The Failure of 21st Century Liberalism
By 
I strongly believe that what Trump is showing is the complete rotten core of 21st century liberalism–and I define this broadly for despite what the say, almost all the self-defined “left” are essentially liberals–to have any useful to say at all. In short, we believed institutions would say us. We dismantled social movements and told everyone that voting was the only thing that mattered (see Obama’s dismantling of his grassroots followers as soon as he was elected in November 2008). We created government agencies that did great things, but we disassociated them from the politics required to sustain them. We turned social movements into legal details and a belief that expertise mattered. We forgot how to organize or in the case of too much of the labor movement, stopped organizing entirely. We channeled increasingly extreme versions of individualism over building collective power (and here, the left is very much guilty), making it almost impossible to come together to fight together. We heard and believed that our smart Democratic leaders would take care of things, allowing us to ignore all the crazy things Republicans said and did. The adults in the room would keep it under control, whether the media’s dear Republican Daddies like John McCain and Mitt Romney or the people’s Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.
But it all collapsed immediately when Donald Trump decided to blow up everything else. No one knows what to do because no one has done anything but screw around online for the last quarter century. As such, Trump is just caving everything in and no one has the first clue what to do about it because we lost the language, the understanding, and the energy on how to create change.
The Nobel prize winner Maria Ressa has said Americans are like “deer in the headlights” amid the collapse of US institutions and free speech under the Trump administration, particularly after Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
Speaking to Jon Stewart on the satirical news programme The Daily Show, the journalist and author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator said the speed at which Donald Trump had “collapsed” US institutions happened much faster than she anticipated.
She drew comparisons between the Trump administration and the government of the former president Rodrigo Duterte in her home country of the Philippines, saying: “If you don’t move and protect the rights you have, you lose them. And it’s so much harder to reclaim them.”
We don’t know how to move anymore.
As I’ve said forever, voting is merely one minor step in politics. It’s necessary but for way, way, way too long, liberals have focused on it as THE THING THAT MATTERS. We now clearly see that is vastly insufficient and, again, no one knows what to do.