By Tom Robotham
On January 22, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman published a column titled “How Change Happens.” In essence, he argued that Bernie Sanders and his supporters are naïvely idealistic.
“While idealism is fine and essential,” he wrote, “it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends.”
Krugman, of course, was merely echoing what Hillary Clinton has said on the campaign trail: vote for me because I’m a realist.
A lot of people I know share this point of view—although their sense of what’s “realistic” has changed. Eight or nine months ago, I was hearing on a daily basis people saying that they liked Sanders but would not back him because he wasn’t electable. As he surged in the polls, that argument began to lose its power. And in the wake of Sanders’ virtual tie with Clinton in Iowa, it has been further diminished. (The deadline for this column came before the New Hampshire primary, so I cannot comment on that outcome.) As a result, the “hard-headed realists” are now arguing that if elected, Sanders could not turn his ideas into policy. He would fail, they add, because Republicans are too powerful and because, as Krugman argued, our very system favors incremental change.
This middle-of-the-road mentality is not new, of course. Before the Civil War, it was embraced by Abraham Lincoln, who argued that we should not try to end slavery where it exists, but merely contain it. One hundred years later, white liberals adopted a similar attitude toward Civil Rights: We agree with your goals, they told black leaders, but you must be patient.
Martin Luther King Jr. responded that the time for patience had long since passed. “We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights,” he wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
What followed, of course, was rapid and radical change—an end to segregation in schools and public facilities; increased protections of voting rights, and anti-discrimination laws in both the workplace and in housing.
Racism persists, and the battle for true equality must go on. But this fact should not in any way devalue the success of that political and cultural revolution led by King and others.
The Civil Rights movement, moreover, is but one example. While middle-of-the-roaders were wringing their hands about the Vietnam War, idealists were taking to the streets, burning their draft cards and putting an end to that immoral conflict.
Soon thereafter, environmental activists did the same thing. Take Pete Seeger, for example. Fed up with policies that actively encouraged flagrant pollution of his beloved Hudson River, he proposed building a replica of a 19th century sailing sloop to serve as an educational vessel. If more people sailed the river and could see the pollution, he reasoned, they just might begin to do something about it.
Characteristically, the “realists” of the time responded that this was a nice idea, but it could never work. The river was already too polluted, and the industries that were responsible were too powerful.
They were wrong. Today, thanks the efforts of Seeger and many like him, the river is clean enough for swimming and fishing.
Bernie Sanders represents this tradition.
“What Iowa has begun tonight is a political revolution,” he said to his cheering supporters after the results had come in. And he’s right. He’s right, first of all, because his campaign itself is a radical departure from the status quo. Rather than looking to corporate donors—as every other candidate does—he appealed entirely to the masses for financial support. And as of last week, he had secured 3.5 million individual contributions averaging $27 each.
By doing so, he is essentially giving the middle finger to the corporate oligarchy that virtually owns the federal government—which means that if he is elected, the oligarchs will not own him.
Ah yes, you may say, but they will still own Congress.
Perhaps. But revolutions have to start somewhere, and this one is off to a good start. As the surge in support for Sanders makes clear, millions of Americans are sick of incremental change. They agree with Sanders that health care is a right, not a privilege; that college should not cost the equivalent of a home mortgage; that we should not allow the military-industrial complex to dictate our foreign policy by waging wars for profit; that everyone who works should be paid a living wage; that our national focus should be on creating more jobs, not more jails—and that the tax system and the economy as a whole should not be rigged—as it currently is—to favor billionaires.
If Sanders can ride this wave of revolutionary thinking into office, why can’t the wave continue to build and carry likeminded people into Congress as well?
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that this will be easy—and neither does Sanders. In his Iowa speech, he pointedly said that no president can do it alone. It can only happen with massive and sustained popular support.
Yes, it will be difficult. But not, primarily, because of right-wing opposition. Middle-of-the-road “realists” are the bigger problem. This is true not only with regard to national politics but in everyday life. Semester after semester at Old Dominion University, where I teach, I encounter students who have chosen some dreadfully boring major at the insistence of their parents who believe that pursuing one’s dreams is “unrealistic.” Their message is, earn a practical degree, get a nice steady job, buy a house, raise a family—and maybe when you retire you can take up painting or write your novel. And this of course is precisely what our system of capitalism run amok needs. Corporations don’t want idealists—they want worker bees.
Pardon my French, but fuck that. It is this kind of thinking that has caused so many people to believe that idealism is a reflection of immaturity. They’re wrong. The truth is that a denunciation of idealism is nothing more than thinly veiled cynicism. The trouble with this is that dreams are a fundamental part of human nature—and when they are set aside they do not die. They burn quietly in some distant corner of the soul, fueling what Thoreau called a “quiet desperation.”
This is what millions of Americans are feeling today with regard to our political system. Quiet desperation. Yes, we need all of those things that Sanders talks about—but we’re powerless to do anything about it.
No we are not! As men like King and Seeger and so many others have demonstrated, each of us has a latent power that is immeasurable. And when we pool those powers in collective action, we can accomplish anything. I realize that by itself this statement sounds like one of those insipid motivational posters that, ironically, you see on the walls of corporate offices. But as I noted earlier, history has demonstrated that it’s true.
The hour is getting late. But our democracy has not yet met its demise. It can be saved—but only through idealism.
