Liberal Democracy Today — Chronicles of Love and Resentment
I think this is a very interesting *Chronicle*. It begins by asserting that liberal democracy depends upon compromise, which means neither side sees itself as occupying an ontologically prior and privileged position. It then goes on to point out that the Left finds it difficult to adhere to these terms, because it sees itself as representing the originary position of equality on the scene. This assumption leads the left to see all institutions as ultimately illegitimate--either they facilitate the originary distribution of the scene, in which case they are provisionally accepted, or they interfere with that distribution, in which case they must be overthrown. It then points out that this tendency of the left is becoming more extreme, and finally cites AOC's New Green Deal as a new way of "seizing" the originary position of naked equality, in this case before a "victimized" nature, which we are all now committed to protect (from ourselves--from our own "sparagmatic" tendencies). But I don't know if Gans realizes that this presumed originary position would itself be incompatible with liberal democracy. What would there be to compromise over? And any alternative to the GND would be a set of forces that could crush it, also without any regard to liberalism or democracy.
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In terms of GA, then, it seems to me we can formulate the following hypothesis: the future of the social order will depend upon the battle, or competition, or dialectic, between those who insist on directly occupying the originary position, and those who insist that distribution must be mediated by the descendants of the Big Man--hierarchs, or autocrats. The disadvantage of the post-Big Man faction is that its position is anterior to the originary scene simulated in the leftist scenario; its advantage is that, while hierarchs and autocrats actually exist, at least as much so under the most self-proclaimed egalitarian order, any imagined egalitarianism now is a fraudulent simulacrum that "disappears" the center from the originary scene. Even if, as Gans suggests here, "Nature" can become a new sacrality (he is right to "hesitate" to ask the Green New Dealers if they see it this way), the tremendous, superhero movie level agencies required to carry out 1/10 of what the GND envisages would create vast new hierarchies and priesthoods. If they were to adhere to the assumption of the originary position, they would raze the earth and all in it, including each other; if this new order were to be stabilized, new ways of sacralizing hierarchies would have to be created. In the end, the autocrat is the more authentic inheritor of the originary center, even if patience is required to see it as such.
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Right--posterior! The imperative to save the planet would wreak havoc with the mass market as well, which is perhaps part of what you're getting at here. (It would address tommy's Age of the Spragmos, though.)
There's a partly but not completely ironic sympathy with AOC on the right, in part because she's so heedlessly busting up the terms of liberal democracy, and proposing massively heroic projects similar to those admired by the imperial right. I read more of that sympathy in Gans's Chronicle than is warranted, but whether he subjectively "feels" that sympathy the alternatives he presents implies it. Less "sympathy" than acknowledgment of a confrontation over the terrain of a ruined liberalism. That's getting a bit ahead of things, but no one in the Democratic party seems interested in openly resisting AOC (even if there are noises that behind the scenes there are plans to stymie her). They seem to be accepting that she's the future.