The Revolution Will Not Be Moralized

Liberals, progressives, and leftists all find themselves greatly concerned with the nature of social progress. It is, of course, a complicated matter, and vexing questions seem to trouble the path forward from the outset: What kinds of people does progress call us to be? How might we rectify the injustices of the world with clear eyes and vigor?

These questions also call to mind the mixed responses to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. Now, racists will be racist, I know — but, even on the left, there were those who walked away from their viewing with a deep sense of dissatisfaction. They bitterly claimed that Lamar’s show, entertaining as it was, had little substance — that a performance rife with subversive political symbolism, from a Black Uncle Sam to a divided American flag composed of Black dancers, all done right in front of one of America’s most callous conservative presidents, was not revolutionary enough.

Those who felt this way were quick to chide those who took joy in watching the halftime show. They maintained that any celebration of the power of Lamar’s performance was more of a capitulation to the powers that be. “Black Americans,” Chez Chardé wrote, “are too impressed by empty symbolism.”

Now, I should be clear here that my aim is not only to harp on a minority response to Lamar’s halftime performance. If this were an isolated occurrence, there would be no use in giving any further analysis. But this incident, I suspect, is itself indicative of a view that evidences a deeper, more troubling tendency on the left: the view that change-making is an all-or-nothing affair.

I could easily offer up a kind of ad hominem jab at those from whom we hear these claims most often: that it is those very same people that you’ll never find doing the messy political work on the ground. But this argument is itself a form of obfuscation. It does not tell us why, beyond the lethargy of its proponents, we should be wary of such a political view.

I remain deeply suspicious of those who moralize and scrutinize as though progress is an all-or-nothing affair. The fact of the matter is that tragedy inheres in our political condition. We make our choices against the backdrop of a world in which failure and frustration are always at our door — one in which we are robbed of any lasting sense of satisfaction. People choose to protest, for example, at the expense of seeking elected office, negotiating with their political adversaries, or otherwise seeking to bring about change. Every step forward is a step back in another regard — and any situation properly called “moral” is one in which some good must be sacrificed at the altar of another.

What I am trying to say here is that this moralistic tendency on the left is indicative of a deeply corrosive political fiction: the illusion that we can, if we only try hard enough, usher in change without sacrifice, without compromise, without loss. To moralize in such a manner —  to speak as though bringing about change is an all-or-nothing affair — is to ultimately induce a kind of paralysis in oneself. It is an idealism that lends itself too easily to truculence and inaction. One inevitably refuses to take up arms in the long march toward liberation because the march itself appears too slow, too complex, too imperfect.

I contend that the revolution will not be moralized — that any attempt to take refuge in political perfectionism will leave us woefully unprepared to face the challenges of the present moment. We must not, however, allow the tragedy of our situation to resign us to the ranks of pessimists and cynics. The injustices of our situation demand that we continue to press on for a path forward. But we must never allow our idealism to shadow our commitment to the messy work of bringing about change on the ground.

Political action, I conclude, must be seen as both a moral and tactical affair. Bound up with this task is a commitment to taking our joy whenever and wherever we can get it, to refusing to succumb to despair, to realizing that our democracy is never perfect, but perfectible. It is a view steeped not in moralism, but meliorism — in the belief that the soul of progress lies in our ability to creatively confront the more tragic aspects of our situation.

Political terms typically charged with binaristic moral judgments take on a new meaning in this regard. No longer can performance, symbolism, and art — violence, protest, and respectability politics — be seen as irrevocably good or bad. They are, at best, sensible methods of responding to injustice and, at worst, empty and regressive political tools. To fight for progress is to find some way of working in the gray area — to see with clear eyes that even as failure and frustration await our every step, we must continue to find joy in continually offering up complicated, creative responses to the injustices before us. It is a view saturated, in the words of Eddie Glaude, in “a hope not hopeless but unhopeful” — in the humble optimism that our doings and sufferings might eventually divine the best path forward.