from Paul Berman [left] on Tablet in the second of a series of highly provocative and thoughtful essays on the American left and the dangers of anti-Semitism.
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Michael Walzer has brought out a book called A Foreign Policy for the Left, in which he argues that, when people on the American left contemplate domestic affairs, they do so in a thoughtful, sober, and serious manner—or, at least, they make what Walzer considers to be an honest effort. But when those same people turn to world affairs, they slip into a different habit of mind, as if sliding from one lobe of the brain to another.
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The question of world affairs arises, and the left-wing public responds by thinking: “Everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.” No elaboration seems required. From that one assumption follow all the others.
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There is the spectacular instance of left-wing delusion about the Islamist political movement—the left-wing supposition that something has got to be progressive about the Islamists, even if the Islamists appear to be medieval reactionaries; and the further supposition that Islamism’s enemies among Muslims and non-Muslims alike must surely be the actual reactionaries, even when the enemies appear to be liberals and progressives. Here is a “politics of pretending” in a double-twist pretzel version.
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You can read about Bernie [Sanders’s] shortcomings in Truthdig, where he turns out to be a major sellout, a non-socialist because a non-anti-imperialist, and a tool of the sinister Democratic Party. The anti-Zionists and the fantasists yearn for an American [Jeremy] Corbyn [head of Britain's Labour party]. They want a national leader who will denote as realistic their own fictions and dreams about faraway dictators; and will usher the fictions and dreams into the American mainstream; and will say nice things about Hamas and bad things about Israel; and will offer an appalling speech to the Democratic National Convention; and will stand shoulder to shoulder with the outright bigots; and will drive everyone with a Jewish soul out of the left, except for a pitiful handful.
But America has produced no such leader. America has produced Bernie Sanders. America is different. Not different at every moment, but, even so, different.
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