Tony Judt wrote this about the state of the Left in America in his book Ill Fares The Land …
“We no longer have political movement. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals – fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers – are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this.”
Taking the recent election as evidence Judt, who passed away in 2010, was right on target (no pun intended). Here are some valuable web resources for further investigation of this important thinker:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?189437-1/postwar-history-europe-since-1945
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/04/29/ill-fares-the-land/
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/tony-judt-interview
The Strange Death of Liberal America
Tony Judt’s Obituary in the Guardian
In today’s America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig leaf. There really is no other difference between them.”
― Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century
Parallel Narratives 