Sometimes you rewild someone else’s ideas and other times theirs rewild you. What I mean by rewilding is that they remake or even create the conditions for a shift in perspective, imagination, and even paradigms. No small thing, but one that happens more often than you might think if you search for and consciously cultivate these wild thoughts. I found one recently in this interview of Chris Hedges by Kyle Kulinski. He asks Hedges at the 50 second mark, “Is there an alliance that can be made between the populist left and populist right focused on economics that can move us in a more FDR-like direction?” This is such a difficult question, one that could be palmed off. That’s what is normally done. The hard task of engaging is just magicked away with vapid generalities.
Hedges’ response could have taken any number of turns given his wide experience as a renowned war reporter and prison teacher, but his response is instructive in a much larger way. You can watch the whole thing. It is an object lesson in how to think both theoretically and pragmatically. He first notes that the premise of the question assumes that there is a populist left. He argues effectively that populist left as we know it has already committed suicide. Or they have become the blue check, cul de sac liberal elite. As he puts it they have morphed into, ” a boutique kind of activism [centered] around identity politics and woke culture.”
Many thinkers would be satisfied with this devastating, elbow from the sky takedown, but not Hedges. He continues,
“In terms of the populist right i think that the only hope is to build alliances and you’re right that
the solution is in terms of re-empowering a disenfranchised working class to build alliances.”
He is not satisfied with these general suggestions. He continues with some specific examples,
“We need to build alliances around specific issues, for instance, the
Kellogg Strike, the attempt to unionize Walmart or Amazon.”
It is a classic move from the general to the specific, but that is not enough for Hedges who then argues from a local perspective, his own teaching perspective from his prison classes he teaches at Rutgers and his own working class family experience.
From 1:48 to the end of the clip (see below) Hedges shares how he has approached the problem of working with what might be considered difficult folk. It is a personal engagement that is tied into strongly held values that must be shared. And he shows us how to do this. You can always separate the deeply serious folks in this way. If they are not making the issue personal, they ain’t serious.
This prospect is one I am taking with me in my own community as I try to get the Democratic Party locally to change how they look at folks who are not like them. This is particularly important now as defunct national leadership tries to tell us how to handle the deplorables among us. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama are so far removed from my experience on the ground in a little southcentral Kentucky county that Chris Hedges thinking model here is more than just refreshing. It is the way to move. We need to be centered on personal values, shared specific values if we are going to succeed in working together. For me that comes by working with specific people with specific needs using specific tools. I have working class bonafides, I know some of what folks need here (jobs and training and union membership) that could be pushed with something like the ARPA legislation and money that has devolved to this county. And that is what I am doing just like Hedges is working in prisons and sharing his wealth of experience.
