Liberals (Always) Have The Best Tunes

In the near future 2016 is just going to be the year about which sane people say 'we don't talk about that' and move on to happier times. Let's hope that's true because this is a dismal time to be alive if you believe in, you know, stuff like liberal democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, one could even say western civilisation founded on Enlightenment values.  Indeed believing in such things seems now to be the test of belonging to the famous 'liberal elite'. 

One of the saddest effects of the vile, pernicious and mendacious campaigns that have been run by thoroughly unscrupulous politicians in the UK and the US has been to make identity based on race, origin or belief the test of whether one truly belongs. This breathtakingly illiberal tidal wave is now making how you look, how you speak and how you behave a matter of political concern rather than a matter of personal choice. It will affect how people are treated and indeed whether they are able to remain in places in which they have lived for generations. 

So whilst we have been well aware of culture wars for decades, particularly in the US, these have been framed as battles within a still predominantly liberal democratic context. Now that very context is under direct threat and if you are deemed to come out on the wrong side in whatever tests are applied all bets are off.

Culture is therefore centre stage in a political context in a way that many of us consider it should never be. In my view that is a catastrophe for the west and shaming for our nations and the best of their traditions. 

In such times one wonder whether there is any hope at all. 

I was musing about that on the way to hear the wonderful Anais Mitchell earlier this week. She is a fantastically gifted singer and songwriter from the US who has been developing amongst other things a musical set after the apocalypse based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice called Hadestown.

The second song that she played was a simple, plaintive piece originally written just after the younger Bush had been elected President called One Good Thing. The point was - is there a single good thing about this benighted country that has just elected such a person to the highest office? 

The answer for me was clear. Yes, you. And other people like you.

This was followed by a plea for us not to cut ourselves off from the US for the next four years, at least culturally.

There may be all sorts of cultural battles to be fought over the coming years but the one that it seems to me that liberals win hands down every time over the reactionaries and the demagogues and the bigots is when it comes to creativity.

Older readers may recall the film Bob Roberts which took as a central conceit the frank absurdity of a right wing protest singer. The basic point was that Bob was a fraud and only out to use this unusual career as a way of being elected. He even ended up arranging to be shot (non fatally) to boost his appeal.

So why is a right wing singer a much more unusual phenomenon than a liberal one? And why are liberal ones frankly so much better.

Back to culture linked to liberalism. If you believe that how you look, how you speak, what you believe and how you live your life is fundamentally a matter of personal choice to be respected in those terms your starting point is to value others. 

In artistic terms empathy and the ability to inhabit the perspective of others and a more instinctive curiosity about difference and what happens when you combine and mix is always going to open up far more possibilities than a perspective that simply wants to reinforce and control and separate.

But there's more to it than that. A liberal perspective makes it far more likely that that multiple points of view will be recognised and understood. And that extends to being critical of your own side. And being prepared to make fun of it because you want it to be better.

If you don't think you have all the answers you are going to see the inherent absurdity in much of the human condition but nonetheless value it greatly. It inspires a great deal of humour, particularly satire and irony. Its part of a commitment to improving the human condition as well as puncturing the posturing of the powerful and those who do think they have all the answers.

Liberals are also much more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. The sense that there aren't simple answers and that we move forward unsteadily. In contrast conservatives simply tend to want an end point (or a return to the past) and to have that point reinforced. 

Whilst conservatives often castigate liberals as preachy the opposite is more likely to be true. Talk radio in the US, dominated by conservatives, is preaching by another name. Generally to the converted.

Clearly there are lots of right wingers who sing. Just consider forms like country and western. But leaving to one side the alt and nu forms of country which have subverted it from a more liberal perspective, the traditional version is all about creating an echo chamber of self reinforcing values and morality within strict boundaries and formulae and with a clear conclusion. 

It's easy to mock some of the further reaches of sessions on Radio 3 at midnight that bring together gamelan, electric guitar and mouth organ to see what happens when you put three people in a room together and ask them to get on with it. But I'm personally very, very happy that it happens. And frankly it happens as a product of liberal values.  

My suggestion is that liberals are far more disposed to creative engagement with others, to self reflection and to a level of curiosity that leads to far better art. 

I recently saw a piece at the theatre called Heartbeats and Algorithms which amusingly but quite profoundly looked at the consequences of developing an algorithm that will predict how you will behave in any given situation. 

The conclusion was clear. Heartbeats win out over alogrithms. We don't want to be predictable and we don't want to be controlled.

That's a fundamentally liberal perspective. And it's why in my view liberals will always have the best tunes. 

Something to hang on to in these dark times.

Oh, and Anais finished with this.