviser of the Week.
Those lessons are that the world does need to have a country as powerful as the United States involved in global affairs. Trump’s decision to essentially ignore all but a few foreign policy issues contributed to a growing sense of impunity among authoritarians in the world. When Trump did act, it was almost always alone, which proved to be ineffective. Neither of these things were unique to Trump, but like so many of his actions over the past four years, he took them to an extreme.
More than ever, Trump demonstrated that the world needs U.S. involvement in a constructive, multi-lateral manner, but that it needs a U.S. that will support an international framework, rather than merely pursuing its own cynical interests with no concern for the consequences. U.S. administrations have behaved badly in foreign policy for many decades, but maybe Trump, by taking those behaviors much farther, has shown us that we need to change and shown the world that it needs to push us to change. One can hope.
Americans seem to have learned that our lack of universal healthcare is not only stupid and self-defeating, but a crime against our citizenry, especially, but not exclusively, the most marginalized. The healthcare industry, which cannot make nearly as much money anywhere else in the world because no other wealthy country is this short-sighted, has mobilized their forces in both parties to block universal health care. Hopefully, the realization of how badly we need it will last even when COVID-19 is finally over. But even if it doesn’t, we now have a clear and exceptionally large data point in the ongoing argument.
I am less hopeful on race, but still encouraged by some of what is happening. While the establishment, for lack of a better word, has co-opted the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and plastered words like “end racism” far and wide, the resistance to real change is as strong as ever. The BLM movement seems to see this very clearly, and I’m heartened by how much energy and agitation I continue to see there. But it’s also clear that the subtle backlash from people who, while strongly opposing the overt racism of the Republicans and Trumpers, are still very resistant to substantive change that might mean they lose some of their privilege, is severe.
But maybe we’ve learned from the past fifty years that suppressing racism and bigotry doesn’t mean it’s gone. In the last decades of the 20th century, white people successfully made overt hate unwelcome, but as long as we weren’t seeing the hoods and burning crosses, we were OK living with police brutality, racist incarceration systems, racist education systems, the ongoing lack of Black and Brown access to sustainable wealth, and so many other institutionalized forms of racism. Maybe now we understand that racism isn’t just a matter of affirmative action or considering the “N-word” out of bounds in polite society, but a foundational element of our country and culture.
In other words, I hope 2020 will, in the long run, help to teach us that our systems don’t need a tweak here and there, but a complete change. Capitalism and Liberal democracy were, I believe, significant steps forward in their time, compared to European systems that preceded them (in other places, there seemed to have been more functional systems, albeit with different goals, but colonialism has largely relegated those to memory in one way or another). But they are now staid and corrupted, their inherent flaws magnified, and their benefits diminished. They have outlived their usefulness and need to make way for more progressive, more democratic, more egalitarian alternatives.
In 2021, I commit to doing my part to bring that kind of future about. And I hope to learn from every one of you how we can all best do that.
And, just a reminder, you can pre-order Except For Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, by myself and Marc Lamont Hill by clicking here.
I wish all of you a happy new year. I wish for all of you a year that is not simply better than 2020, but is a year filled with joy, achievement, love, and progressive change, whatever those things mean to each of you. And I am so appreciative of having you with me on this journey.
My Recent Work
America: “Donald Trump has shown the whole world how broken our political system is. It’s so embarrassing for everyone to see how dysfunctional we are as this wannabe authoritarian undermines our democracy. How can we be any more of a joke?”
Israel: “Hold my beer.”
Gideon Sa’ar’s entry into the Israeli political fray might make this round of elections even more contested than the last one. But Israel’s fourth election in two years is the last thing anyone in Israel wanted.
At Responsible Statecraft, I explored what Sa’ar’s entry means and who he is. Most Israelis are familiar with him, but he’s much less well-known outside of Israel, particularly since he has not been involved much in foreign affairs.
Meanwhile, I did a broader breakdown at ReThinking Foreign Policy of where things stand as of now in Israel. I explain there how this election is going to be between far right and farther right potential Israeli governments and how completely marginalized left-wing and Arab parties are. Never say things can’t get worse politically in Israel. They keep proving there is no bottom.
Finally, I did a deep dive into Barack Obama’s snide putdown of “Defund the Police” as a mere “snappy slogan” as well as his threadbare attempt to walk back his comments. This piece at ReThinking Foreign Policy explores the considerable depths of animosity among Democrats to progressive change and how reminiscent it is of liberal objections to Palestinian views of Israel and the occupation.
Recommended Articles
How Israel Attacks Drove Warnock Into the Arms of a Centrist Pro-Israel Group
By Akilah Lacy, The Intercept, January 1, 2021
By Robert Malley, Foreign Policy, December 29, 2020
The Palestinian Cause at a Moment of Transition
By Inès Abdel Razek , Salem Barahmeh, Dana El Kurd, Fadi Quran, Jewish Currents, December 21, 2020
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