How Do You Recruit A Class Traitor?

That was the question brought to my mind by Jedediah Purdy today.  The headline is a little bit misleading, in that, while it contains a call for the rise of class treason by members of the investing class, it offers no prescription for one.  And that's at least honest, because there is none--not, at least, in the sense of a straightforward plan with identifiable, achievable steps toward making class treason happen.

It's an understandable call, when you consider American history in the mid-20th century.  The three Democratic Presidents that did the most to move progressive causes forward into reality--Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson--were class traitors, who understood how their class operated but also understood the need to betray its self-interest for the greater good of the country.  We are now into our third Democratic Presidency since Johnson, and none of those three successor names--Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama--will ever have the resonance of their predecessors among progressives.  (I'll make a slight exception for Obama, since his story is still being written, and he may ultimately be able to claim the ACA as a major achievement.  But, as even he might concede, a lot will depend on the outcome of 2014).

But I find Purdy's piece to be irritating, in that it seems like an exercise in the type of wishful thinking progressives start to engage in when the road to Nirvana starts to look hard and long, as it so often does.  "Maybe a class traitor will save us."  "Maybe another Roosevelt, Kennedy or Johnson will come along."  "Maybe the voters in red states will finally wake up."  Sometimes, I think that, if progressives had a chance to change our national motto, it would be changed to "Maybe, Maybe, Maybe."  Or if they had a chance to select a new national anthem, it would be John Lennon's "Imagine."

However, as even Obama is fond of pointing out, it takes more than imagination and hope to make change happen.  It takes hard work, sacrifice and compromise--the latter being the ugly reality that you don't always get to move the needle as far as you would like.  You have to be content with moving it as far as you can.  But the bottom line is that you've moved it, and given the next generation a chance to move it some more.  History is a relay race, with the goal being to take the baton and do the best possible job you can of handing it off.  You don't get all the credit.  You're not meant to do so.  It's a team effort, always, and it appalls me that progressives, of all people, need to be reminded of that fact.

I tend to agree that class traitors are helpful.  They have knowledge and resources, and both are badly needed.  But the only way to "recruit" them, if at all, is by being out on the barricades every day, not being afraid of confrontation, and not letting short-term fatigue get in the way of a better society in the long run.  It's the only way to make it happen.  But it does happen, if you simply keep on showing up and not giving in.  That's how you end up getting people like this.  And this.  And it is so worth it.  Something to keep remembering, on the days when the barricades start to look like mountains that can never be climbed.

Because we can climb them.  Together.  By moving forward, this election year and every day of every year thereafter.  If we do that, the class traitors will come.  I suspect that many of them are just waiting to see if anyone will welcome them.  Let's show them that we're here for them, and we're not going away.