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Notes -
I’m cooking up a post about how the American left has historically consisted of two very distinct factions - Populists and Elitists/Futurists - and how a theoretical realignment of political tribes in this country might pit a coalition of working-class whites and Hispanics - the Populist coalition, headed by a Trump-like caudillo figure who is more favorable toward Latin American immigration than Trump was - against a white/Asian/Indian/Jewish urban Elitist coalition that has re-embraced old Progressive ideas such as eugenics.
The sort of labor-oriented, anti-elitist brand of leftism you see in this book hearkens back to the early-20th century, pre-Gramscian, non-Leninist socialist labor movement championed by guys like Fightin’ Bob LaFollette, Eugene Debs, and to some extent Huey Long. In the 21st-century context, that coalition remains uncomfortably welded with elements of the Elitist coalition, although Trump’s great triumph was peeling off a substantial portion of that element. When Bernie Sanders at long last succumbed to the political necessities of Democratic politics in 2020 and embraced the racial/gender policy preferences of the left-elitists within the party, I saw it as a particularly grievous stab-in-the-back of the populist faction that he’d always seen himself as a crusader for. (Whether or not a Brooklyn Jew and old-school Civil Rights activist can stake a legitimate claim to speak for that coalition is a complicated question, and one which I will grapple with in my post.)
A big factor in that transformation is that organized labor, and especially manufacturing unions, declined dramatically (due to deindustrialization mostly but also under attack from the right). The unions that have gained power like the SEIU have pretty different gender demographics then the old unions that used to dominate the Democratic Party.
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Another huge difference between the 1632 series and modern leftist fiction is that 1632 is relentlessly optimistic. People get killed, stuff blows up, the bad guys make gains, but these are problems to be solved and they in fact WILL be solved, or at least put on a path to be solved. Our Heroes have the advantages, they WILL use them, and in doing so they will attract other competent good guys; the bad guys ultimately don't stand a chance.
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