Idealism, which had a big impact on 19th-century German philosophy, is now the only order of politics on the right. And the further you go to the right, the more intense becomes the expressions not of the world (actuality) as it is, as it happens, as it matters materially. In this region, what matters is simply mood, in the Kierkegaardian sense. Mood, the 19th-century philosopher argued, is not even associated with religious feeling, but with that of the sensualists—the lowest order of human experience. (White American Christians might learn a lot from this curious reversal—God is not about mood.) But here I want to, in the space of a post, explore the right wing's raw idealisms and leftist penetration "should." In this reading, mood of the right is completely captured by idealism; the left's "should" is philosophical in the Wittgensteinian sense, meaning it "is a battle against the bewitchment.” 

A good point of departure for this exploration, which will be brief, is this presently popular business in Seattle's mainstream to raise the alarm about the large number of Seattle-area people who have it in mind to leave the Seattle area really soon. We can categorize this as idealism because it is not actually happening. It is a mood. Its zone, as such, is entirely mental. There has been no mass exodus. But mentally speaking, there has been and it's getting worse every day. This is idealism in the purest sense. Ideas as reality, rather than the other way around.

We know exactly the political significance of this mood. It says this: Too much crime in the city, too much talk about defunding the police, too much softness when it comes to the unproductive, many of whom are homeless. And now hardworking people with their hard-earned cash have had enough. They are moving to places that impose law and order on the lowlifes. The city, which was abandoned by law-loving types in the second half of the previous century, must be, will be abandoned again. But where will they go? In the past, it was the suburbs, but that zone of possibilities is often more diverse than the inner city. Bellevue, a suburban downtown, is now a minority-majority, and so is Kent. Even Federal Way is much less white than Seattle, and more Black. Going outside of the city is no longer the same as it was in the golden Leave It to Beaver days.

And there is the reality that the inner city has become too expensive for middle-class America. This reality can better explain why a large number of those who moved elsewhere, moved elsewhere. And this elsewhere tends to be near here, the city. This explains why the suburbs are now more diverse than the urban core. It is assumed, in this mood, that the people leaving Seattle are white and angry. But KOMO never reports on actual displacement—the historically Black neighborhood, the CD, is, for example, now almost entirely white. But that doesn't matter because that's not the right mood. And please keep this in mind, when you consider the coverage about the mass exodus from Seattle. It has actually already happened and primarily impacted POCs. But the mainstream never pressed the panic button when the exodus was actual; it only presses when it is a mood. 

KOMO, of course, does explain (the white) mood of moving in its headline: "171,000 people plan to leave King County in the next year. Here's where they're going." You have to read it to see that white flight is actually at the bottom of reasons. The first one is simply the weather. 

"The warm weather, I assume, is what most people are going for. Just to see the sun more than 100 days a year," said Todd Jeffress, a Seattle-based flight attendant moving to Texas this summer.

The next reason? King County is now for the rich.

Jeffress added that he will start attending pilot school and could not afford to live in King County any longer.

At the end of article, we finally find the right/ideal mood:

“People don’t feel safe anymore," he told KOMO News, citing police's inability to chase after drivers during certain crimes... As crime spikes and affordability takes a hit, census numbers indicate even more people may leave King County. 

But let's look at the left's "should." Strangely enough, Marx was opposed to this "should." It led to—as one of China's leading and contemporary scholars of this 19th-century philosopher, Zhang Yibing, explained in his exhaustive book, Back to Marx—humanism, which is not scientific. The "should," in this reading, is identified with mood, with idealism. What Marx wanted, according to Zhang (who is, by the way, a brilliant scholar, though I disagree with a number of his positions and conclusions) was to deal only with the "is." This, he thought (incorrectly), is the scientific approach, which emerged from classical economics (Smith, Sismondi, Ricardo, and so on). But there is little in human sociality that can be explained by the scientific method. It is instead the region of culture—meaning, it's mostly about the way we choose or are forced to live. Even Adam Smith was aware of this. Marx was not. He thought all of the action was in the "is," and this concentration on the "is" became one of the least rewarding schools of his thought, historical materialism.

But the action of the "should," which, when handled properly, is humanist (rather than idealist), on reality is to make plain sense of it. Why is the cost of housing so high in Seattle? Why can we do nothing about affordability? Why are people living on the street? Why are Black people no longer in the CD? They should be there. Â