The Dead Center
about the bookabout
The Dead Center takes an acerbic and often ribald eye to contemporary politics, particularly those of mainstream liberals in the United States. Combining engaging polemic and serious intellectual analysis, it offers a timely portrait of a political landscape sullied by an already ineffectual Biden administration, the marginalization of forces around Bernie Sanders and the ominous shadow of Donald Trump in the wings.
In these pages Jacobin staff writer Luke Savage exposes the hollowness and futility of the liberal project in the 21st century, offering searing critiques of some of its leading figures, notably Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, and touching on topics that extend over the milquetoast politics of the Biden presidency, Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, the monopolists of Silicon Valley, and the worst excesses of cable news punditry. Always deeply informed, often on the basis of direct personal experience, Savage’s book also explores the recent trajectory of younger people away from the liberal mainstream and towards the socialist left.
“If you have appreciated Luke Savage's work… as much as I have, then you must pick up a copy of this book. Luke brings a smart, informed, critical perspective to bear on the crisis of American democratic life and the continuing class war from above against the democratic achievements of generations.”
—Harvey J. Kaye, Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
“Sardonic and hilarious, The Dead Center contains some of the best political, media, and cultural criticism I’ve read in some time. It’s clear-eyed about the immensely powerful forces working against progress and the working-class. It left me feeling both angrier about liberalism’s failures and more hopeful. This is a book that understands the past, present, and future of left politics as well as any I’ve read.”
—Alex Shephard, The New Republic
“Luke Savage is one of the contemporary left’s finest writers and one of liberalism’s most astute and merciless critics. These qualities converge in The Dead Center, which catalogues twenty-first century liberalism’s worst embarrassments and darkest betrayals. This entertaining and timely book will unsettle political moderates — and, more importantly, provide ample reinforcement for a rising generation of leftists intent on challenging them.”
—Meagan Day, Associate Editor, Jacobin
“Liberalism, we know, is in crisis, and few people are better at dissecting the tensions of contemporary liberalism than Luke Savage… Savage illuminates the contradictions and blindspots that have made modern liberalism so ill-suited to solving the problems that bedevil the present moment. A must-read for anyone of any ideological persuasion interested in better understanding our age and its pathologies.”
—Daniel Bessner, Joff Hanauer Honors Associate Professor, University of Washington
“Everyone should read this book. Luke Savage is a perceptive thinker and a lively and entertaining writer, and skewering centrist liberalism is what he does best. The socialist left is lucky to have him.”
—Ben Burgis, author of Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters
“It’s more than a little infuriating that one of the most clear-eyed and insightful writers on American politics is Canadian, but I suppose that’s just a sign of the times we live in.”
—Josh Olson, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-host of The West Wing Thing
About The Author / Editor
Preview
Liberalism’s Loss of Confidence
Though it would be reductive to isolate a single moment or point of rupture, the financial meltdown of 2008 and its aftermath is certainly a worthy enough place to begin the story of liberalism’s loss of confidence. Appropriately enough, 2008 also saw the ascendancy of Barack Obama: a figure who for many (including my nineteen-year-old self) represented the best hope for a different kind of world after the crisis — a crisis that plenty outside of elite circles, whether versed in the inscrutable workings of high finance or not, understood to be the product of deep structural flaws in the architecture of the world economy.
The administration’s willful decision to forgo any serious reordering of the political settlement and the subsequent global march into austerity caused untold human suffering and emboldened the most sinister currents on the political right. But it also helped instill in a generation of downwardly mobile young people a hardened skepticism of centrist platitudes, political saviorism, and liberal doublespeak. As you’ll see from the pages of this book, the inveterate conservatism of so many would-be progressive figures has played a major and undeniable role in the development of my own politics. Though I certainly cannot claim to speak for others, I suspect this trajectory is one that many millennial readers in particular will identify with.
Life on the left, of course, is ultimately about much more than finding fault with centrist triangulation or rolling one’s eyes in the direction of individual liberal politicians. Unless grounded in materialist analysis and undergirded by firm egalitarian commitments, anti-liberal critiques can all-too easily slide into shallow contrarianism or various genres of ersatz iconoclasm that are really just conservatism by another name. Events of the past decade, however, have been remarkably clarifying for those of us who once believed that the leaders of a conventional institution like the Democratic Party could, or even wanted to, deliver progress in any meaningful sense of the word.
Among other things, the breathtaking liberal hostility to both of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns was emblematic of an orientation whose guiding ethos remains hierarchical and corporatist, whatever its official branding may suggest to the contrary. The same applies in my native Canada, where Trudeaumania 2.0 has proven to be every bit as hollow, politically staid, and change-averse a phenomenon as early critics like myself argued it would be. In Britain, the other Anglo-American democracy to make an appearance in this book, the stunning and unlikely success of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party’s 2015 leadership election was met with a reaction from establishment pundits and media oligopolies so hysterical that it made the attacks on Sanders look tame by comparison.
in the media
The Dead Center
about the bookabout
The Dead Center takes an acerbic and often ribald eye to contemporary politics, particularly those of mainstream liberals in the United States. Combining engaging polemic and serious intellectual analysis, it offers a timely portrait of a political landscape sullied by an already ineffectual Biden administration, the marginalization of forces around Bernie Sanders and the ominous shadow of Donald Trump in the wings.
In these pages Jacobin staff writer Luke Savage exposes the hollowness and futility of the liberal project in the 21st century, offering searing critiques of some of its leading figures, notably Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, and touching on topics that extend over the milquetoast politics of the Biden presidency, Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, the monopolists of Silicon Valley, and the worst excesses of cable news punditry. Always deeply informed, often on the basis of direct personal experience, Savage’s book also explores the recent trajectory of younger people away from the liberal mainstream and towards the socialist left.
“If you have appreciated Luke Savage's work… as much as I have, then you must pick up a copy of this book. Luke brings a smart, informed, critical perspective to bear on the crisis of American democratic life and the continuing class war from above against the democratic achievements of generations.”
—Harvey J. Kaye, Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
“Sardonic and hilarious, The Dead Center contains some of the best political, media, and cultural criticism I’ve read in some time. It’s clear-eyed about the immensely powerful forces working against progress and the working-class. It left me feeling both angrier about liberalism’s failures and more hopeful. This is a book that understands the past, present, and future of left politics as well as any I’ve read.”
—Alex Shephard, The New Republic
“Luke Savage is one of the contemporary left’s finest writers and one of liberalism’s most astute and merciless critics. These qualities converge in The Dead Center, which catalogues twenty-first century liberalism’s worst embarrassments and darkest betrayals. This entertaining and timely book will unsettle political moderates — and, more importantly, provide ample reinforcement for a rising generation of leftists intent on challenging them.”
—Meagan Day, Associate Editor, Jacobin
“Liberalism, we know, is in crisis, and few people are better at dissecting the tensions of contemporary liberalism than Luke Savage… Savage illuminates the contradictions and blindspots that have made modern liberalism so ill-suited to solving the problems that bedevil the present moment. A must-read for anyone of any ideological persuasion interested in better understanding our age and its pathologies.”
—Daniel Bessner, Joff Hanauer Honors Associate Professor, University of Washington
“Everyone should read this book. Luke Savage is a perceptive thinker and a lively and entertaining writer, and skewering centrist liberalism is what he does best. The socialist left is lucky to have him.”
—Ben Burgis, author of Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters
“It’s more than a little infuriating that one of the most clear-eyed and insightful writers on American politics is Canadian, but I suppose that’s just a sign of the times we live in.”
—Josh Olson, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-host of The West Wing Thing
About The Author / Editor
Preview
Liberalism’s Loss of Confidence
Though it would be reductive to isolate a single moment or point of rupture, the financial meltdown of 2008 and its aftermath is certainly a worthy enough place to begin the story of liberalism’s loss of confidence. Appropriately enough, 2008 also saw the ascendancy of Barack Obama: a figure who for many (including my nineteen-year-old self) represented the best hope for a different kind of world after the crisis — a crisis that plenty outside of elite circles, whether versed in the inscrutable workings of high finance or not, understood to be the product of deep structural flaws in the architecture of the world economy.
The administration’s willful decision to forgo any serious reordering of the political settlement and the subsequent global march into austerity caused untold human suffering and emboldened the most sinister currents on the political right. But it also helped instill in a generation of downwardly mobile young people a hardened skepticism of centrist platitudes, political saviorism, and liberal doublespeak. As you’ll see from the pages of this book, the inveterate conservatism of so many would-be progressive figures has played a major and undeniable role in the development of my own politics. Though I certainly cannot claim to speak for others, I suspect this trajectory is one that many millennial readers in particular will identify with.
Life on the left, of course, is ultimately about much more than finding fault with centrist triangulation or rolling one’s eyes in the direction of individual liberal politicians. Unless grounded in materialist analysis and undergirded by firm egalitarian commitments, anti-liberal critiques can all-too easily slide into shallow contrarianism or various genres of ersatz iconoclasm that are really just conservatism by another name. Events of the past decade, however, have been remarkably clarifying for those of us who once believed that the leaders of a conventional institution like the Democratic Party could, or even wanted to, deliver progress in any meaningful sense of the word.
Among other things, the breathtaking liberal hostility to both of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns was emblematic of an orientation whose guiding ethos remains hierarchical and corporatist, whatever its official branding may suggest to the contrary. The same applies in my native Canada, where Trudeaumania 2.0 has proven to be every bit as hollow, politically staid, and change-averse a phenomenon as early critics like myself argued it would be. In Britain, the other Anglo-American democracy to make an appearance in this book, the stunning and unlikely success of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party’s 2015 leadership election was met with a reaction from establishment pundits and media oligopolies so hysterical that it made the attacks on Sanders look tame by comparison.