Deconstruction Time for the Democrats

By DON ROLLINS

“To think deconstructively is to not only call into question accepted truths, but to ask in whose interests it is that they be accepted. These accepted truths might be benign – the result of lazy thinking or genuine consensus – but they can also be malignant.” — Peter Salmon, Australian writer and Jacques Derrida biographer

If there’s a rank amateur’s version of deconstruction philosophy, maybe it goes something like this: What we know about the world is what we were taught to know about the world. So comes the question, who taught me about the world?

For those who (like me) have little genetic disposition or patience for esoteric philosophy, wrapping the mind around deconstruction begs an old metaphor, the one about trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. This stuff is clearly not for those looking for a breezy summer read.

But there’s something at the core of the deconstructionist point of view that has for the past 60 years been a thorn in the side of conventional Western literature and philosophy. And more recently, conventional politics.

Most often credited to the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), deconstruction posits that everything within Western culture has been “constructed“ and institutionalized, and can thus be “deconstructed” and de-institutionalized - taken down to its barest essence.

Headiness noted, Derrida’s anti-orthodox approach to truth (small t) has a way of coming around after going around, especially during major upheaval. Hard times call for hard answers, and the deconstructionist approach to change has particularly resonated among left-leaning political, social and religious progressives; Deconstruction, with its iconoclastic questioning of why we think the way we think, has taken form in such movements as Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo, PussyHat Project and #BlackLivesMatter.

But alas, for all its obvious and not-so-obvious impact on American progressivism, deconstruction is in short supply where its needed most: The Democratic Party brass.

Democrats in top leadership positions are not alone in resisting deep change within their party, but they bear much greater responsibility than their rank-and-file fellow partisans.. Rather than challenge the Boomer-driven policies, practices and assumptions that placed Joe Biden on that debate stage in the first place, two party giants - former presidents Obama and Clinton - rushed to their friend and colleague’s defense. In line with the party’s spin, every candidate has an off debate or two. Stay the course.

Its not often a single instance captures what’s amiss with a major party, but amiss was written all over what Democrats desperately needed to be one of their candidate’s finest hour. An already anxious, increasingly fissured base became all the more. And not even those calling for a change in candidates thus far appreciate the true nature of what’s gone wrong.

At this juncture, a deconstruction approach is neither timely nor particularly realistic for the Democratic Party as constituted. Soul searching is better left for another time. But whatever the outcome for 2024, party elites would do well to autopsy the 2024 primaries and general election per a clear-eyed destruction lens:

1. The apparatus for choosing high-office candidates did not come from on high, nor even the pens of unbiased founders. Republican higher-ups and conservative Supremes get that (for all the wrong reasons) even as they lay waste to constitutional norms. Instead of running predictable candidates in predictable ways, Democrats should vet those with the nerve to say the system itself is questionable;

2. Modern presidential elections are neither modern nor truly elective. Their outcomes are increasingly determined by a handful of states, and dependent in part on how many millionaires and billionaires each side can muster. Democrats should expect shouts of hypocrisy as they too play this game, but any hope for change has to come from their side;

3. Democratic Boomers and Elders do not necessarily make for better leaders; in fact all but the most visionary and vigorous may be harming their party’s larger ends by boring the pants off younger voters and potential candidates. The champions of the rich Democratic tradition should be given their due; but generational change is now upon us, and its time to pass the baton with grace and encouragement;

4. Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. Overall progress against injustice is real; but tell that to the parents who just lost their child to gun violence, the woman who traveled three states over to undergo a safe abortion, or the migrant who qualifies for citizenship, but is deported because of clerical errors this side of the border. Democrats can explode the myth of full personhood, yet lift up and resource efforts to make positive strides.

If the deconstructionist position appears more acid than balm, some would say that’s a fair observation. But Derrida’s followers are quick to note deconstruction doesn’t mean destruction. The object in question may still exist, but is stripped of meaning previously assigned for the sake of privilege, power or simple inertia. The constitution doesn’t cease to be, it just ceases to be holy writ, in need of comprehensive rethinking.

Deconstruction is likely among the most slippery concepts in modern philosophy, and this analysis may result in more heat than light. But the Democratic Party no longer seems to have an appointment with a destiny. Or the willingness to ask why.

Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2024

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