Hello, friends,

I hope you’re keeping well this Armistice Day - or, as it’s known in the U.S., Veterans Day.

Exactly one year ago I launched The Progressive Cafe as a sort of repository for my thoughts on various topics.  I’ve always been that guy who writes a long, citation-laden Facebook post.  That’s because I was always that guy writing for his college newspaper and putting ideas out there at a time when Facebook didn’t even exist.

I wasn’t always right.  I listened to conservative talk radio as a sort of “find out what the other guys are thinking” while trying to talk sense into the post-9/11 world right after the Iraq War launched.  I had no idea how deep Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and others would descend into Fascism.  Hell, I hardly understood that term as well as I do now.

I’m still not always right, but now I’d say I have a much better understanding of how history works.  For those who don’t know, there are two main (we could go into the weeds here, but let’s stay kinda focused) contending theories of how history has developed. 

The first is called the “Great Man” theory, suggesting that exceptional leaders (who are almost exclusively male, of course) drive the events of history. And, sure, there’s some truth to the idea that individuals shape history.

But I prefer a more movement-oriented framing of history.  The Inquisition may have had its De Torequemada, but it only did as much harm as it did because the populace at large was unwilling to confront it and shut it down.

Partly that’s because the “Great Men” had the power to put anyone who resisted in a torture device, but when people banded together to leave the church’s umbrella under successive movements like Lutheranism and Calivnism, well, that had an impact.

“Okay,” you may be saying, “Jesse, you have just rambled for a few paragraphs.  I assume you’re setting something up?  What is it?  Spit it out!”I believe that Progressivism is a movement that, while characterized by leaders like Bernie Sanders, is highly individualized but also highly idealized.

And today, on the one-year anniversary of The Progressive Cafe, we’re going to talk about it.

So What Is Progressivism?

Whenever I try to explain a topic, the first place I’ll go is a dictionary.  I’ll see if it’s available.  In this case, Wikipedia has a definition sourced from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Okay, so I feel like that’ pretty self-explanatory:  We believe in advancing the Human condition, making it better for people.

But when asking “What is an ideology,” I like to also ask people who believe in it what they think it means.

On this platform, Cecelia Ivy Price (who did the artwork for our logo, by the way!!  Check her work out!) had this to say:

Off the platform, my usual thought-bouncer-offer Jamie Diamond had this to say:

Still others provided me with feedback, but not with permission (as of yet, anyway) to quote them. I’ll add what they say if/when they give me permission.

With that said, here’s what I’m extrapolating:

So What Do I Think Progressivism Is?

I think it’s hard to beat what my two friends already said, but if I had to give it a quick definition, knowing it would probably change a little each day, here’s my best shot:

Obviously one could write a whole treatise about it (and I’m kinda doing just that), but I feel like that’s a fairly decent way to put it.

So How Does One Live According To Progressive Beliefs?

Well, let’s start with the idea of advocating or standing up for them, then we’ll talk about what some examples are.

Progressives tend to believe that, without this aspect, nothing really gets done.  Change doesn’t happen without effort, and abstract ideas are relatively useless given that we’re trying to advance the Human condition.  It’s easy to say “I’m a Progressive!” and I can’t deny that more people with basic conviction towards our cause makes it easier to enact change, but ultimately a Progressive is going to put their money where their mouth is (sometimes literally) and advocate for change.

Here’s an example:  I’ve called West Virginia Senator & Coal Baron Joe Manchin a conservative, perhaps even regressive force.  I’ve even defined the distinctions there.  Well, Joe Manchin isn’t running for re-election in 2024, but do you know who is running?  Zachary Shrewsbury.

It’d be easy for me to just applaud him silently, but as someone who had some spare cash lying around, I kicked him $27.  I’ve always argued that a Progressive can win in West Virginia, based on evidence like this data that West Virginians at least seem to want Medicare for All.  So I put my money where my mouth is.

For people who aren’t chronic pain patients, they get out and do more.  They run for office, or volunteer for campaigns and go door-to-door advocating for their candidates.  I’ve done that before, and I’ve also done phone banking since that can be done from the comfort of one’s chair.

Popular mobilization is how people get elected, after all.

A movement gets people elected, not a Great Man.

So that’s the advocacy/standing-up part, but what about those ideas?

Some Examples Of Progressive Ideas To Stand Up For

Ahhh, here’s where I throw a half-dozen or so links your way for you to check out what we’ve done in the past year!Well, I’ve already mentioned Medicare For All, which we talked about in one of our earliest articles.  There are simple things like making sure elections are fair, unlike, say, Gerrymandered districts which we talked about in our first article.  It’s like making sure that people can maximize the power of their vote without fear that they’ll spoil an election through a process called Ranked Choice Voting.

It’s about holding America responsible for its past war crimes and pointing out that we shouldn’t let them keep us from going after others who commit them.  It’s about calling for an end to cycles of violence, even in the face of horrible atrocities, because if they don’t end then we simply bear witness to more.

It’s about supporting strikes when they’re announced, and not just when they win - although we do want to cheer when they win!

It’s about challenging one’s own party when they don’t do the things that make a Democracy strong, such as having primary debates.  It’s about challenging anyone who nominates a terrible judge to a high court, even if they’re from your party.  Hell, it’s about challenging just how “part of your party” someone really is.

It’s about proposing ideas that might make the global climate crisis just a little better, such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.

It’s about knowing that art is connected to the Human condition, and advocating for art to be more than a tax-writeoff cash-grab.

These, and many more, are some of the ideas that we’ve stood up for here at The Progressive Cafe.  If you want to see us stand up for more of them, and see what comes next, join us by subscribing.  We may not have hit our unofficial “50 subscribers in our first year” goal, but we’re growing and most importantly we’re doing outreach to try to get more people engaged.

So, take that first action! Join us!

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.