Comment by tptacek
5 years ago
You get that Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren don't represent the majority of people left of the American center, right? "Squad" politics get trounced outside of hyper-left noncompetitive districts. There's a pretty significant media bias feeding into this analysis you're providing. If you're going to cite Elizabeth Warren, for instance, you might want to factor in the fact that she quite literally embarrassed herself in the 2020 Democratic primary.
I recognize they’re not representative. I said that “I’m not sure” that the left is “heading in the right direction.” What’s the direction? After Biden won the nomination I thought I had overreacted and things were going back to normal. Then I opened up Twitter to see the most completely normal Midwestern people at my alma mater declare they are “gatekeepers of white supremacy” on a Zoom conference with hundreds of students. The feminist academic Dean I watched get installed just a couple of years ago was cancelled for not acquiescing to similar declarations. My dad says it’s just academia, and not to worry about “so long as it’s confined to the campus.” But he’s also 70! He’s not going to be around forever to keep things in line.
I think it mostly is campus stuff. Even the New Yorker ran a whole long piece practically taking Ibrahim Kendi apart. See also the elite discourse backlash against Robin Diangelo.