In his book Know-It-All Society, Michael P. Lynch claims that intellectual arrogance rules US politics. Along the way, he points out that people share the news not to get at the truth. Or even to engage with ideas. Rather, they share the news an act of expression – a case of what Lynch calls ‘expressivism’ (related to, but somewhat distinct from, ethical expressivism). ‘Expressivism,’ here, means they post news stories on Facebook and Twitter to say something about themselves rather than about the world.
I think Lynch makes a good point. And I want to extend that point a bit. I think the term ‘expressivism’ provides us with a useful way to look at how people talk about COVID policy and even the politics they want to see.
COVID Policy
With COVID policy, expressivism enters the picture in splits between people’s personal behavior and the policies they support. And we see this split on both the left and the right.
On the left side, quite a few people advocate for a stricter approach. Sometimes very loudly, and often with moralistic language. And the policies they advocate seem to float apart from the data. In a previous post, I placed some of these folks into the category of ‘Doom Cult.’
But lots of these folks – even Doom Cult types – don’t actually follow the polices they support. The mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles blatantly ignored their own COVID restrictions. AOC caught COVID in Miami while engaging in the same behavior she wants to restrict. But non-politicians do the same. They advocate for closing schools and imposing restrictions. But the same people dine indoors at restaurants or drink in bars.
On the political right, we find talking heads who loudly rail against vaccines while getting themselves vaccinated as soon as they’re eligible. Many also mask up when they go out. For them, it’s all about ‘owning the libs’ and expressing their imagined superiority.
Expressivism and Politics
And then I look at the candidates people support. And what they seem to want out of their politicians. These things look like they’re about little more than personal expression. There’s little sign that anyone wants to get things done.
Trump ran the US for four years largely on fake executive orders and beating the drum about a range of fake problems. Right-wingers whine about books about gay people, ‘critical race theory,’ and any other fake outrage of the day. They make noise. But most of their actions are so identitarian as to reduce to nihilism. They cosplay politics as much as they play politics. Here we find, then, another case of expressivism – personal expression disguised as politics.
Finally, we can look at what passes for ‘strategy‘ on much of the political left. Many fail to think at all beyond electoral politics. And their take on electoral politics amounts to finding candidates who pound the table as loud as possible, engage in various kinds of moral grandstanding, and make little attempt at actually doing anything. Even if they wanted to do something, they haven’t built any form of popular power needed to do it.
Did we start by reducing politics to personal expression or by forgetting how popular power works? I don’t know. But the same results flow from it, either way. We hold precious little basis for popular power. And we have a ton of people on the public stage doing nothing more than showing their asses.
