These dispiriting statistics from Frank Viviano (cross-posted from Salon.com) makes it kind of hit home that voting does matter. Although he fails to cite a source for these numbers, if they are even partially accurate then this represents a pretty spectacular failure of American democracy in a time of crisis.
"In 2008, more than 65 million Americans cast Democratic votes in congressional races, a 13 million-vote edge over the Republicans. In 2010, the Democratic vote plummeted to an abysmal 35 million, 6 million less than the GOP, which took decisive power in the House and paralyzed the Senate.
We think we know this story. But the truth is, we haven’t begun to absorb its full details and implications yet:
•The number of voters under 24 who bothered to go to the polls in 2010 dropped by a stupefying 60 percent, and those between 24 and 29 by almost 50 percent. Altogether, the participation of young people – who had been overwhelmingly pro-Obama in 2008 – declined by 11 million votes.
•Among over-65-year-olds, the core of the Tea Party movement, the voting numbers barely changed, from 17.6 million in 2008 to 17.5 million in 2010.
•The African-American vote fell by 40 percent, and the Hispanic vote by almost 30 percent.
•Among the mostly white voters who earn more than $200,000 per year, the turnout fell by a scant 5 percent, from 7 million to 6.5 million.
•Voting by those with annual incomes under $30,000 dropped by 33 percent, more than six times the figure for the affluent.
In effect, the abstainers turned a potential Democratic landslide into a full-scale collapse – with nightmarish consequences for civil rights, for the U.S. and world economies, and for social programs that range across the board from healthcare and educational funding to employment programs, pension benefits and the sagging national infrastructure."
Viviano calls this a "massive progressive cop out" and to some degree it is but it is also hard to say just how much. How many self-conscious progressives stayed home versus how many "moderate" Democrats were dispirited or disillusioned? It is difficult to say exactly what happened, teabag momentum, the feeling of betrayal, delegation or abnegation of responsibility to Democratic elected officials. There has been quite a bit of speculation that the president really doesn't believe in progressive ideals, he's actually a moderate republican, and so on. I would like to forward an alternate frame.
In The Vital Center Schlesinger made a distinction between doughface progressive "wailers" and radical democratic "doers" in our liberal tradition. The doughface in his conception was "a democratic man with totalitarian principles" who runs from responsibility and freedom, surrendering the chaos of liberty for the protective embrace of communist discipline. In our contemporary situation, voters largely abdicated the responsibility for involvement after electing Barack Obama, and once in he feared actually being responsible for the consequences of big decisions. This explains why to some degree why his cabinet was stocked with doughfaces like geithner and summers, progressive men with banker's principles. It seemed that the entire Democratic governing coalition was held captive by lack of vision and fear. Fear of trying something different, fear of being held responsible for the radical actions necessary to get our society back on track.
Schlesinger's wailer as well, was a liberal utopian who was afraid of the real world. They simply wanted to criticize but not actually change things, much better to craft the perfect rhetorical flourish to condemn greed, oppression, and the like. Therefore, wailers don't actually want power. Combine this with the decay of intermediate forces, unions, clubs, even party structures and you can see how someone that perhaps started out with principles could become unmoored when faced with that kind of fear. Without intermediate forces to support liberals once in power, or threaten them when they waver it is no wonder they fall prey to special interests.
I probably qualify as a wailer, so does Mr. Viviano at least in so far as his activism is limited to writing "blame the victim" articles for liberal commentaries. This story does reek of finger wagging, "tsk, tsk" you dumb proles, look what your laziness did. Now you are forced to "occupy" things and suffer the tear gas and truncheons because your fellow Americans were too busy to show up. Take this quote: "The leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights era fought with unflagging commitment, and King himself was martyred, in a two-decade campaign for the voting privileges that 2010 abstainers dismissed as unworthy of an hour’s time on a single Tuesday in November. The Wall Street demonstrators are now debating an even broader boycott of the 2012 presidential election." Shame on you!
Unfortunately for my fellow wailers, American activism doesn't work like that. In the aggragate, it is much harder to get people to show up than appeals to past accomplishment or sacrifice. Yet, energy and activism does get going and has accomplished things. Viviano has a pretty short sense of history if he thinks the civil rights movement accomplished its work in two decades, this leaves out the seven decades of activism prior to it, and the four since of trying to defend the progress in the face of apathy. Unfortunately as well, Democratic efforts on behalf of civil rights neglected other elements of the New Deal coalition and contributed to the fracturing of liberalism we see today. The progressive movement has some similar features in OWS, denial of opportunity, exploitation for the benefit of their economic masters. I don't want to equate the two too closely but movements for change take time, collectively there is a sense of impatience and the same desire for instant and painless results.
But SNCC and the SCLC were intermediate structures that could focus energy and maintain pressure even when popular commitment waned. OWS could be an intermediate structure that a greater number of people can focus on, a human face for all the frustration out in the country. The teabag movement, with all of its corporate money, conservative media coverage, guns, racism and furious anger on the shadows instead of the substance, was really scary. I worried that there would be armed pot-bellies in front of the polls last November, but I still went. It is really hard to believe that your ideas matter when there is no centralizing movement, no structure to explore and find out others may have similiar beliefs. TV commercials don't do much compared to real organization.
So, wailers need to understand order of causation, it would be great if a great critical mass of people could cut through the crap and do their civic duty without prodding but how often has that ever happened? Freedom is a great thing, but people will rarely fight for it. There needs to be something else, a real goal. Similarly, democracy is a great thing, but it tends to dissipate rather than focus energy for change. Especially on the left where everyone has a different opinion on what is important, what the strategy should be, and what the goal is. In the end, direct action and voting are important, we need both if there is to be any change for the good.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Mark Rudd on OWS
Cross-posted from Mark Rudd's facebook page. This is a very elequent show of support for OWS that I thought should have legs beyond fb. On that note, it is a great thing that radicals who helped end the war in Vietnam and fought for a better society are still around because young people need support and guidance from people who actually got up and did something about injustice. Unfortunately, our situation bears more similarity to the Great Depression than the 1960s, so today's activists will need to supplement these ideas with techniques of the Labor Movement as well. Then there is the uniqueness of the current situation where sit-down strikes, picket lines and so on will not be as effective either. So Mark's advice is a starting point, but history is dynamic and new ideas of resistance will have to be found as well. I don't know what they will be but I have a bad feeling that violence will play a part in some form. Anyway, just doing my part to try and keep the momentum going.
I've been thinking a lot about mass movements, radical and otherwise, more or less continually since 1965, when, as an 18 year-old freshman at Columbia, I got swept up into the anti-Vietnam War and radical movements. The young people already educating themselves on the war and protesting it were the coolest kids around and I wanted to be one of them. What made them so attractive was not only their intelligence, but that they were on fire with moral outrage.
That's exactly the same feeling I get from Occupy Wall Street. Your moral commitment unmistakably shines out. Bravo! Many of us old people had almost given up hope because it seemed that our whole society had become completely deadened to the hideous immoralities we live with--poverty, greed, racial injustice, militarism, mass incarceration. Yet finally and out of the blue somebody's standing up and saying Enough! That in itself is close to miraculous. Thank you for allowing yourselves to become morally engaged and for having the courage to act.
On top of that, your actions and words have been brilliant at communicating what you're about. "We are the 99%" is a crystal clear metaphor exposing the elite we're fighting. Even the Albuquerque Journal, my local daily newspaper not exactly dedicated to exposing the truth, regularly reports Occupy demonstrations as being (in their words) "against corporate greed." You've pulled off another miracle.
There's even more: you've been able to draw out in support of the movement against the corporate elite thousands of union workers and other progressives, not only in New York City and around the country, but around the world. You may have shifted conventional politics to the left, as both Republicans and Democrats fear or welcome, respectively, the rise of a populist progressive movement analogous to the influential (but illogical and ridiculous) Tea Party on the right. That's a lot to have accomplished by a few people in a short time.
That's it for unmitigated praise. Now a few "issues" that occur to me. I hope this may be helpful to you.
In general, all the Occupy actions, the encampments and the demonstrations, have been admirably nonviolent and disciplined. Despite being attacked by police numerous times, most people have kept their cool, understanding that any show of violence on our part will be used as justification for more attacks and will isolate the movement. But there are plenty of people--perhaps they're not very intelligent or perhaps they're police agents--who advocate fighting the police as surrogates for the corporate and banking elites they're protecting. Big Mistake! The Vietnam anti-war movement split and weakened over this phony issue of militancy; my own faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, mistakenly raised fighting cops and then guerilla warfare to the level of strategy. Indeed, it was a disastrous strategy, doomed to failure. We thought that our acting on our beliefs would show our seriousness and attract people to the revolutionary movement. It did the opposite. Please don't fall into the same error.
One thing about nonviolence as a strategy is that it has to be total. A drop of violence, even so far as calling cops "pigs," can taint the whole movement as being violent. So far you've been pretty cool about all this, but watch out for stupid people (mostly young men) and for cops who infiltrate in order to wreck the movement. "Diversity of tactics" (property damage or even violence in self-defense) inherently sabotages nonviolence. It's the tyranny of the few against the many.
How do movements grow? So far the two tactics of physical occupation of space and of demonstrations have attracted a certain number. But what part of the 99% have joined the movement? Here in Albuquerque, a city of half a million, a few dozen are occupying a city park next to the university, while a few hundreds from time to time join in demonstrations. Occasionally some students passing by are drawn to daily teach-ins. But for the most part, few people understand what's going on; what they see of the occupiers is the predictable bunch of street people, old rads with gray hair and pot-bellies, and homeless people. I hope I'm not hurting anybody's feelings too badly, but most of my neighbors are terrified to interact with this bunch. They're way too marginal and "normal people" don't think that they have anything in common.
So some thought has to be given to how to "organize" the rest of the 99%. By organize I mean how to grow the movement. The best place to learn about organizing is to look at successful movements. There have been a lot of them in the twentieth century--labor, civil rights, peace, gay rights, women's, disabled people's, environmental and anti-nuclear. All of these have used organizing models that involve building relationships with people, talking, learning each other's stories, developing people's capabilities and leadership. For the last few years I've been studying the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) work in Mississippi from 1961 to 1964 to learn what good organizing is. These young black people went into one of the most terrifying and violent places in the South, the Mississippi Delta region, and in three years were able to organize a victorious mass voting rights movement. How did they do it? The answer is complicated, but at its core was an organizing method that was horizontal and democratic. It's exactly the same "Participatory Democracy" that you've been trying to build via your General Assemblies. In fact the term Participatory Democracy was originated by SNCC and later came to white kids via SDS.
Movements don't happen spontaneously as people see others acting and then decide to join in. That's what's happened so far, but you've probably reached a limit. It's time to start figuring out how to organize. You've been operating on self-expression, but now there's got to be strategy beyond self-expression.
Part of strategy has got to be coalition-building. Here's a problem: many of the OWS people are completely opposed to the current system of money and politics. They rightly condemn both the Republican and Democratic Parties. All cool. But many of your supporters, such as myself, believe that there's a chance worth taking in devoting our energies to reforming the Demo Party, in trying to move it toward the left. We believe that the main reason President Obama has been such a disappointment is that there are just not enough progressive votes in Congress and that there's no mass movement on the left to elect a new Congress. Here in Albuquerque there's a congressional seat opening up in 2012. The two main candidates for the Democratic nomination are a mainstream center-right sold-out ex-city mayor and a young progressive state senator. I'm working for the young guy. He has a chance of winning, but only if enough people come out and work for him, if enough people get fired up. I support Unoccupy Albuquerque (the new name), but can Unoccupy Albuquerque support my electoral efforts? What's a coalition? Here diversity of tactics make perfect sense--direct action combined with electoral work.
Unless ideological factionalism rears its ugly head, as has happened so many times before on the left. My anarchist ideas are right and your belief in reforming the Democratic Party is bullshit. I'm smart and you're not. Change isn't possible through elections, but only through organizing general assemblies in which people practice direct democracy. Your ideas are immature and utopian and won't work in the real world. Grow up. I used to believe in revolution but I've learned it's not going to happen. Capitalism is about to fall. Capitalism will be around a long time. Blah blah blah. No wonder a leftist firing squad is often characterized as being a circle. It's a wonder we ever ended the war in Vietnam the way we used to fight among ourselves. Nobody has a monopoly on truth, get over it.
The old New Left, which more or less devolved into single issue politics in the seventies and eighties then expired in the nineties, never really considered the problem of power. Meanwhile, the old New Right, led by crackpots like Karl Rove, actually attained power starting with Reagan in 1981. They did it by a savvy strategic linkup of ideological conservatives with a Christian fundamentalist base. What will be your strategy to rise to power? (My generation will probably be long gone). Ignore the question at your own risk. I assure you the other side is not.
One last point: 85% of all black voters support President Obama. Meanwhile many or most white progressives spend a lot of their time attacking him as a stooge of Wall Street. Many OWS people feel the same way. Does that mean that white OWS people are smarter than black people? Or vice versa? Or is it merely a problem of point of view?
I'm supporting Obama for re-election and at the same time working for progressive candidates for Congress. And supporting the rise of a smart direct action movement, OWS. It's not a contradiction, it's a coalition.
Good luck. I'll be watching to see how it goes.
Love,
Mark
#OWS #occupywallstreet #99percent #solidarity @hotleadenema @JasonLeopold @OccupyWallStNYC
I've been thinking a lot about mass movements, radical and otherwise, more or less continually since 1965, when, as an 18 year-old freshman at Columbia, I got swept up into the anti-Vietnam War and radical movements. The young people already educating themselves on the war and protesting it were the coolest kids around and I wanted to be one of them. What made them so attractive was not only their intelligence, but that they were on fire with moral outrage.
That's exactly the same feeling I get from Occupy Wall Street. Your moral commitment unmistakably shines out. Bravo! Many of us old people had almost given up hope because it seemed that our whole society had become completely deadened to the hideous immoralities we live with--poverty, greed, racial injustice, militarism, mass incarceration. Yet finally and out of the blue somebody's standing up and saying Enough! That in itself is close to miraculous. Thank you for allowing yourselves to become morally engaged and for having the courage to act.
On top of that, your actions and words have been brilliant at communicating what you're about. "We are the 99%" is a crystal clear metaphor exposing the elite we're fighting. Even the Albuquerque Journal, my local daily newspaper not exactly dedicated to exposing the truth, regularly reports Occupy demonstrations as being (in their words) "against corporate greed." You've pulled off another miracle.
There's even more: you've been able to draw out in support of the movement against the corporate elite thousands of union workers and other progressives, not only in New York City and around the country, but around the world. You may have shifted conventional politics to the left, as both Republicans and Democrats fear or welcome, respectively, the rise of a populist progressive movement analogous to the influential (but illogical and ridiculous) Tea Party on the right. That's a lot to have accomplished by a few people in a short time.
That's it for unmitigated praise. Now a few "issues" that occur to me. I hope this may be helpful to you.
In general, all the Occupy actions, the encampments and the demonstrations, have been admirably nonviolent and disciplined. Despite being attacked by police numerous times, most people have kept their cool, understanding that any show of violence on our part will be used as justification for more attacks and will isolate the movement. But there are plenty of people--perhaps they're not very intelligent or perhaps they're police agents--who advocate fighting the police as surrogates for the corporate and banking elites they're protecting. Big Mistake! The Vietnam anti-war movement split and weakened over this phony issue of militancy; my own faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, mistakenly raised fighting cops and then guerilla warfare to the level of strategy. Indeed, it was a disastrous strategy, doomed to failure. We thought that our acting on our beliefs would show our seriousness and attract people to the revolutionary movement. It did the opposite. Please don't fall into the same error.
One thing about nonviolence as a strategy is that it has to be total. A drop of violence, even so far as calling cops "pigs," can taint the whole movement as being violent. So far you've been pretty cool about all this, but watch out for stupid people (mostly young men) and for cops who infiltrate in order to wreck the movement. "Diversity of tactics" (property damage or even violence in self-defense) inherently sabotages nonviolence. It's the tyranny of the few against the many.
How do movements grow? So far the two tactics of physical occupation of space and of demonstrations have attracted a certain number. But what part of the 99% have joined the movement? Here in Albuquerque, a city of half a million, a few dozen are occupying a city park next to the university, while a few hundreds from time to time join in demonstrations. Occasionally some students passing by are drawn to daily teach-ins. But for the most part, few people understand what's going on; what they see of the occupiers is the predictable bunch of street people, old rads with gray hair and pot-bellies, and homeless people. I hope I'm not hurting anybody's feelings too badly, but most of my neighbors are terrified to interact with this bunch. They're way too marginal and "normal people" don't think that they have anything in common.
So some thought has to be given to how to "organize" the rest of the 99%. By organize I mean how to grow the movement. The best place to learn about organizing is to look at successful movements. There have been a lot of them in the twentieth century--labor, civil rights, peace, gay rights, women's, disabled people's, environmental and anti-nuclear. All of these have used organizing models that involve building relationships with people, talking, learning each other's stories, developing people's capabilities and leadership. For the last few years I've been studying the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) work in Mississippi from 1961 to 1964 to learn what good organizing is. These young black people went into one of the most terrifying and violent places in the South, the Mississippi Delta region, and in three years were able to organize a victorious mass voting rights movement. How did they do it? The answer is complicated, but at its core was an organizing method that was horizontal and democratic. It's exactly the same "Participatory Democracy" that you've been trying to build via your General Assemblies. In fact the term Participatory Democracy was originated by SNCC and later came to white kids via SDS.
Movements don't happen spontaneously as people see others acting and then decide to join in. That's what's happened so far, but you've probably reached a limit. It's time to start figuring out how to organize. You've been operating on self-expression, but now there's got to be strategy beyond self-expression.
Part of strategy has got to be coalition-building. Here's a problem: many of the OWS people are completely opposed to the current system of money and politics. They rightly condemn both the Republican and Democratic Parties. All cool. But many of your supporters, such as myself, believe that there's a chance worth taking in devoting our energies to reforming the Demo Party, in trying to move it toward the left. We believe that the main reason President Obama has been such a disappointment is that there are just not enough progressive votes in Congress and that there's no mass movement on the left to elect a new Congress. Here in Albuquerque there's a congressional seat opening up in 2012. The two main candidates for the Democratic nomination are a mainstream center-right sold-out ex-city mayor and a young progressive state senator. I'm working for the young guy. He has a chance of winning, but only if enough people come out and work for him, if enough people get fired up. I support Unoccupy Albuquerque (the new name), but can Unoccupy Albuquerque support my electoral efforts? What's a coalition? Here diversity of tactics make perfect sense--direct action combined with electoral work.
Unless ideological factionalism rears its ugly head, as has happened so many times before on the left. My anarchist ideas are right and your belief in reforming the Democratic Party is bullshit. I'm smart and you're not. Change isn't possible through elections, but only through organizing general assemblies in which people practice direct democracy. Your ideas are immature and utopian and won't work in the real world. Grow up. I used to believe in revolution but I've learned it's not going to happen. Capitalism is about to fall. Capitalism will be around a long time. Blah blah blah. No wonder a leftist firing squad is often characterized as being a circle. It's a wonder we ever ended the war in Vietnam the way we used to fight among ourselves. Nobody has a monopoly on truth, get over it.
The old New Left, which more or less devolved into single issue politics in the seventies and eighties then expired in the nineties, never really considered the problem of power. Meanwhile, the old New Right, led by crackpots like Karl Rove, actually attained power starting with Reagan in 1981. They did it by a savvy strategic linkup of ideological conservatives with a Christian fundamentalist base. What will be your strategy to rise to power? (My generation will probably be long gone). Ignore the question at your own risk. I assure you the other side is not.
One last point: 85% of all black voters support President Obama. Meanwhile many or most white progressives spend a lot of their time attacking him as a stooge of Wall Street. Many OWS people feel the same way. Does that mean that white OWS people are smarter than black people? Or vice versa? Or is it merely a problem of point of view?
I'm supporting Obama for re-election and at the same time working for progressive candidates for Congress. And supporting the rise of a smart direct action movement, OWS. It's not a contradiction, it's a coalition.
Good luck. I'll be watching to see how it goes.
Love,
Mark
#OWS #occupywallstreet #99percent #solidarity @hotleadenema @JasonLeopold @OccupyWallStNYC
Friday, October 14, 2011
A blog about that 53% guy
So, what to make of this guy. The first thing to note may be what my wife immediately pointed out "what does he think this list is if not whining?" Now I've run into at least a dozen of these jerks, not intentionally you
understand, let's just say this is a big reason I don't like to go to bars. But no, to them it isn't whining, it's more like a badge of toughness that they will butt into any conversation or casual remark. So it is a matter of perspective, by definition the tough guy cannot whine but woe be it to anyone within earshot who dares say "oh, it's been kind of a rough week, I'm a little tired." Hence all of the "No Whining" bumper stickers, they are for you, not me. Making a big deal out of your alleged suffering is our middle-class link back to a warrior society.
I actually don't know where this picture came from originally and I don't care enough to look, the look on his face is enough to tell me I don't want to know. But this sanctimonous look he's giving the camera says a lot. First, that well, he's probably lying about his alleged suffering quite a bit. How old does he look? But say he is a former marine, active duty enlistments are 5 years minimum now as I understand it. Plus 8 years of college and who knows how many after, pretty nonspecific, he would have to be at least 31 right? Not likely. Marines are a different breed, but they aren't exactly known to be smart. Army guys are different, complaining isn't something shameful, it is an art. Anyway, if this is how he identifies himself I doubt he'd be pleasant to be around.
How about working all those hours during college? Most people work during school, that many hours even if going part-time to classes doesn't leave nearly enough time to study. So this guy is either saying, "I'm a lousy student" or rarely sleeps. Either way, no wonder he's so bitter and attacking people not like him as "whiners." I came across this class act through an open letter on Daily Kos posted by some of my friends, thanks guys.
Getting right down to it, the Kos article repeatedly praises this guy for his "pride" and "work ethic." Not to put too fine a point on it, but pride is a deadly sin for a reason. In Niebuhrian theology, it is pride that serves as a catalyst for transmuting the will-to-survive present in all higher lifeforms into will-to-power. The will-to-power is not ordinate, it can only be limited through countervailing force and presses in short order to domination. To further illustrate this point, Arthur Schlesinger identified a personality type he called "totalitarian man," an individual that is filled with anxiety and longs for discipline that goes with surrendering freedom for order.
The Kos article does lay down why he is wrong in this attack on others' exercise of freedom and desire for justice. But then goes on to say that he wishes the 53% guy would be his ally. This will never happen. Like the trapped souls in the Matrix, this guy is fully dependent on the system and will in all likelihood die to protect it. Therefore, attempts to reason with him are doomed to failure. Pearls before swine, trying to reason with totalitarian man are likely to result in him turning to rend you. No, this guy is dead wrong but pride will never allow him to question his assumptions or break through the "othering" of liberals. He will never see protest against the system of greed and domination as legitimate or anything other than an attack on the privilege he desperately wants to be part of. And he is willing to sacrifice all dissenters for even the faintest chance at "getting ahead" and joining the privileged class.
Finally, this desperate identification with his exploiters and masters led to my gut reaction to reading his scrawled manifesto. SUCKER!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Occupy this!
It is always so hard to look at current events after working on my thesis concerning how democracy should and did work from a realist point of view during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, especially how leaders elected to represent such a diverse electorate then act in the world. We have fallen very far as a people, but the enemies of freedom and justice have also advanced much further in their ability to manipulate us and the system.
I was invited to one of the "occupy" events starting up in my area, there were a pretty diverse group of comments already on the site, including a link to this story. I was pleasantly suprized that there are still people able to post opinions like this, but also dismayed. There is no need to go in detail about the fragmentation of grass-roots political movements, if you look into the Populist movement in the US of the late 19th Century or SDS in the '60s a genuine leftist can only see wasted opportunity in the infighting, backstabbing and general dissipation of energy in those organizations. As much as I hate the proto-fascist/corporatist right, there is a tendency on the left to spontaneously divide and sputter, along with a "holier than thou" attitude among wannabe leaders that turns a lot of potential sympathizers and supporters off. The point is, for any good points the socialist author made, his tone and conspiratorial projection onto the Democrats made me roll my eyes and say "forget it" I don't want to be on either side.
Don't get the wrong idea, I come here to praise the Occupy Wall Street movement, not trash it. For one thing it is simply too early to put it in any kind of context. For another, a coherent strategy hasn't emerged yet. But of course that doesn't stop demogogic propaganda-spewing apologists for class war on the poor from describing them as "parasites" and so on. Spitzer may be naively optimistic on Slate here by describing OWS's efforts as already effectively changing the conversation, but I largely agree. Optimism implies certainty however, and the only thing certain was that a movement of this kind was inevitable. As it was in the American past, injustice cultivates its own corrective but it takes work. Therefore I have hope that OWS can gain momentum, solidify, and make a real effort on our behalf. But success is not inevitable.
More interesting is the analysis by Djerejian from a more Burkean conservative point of view, the social and economic forces in a nation must find balance if there is to be harmony. Harmony is kind of a vague term in political definition as far as I can tell that may have more in common with stability than justice. Stability can be enforced through coercion, or by a feeling among the majority that they have dignity and an investment in the social structure. People take to the streets when they lose that feeling and decide they have little to lose by fighting for it compared with accepting an unjust situation. The people currently participating actively in OWS have reached this point, along with many others who sympathize and support them. People take part in demonstrations when their lives become intolerable because of the active intervention of more powerful forces then they can influence.
Justice, on the other hand, is the major point of departure from Burkean conservatism for Christian Realism as formulated by Reinhold Niebuhr. Harmony gained through the achievement of a tolerable justice, as the US had for many years after WWII, required the sacrifice of many in varying degrees. Direct action by working people combined with strong political leadership made it possible for so many to take a feeling of ownership in our society and feel it was worth defending. Decades of hard work by the children of darkness have now combined with complacency to take much of that away. The middle-class society of the postwar era may have been a first in western civilization, but the regression of the last three decades is also unprecedented.
So whether or not OWS is a step towards retaking our dignity is up in the air, but I have to counsel caution. Simply as a countervailing force to check the rise of parafascism in this country it is definitely progress. By giving people "out there" a different narrative and physical symbol of another way to feel about American politics is significant in itself. Thus the incredible lengths the noise machine is going to discredit OWS's character individually and as a movement. Of course the accusations resonate with small-minded authoritarian personalities who will defend the system to the death if need be. They will repeat them simply because they cannot bear to think for themselves. But this caution is not for or about them. What I have in mind is to say that there is no utopia, nor is there a silver-bullet that will bring justice in one fell swoop. And this movement has to be for the long haul, if it simply flashes into a fad and fades away not only will the conditions not improve, but the children of darkness will be emboldened to take even more from all of us.
I was invited to one of the "occupy" events starting up in my area, there were a pretty diverse group of comments already on the site, including a link to this story. I was pleasantly suprized that there are still people able to post opinions like this, but also dismayed. There is no need to go in detail about the fragmentation of grass-roots political movements, if you look into the Populist movement in the US of the late 19th Century or SDS in the '60s a genuine leftist can only see wasted opportunity in the infighting, backstabbing and general dissipation of energy in those organizations. As much as I hate the proto-fascist/corporatist right, there is a tendency on the left to spontaneously divide and sputter, along with a "holier than thou" attitude among wannabe leaders that turns a lot of potential sympathizers and supporters off. The point is, for any good points the socialist author made, his tone and conspiratorial projection onto the Democrats made me roll my eyes and say "forget it" I don't want to be on either side.
Don't get the wrong idea, I come here to praise the Occupy Wall Street movement, not trash it. For one thing it is simply too early to put it in any kind of context. For another, a coherent strategy hasn't emerged yet. But of course that doesn't stop demogogic propaganda-spewing apologists for class war on the poor from describing them as "parasites" and so on. Spitzer may be naively optimistic on Slate here by describing OWS's efforts as already effectively changing the conversation, but I largely agree. Optimism implies certainty however, and the only thing certain was that a movement of this kind was inevitable. As it was in the American past, injustice cultivates its own corrective but it takes work. Therefore I have hope that OWS can gain momentum, solidify, and make a real effort on our behalf. But success is not inevitable.
More interesting is the analysis by Djerejian from a more Burkean conservative point of view, the social and economic forces in a nation must find balance if there is to be harmony. Harmony is kind of a vague term in political definition as far as I can tell that may have more in common with stability than justice. Stability can be enforced through coercion, or by a feeling among the majority that they have dignity and an investment in the social structure. People take to the streets when they lose that feeling and decide they have little to lose by fighting for it compared with accepting an unjust situation. The people currently participating actively in OWS have reached this point, along with many others who sympathize and support them. People take part in demonstrations when their lives become intolerable because of the active intervention of more powerful forces then they can influence.
Justice, on the other hand, is the major point of departure from Burkean conservatism for Christian Realism as formulated by Reinhold Niebuhr. Harmony gained through the achievement of a tolerable justice, as the US had for many years after WWII, required the sacrifice of many in varying degrees. Direct action by working people combined with strong political leadership made it possible for so many to take a feeling of ownership in our society and feel it was worth defending. Decades of hard work by the children of darkness have now combined with complacency to take much of that away. The middle-class society of the postwar era may have been a first in western civilization, but the regression of the last three decades is also unprecedented.
So whether or not OWS is a step towards retaking our dignity is up in the air, but I have to counsel caution. Simply as a countervailing force to check the rise of parafascism in this country it is definitely progress. By giving people "out there" a different narrative and physical symbol of another way to feel about American politics is significant in itself. Thus the incredible lengths the noise machine is going to discredit OWS's character individually and as a movement. Of course the accusations resonate with small-minded authoritarian personalities who will defend the system to the death if need be. They will repeat them simply because they cannot bear to think for themselves. But this caution is not for or about them. What I have in mind is to say that there is no utopia, nor is there a silver-bullet that will bring justice in one fell swoop. And this movement has to be for the long haul, if it simply flashes into a fad and fades away not only will the conditions not improve, but the children of darkness will be emboldened to take even more from all of us.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Huh huh, fire.
An actual conversation I recently noticed, observing but taking no part in. I changed the names for fun, not to protect "innocence."
Beavis:
espn.go.com
The Hank Williams Jr. song that has opened Monday Night Football for 20 years will not be part of the opening tonight after Williams made comments comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler on Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends.
- SS: Even free speech has it's limits. Try hopping on a commercial airplane and yelling "I have a bomb!". Or finding the most muscle bound guy in a bar at 2 a.m. and telling him his gf's ugly. Hank probably could have made his point much better by choosing his words more wisely.
- Mrs. Beavis: Your dinner is getting cold. You couldn't post this at home? We have internet here. I get the bill every month. Just so ya know.
- Ron Paul's Fluffer: Well, if I gave a shit about basketball, soccer, golf or NCAA womens sports, I'd turn on ESPN.
But I don't.
- JH: You compare someone to Hitler ONE time.....
- Butthead: The corporate media worked very hard a couple years ago spreading fear to get this man elected! Can't be putting anyone on tv who says any bad words about him
- Beavis: You mean the Chocolate Messiah or Bocephus? In one case, being president seems to prematurely age just about everyone who takes the job. In Hanks case, that'd chalk it up to a few decades of hard living... And I gotta disagree with saying he compared Obama to Hitler. He never did say which side was which. I'll admit, it wasn't the smoothest of comparisons, but his basic (if poorly stated) point that these are supposed to be opposing sides, so why are they out having a good time together (because when the back slapping/glad handing starts, that's when the principals get tossed aside, and the American people get screwed in the name of "bipartisanship") is a good one. Either way, ESPN shouldn't be acting as a defacto censor by penalizing him for speaking his mind. And "fire in a crowded theater" doesn't apply here. There is no clear or present danger in calling the president Hitler. Even if you find it distasteful, it's protected.
- SS: Screech its exactly the same thing. For freedom of speech to work, we as people have to exercise that right with responsibility. We have the right to bear arms, but not to point and shoot wherever we want with no regard to others, whether we like them or not. A pastor might have the opinion that one of his parishoners is an asshole, but if he exercises his right to "free speech about that person in the pulpit on sunday morning, he probably won't be giving sermons at that church much longer.
- Bobcat: Beavis im talking about hank and the shithouse of make up on his face....bernie looked better
- Beavis:Welcome to the HD era I guess.
- Butthead: Shit...not even the same Goddamm sport!
- D: You know the deal Josh,,,,he's considered a "spokesman" for MNF on ESPN and since they didn't like what came out of his mouth, he gets released. How many DJ's you know been dumped for what they said on the air? ESPN didn't want to be associated with those comments in any way and made the break and made it clear "why" they made the break.
It is hypocritical to bash Disney for dissociating itself from williams because of dumb remarks, freedom of association is also protected under the same amendment guys. Williams is a well known republican partisan, he played at their convention in 2000 and has been active in republican campaigns since, but this never troubled Beavis before. My friend Beavis prides himself on consistency, but I don't recall him coming to the defence of the Dixie Chicks or anyone who questioned the invasion of Iraq. No, no one went to jail for dissenting from bush era militarism and few people lost jobs because of their beliefs. But in our Orwellian right-wing, partisanship excuses hypocrisy and righteous indignation is only pointed toward people who point out hypocrisy or racism. It is an atmosphere of "I am always right and can use any device which proves my point, anyone who points out that 2+2=4 is the one with the problem." So saying "the chocolate messiah" is not racist and only exposes the rotten character of anyone who might assert that it is. The other inconsistancy is that Beavis usually adheres to the idea that workers have NO rights, on the job or otherwise.
But the main thing, for all of them seems to be confusion as to what free speech is. This wasn't the heavy-handed government cracking down on dissent, this was a chickenshit corporation jettisonning a known partisan for making a dumb crack that will likely offend quite a few customers. And the kind of dingbats who would think comparing Obama to Hitler is okay are gonna watch MNF regardless. And that damn song has been terrorizing my ears for twenty years. Can you think of another brand that has stayed the same for two decades? And uh, williams isn't exactly out of a job or deported or had his assets confiscated. The final thing to note is that this sort of talk doesn't really fly on commercial television, hence the failure of rush, savage, and finally even glen beck on tv.
So, I'm not defending a giant corporation. I'm not going to defend multi-millionaire country singers either. I am attacking hypocrisy and some reaallly screwed up priorities.
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