For centuries, the right has relied on the same tactic to preserve the status quo: convincing people that a better world is simply impossible. They tell us that while it may look perverse to have a society in which some people eat $2,000 gold-flake pizzas while others die from being unable to afford medical treatment, it is simply The Best We Can Do, and it is futile and naive to protest. If you are revolted by the fact that Jeff Bezos can’t think of any way to spend his money except by starting his own space program while his warehouse workers toil in misery, you simply do not understand basic economics, which says that this is fine and natural and inevitable. If you find it gross and unacceptable that there are homeless people sleeping in front of empty luxury condo buildings, you’re naïve, irrational, unrealistic.
Albert Hirschman, in his book The Rhetoric of Reaction, looked at conservative arguments throughout history to show that they consistently make appeals to the same notions: perversity, futility, and jeopardy, i.e., Proposed Reform X is against God/nature, it won’t work, and it will threaten existing progress. The arguments are made consistently regardless of whether there is any evidence that they are true. This is how a “war on the imagination” is waged, and people become convinced that it isn’t worth dreaming of anything radically different than the status quo. So when teachers are being paid so little that they leave the profession, we are told that the only options are to let unqualified people teach or import teachers from overseas. And when our public schools are underfunded and dysfunctional, we have a debate over how best to turn the schools into effective job-training programs.
Convincing You That Nothing Better Is Possible | Current Affairs
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