Clipse and Moral Clarity

Leave it to the Clipse to have one of the most profound album roll outs during one of the most perilous times in American history. Prescient as ever, their key word during the creation of their new project Let God Sort Em Out was “urgency.” Touché.

Last week, liberal New York Times journalist and commentator Ezra Klein appeared on conservative comedian Andrew Schultz’s podcast to talk about politics. A central theme of the conversation was framing the issues that have marked the last month of Trump’s presidency - tax cuts for the rich, Medicaid cuts for the poor, and the refusal to release the Epstein files - in a way that convinces Republicans Trump is a typical corrupt politician rather than a messianic figure. Not only is the conversation too little too late, but it’s one in a line of pro-Trump podcasters on an apology tour (see: Joe Rogan and Theo Von) after serving up their audiences of millions to him on a silver platter.

While relatively few could have predicted the Administration’s decision to lie about the existence of the infamous “Epstein client list” after campaigning on it for years, the more important fact is this - Trump kept his promise to his base about his intention to amass a level of power that would render him untouchable whether he lied or not. For all of the mainstream media’s pearl-clutching during his campaign about impending authoritarianism, there was no critique of his supporters’ desire for that authoritarianism. Trump’s base didn’t just want lower taxes and lower costs of living, they wanted to see what unfettered power in the name of “traditional values” could really do. Both for them and to everyone who wasn’t them. And, while the conservative base has been out for blood, liberals have been more afraid of alienating them than committed to beating them. The quickness of America’s foremost thought leaders to defend voting for a White nationalist billionaire dictator as a reasonable political response to high cost of living is not only bad political analysis, but a stunning lack of moral clarity.

Klein’s new book Abundance is an examination of the Democratic Party’s failure to govern effectively. One of his primary examples is California’s inability to build a high-speed rail system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco. In 2008, California’s voters approved a proposition to set aside $10 billion to begin construction. In 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, which included hundreds of billions of dollars for such infrastructure investments. But, when California applied for federal money, the Obama Administration only wanted bids that would build the rail system in ways that improved air quality in poor communities. Initial construction began in the Central Valley due to the area being more poor and polluted than coastal California, but, to this day, the rail system is not built. In Klein’s view, Obama’s prioritization of protecting the vulnerable was the problem. To him, the decision made it less likely that high-speed rail would generate the political support and financial backing to be completed. Instead of criticizing a political class that refuses to support ethical infrastructure, Klein criticizes the requirement for environmental review. Put simply - if the Obama administration hadn’t cared so much about addressing environmental injustice up front, Democrats could have really accomplished something great. So, as the Right is pursuing their destructive principles more aggressively, Klein advises the Left to become less principled in the name of political expediency.

The false equivalence between those struggling to live how they want and those struggling to live at all is constantly peddled as a reasonable way to analyze politics by people employed at our most prestigious institutions. No one would argue that Democrats have been particularly good at governing. But the fact that Klein, with all of the resources at his disposal, couldn’t bring himself to support both environmentally just infrastructure policy and effective governance reveals the fundamental lack of a moral compass at the core of so much political analysis. There is an obsession with imagining the Democratic Party’s base as middle and upper middle-class liberal arts educated White people whose belief in egalitarianism is contingent upon how easy things are for them. It’s another way to make “White swing voters” the center of the political universe. It justifies abandoning the Party’s actual base of racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities across class, who’ve been the primary targets of the Trump Administration’s cruelty from mass job loss due to DEI cuts to ICE kidnappings and deportations to college students protesting the Palestinian genocide and starvation.

But back to Clipse. At the ages of 48 and 52, Pusha T and Malice are being almost universally celebrated because they’ve made integrity a brand in a nation addicted to scammers. They make it plain in a culture that thrives on subliminals. They’ll give it to you in poetry, but they’re just as happy to give it to you in prose. One of their latest singles “So Be It” is not only a timely refusal to relinquish principles regardless of the consequences, but an awareness of how that refusal distinguishes them from everyone else:

You ain’t solid, you ain’t valid, you ain’t Malice/

Been quiet, ain’t riot, you ain’t Paris/

Blow money, you owe money, we ain’t balanced/

You ain’t believe, God did, you ain’t Khaled

As much as they’re reduced to the “coke rap” imprimatur, the genius of their subgenre is that they deal with the mechanisms of the underworld while also laying claim to a superior code. They didn’t make the streets or drug dealing attractive. It was obviously dangerous. But living by their principles was their superpower. They weren’t ever trying to get over on anybody or give people less than they asked for. They did what needed to be done as honestly as their circumstances would allow. And they were completely transparent about all that it entailed.

It’s in the context of violence and lawlessness that their unwillingness to compromise truly shines. While their circumstances lack ethical simplicity, the certainty about how they see themselves and the standards they live by always puts them at an advantage. The day after the album came out, Joe Budden asked them how they felt about opposing forces (i.e. their former label Def Jam and other rappers) attempting to undermine their release. Push offered an appropriate perspective for anyone committed to living by the courage of their convictions - “They should attempt. Everybody should attempt. Come out together and try to stop this. We thrive on being able to A vs. B the music. I want to A vs. B all the music. Let’s see who’s gonna be here. We’re winning.”