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One text I read while writing about Lasch was a reply to his critics he wrote for Tikkun in 1986 called "Why the Left Has No Future." It starts with the still valid observation that the left is unpopular with most of the people it claims to represent, which leaves two options./1
The first is total irrelevance, and the second is pursuing its aims via the "long march through the institutions." This second approach, he notes, triggers further resentment from the unsympathetic populace, which becomes the basis of the right's cultural populist messaging./2
Another still relevant point he makes is that in accounting for their own unpopularity, the left falls back false consciousness theory, claiming the public is brainwashed into right-wing views by media (the more recent social media disinfo panic is the latest version of this)./3
As he points out, this attitude merely reveals their elitist contempt for the average person's ability to draw their own conclusions about the world, an ironic stance for a movement that claims to be about empowering average people to fight for their own interests./4
In any case, the whole thing is worth a read./FIN https://www.tikkun.org/oldsite/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Why-the-Left-Has-No-Future.pdf
and here's mine icymi: https://im1776.com/2020/12/23/how-christopher-lasch-left-the-left/
