The vision of the future that the American left (at least, the part of it that I identify with) argues for is a high-trust society where we accept and rely on each other to achieve collective success in the form of safety, prosperity, opportunity, fulfillment, and health, and every person is afforded as many opportunities as possible to share the success.

It seems to be the “relying on each other” bit that creates a bit of a built-in footgun, because there’s not much trust to go around. Leftists are exceedingly good at coming up with reasons not to trust anyone, because if you don’t trust anyone, then you don’t actually have to risk being disappointed. If you refuse to work with someone because you don’t identify with them, or because they said something that you don’t exactly agree with, then you often end up not being able to unify enough people to achieve any of your goals.

I’m not arguing that this behavior is unreasonable. The leftist mission is constantly undermined (by neoliberals, who will always say that our goals are too lofty and we should focus on maintaining the status quo instead) and opposed (by fascists, who want a social order that is extremely hierarchical and violent because they believe they will always be the perpetrators and never the victims). However, it is unhelpful, because our opponents don’t have this problem.

Neoliberals have been able to unify because the prevailing alternative to doing nothing has been that things get worse rapidly – a no-brainer choice. Fascists have been able to unify because everyone in the movement believes that they won’t be on the bottom when the dust settles. It turns out that fear, greed, and rage are much more useful emotions for organizing than trust and hope.

For this reason, I don’t believe that the American left will achieve critical mass unity until fear, greed, and rage build up in this ideological space. Fear that we’ll lose everything if we don’t stop squabbling and help each other. Rage over the things, people, and opportunities taken from us. Greed for a future that is safer, wealthier, and contains more opportunity than the past and the present.

I think this is coming soon. But it’s a shame that we have to lose so much before we can get our shit together.