|
What Is To Be Done?
by FlashHarry
Since I first ran into blogs circa 4/2004 at Billmon’s, I have been intrigued by the idea of using a comments or chat room type format to address specific problems and hopefully come up with solutions.
On the recent WB: Sucker Pitch thread here, DeAnander linked to a great piece by Progressive Review‘s Sam Smith: "Things to Do in the Bad Times".
Smith presents concrete suggestions for developing a serious progressive movement that can also influence and/or dominate the Democratic Party, and more importantly, win elections.
I would especially enjoy hearing from my good friend rgiap and others who have experience in developing political and social consciousness. Hopefully we have others here who also know how to turn ’em out on election day.
If you choose to participate in this thread, please be somewhat civil. Leave the corn pone and grits, snarko-Marxism, pole axes, chain guns, and Renaissance poisons at the door.
And if you think there is nothing to be done, remember that 60s saying attributed to Eldridge Cleaver:
IF YOU ARE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
So please read Sam Smith and comment here: THINGS TO DO
IN THE BAD TIMES
Smith’s article reiterates points that have been made here before.
Jargon does not speak to the lady at the register in the grocery store. Americans can relate to progressive ideas, but to speak in terms of class consciousness or imperialism as the last throes of capitalism would cause fear and alarm…not toward the govt, but toward the person raising those terms because we have a sixty year history of negative campaigning against such issues.
But, talking about the unfairness of the way in which companies treat people is something everyone can relate to at the sticky end of the lollipop. Talking about the hypocrisy of the Republicans, who want govt off their backs but are now running the biggest deficit EVER, and much of it due to money that goes to Cheney’s stock portfolio speaks to people. Talking about Bush’s desire to go into Iraq to get back at Saddam b/c Saddam wanted to kill his daddy (a common thought among people who work in factories, or did, where I am) is an opportunity to ask if the govt is the right place for Bush to carry out a vendetta at the expense of national security and the lives of American soldiers.
also, it’s important for those who call themselves progressives to give credit to the legislators when they do vote for things that help the poor and middle class…and the dems do have a better record of this than the repubs.
we are in a two party electoral system, like it or not, so at the local level, you either need to be a candidate or find someone who wants to be a candidate who shares your principles and provide cash support, foot support (as in going door-to-door to increase name recognition) and basic help like stuffing envelopes, etc.
one of the big issues that I think the dems have missed out on, but that is very viable at the local level is energy independence from the middle east. creating jobs locally by moving to renewables at the local level, making sure laws are passed that, for instance, let people avg. energy consumption (and let their meters run backwards) are things that people can relate to at the local level, including the issue of farmers supplying fuel, converting cars for biofuel…none of these are grand ideological issues, but these are the sorts of jobs, local relations, and food on the table issues that matter to people.
where I leave there is a group that lobbies the state govt for just such issues (energy avging) and acts as a watchdog for profiteering from energy providers, etc.
I think a great, positive theme which, again, can be done at the local level, with the cooperation of local bizzes and local politicians and local voters is to associate progress with a move to a 21st century energy policy. It can be presented as patriotic (freedom from m.e. oil), it can be presented as empowering for local citizens and bizzes, it can be presented as, unfortunately, (snark) something the republicans will not deal with because they are in the pocket of the oil cos.
And, like it or not, these issues resonate more with a variety of people if they are not presented by someone who looks like he or she went down into a bomb shelter in Haight-Ashbury in the sixties and has just climbed out into the bright blinking sun of thirty years of republican rule.
The republicans started at the local level on school boards, stuffing envelopes and calling voters from local pol headquarters, supporting local candidates, even if they are not your perfect choice, and forming coalitions that, as Smith notes, do not have to pass an ideological test to be part of your play group.
while rgiap has much to say about his life in the pursuit of decency toward a cross-section of humanity, his experience is not with local level American politics, and if you really want to make a difference, you have to get down into the trenches and win a place on the school board to counter the helmet-haired republican who wants to teach creationism in the public schools. And you have to counter his or her arguments with common sense, and facts about declining math and science scores, and American competitiveness in the world.
most Americans could not tell you who Fred Hampton was, but they can surely tell you the story of Adam and Eve. Most Americans can find ways to see conservation as an American issue if it’s presented as patriotism, not jingoism, and can make those small changes (florescents for incandescents, for instance, that start to lead to bigger changes…and the idea of owning a part of their own energy co-op, for instance, is another way to appeal, in the same way that farmers have co-ops.
the local farmer’s market is very successful because it’s a fun event to attend, it has good food available that meets a basic need, there are a variety of people buying and selling, and there’s even entertainment provided by local musicians.
in addition, the market puts money into the community, provides organic farmers a market, provides a meeting space for people that’s not “just” about politics, but allows local politicians and others (living minimum wage coaltion, anti-Iraq war groups, sustainability groups, etc. a place to also set up a table and talk to people.
that, to me, is one of the most successful ways to reach out beyond the core of yellow dogs, or red dogs, whatever color you politics may be.
additionally, dems or progressives have to take the security fears of Americans seriously. One way, of course, is to put them into perspective…the probability of a terrorist attack vs a car wreck…but use that fear in a positive way, in local actions mentioned above, and, at the same time, to, as an not pissed off aside, mention that it’s sad that Bush didn’t seem to be able to get past his own fear, and look at the mess he’s made…and now we have to work to fix it where we are.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 3 2005 15:46 utc | 6
I like the concept of this post. And Sam Smith has a few good ideas. But his reliance on the Democratic Party to effect change is downright naive. Even the #1 “Progessive” he cites, FDR, only made the changes that he did because the Great Depression created the very real possibility that people would rise up against the American Experiment en masse, and Henry Wallace and others were breathing down his neck. Rich politicians only change their policies to survive challenges by radical activists: They don’t cede power willingly; it must be wrested from them.
Several things must happen before conditions are ripe for change, but when they are met change will be swift and unstoppable. For gradual change: Clean up the voting process and curb the power of money in politics. These are huge projects that most of the public does not care about at this moment, or see as relevant to them and their Soma supply, so perhaps little will happen until the conditions for large-scale change are met: Things need to (and will) get MUCH worse than they are now. Certainly the employment spectrum in this country will deteriorate. But what the other precipitating events are exactly for large scale change is hard to predict.
To see what might happen we need to step back a little here. The Civil Rights leaders Smith quotes were from about 45 years ago. What will the world be like 45 years from now, in 2050–assuming it still exists? For one, Peak Oil WILL weigh upon us heavily, whatever debates might range now about its onset date. Global Warming, ditto. Collapse of portions of the ecological order, probably Ocean life first, almost certainly. Runaway damage from Genetic Engineering, fish farming, and biowarfare research, if not actual attacks, highly probable. Increasing amounts of the earth will become uninhabitable, or far less desirable to live upon, as areas of southern Iraq,the former Yugoslavia, and others, suffering fom D.U. pollution and skyrocketting cancer rates, already are.
We will be relying heavily upon Nuclear Power in the near future; the laws have already been passed and the plans have been made. Why Nuclear? Is it the best for life on Earth, or, as a highly centralized mode of generation, is it best for the health of the corporations of the earth? Pushing our aging nuclear plants (most already functioning past design limits) will, almost certainly, result in a Chernobyl-like accident here in the U.S.
By 2050, more than one out of every two people will contract cancer, and lifespans will be declining. They have already peaked, and increasing poverty caused by global chaos will lower the span for the poor and disenfranchised, radiation and chemicals will lower the span for the rich. Of course, medical progress will help the lucky 1% of the earth live longer–although at increasing expense, and intervention, for diminishing payback.
Resource wars will proliferate around the globe, as the U.S., China, and, to a lesser extent, Europe, India and Russia vie for control of many dwindling resources like oil, water, and essential minerals and metals. The odds of additional terror attacks in this climate over the next 45 years–probably 100%.
As limits to growth are reached there will almost certainly be large scale decimations of human populations, especially in Africa. We will also see increasing rates of extinction in the animal kingdom.
The difference from 45 years ago? We have now entered late-stage capitalism, whose imperative of ever increasing growth almost insures these dour predictions manifest. What consideration is being given for designing and implementing an economic and business model that does not depend on ever increasing growth, but functions just as well in a state of controlled decline. Are the DEMOCRATS talking about this????? Come on……
Controlled Growth is an oxymoron, as current species extinction, climate change, desertification, etc., attest to. Yes, Science will come up with many great inventions in the next 45 years, many in the service of the very rich, who control the funding stream. But will Science magically save us from all of the effects of this dire scenario? And, as we are talking about little more than a generation from now, do you want to bet your children and grandchildren’s, and indeed all of mankind’s, future that it will? Those who think that science will resolve all of this and more are almost as foolish in their faith as those that believe we will all be swept up into Heaven in the Rapture. Think about it.
***************
Most of what I have been talking about relates to the “Get a Plan” section of THINGS TO DO.
So, what are my suggestions? It will be very difficult to effect change as long as the ULTRA-rich, who control much of the agenda, continue doing better, which they are, and possibly will be even 45 years from now, though with less stability. Perhaps one or two million people in this country understand what I am talking about here and don’t believe the NPR lullabies about how great things are, despite one or two bad apples.
Everyone simply has to commit to educating and changing one person’s mind. That will double the base. Then work on changing one more mind: It gets harder each cycle as we have to dig deeper into wingnut loam, but eight cycles (that is, only eight people’s minds per person in this, the ULTIMATE pyramid scheme) and we have a super-majority. Remember most people are sheep, and as more and more people wake up, more will blindly follow.
The alternative is to wake up one day and realize that deficits no longer matter, and now, perversely like Oscar Wilde, we find all our evenings free. Forever.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 4 2005 4:58 utc | 22
@ Deanander
While I do lean towards activism, I’m not arguing wholly against against electoral politics. I just think that one needs to consciously keep away from the personality analyses, the “he said, she said” games, believing the official propaganda line (“Spreading Democracy”) in any way, shape or form, and bemoaning the performance of elected Democrats as if it were an endless Blues song (“My baby done left me”)–a level of consciousness development and psychological insight that most so-called liberal democratic blogs seem eternally and forlornly stuck at, as counterproductive.
Watch the money–as if it were your own, which it is, in a sense–carefully. This is not a three card monty game. Watch the money, not what they earnestly avow, and make political decisions accordingly. If you smell a rat, it is a rat. Don’t moan; dump ’em, disgrace ’em, (if you’re Karl Rove, destroy ’em), and move on.
I also believe that you will have better luck with conservatives, even Kool Aid addicts, by moving the argument away from social issues and into more existential ones as I have delineated above. Helen Caldicott tells a story of arguing with some important General in the Pentagon and getting nowhere, just official propaganda. Then she spied a picture of the General’s grandchildren on his desk and took the conversation to the level of his hopes and candid expectations for them: this broke the communication through to a whole different level. His doubts and fears were as strong as her’s, despite the fact that the government was following “his” agenda.
I believe that never before in Human History have so many powerful people been so pessimistic about the ramifications of their actions as today, despite what you see on their faces. They just don’t have a language (economic, financial, emotional, etc.) that they can discuss this in. Also, discussing the fact that the empire has no answers is about as socially acceptable as discussing the fact that the emperor has no clothes. They must admit that everything they have strived for is nugatory.
The rest of the populace can be divided into two groups: those who know or sense where we are heading, but the fear and powerlessness is so great that they block it out. They can be worked with slowly, gently, with acceptance that there are others who have faced this fear and not flipped out–who they can talk to, and who will be there to support them.
The second group is those who have no sense of the state the world is in. Everything is O.K. They inhabit in a capitalist fugue, eternally seeking happiness through aquiring more, never seeing the consequences of their actions. This is tough, but I believe slow, very slow education can work. (“You like your cell phone, well, let me tell you about a very valuable mineral that is necessary for their manufacture, and how many people have been killed over it”.)
I also believe that most people’s defenses are like a cell wall. And most people have something that has gone wrong in their life, they’ve lost their job, someone in their family is sick, they’re taking care of an elderly parent, a disabled child, whatever; and that the government, such as it is, has failed them on this. This, then, is the lock and like an enzymatic reaction, your proper response, over time, to how their need can be met is the key to changing that person’s politics.
Noam Chomsky talks about how essential the atomizing of any sense of people’s solidarity is to the success of the neo-liberal agenda. Conversely, any reestabllishment of connection between people, any understanding of a sense of commonality of interests represents a weakening of support for the neo-liberal agenda.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 4 2005 7:24 utc | 27
@ Deanander
vis-a-vis optimism/pessimism, and people’s political positions, there is this article by Tom Hayden, which I feel is worthy enough of its own discussion thread.
Co-opting the Radical Instinct, A Warning
I think that you all might want to know something about how the other side sees you. There’s a study done by the Cattlemen’s Society. Now, you may think they’re an irrelevant, marginal group, but they’re quite crucial to the frontier mentality that built this great country on the backs of the native people. They are a big special interest group, and they pay good money to find out who these activists are. A few years ago they did a study. The question was: How do we contain and stop this direct action movement? It wasn’t called the direct action movement then; it was the civil disobedience movement, the protesters, the environmentalists, all the rabble that they were concerned about at the time.
They created a chart. At one end were the radicals, defined as people who believe that the system itself has to be changed. A radical would he anybody who understands that globalization is a system with many fronts and many issues. Their prescription for the radicals was to isolate and discredit them, not because there was something inherently radical in their behavior, but because they were pointing out that it was a system. So, the first goal, they said, was to discredit the radical analysis.
The second group on the spectrum were the idealists. These are people who want to give the system a chance. They believe in the same social justice values that the radicals do, but they’re idealistic; they don’t have a cold, cynical view that nothing is possible under the system. So, it’s extremely important, the study said, that the idealists don’t become radicals. In order to keep this from happening, you raise the stakes of radicalism so that people are afraid to become radical, because they then get smeared, discredited, and worse. You have to give the idealists occasional victories in order to keep their hope in the system alive.
Third on this continuum came the pragmatists. The pragmatists are former idealists who’ve won some victories, who start to believe that the system works. So, they said, it’s extremely important for the idealists to have victories — not because of justice, but because that way they become pragmatists. And you want the pragmatists to be able to say: See? The system works. Be pragmatic.
And the final part of the spectrum — the culmination of your future, if you follow this plan — is that you can become an opportunist. An opportunist is a former pragmatist. An opportunist, they said, is a pragmatist who gets attracted to the money, the glamour, the status, and the power. And then they had a whole workshop on how this could be done. How to discredit the radicals, cultivate the idealists, make them pragmatists, and then find the opportunists among the pragmatists. And there — you have the story of my generation, the 60s generation.
You have millions of people who have radical instincts but little expectation, who have lowered their expectation. You have millions of people who are former idealists, who have become pragmatists. And you have plenty of people who are opportunists. My question is: How can you break this cycle? It’s the most important cycle to break. You can’t break the cycle of poverty; you can’t break the cycle of violence; you can’t break the cycle of corporate expansion; you can’t break the cycle of the arms race; you can’t break the cycle of imprisonment, if you don’t break the cycle by which radicals are isolated, idealists are turned into pragmatists, and pragmatists into opportunists. I have not found an answer to this problem, but I’m here to tell you it is the problem. And you are its answer.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 4 2005 7:33 utc | 28
Some instinctive sense of survival probably does. (remain).
Individually yes, collectivelly no. We have already killed off half of all the species in the ocean. How many more species do we kill before man DECIDES it’s now magically time for balance. We ARE out of control.
Derrick Jensen compares the environment to a person: We are lopping off his fingers and toes and saying “It doesn’t matter; he can get along fine.” Now we are preparing to amputate some major limbs. Of course, the person is already blind….
HKO is right: things will slowly evolve, improve. But, along the way, there will be major precipices we will fall off, only to arrive at a higher state of entropy for most, a lower state of order. The elite are still protected.
9-11 was one such step. It represents, not the growth of state and non-state terror, for that has existed since the birth of states, but the failure of the state to keep these “messy” items from the public’s consciousness. Clinton and Albright, as picadors in the bullfight, did a marvelous job of weakening Iraq and killing Iraqis, away from the general public’s awareness. But, the ruling elite panicked because of peak oil, felt they could no longer bide their time, play the waiting game for Iraq to fall into western hands. Also China had just signed contracts with Hussein and Iraqi oil was no longer going to be dollar denominated. This was the first crisis that the public saw. There will be many more as the resource wars heat up.
But remember: Wohlstetter, the mentor of Wolfowitz and the neo-con’s, believed that the public should NEVER know what the elite was doing, or why, in governing. In this latest dust-up they have failed miserably. This alone indicates failure and panic.
One reason that I am so pessimistic about the possibility for change is the control that the military-industrial complex exerts on the economy. It has long been policy to site military facilities in every congressional district so that every congressman is beholden for his job.
Too many people are dependent on the continued existence of this military Leviathan for their livlihood, their ideology. I look at all economic activity on a scale of ecological sustainability, and militarism is the lowest of the low. Consumption of non-renewables (I believe the U.S. military alone consumes as much oil as the seventh largest nation on the planet), environmental pollution, radioactive waste, bomblets which will kill and maim for generations, the spewing of hate and prejudice: on all levels this is pure destruction, the anti-life principle in progress. It is sheer, slow suicide for the planet, piece by piece, bit by bit, niche by niche.
But the enormity of the event needed to have people see the destructivness of militarism, I don’t even want to fathom. I leave it to you to speculate.
Idealists talk about running the planet based on the “Precautionary Principle.” It sounds great in theory. But that is not how things are run, and have historically been run, by humans, nations, corporations. The way things have been run is this: A resource is identified, and then exploited until it is virtually finished, at least in an economic sense. Then it is abandoned and and new one is found. This behavior, I term “The Catastrophic Principle” of human affairs, and until the people of the planet are as aware of this principle and the effects of human behavior on the biosphere, as they are of Michael Jackson’s dick and nose, I give little chance for 95% of our species.
What can we do? It seems quaint to me to consume as little as possible when my neighbor drives a boat, waters her lawn 24/7, puts out 8 pails of trash weekly compared to my one, doesn’t recycle, and her child sits amid welter of plastic that would make The Graduate proud. But it’s the best that I can do. Still, having lived in the third world, I am well aware of how people that have less than us, and cannot aspire to our wealth, nontheless still aspire to our profligacy and are blind to environmental concepts. And I often find myself lusting after the newest laptop or whatever gizmo as much as anyone. We can at least aspire towards a more bio-friendly technology.
And we can agree not to have biological children. One life here in the developed world has the environmental impact of 20 in the undeveloped.
And continue to educate, educate, educate. I have found that over the years, I have become much more vocal in explaining how the world works with my neighbors, friends, family etc. So, some of them think I’m a nutcase. The seed of “doubt of life as it is” and “awareness of how it could be” has been planted. One day it will take root.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 4 2005 14:44 utc | 33
The warm currents of pathos and passion which traverse this meandering thread are an unmistakable sign of the fervor burning just beneath the apparently placid patriotic uniformity of American public discourse as sung by its officially sanctioned bards. It is a hopeful sign that there is no official program, no party line, and no oracular vision to unite us except the belief that America can do much better, and that the great task remaining before us, to effect such improvement, is still within our power and in our hands. We can once again achieve a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.
The nodes to be resolved are many and the forces arrayed against liberal governance are powerful, but so too is the hidden groundswell of desire to recapture the fallen and Bush-besmirched banner of American idealism.
None of us expect a possible Democratic victory in 2006 or 2008 to restore a lost paradise: the end of Bushism should, however,be much more than a consecration of the principle that “to the victor belong the spoils”.
What many of us are seeking, I believe, is a little less than a virtual refoundation of the American republic,
a new birth of freedom fostered by an updating of the enlightened ideals of the founding fathers,
and a reformulation of the axioms of Madisonian political wisdom.
It may indeed be, as some have suggested here, that such hopes are forlorn, the evolution of the military-industrial-financial complex may be so far advanced that our society has, so to speak, acquired a political hoof
that forecloses a return to the greater flexibility of separated dactyls suitable for simpler times. But I refuse to accept the eternal persistence of that political dead hand as a working hypothesis: if present institutions
are unresponsive let us challenge, reform or abolish them, not accept their shortcomings as our destiny.
The ascending path toward the neo-constitutional reforms will necessarily be long and difficult. Our
tools for reaching them can only be those of majoritarian consensus. Therefore, I believe, our
first goals should be those of comity rather than polity. Insisting on honesty,openness and frugality in government should be a hallmark of the progressive struggle, and a countersign for detecting possibly unexpected allies.
There is no dearth of issues nor lack of compelling themes. It would be foolish to abandon such resonant
chords as family security, religious freedom, and community pride to the cynical manipulation of our opponents.
It is, rather, our task to embrace and redefine them within what we see as their natural context, that of
cooperation and cohesion rather than competition and constriction. Likewise, such traditional progressive tabus
as isolationism, neutrality, states’ rights and property rights should no longer be liquidated as typically
reactionary shibboleths. Asserting the rights of the individual in the face of predatory corporations and
invasive governments should be but two faces of the progressive coin.
We may hope that across America thousands of streams of local initiative will feed into dozens of regional tributaries to a few mighty progressive rivers, whose gentle but insistent rolling will clean and re-vivify the nation.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 5 2005 9:27 utc | 56
|
