American ideologies today Book

Two people recommended this book: a somewhat younger friend and my son-in-law. Actually the friend gave it to me. The idea behind today's recommendations of this book, which was published in 1998, is that it predicted the election of Trump or someone like him.

I recently got hold of an audio version of the book in its least expensive version, an mp3 CD from Amazon (unless of course your library has it--but mine didn't have the hard copy, much less any e-versions), and that has enabled me to get it read. The question is, did I know what I'd heard? Even with reference to the book, I wasn't sure. The narration was workmanlike but overly idolized what was being read, in the manner of a student looking up to a teacher, so missed any irony or tongue-in-cheek parts, assuming they were there. Plus, there were the occasional mispronunciations, such as "Tillich" ending in the "ch" sound instead of "k." At any rate, I let it wash over me, but it wasn't enough.

Only when I was rereading did I become clearly aware of the subtitle. Ha--Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America!

Rorty died in 2007, but his book came to life following Trump's election, when we elites were trying to figure out what hit us. Twenty years ago, Achieving Our Country had predicted that populist uprisings would imperil liberal democracies--that the left-behind working class would in a wave of resentment put a strongman who promised a remedy into office.

That is not all. He argued against a reflexive anti-Americanism and in favor of American civic pride, for agency as opposed to spectatorship, campaigning and gaining power over protest, hope and exertion over condemnation and passivity (James Baldwin over Elijah Muhammad).

There is an excellent discussion of the compatibility of civic pride with past mistakes, even barbarism--in fact, the case for giving up the concept of sin in favor of a secular antiauthoritarian vocabulary of shared social hope, and regarding self-loathing as a luxury which agents--either individuals or nations--cannot afford.

He saw that--already--leftists in the academy have permitted cultural politics to supplant real politics, and have collaborated with the Right in making cultural issues central to public debate.

He saw that the left was (already) cannibalizing itself as the further left condemned the liberals. Warning: language has changed and often requires translation.

He already saw the pitfalls of identity politics, although that name for the phenomenon hadn't yet emerged as the winner.

I find his overall presentation similar to Francis Fukuyama's "Against Identity Politics" in Foreign Affairs.
Responses and rejoinder here:

His emphasis on agency as action vs. spectatorship, purity, and blame is closely related to Timothy Snyder's concept of a politics of eternity.

His view of the Left as good and the Right as bad seems to have very recently become antiquated, as suddenly it falls to the Center Left and Center Right to hold the fort against the illiberal extremes.

His view of the persecution of the other as "sadism" also seems off target, as though it were just being done for fun, rather than having a dynamic behind it.

For current reading on the state of the Left, see this link, beginning with the three Paul Berman articles at the bottom of the page:

Hard for me to rate, considering the translation issues, but either four stars or five!