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For some time now, I’ve been intrigued by who whispers what behind closed doors.
When I am with right-wing groups, inevitably someone will look around to make sure we’re alone before voicing concern about the increasing extremism demanded by “the base”—especially regarding white nationalism.
When I’m with a left-wing crowd, someone will quietly shrug at the announce-your-pronouns gender ideologies—the kind that demand saying “pregnant people,” for instance, instead of “pregnant women.”
Debates on these issues are important, but what interests me most is that these concerns are never spoken publicly—only in safe spaces away from the tribes.
Michael Schaffer at Politico summed up this political predicament with a headline: “Liberal Elites Are Scared of Their Employees. Conservative Elites Are Scared of Their Audience.” As Schaffer put it, “On the left, they’re afraid of disaffected underlings organizing on Slack. On the right, they tremble before enraged strangers yelling at TVs.”
People on the left widely distributed an article by Ryan Grim from The Intercept showing progressive organizations in gridlock because young staffers insist their leaders take a policy stance on carbon emissions or Middle East diplomacy.
On the other side, a longtime conservative Republican leader told me he left politics because he was tired of the old men eating breakfast at Hardee’s screaming at him for not supporting Donald Trump enough.
Recent years have shown us this kind of fear is not limited to “elites.” The performatively outraged people those elites are trying to appease often feel just as scared—fearful of not proving …
