The Overwhelming Power Of The American Left
“You have everything. And so much of it.” That is what Peggy Olsen said to Don Draper in Mad Men. It was indicative of the perceived unparalleled power and privilege Mr Draper had. In America, and consequently the world, this applies to the American left. Except it is not a perception. It is a reality.
The power and influence of the American left is almost impossible to overstate. It sets the narrative and controls the institutions within America, and uses American hard and soft power to spread its ideology around the world. Every single cultural debate in America is described with a left leaning framework. Talking points of the American left have entered the daily political discussion of other nations. Even in nations with fundamentally different social debates. How has this happened?
This article will be an attempt at describing the rise to and nature of power of a political ideology, with as little commentary on the ideology as possible. But commentary will inevitably slip in. First let’s look at the left’s prodigious power within America. It is a product of decades of slow build up, taking over every institution and purveyor of information in the country.
In a sense, the leftist takeover of institutions was inevitable. Before the 1950s, being on the political left, especially on social issues, meant simply striving for equal, or slightly more, rights for out groups within the country. The types of people who created and went into news and media naturally leaned more to this side.
This context additionally provided an easier starting argument for social leftism than conservatism. America, like all societies, had hierarchy and inequality between groups. It was quite simple to argue that radical restructuring was needed to remedy the systems of society. Before legal equality was granted, it was difficult to argue for preserving a system with transparent, built in inequality.
Social conservatism only started to become easier to argue for once legal equality was ensured. The argument was that social progression is good, but it is essential to preserve and have pride in the nation that that society is based on. It is easier to argue to make radical change to flawed structures than argue that “while the structures are flawed, let’s not go too far in our push for change.”
It is easier to make simple, understandable slogans pushing for social leftism, than for social conservatism. The majority of artists, creators and people in media were on the political left. And because of the aforementioned difficulty in articulating a vision of conservatism, those people stayed on the political left even after leftism morphed into something beyond wanting equal rights.
Political leftism didn’t become noticeably different from the push for egalitarianism until there was already an entrenched ecosystem of left leaning people in all halls of power in America. Conservatism, being more content with society as it is, did not drive people to be creative change agents. People who are more outside the box in ideas and ways of thinking, are those who rise to prominence in the culture. And those character attributes are connected more to the political left than the political right.
This is far from a comprehensive description of how the left took control of American institutions. But it does provide a window roughly into how this process occurred over decades. Eventually this process solidified into overwhelming left wing domination of the population of media, the arts, and tech. Even though there were conservatives in these fields, they were either blocked or forced into acquiescence by the supermajority left.
As a result of the consequent left wing domination of the institutions of America, and the way that political leftism’s ostensible tenets lent themselves more easily into sloganeering, left wing premises became surreptitiously inserted as axioms. The way that the left described their points of view (which obviously the right objected to) became how the ostensibly neutral news outlet described it. After all, all news and history is written by humans, who have inherent biases.
That is why, whenever one goes to a “neutral” website on a culture war topic, the manner in which the debate is described comes from a left leaning point of view. Conservatives do not accept that there is such a thing as “abortion rights.” For context, how would liberals react to the debate being about the “unborn baby’s rights”?
The same goes on arguments over race. Conservatives do not accept the premise that the left is fighting for “racial equality.” They say that legal equality is already here, and what the left is doing is using racial demagoguery to keep different groups divided, which hurts the country. Or that the push has gone past what the original goal was, and has pushed into racism against the supposed “in group.”
The fact that I have had to insert my obvious right leaning bias to simply explain the nature of the left’s default advantage is another example of that fact. Unwittingly, anyone who is not already conservative, starts with premises that the liberal position is the default. Conservatives must start any discussion on this topic by conveying “I know it may seem like this, but actually this is what the debate is about.”
As long as any type of inequality exists, it will always be easier for the political left to point to and claim that they are fighting for equality, even if that is not the case. Add in the fact that media, tech, the arts and education are all dominated by leftists, and the leftist message becomes the perpetual reinforcing axiom.
Beyond the US, the American left’s influence is also profound. America is the most powerful and influential nation in the world. In the age of technology, American culture and ideas are spread to every corner of the world. And American social debates are particularly influential in other Western countries, with similar cultures.
There is a reason the Black Lives Matter ideology became a world wide movement. Even though the ideology was created in reaction to the specific racial dynamics within the US. Other nations have similar racial problems, but not in the same specific manner as the US. Yet the US racial debate was used as a blanket for racial debate in many western countries. Or at least an inspiration.
Nothing was more indicative of American cultural hegemony, which is now functionally American leftist cultural hegemony, as when the English national soccer team knelt before their game with the US in the World Cup, while the American team stood. Kneeling as a way of fighting supposed racial injustice was started by American football player Colin Kaepernick.
His kneeling and purported “logic” for doing so was the inspiration for BLM’s kneeling. BLM’s kneeling was adopted by nations all around the world. Soccer’s European Championship, played in 2021, was a year after the national and world wide kneeling. It saw multiple European teams kneel as a “symbol against racial injustice.” Never mind that the kneeling came from an incorrect premise of rampant racism in American institutions.
Despite the obvious left wing political origins of the kneeling, nearly every non eastern European team participated in the kneeling. Nations like Italy, which are more culturally moderate than Western Europe, did not kneel at first, but then did when pressured to, by the Western European dominated media. The Anglo and Germanic nations were the most enthusiastic proponents of this exercise.
It was both depressing and fascinating to see the nations closest to the US culturally, be the most enthusiastic performers of kneeling. The British teams were at the forefront. This makes sense, as the British are the closest European nation to the US, linguistically and culturally. The intermingling of the cultures, along with shared language and easy communication, has made the British readily available to adopt American political discourse.
Thankfully, by the 2022 World Cup, kneeling had stopped, except for the English national team. I suspect that it was easier for England to continue than the US because kneeling was more immediately felt as politically in the US. Had the US players kept kneeling, there would have been some outcry within the country. Because kneeling was an American issue at the start, the British right didn’t feel as immediately attacked by it as the American right.
American entertainment, media and tech dominance means that American terms and political debates seep into countries around the world. America’s military allows American values to be exported around the world. And because the politics left controls the White House, they can order LGBT flags to be raised in socially conservative countries where US troops are based in.
The American left’s international influence is merely a function of America’s international influence. The totality of the left’s domestic dominance is the key. The American left isn’t necessarily more extreme than the left in other Western countries. It simply has the power in the most influential country in the world. As a consequence, it provides the leadership that the left in other countries follow.
Because of technology and globalization, the world is becoming more connected. Many say that every nation is becoming more like other nations. While that may be true to some extent, it is more that other nations are being engulfed by American culture. Being engulfed by American culture means you are engulfed by the dominant ideology of that culture.
It should be noted that conservative American ideas are spreading around the world. They are spreading for the same reason American liberal ideas are. Just at a lower rate because of the American left’s domination of American culture. But because the institutions are all solidly on the left, there is a ceiling on how much of the American right can be shown to the world. The left’s views are easily transferred from American media to foreign media.
In this privileged position, the American left has been able to shape the view of billions of people. Their influence is so profound that most people don’t even realized that they are influenced. What people take for granted as de facto are narratives shaped by the American left. That is true power.
America even now is the most powerful and influential nation in the world by far. And the left has profound hegemony in American life. Having hegemonic power in the world’s hegemonic power means you have incredible control. Let’s hope that the American left uses this power prudently.