Why the right keeps winning and the left keeps losing | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/michael-lerner/why-right-keeps-winning-and-left-keeps-losing
Most US residents work in an economy that teaches them the common sense of global capitalism: “Everyone is out for themselves and will seek to advance their own interests without regard to your well-being, so the only rational path is for you to seek to advance your own interests in the same way. Those who have more money and power than you have are just better at seeking their own self-interest, because this is a meritocratic society in which you end up where you deserve to end up. If you deserved more you would have more.”
Now here is the central contradiction: most people hate this kind of reality. We believe that it is in stark contrast to the values we would like to live by but simultaneously we also believe that the logic of capitalist society is the only possible reality, and that we would be fools not to try to live by it in every part of their lives. This message is reinforced in our workplaces and also by almost every sitcom and television news story available. Unconsciously, many people adopt the values of the marketplace, and these values have a corrosive impact on their own friendships, relationships, and family life.
So when many people encounter a different reality in right-wing churches that have specialized in creating supportive communities, they feel much more addressed there than they’ve ever felt in progressive movements that focus on economic entitlements or political rights, which sometimes disintegrate due to internal tensions over dynamics of relative privilege and unproductive feelings of guilt.
Only rarely do these liberal or progressive movements actually manifest a loving community that seems to care specifically about the people who come to their public talks or gatherings.
#imaginaire #politique #militantisme
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