Government By Performativeness is a Failure

Marc Nozell from Merrimack, New Hampshire, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A few weeks back, Jaybird wrote about the firing of three far-left school board members in San Francisco. I found the following quote from Clara Jeffries, writing for (as editor-in-chief of) Mother Jones, particularly interesting:
When you’ve lost even the far-left Mother Jones, you got trouble, my friends.

Regardless of your political persuasion, it’s hard not to think that perhaps Democrats in positions of power have some ‘splainin to do.  Left-wing policies in American cities have spectacularly failed by all but the most generous of measures.   Democrat politicians time and again have been shown to be uniquely inept and corrupt – uniquely, because at least with corrupt Republicans, you know what you’re getting going in.  Republicans admit they’re out to help big business, but Democrats speak empty words about “helping people” and “hope and change” while doling out an endless stream of goodies and benefits to their fatcat chums. 

In their neverending pursuit to line their own pockets whilst seizing as much power as they possibly can, the Democrats have steamrollered over damn near every cultural and political norm there is.  They have done this with the full complicity of the American media and a shocking number of corporations (for a political party which purports to hate big business and all), and they continue to reward crooked and inept special interest groups at the expense of both the American people and the Constitution itself.

It’s outrageous.  People on both the right and the left think the graft present at the deepest levels of the Democrat Party is outrageous (Do you doubt it?  Think of how the movers and shakers at the DNC conspired against Bernie Sanders not once but TWICE!  Yes, leftists are angry about this pro-establishment, pro-1% corruption in their movement, and they SHOULD be!)  

People on both right and left despair over the suffering we’re seeing in so many places in America – even though we may have different ideas about how to fix these issues.  The oldest city in America’s interior, Detroit, which hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957, is in a shambles; former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was so corrupt he was actually sentenced to 28 years in prison. (If this strikes you as unjust, rest easy – Donald Trump later commuted his sentence).  Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, has elected Democrats since 1952, including the brutal, racist, and corrupt pro-cop populist Frank Rizzo, a guy so terrible he later jumped ship and became a Republican.

One can tell the sad state of affairs when your, or at least MY, knee jerk reaction to all this is to think “well, maybe the corruption wouldn’t be so bad if they actually DID anything”, but the state of American cities is inarguably indefensible.  Chicago, which in 2021 had its deadliest year in 25 years, has been electing exclusively Democrats since 1927.  Raging dumpster fire Gary, Indiana has gone blue since 1943.  St. Louis, either the second- or fourth- most dangerous city in the US depending on the source you consult, 1949.  Baltimore, since 1963.  San Francisco, 1964.  Even the Republican-leaning state of Ohio has Cincinnati electing Democrats since 1971, and Cleveland since 1990.  At some point, surely any rational person interested in an explanation for American decay would look not at the claimed intentions, but at the results of Democrat policies in American cities, and in a good number of rural areas as well.  It makes a person wonder, “While their peace, love, and harmony rhetoric sounds nice, are their policies really working?”  Even the most generous of standards, they’re not.

Performance vs. Performativeness.  It’s a thing.  And you can only outrun it so long.

In order to defend themselves from having to answer these hard questions coming at them from both sides of the aisle, the Ds, rather than address whatever-it-is in their methods and underlying philosophy that appears to be lacking, went all in on performativeness, blaming “white supremacy” for America’s problems instead.  Now, why exactly “white supremacy”, which was a Definite Thing back in the early part of the 20th century, is turning cities into pits of despair in the here and now, after decades of glorious leadership of woke progressive Democrats, instead of in the then and there when cities were run by Republicans at least some of the time, and old-school fiscally responsible Democrats the rest, is one of those hard questions.  It strikes me that “white supremacy” is an awfully convenient way to pass the buck from the people, party, and policies actually to blame for the 75 year decline of American cities, over to some nebulous, all encompassing boogeyman that is somehow in everything and everyone all the time.  It’s sad that the politics of scapegoating and division has worked as well as it has, but that’s in no small part because the vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions truly despise racism and really do want to make things right for everyone who has been or is being harmed by racist policies. 

What is even sadder is that Democrats are apparently willing to divide America in perpetuity to avoid taking their lumps for their own failed policies, or …gasp!…take up the challenge of improving upon those policies.  But here we are.

To give a concrete example for skeptics, let’s return back to Clara Jeffries’ original article.  One of the “performativeness over performance” moments that Jeffries calls out in her excellent article is the decision of the school board – at the height of the pandemic, with children out of school and ostensibly not learning, with some children lacking Internet access to take classes online – to expend time and money on a scheme to change several school names to be more acceptably woke.  This was a scheme so ill-timed and poorly thought out that SF Mayor London Breed, who is not exactly a conservative, stated, “What I cannot understand is why the school board is advancing a plan of all of these schools renamed by April when there isn’t a plan to have our kids back in school by then.”  

I can’t understand that either.  Do you? 

Even more egregious, as is so often the case with progressive performative theater, many of their changes were arbitrary, even petty.  Changing the name of Dianne Feinstein Elementary School because while this beloved liberal icon was mayor, city employees replaced a tattered Confederate flag that had been part of a historical display of flags that had been standing for nearly fifteen years before she ever took office, for example.  This was in the ’80s!  AND she soon thereafter had the flag removed completely, at a point in time that simply wasn’t being done!  Yet at the same time, the school board kept George Moscone’s name on a school, even though he was mayor while the flags stood and did nothing to change them. 

Other changes to school names were outright ahistorical, based on erroneous claims that individuals had been part of genocidal acts when they weren’t, or that historical events were racially motivated despite substantial evidence to the contrary.  This so-called educational body, the San Francisco School Board, even made several outright mistakes borne from a lack of proper research.  According to Jeffries, they even got certain historical figures mixed up with others!  Not a good look for the people who are, ya know, supposed to be in charge of imparting accurate information about the world to impressionable youngsters.

One of my fave pithy expressions is this: “Don’t argue over what’s on the menu when the restaurant is on fire.”  In other words, don’t waste time on the small stuff when you’re facing a real emergency.  Yet this happens so much with Democrats; they focus on the slightest of injustices out of all proportion, while willfully ignoring massive and undeniable problems that must be addressed.  Thus we see leftist pundits breathlessly consumed by the existence of Aunt Jemima¹ instead of doing anything about the fact that children, even innocent babies sitting strollers and in carseats, are dying across the US, caught in the crossfire of a once-great city imploding. 

Democrats ignore real-world threats to focus on unimportant surface-level details so often that I have to conclude that it’s not an accident, it’s a tactic.  Performativeness over performance.  Because performativeness is not only loud and distracting, it’s EASY.  Anyone can blame Aunt Jemima for the world’s troubles.  Much harder to look deeper and accept some responsibility for why things are they way they are.  But you can’t fix a problem without having a full understanding of why it exists.

You know the reason why the San Francisco school board sat around renaming schools in the midst of the biggest crisis that has ever hit modern public education?  Because they have no freakin’ idea what to do, how to govern, how to fix anything.  They don’t even get what’s going wrong.  All they know is how to make hollow and meaningless gestures, and they do this in lieu of attaining a deeper understanding of the issues they were elected to handle.   Because problems you understand, you may be expected to solve.

Now, some may say, “but Democrat leaders WANT to make changes, and the Republicans block them every time.”  But that reply is utter nonsense.  Not only did literally everyone involved in San Francisco education regardless of political persuasion want the school board to, like, you know, do ANYthing of substance, but also because governing wisely and well requires you don’t always get what you want.  That’s why compromise is a thing, why people say things like “reach across the aisle” and all the rest of it.  Any politician – any leader – who demands that either the other guy enact their whole entire plan precisely as they themselves personally envision it, regardless of how stupid, misguided, or unfair it is, or they’re going to take their ball and go home, is neither leader nor politician.  They’re a religious extremist, interested only in forwarding their own agenda, and are willing to sacrifice anyone – even small and defenseless children – upon their altar.

And that’s what the progressives have evolved, or should I say DEvolved into, courtesy of their woke beliefs, beliefs so strong that wokeism has in essence become a religious movement – a bunch of impractical dogmatists rendered so ineffectual by adherence to fanaticism coupled with every politician’s desire to be held accountable for nothing, that they refuse to compromise on anything, no matter how minor.  They are paralyzed, unable to commit to any course of action because every course of action may end with them “sinning” either inadvertently or by association.  And while people’s religious precepts are their own business, when it comes to leadership, sending a zealot into a situation where compromise and practicality…qualities necessary to effective leadership…is required, is simply not going to work.

When most of us look back at historical leaders, we see flawed human beings in a tough situation doing the best they could to juggle the needs and desires of many self-interested parties attempting to live together in a diverse nation.  Sometimes, indeed, too many times, they got it wrong, but the miracle lies in how often they got it right.  It is truly amazing how for all their faults and foibles, their efforts bestowed upon us the luxury of worrying about an image of Aunt Jemima on our pancake syrup instead of wondering where our breakfast would come from.  Yet when leftists look back at history, they see the evil and the complicit, no more and no less.  Is it any wonder they fear committing to any real course of action, if they think they’ll be judged in perpetuity and invariably found wanting?

But as they say, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.  If the most pressing issue a “leader” thinks they have during a global pandemic that has left the most at-risk children out of school, learning nothing, and in potentially dangerous situations and environments, is to change the name of a school because it too closely resembles the name of a famous American battle, when it wasn’t even named after that battle, well, that “leader” has clearly chosen performativeness over performance. 

Leftist policies have failed.  They have failed undeniably and spectacularly and inarguably.  The human misery inflicted upon Americans of all races, colors, and creeds by the misguided policies of woke politicians, bureaucrats, and demagogues is heartbreaking.  Democrat “leadership” has failed in San Francisco, in Detroit, in Baltimore, in Chicago, in New Orleans, and even in our nation’s capital.  But what’s the answer?  Democrats are choosing to double and triple down on their failures instead of contemplation and compromise, choosing to debate the ethics of vegan wontons while the restaurant smolders around them, while people are OD’ing on opioids in the bathroom and the waitress has her kids out in the car because she can’t find childcare, even continuing that debate while someone drives by and shoots the place up.

What Clara Jeffries said about the San Francisco School Board was spot on.  But it’s nothing new.  Democrats have been putting performativeness over performance for a very long time, because performativeness is something they think they can win at while distracting everyone from their utter lack of performance in basically every arena beyond the crafting of soundbites that play nicely in their media-enabled echo chambers.

And this is not a “Vote Republican” prescription, either.  That would be me making the same mistake progressives always do, suggesting a solution that is simply untenable for the people I’m offering it to.  Vote Democrat, by all means.  But do something!  There are plenty of Democrats out there with ideas, good and productive and practical ideas (Jeffries mentions some of them in her article) who are being constantly hamstrung by the individuals within their party who allow corruption and woke fanaticism to rule the day.  Find these people.  Elect them.  Stop tearing them down when they try to make positive changes because the changes aren’t woke enough or don’t go far enough for your liking or because some ivory tower activist can envision some other more perfect solution that would work flawlessly if only we lived in a utopia.

Because the Democrats have listened to their ivory tower activist wing long enough.

1. Aunt Jemima, of course, being the quintessential symbol of making superficial changes while ignoring meaningful ones.  Some readers might like to hijack this narrative to say something like “Gawd, why are conservatives so obsessed with Aunt Jemima, anyway??” – yet another instance of Democrats so unwilling to hear legitimate criticism of the results of their failed policies that they derail the convo in favor of performativeness.  Well, hey, I don’t care actually about Aunt Jemima, it’s what Aunt Jemima says about YOUR MOVEMENT that is important.