responses to trevor, uly laz, etc re: obama haters
This started as a response to comments from Trevor Blake, Ulysses Lazarus and others on my Obama-haters rant. It seems to be turning into notes for a first draft of the political thoughts I’ve been stewing over during my retirement.
Change and Mobilization
Given my intended audience, I wrote about change and mobilization without specifying that I meant positive change and mobilization of people I can fundamentally get along with. I figure that’s clear from context, but nonetheless, I’ll take the opportunity to give a short version of one of my favorite rants.
The best example of mobilization for political change in recent decades comes from the conservative movement and the religious right, clearly an example of people I don’t want to be successful. It started with the Goldwater campaign in 1964 (where Hilary Clinton cut her political teeth, I believe) and was perfected by the Christian Coalition under Ralph Reed in the 1980’s. See also: Operation Rescue.
It’s a good reminder that the “left” has no monopoly on grassroots support or popular sentiment. This may seem obvious, but many activists dismiss the conservative movement as astroturf (false grassroots). Learn from these groups, and work on organizing. They may be in disarray, but they’ve got a forty-year head start.
The Masses
I don’t really believe in “The People”, only people. My view of the polity owes as much to taoism and discordianism as it does to marxism, anarchism or whatever.
When I talk about mobilization, I don’t mean some nebulous mass of people. I mean finding the people who are inclined in the same general direction I want to go and forming them into a cohesive interest group. Even in periods of high mobilization, except maybe during peaks of revolutionary activity, most people are still on the sidelines. Decisions aren’t made by masses- they’re made by organized parties or factions that are able to exert political influence.
Best Interests
I definitely don’t expect the masses to know what’s best for them- anyone who’s heard me talk about Oregon ballot initiatives will know that I hold the idea of direct democracy in low esteem.
To the extent that I think I know better than the masses, it’s because I’ve put some study into particular issues and into political processes. I’m getting better at humility and calling bullshit on myself when I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’ve still got a long way to go.
As far as grand schemes for the next hundred years, I think these are typically made up of ego and illusion. I still find large chunks of ideology to be dislodged from my thinking, but I’m moving towards a more pragmatic approach in which we do whatever good things are in our reach now. A series of small things, one after another for decades on end, can add up to far more than fruitless struggle for pie-in-the-sky perfection.
Note to myself: I should post sometime soon about the concept of progress. We often take it for granted, or disparage it out of cynicism, but we never really look at what we mean by it or how we think it works.
Taking Joy
This is where Trevor hits the nail on the head- let’s be happy about the positive change we see right now. Sure, we want more, but we’ll always want more- that’s the first noble truth. Too many of us (including myself, or I never would have started on this topic) have grown accustomed to hiding behind bitterness and cynicism, and can always find a good excuse why we’ll never win.
Fuck that. Let’s put aside our masks of spite and despair. Let’s take joy in small victories. One day they may add up to a whole lot more. And if not, at least we won’t have been ugly hateful people along the way.
Keeping People Mobilized
Uly Laz is right that we don’t know if people will stay mobilized, but I promise you they’re more likely to stay mobilized if we go out and organize than if we don’t. We’ve got a chance to scoop up some of these people right now- let’s not squander it on excuses.
Mobilized For What?
Again, I can promise you that they’re more likely to remain merely blue-tinted cheerleaders if we sit it out.
Do you really need me to tell you what to organize around? My two knee-jerk reactions are anti-war and environmental work. These are both areas where people with stars in their eyes are likely to be disappointed sooner rather than later, and therefore fertile ground for radicalization. Some more immediate single-issue campaigns to get involved in right now would be:
- reworking the bailout so it doesn’t go to stock dividends and executive pay
- universal health care
- gay rights
- all sorts of education reform
- ending the drug war and the prison addiction
- repealing the patriot act
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure you can think of more.
Other Stuff
I’m amazed how many people replied, here and elsewhere, by telling me again what’s wrong with Obama. The whole point is that we know Obama’s not going to deliver, but we can make use of this historical moment nonetheless. Are you really going to wait for the right politician to come along and rescue you? You might as well wait for the messiah, or the aliens, or the worker’s paradise.
My political views have evolved considerably over the years, based in part on theory, but in larger part on practice and the study of history. I make no claim right now to an ideal political system, or even to a perfectly consistent program. But I do claim that some sort of action is better than griping on the internet, and small victories are better than ideological purity. I also claim that small victories are how you build a movement, and that building a strong movement is how you gain larger victories.
I’d rather start forward on an uncertain road than sit and wait for everything to be perfect. There will be problems and mistakes along the way- that’s true of everything we do. Take a step forward, and if you keep your balance, take another step, and another. Forward motion is key. There is no final destination, just steps along the way.
Comments
I remain cautiously optimistic that Obama may deliver more than we think he’s capable of. Those that disparage him for being part of the machine, I’m not so sure. His roots are in community organizing, and as I’m sure he quickly found, you can’t institute change unless you are part of the works that can institute change…politics. As you said, politicos get things done.
I myself found in getting more involved with the peace movement that there is learning curve between idealized values and actually working with others and making things happen. If you work with more than 5 people, you are trying to move a many-headed monster with many legs going different directions, no matter how peaceful the intentions of individuals. Change happens slowly and in small ways. Yet some things do happen, such as a court victory that says we have a right as citizens to address our representatives, even if their offices are on private property. Dedicated activists got themselves arrested, not at all dramatically, by attempting to speak to Gordon Smith about getting out of Iraq.
If people expect dramatic change happening quickly, they are bound for disappointment.
I had more to say but I gotta go. I admire your thoughts on this and other worldly affairs and look forward to more. More commentary on your links!
Thanks for posting this and part one. Now is the time to mobilize, I agree.
A very worthwhile read on the topic of staying involved is here too:
http://www.htmltimes.com/how-to-make-barack-obama-keep-his-promises.php
You honor me with such a thoughtful reply.
Now is clearly a good time to get moving on forming new powerful organizations, whatever your politics. I’ve been churning on the subject for a long time, particularly since the election, and I think there is a very real opportunity to completely change the political landscape over the next decade or two.
That being said, I think there’s also an opportunity to create a vast organization made up of many loosely interconnected self-organizing networks united by a common basic agreement, one that reflects and appeals to both the Comedy-Central-mainstream and the proper radical, providing common services and opportunities, much as the conservative movement has done, capitalizing on existing communities and connecting them with a common narrative.
I think the main thing behind any movement is essentially this: those in power have proven themselves too incompetent and/or evil to continue to run things. We and people who agree with us should definitely be running things instead, because we would do a substantially better job of it. Power exists, so although we want to distribute it more equally, we do still need to play the games of power in order to gain enough to ensure that we are not prevented from creating a more just world.
We should talk more seriously on the subject sometime soon.
If Obama does well and makes some of the hope he sold come to fruition – excellent.
& if he fails… the notion that our two-party system can ever deliver change becomes farcical and disproved and that majority of people who ardently want change from the corporate-statist-media-machine we have, will be forced to make it themselves.
I’m highly cautious about Obama. I am of the opinion that the sort of interests which converge around a President are not necessarily those which are well disposed to the “dirty hippie/progressive” faction of Democratic Party supporters. As his appointments tend to show, he is picking DC insiders which, if anything, suggests a return to the Clinton years more than anything else (of course, the Clinton years were certainly better than the last 8, but on an objective level its not exactly brilliant). Tom Daschle, Clinton and Larry Summers do not suggest anything beyond the sort of centrist, triangulating politics that Bubba excelled at.
That said, I do not think it is all bad. While certainly such selections fall well below the expectations of an Obama government, I’m not really concentrating there.
Like others have mentioned, Obama has mobilized a lot of support. He got so far by embracing the progressive wing of the Democrats and by organizing grass roots support via the internet in a way which did not piss people off (unlike the Ron Paul crowd, for a contrast). The thing is, a lot of that machinery, the mechanisms used for organizing all this, are still in place and available. People are motivated and they are more engaged and perhaps that bodes well for the political culture in the country.
Now that the Republicans are engaging in a circular firing squad and Bush is on the way out, the need to get behind “the opposition” and play partisan to the Democrats may not be so vital, and we’ll see some of them breaking ranks in order to try and keep Obama on the political straight and narrow. Probably not in the Senate or administration itself, but perhaps a minority in Congress and various advocacy groups might. It will be interesting to see the Netroots reaction, especially if Obama does knife the progressives in back, as I suspect he will.
I agree with making use of the historical moment as a premise. People are charged up, they do want change and if a leader can be shown to not be providing that, then its entirely possible they will make other arragements, an endeavour I fully support.
I have more on this, but I shouldn’t type so much when still half asleep – I’ll try and come up with something more coherent later. Hopefully my point is discernable among the gibberish.
[...] Johnny Brainwash is an armchair activist and disaffected leftist. His past political activity has ranged from blockading logging roads with Wild Rockies Earth First to coordinating a state campaign for Nader in 2000, with lots of other stops along the way. He mostly organizes Discordian bullshit now, because when he fucks up, no forests get cut down and no one goes to jail. He blogs occasionally at Dysnomia and Shut Up You Are An Idiot. You can read his open letter to Obama-haters here and his follow-up here. [...]