TLP Weekend Edition (November 16-17, 2024)

What we're reading and checking out this weekend.

This week’s music recommendation is a new live record from Hayden Pedigo, a solo guitar wizard from Amarillo, Texas. (Getty Images)

🎧 “The End of the Obama Coalition,” NYT podcast with guest Michael Lind. Ezra Klein interviews TLP friend Michael Lind on the sociology of the Democrats’ crack-up after moving from traditional party-based machines and urban civil servants to the progressive NGO behemoth that replaced it (what John Judis and Ruy Teixeira call “the shadow party”). Lind explains how leftist non-profits and billionaires work together to turn the cultural extremism to 11:

So what I think of after two decades in the nonprofit sector, at various times, is Lind’s law of nonprofit advocacy: You go as far as the voters support your position, and then you go beyond the border into further territory where the next position is unpopular. And this is a deliberate strategic move, because if you just are advocating for what everybody believes anyway, then you’ve won. Nobody’s going to write you a check.

But if you go 10 or 20 or 30 percent further, into the controversial realm, then you will be attacked. And in the case of progressive nonprofits, you’re being attacked by the right, which is what you want. And you can say, “We’re being attacked for this.” And then you can link it to your previous gains by saying, “They don’t only oppose this bridgehead in enemy territory, but they want to roll back everything we’ve done in the last hundred years.” So I do think that kind of edginess, that’s baked into NGO annual fund-raising newsletter culture. That’s how you get people to open their wallets.

And I think that explains a lot of 2020, whether it was the trans issue, whether it was the “Defund the Police”—things that make perfect sense if you’re a nonprofit trying to pry open the wallets of a small number of billionaire megadonors. And big foundations are just electoral poison.

Listen to the whole thing (or read the transcript). Tons to chew on.

📖 "Moving Forward: The 2024 Election and the Curse of the Curse of Knowledge," by Kurt Gray, Helen Devine, and Sam Pratt. It seems that following every election these days, half the country is energized and optimistic while the other half is fearful and despairing. In times like these, it's worth trying to exercise some sympathy and curiosity about our fellow citizens. In the Substack Moral Understanding, researchers are working to uncover how best to bridge moral divides in our society and politics. In a post-election piece, they write about the pressing need for moral understanding of people whose politics differ from our own and why it can be difficult, saying, "Working with each other feels especially difficult now because the right direction for our country seems so obvious to each of us." The team goes on to detail the "Curse of Knowledge," which can make it difficult to step into someone else’s shoes and imagine how they might see things differently. But becoming aware of this "curse," they write, makes it "more important than ever to approach conversations across the aisle with humility and a shared goal of learning."

📘 Blue Labour: The Politics of the Common Good, by Maurice Glasman. TLP featured Blue Labour this week in a piece about the lack of representation in the Democratic Party for economically populist and culturally conservative voters who helped decide the 2024 election. Blue Labour architect Maurice Glasman put out a concise tract about the components of this approach two years ahead of Labour’s big romp in the elections. Although the American Democratic Party has always been more liberal than UK Labour (think FDR’s Four Freedoms), Glasman’s thoughts on communities, faith, patriotism, and the failures of extreme versions of liberalism on the right and left are well worth considering:

New Labour argued that we had no choice but to accept a globalized free market economy in which the race was to the swift, the open and the flexible. Corbynism reacted against this with a jumble of old school statism and identity politics. Both ultimately failed.

In this book, Maurice Glasman takes the axe to the soulless utilitarianism and 'progressive' intolerance of both Blair and Corbyn. Human beings, he contends, are not calculating machines, but faithful, relational beings who yearn for meaning and belonging. Rooted in their homes, families and traditions, they seek to resist the revolutionary upheaval of markets and states, which try to commodify and dominate their lives and homes, by the practice of democracy, mutuality and pluralism. This is the true Labour tradition, which is paradoxically both radical and conservative—and more relevant than ever in a post-COVID world.

📖 "Can we please have less political art now?" by Kat Rosenfield and "Culture in the Age of Trump," by Matthew Gasda. Can culture be fun again? An unequivocal "maybe." Two fascinating considerations of our cultural moment going forward from Kat Rosenfield in the Boston Globe and Matthew Gasda in Compact.

🎶 Live in Amarillo, Texas, by Hayden Pedigo. Acoustic and electric soundscape maestro Hayden Pedigo recently released a live recording of a 2023 show from his native Amarillo. This record is amazing. Check out some otherworldly sounds from a lone guitar plus some good local banter.

Something happened. Between the summer of The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored and the night before Christmas Eve 2023, the music of Hayden Pedigo transformed. Back-to-back months of touring lead to incredible outcomes: First, his chops became more finely honed than ever before, lending a precision and versatility to the songs that would surprise even the most-seasoned Pedigo listener. Second, Hayden lived in these songs, translating them through improvisation and dynamic exploration into emotional juggernauts—instrumental music that sings to the audience.

Pedigo is playing the Songbyrd in D.C. on November 20th. Also, TLP will be in Huntington, W.V. this Saturday evening for Sturgill Simpson’s “Why Not?” tour where “Johnny Blue Skies” and the boys should rip some rock, country, bluegrass, and psych for three hours.