So here is a podcast of this month that makes a genuine effort to be "on the left":

So you've got Richard Wolff, an economist who happens to be cool, Butch Ware, a Black activist who has a persuasive case for how to make the world a better place, and Briahna Joy Gray, veteran of Harvard Law School and the voice of reason who seems most in her element when she identifies what way is the wrong way to go.

And maybe you could call people such as Kshama Sawant or Christian Smalls or Nick Cruse or Sabrina Salvati "leftists." In such instances we are talking about the restoration of a Left in the US, of which I would approve.

But here's the rub. What we have of "the left" today includes:

1) Obama fans
2) Sanders supporters who caved along with Sanders
3) Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers
4) DSA Democrats
5) Suckers for Scam Israel
6) Suckers for Scam Ukraine
7) Members of sectarian parties which would prefer to remain small and pure

And each of these groups has a genuine claim to being "the left." So they can't be legitimately dismissed as "phony leftists." Yet each of these groups, together, has also had a role in forming the America of today, in which businesses act as if their customers are made of money, politics is a commodity, "defense" means a global police state, mass shootings occur every day, the standard approach to the problem of the unhoused is “sweeps,” which is to say moving them somewhere else. In the America of today, education, health care, and housing are affordable at the cost of deep debt servitude, and maybe one in a thousand citizens will publicly ask why the US can't have China's high-speed rail, Finland’s education system, Canada's universal health care, Germany's solar power, or Europe's mass transit. Oh, and in the America of today, people want to stay away from politics as if it were some kind of plague, with three noxious strains: left, right, and center. So we are talking about massive failure at all levels.

Rather, it does us good to dispense with the notion of "the left" altogether, and talk definitively about alternatives to pseudo-conservatism. Can we dream them? Can we make them possible? That's where I think we start.

Pseudo-conservatism, it must be said in parenthesis, is the voice of the status quo everywhere, the collective voice of the creatures of money who rule us. Pseudo-conservatism dominates our political discussion to an extent we do not realize. The pseudo-conservatives never really win, of course, because the world is rapidly changing. That's why they're pseudo-conservatives and not real conservatives. But pseudo-conservatism is the politics of it, whether it be the politics of nostalgia for the early Sixties, for the Fifties, or for the era of William McKinley. Pseudo-conservative ruling elites are in process against any political value you might genuinely have: freedom, justice, the Constitution, prosperity and so on. If the pseudo-conservative ruling elites or their media mouthpieces say they support these values, this is because they feel they have to do so out of ulterior motives, or because they are outright lying.

We run into problems with "the left," then, as a self-proclaimed alternative to pseudo-conservatism. Even if we could call someone in America "the Left," it would still be dubious to assume that there was something meaningfully (as opposed to identity-confirming) "Left" for that "Left" to do. Contrast this portrayal with the notion of "Left" as anyone the complainant doesn't like, which can include everyone up to and including Nancy Pelosi. So what "left" thing is there to do that the non-"left" is not also doing?

We are at a point, now, when anyone of any political stripe might feel obliged to "save America." The situation with SNAP benefits offers an important example. The various other agencies must cover for the lack of benefits.

Donald Trump likes the government "shutdown" -- kind of like how he enjoyed destroying government agencies, or destroying the US Government's international credibility in "peace negotiations" with Iran. Or how he likes picking out US cities and sending troops there because he doesn't like them. Or how he likes provoking countries to send their trade elsewhere through inconsistent and punitive tariff policies. It works in the same way in which Joe Biden signed off on genocide and on diminishing America's standing through pointless war in Ukraine. It will doubtless work to destroy the credibility of the US Armed Forces when Trump tries to effect regime change in Venezuela in full view of television audiences. The general policy drift is obvious: destroy America, and blame the "woke" people or the MAGAs or something.

Now, saving America is not a "left" goal. But those who view themselves as "on the left" in America might ask themselves: what else is there? The America of Trump must die while Trump does his best imitation of a murder-suicide act. And yet, paradoxically, we must save America. What would replace America were it to die in a spectacular murder-suicide while the Democrats sit there with fingers firmly shoved up noses? Would we all use the Mexican Peso if the Dollar were to become worthless? Would we have an ongoing state of nuclear war? They are not going to let individual states peacefully secede from the Union. though I'd very much like that. Maybe Israel has to die first, as a sort of test-case for our Nation's impending death.

Now, granted, there are valid goals which people identify with "the left." Anti-capitalism, social democracy, socialism, communism, sustainability, anti-racism, the working class, revolution, and so on. These goals, moreover, are laid out in terms that specify things we can stand for. Can we pursue those goals without constant invocation of the seating chart of the 18th-century National Assembly of revolutionary France, where the term "left" comes from? I think so. In, fat, I think we'd do better at it. The benefit of dropping the term is, of course, that at some later point none of the idiots who calls us "far left" will be able to do so.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.