Adam Hudson: As I look at young people protesting Trump, one thing I’ve realized is that today’s youth (those in high school and college) are growing up in a different age than millennials my age (mid-20s to mid-30s) — even though we’re all considered “millennials”. Millennials in high school or just entering college are a little too young to remember the Bush years, grew up with Obama for much of their youth, and are now witnessing the rise of Donald Trump.
Contrast that with millennials currently in their mid/late-20s to mid-30s: we grew up in and were politicized by the Bush years. I was politicized by the 2000 election, 9/11, and the Iraq war and was in college during the 2008 financial crash. I remember when a lot of students at Stanford wanted to go into investment banking and it was seen as a lucrative job. But after the crash, less people were interested in it.
As I reflect on this, there’s one important lesson that I think needs to be learned from the Bush years. That lesson is the importance of forging a progressive left position independent of mere anti-Republican liberalism. Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Bush years is that the left got sucked into a large anti-Bush front. So all the issues that the left was concerned about — militarism, economy, racial justice, etc. — got merged into this anti-Bush/”anyone but Bush” front. I remember doing antiwar organizing during the latter part of the Bush years and that’s where much of the energy went — getting Bush out.
But when Obama came in and continued the war in Afghanistan, drone bombings, etc., it was far harder to mobilize people on that issue. Those liberals who criticized the US war machine when Bush was president thought, “Hey, Bush is out. Problem solved” when, in reality, the problem wasn’t solved at all. That allowed Obama to continue and expand Bush’s national security powers and now that same machine is in Trump’s hands — something antiwar critics warned against about Obama’s Kill List.
So we can’t just dissolve into a MoveOn, DailyKos, Daily Show style “anybody but Trump” movement. Even Trump and his gang of gargoyles get pushed out of power, that doesn’t mean issues like militarism, mass incarceration, oppression of women, oppression of LGBTQ people, deportations, climate change, systemic racism, etc. will be solved automatically. Those systems and policies will remain in place even with a Democrat.
So we have to stick to our principles and focus on challenging those unjust policies because of how oppressive and destructive they are, not just because Trump is in office. Trust me, there’s not a huge difference between bombs launched by Obama and bombs launched by a Republican. Police brutality and mass incarceration under a Republican politician remain police brutality and mass incarceration under a Democratic politician. Climate change won’t end just because a Democrat enters the White House. Most of the time, those policies — particularly war, incarceration, climate change — are aided, abetted, and propped up by Democrats.
I know the Left is doing a lot of necessarily soul-searching because how badly we were beat this election. So among the biggest lessons I think the Left needs to learn, it’s the importance of staking out a solid, progressive left position independent of liberalism. In the coming years, I won’t just be going after Trump and the GOP. I’m going after liberals and the Democratic Party establishment pretty hard, too (which I’ve been doing anyway).