Blum, Finkenauer, and the American Myth
Iowa’s 1st District is in the midst of a Congressional toss up, a contest between the petty bourg incumbent Rod Blum and the young Clintonite Abby Finkenauer. It’s a standard American match between a pro-business conservative and a lip service liberal. Blum is contemptible for all the typical reasons, he’s a GOP sycophant that only believes in austerity and immiseration. Not a lot to discuss with him. Finkenauer’s platform, however, offers content that warrants more thorough scrutiny. Insights regarding the inadequacy and animus endemic to the larger Democratic party can be ascertained from her campaign, a project of mythic Americana only rivaled by Springsteen cover bands and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential strategy.
Finkenauer’s entire candidacy is distilled with this succinct ad her team recently unveiled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXxYe2YEGZc
To be candid, I find the affirmation that there was once a time in which politics did not divide to be an absolutely disgusting attempt to revise history, to reinforce the bourgeois bipartisan narrative.
In just 30 seconds, Finkenauer has confirmed observations made by J. Sakai in his historical exposition Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat:
“If the clearing away of the Indian nations had unlocked the door to the spread of the slave system, so too it had given an opportunity to the settler opponents of the planters. And their vision was not of a reborn Greek slaveocracy, but of a brand-new European empire, relentlessly modern, constructed to the most advanced bourgeois principles with the resources of an entire continent united under its command. This new Empire would not only dwarf any power in Old Europe in size, but would be secured through the power of a vast, occupying army of millions of loyal settlers. This bourgeois vision could hardly be considered crackpot, since 20th Century Amerika is in large part the realization of it, but the vision was of an all-European Amerika, an all-white continent.”
The idea that there was once a time in which politics did not divide, in which you could eat dinner with your racist grandparents and disagree and everything would be totally hunky dory, is a fantasy within this empire’s legendarium. It is a whitewashed aphorism of the American bourgeoisie that conveniently omits the legacies of genocide, slavery, and vast economic destitution that have underlied this nation’s development. When has the exertion of political power in America not led to conflict and poverty? Maybe not in the dining rooms of the privileged classes that Finkenauer is fetishizing, but for the rest of the world, I imagine it’s an utterly more tragic reality.
Blum and Finkenauer, representing the undaunted capitalist order, proffer two perspectives:
- Abject economic and political domination, the reactionary objective.
2. A somewhat cordial agreement in which the benevolent cadres of the overclass try to bargain with the more vicious oppressors in efforts to maybe attain less expensive healthcare.
Liberals like Finkenauer fundamentally cannot oppose the ruling class, they’re beholden to it, or they’re just apart of it. So, they cry for platitudinous, means-tested welfares they can never deliver and delusionally allude to an imaginary American past in hopes that this will differentiate themselves from their conservative rivals as the reasonable alternative, all the while desperately hoping this scheme will spur their withdrawn voting blocs.
This strategy has not been effective, partially because “can’t we all just get along” isn’t a cogent method of garnering votes, but mostly because conservatives are much better at harnessing the white supremacist promise of class privilege embedded into the American economic base. Both American liberals and conservatives strive to cultivate political clout by harkening back to the good ol’ days, but while the Finkenauer’s are commending the idealistic hokum of kindness, the Blum’s are assuring their petty bourg coalitions that the racialized class hierarchy will be protected. The political outcome of this duality is a dispirited working class and a roused enclave of bosses, managers, and those who want to be bosses and managers.
The discourses that Finkenauer chooses to deploy as campaign messaging are not spontaneously selected. The American mythos is crafted by cohorts of the despotic class, many of which are upper echelon liberals, authorities that have intentionally set an ideological precedent for politicos like Finkenauer and her peers. The underpinnings of this established liberalism are undeniably racism, patriarchy, and capital.
Democrats, especially those from the post-industrial Midwest, are fond of portraying themselves as working class champions and representatives of the marginalized, but their history as arbiters of capital is overt. Nothing has changed in the present day. Campaigns akin to Finkenauer’s demonstrate the infrangible link between liberalism and whiteness.
