When what’s good gets ya
Barack Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ… here in Raleigh that congregation has been on the front lines for as long as I’ve lived here to oppose war, oppose the expolitation and demonization of the poor, fight racism, xenophobia, sexism, ands homophobia, and provide the core cadre for the region’s Peace Action.
Charles recently posted a link to Reverend Doctor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite — a Church of Christ minister and the President of the Chicago Theological Seminary in Obama’s home state.
Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright — one of the most respected Black pastors in the country — is not as ‘measured’ in his pronouncements as a politician. He believes in the Christian social gospel and its demand for speaking truth to power:
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
Oh well… there goes. The patriot-baiting opportunity this presents is, of course, irrresistable, even though Obama is already playing Peter with his pastor.
Luke 22:34 - And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.
Here is the proverbial pachyderm of US politics, and an inconvenient one for the programmatic left who will cheer on Reverend Wright — as I am, enthusiastically. The left has no popular base in US politics. The taboos associated with Dr. Wright’s words are so powerfully entrenched in the American psyche (for now) that they are, for all practical purposes, impregnable.
We’ve got no game in elections, except as provocateurs… which is why we should seek no more or less than to provoke.
Our work is still cut out for us in unmasking the powers. We are not yet prepared to engage them, excpet by our living examples.
Richard:
My mom joined the United Church of Christ in the early-mid 1980s, when I was a young teenager. We’d had several years away from church, and I wasn’t interested in going back, mostly because it was boring. I clearly remember, to my retroactive shame, being both irritated and embarrassed when, during the announcements portion of the program, various members would stand up and talk about El Salvador and Nicaragua (and possibly the United States’ role in those countries, about which I knew nothing, and so can’t remember specifics of what they might’ve said). They did this every week, just about, and I would roll my eyes. I was completely ignorant of politics at the time (I even voted for Bush the Elder in my first election in 1988, based on no knowledge whatsoever). More than any visceral problem with the content of the announcements, I think I was simply embarrassed. I think these people seemed “silly” to me–why couldn’t they mind their own business? Now, to the extent that I even remember what they were up to, I have a lot of respect for what they were trying to do.
I’m an atheist, but after years of antagonism towards all religious expression, I’ve come around to see such antagonism as at best counter-productive, and at worst point-missingly stupid and destructive.
14 March 2008, 12:51 pmCharles:
Patriot baiting and racist. Of course, we knew the racists would start coming out of the woodwork sooner (not later). Amazing thing about O is that he got going so fast, like Br’er Rabbit that “they” looked up and O had won an insurmountable elected delegates lead count before “they” knew what happened.
Must comment on Ferraro’s comments that being Black is an advantage in an election in the US (!). This is literally the current KuKluxKlan line. The KKK claims that Black people in America are privileged and White people are the disadvantaged relative to Black people. This is exactly what Ferraro is claiming: that O is advantaged in the campaign _because_ he is Black.
Obama is putting White people through a real test. Will the anti-racists Whites reject the racism and rally to O and his racially uniting positions ? O’s is , to me, the M.L.King/Rosa Parks actor of today. Masses of Whites rallied to the anti-racist cause of the Civil Rights Movement. Will they rally to today’s civil rights campaign in the form of the O campaign ?
Note that progressives who have been concerned about O’s centrist positions should be able to see from the church he attends and the minister that he is “one of us” a progressive activist. This is clear from his autobiography (Dreams from My Father) as well. He was an anti-apartheid activist and the like.
Of course, he didn’t campaign that way, because as the thread title says “what’s good gets ya” in America. He had to “deny” Jesus ( and Mohammed, i.e. Farrakhan) for he is rendering unto Caesar, or aspiring to be Caesar (smile). But from my standpoint he’s like Engels interpretation of The Book of Revelations, which is that it is a secret code for a Christian slave revolt against Rome.
O has tremendous courage. He is basically in an ML King gambit, which means he is risking his life.
14 March 2008, 1:51 pmStan:
I rest my case.
Elections are our cultural Rorschachs.
14 March 2008, 5:30 pmMichael Anderson:
Obama signed on to the Corporatist agenda a long time ago…voting for the Tort Law reform act in 2005, for starters. With this religious fracas, he’s trying hard to deal with one of the big Rhinoceroses in his playpen. Two questions I have about him is (1) how much money Wall Street will throw at him to get him elected, ’cause his “peter” is in the Street’s pocket! (2) How long will it take for some (unknown?) party to try and assassinate him? Poor guy…
14 March 2008, 7:02 pmstacia:
I’ve never been much interested in Obama…he seemed like nothing but a marketing job to me. A decent, intelligent, principled man in there somewhere, I suppose, but just a matter of time before he sold his soul entirely to those whose interests are served by his packaging and distribution. And then I heard his spiritual mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright speak (on Rush Limbaugh), and suddenly Obama seemed worth paying attention to, maybe even voting for. Then I read his craven disavowal of his mentor. Not just Peter…Judas Iscariot comes to mind, Obama’s 40 pieces of silver being the Democratic nomination (and not even in hand). If he has a soul left, I hope it’s bothering him right now.
14 March 2008, 10:50 pmpeggy:
Stan Goff quotes the Bible:
Luke 22:34 - And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.
Peggy quotes Bob Dylan:
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
He said, “You’re not Him”
Message #1: Bob Dylan is not Jesus.
Message #2: Reverend Jeremiah Wright also is not Jesus.
Message #3: Jesus did not damn the United States (or any other country or person that I am aware of).
Message #4: Barack Obama did not deny Jeremiah Wright. He said he cannot condone certain words said by Jeremiah Wright.
Obama is running for President of the United States. Jeremiah said, “God damn America” This is serious stuff. Barack is a serious Christian. I think Barack did the right thing in removing Jeremiah from the group of those who might speak for him. Jeremiah is not going to be crucified, for heavens sake. If Jeremiah kept talking like that even after Barack started running for president, I think Jeremiah is the one who betrayed (or at least caused damage to) Barack. If Jeremiah thinks that God should damn America, then he shouldn’t be supporting anyone for president, least of all a good and loyal friend of his. I don’t think he should have made that statement in the first place. Does he expect that if his curse comes true, God will spare only the good people?
Am I the only one who gets this?
16 March 2008, 12:21 amStan:
Rev. Wright is telling the truth. Barack Obama is selling political snake oil. Reverend Wright told the truth before Barack Obama decided to run for the presidency. As to whether Barack Obama is serious about his faith or about his ambition — or whether he truly beleives he can hold them together without contradiction — I can’t know. But Wright is not some appendage of Obama who has to weigh his words in case a parishoner decides to run for office.
16 March 2008, 7:41 amStan:
more on “sex workers” later…. baby in hand
16 March 2008, 7:43 ampeggy:
Does Rev. Wright say that Obama is selling snake oil? If Wright continues to believe that an Obama presidency is something to work for, would you then drop Wright from your list of good guys and add him to your list of bad guys? Certainly Rev Wright told the truth about the fact that in the name of the US, many atrocities at home and abroad have been committed. When he said God damn America (if in fact that has not already happened), that is not something that can be tested for objective truth value. It was what he thought, what he felt. About 9-11 being the chickens coming home to roost - yes, America was inviting antipathy and even hatred from Muslims. But to buy the idea that it was some kind of natural or divine retribution, didn’t Jerry Falwell say just that?
Wright is not an appendage of Obama - exactly correct. Nor is Obama an appendage of Wright. They are long-time good friends. They don’t agree about everything. Can’t you just leave it at that, rather than using this episode as an opportunity to demonstrate your opinion that Obama is a bad man and we shouldn’t vote for him?
Some bunch of slimeballs, searching for dirt on Obama, found these old sermons from his pastor and called them dirt. The whole point was to smear Obama. Now you have bought right into the slimeballs’ agenda by saying that Obama is a snake oil salesman for publicly rejecting some of his pastor’s words, while making very clear that Wright had been a great influence in his life, and still was, and that he respects him and loves him. How much more do you want?
If the African American Christians in Raleigh and other places hear and take your words to heart, they will reject Obama. Is that what you want?
You are a White American Man, therefore you are Entitled to say whatever you want whenever you want and the consequences be damned. The rest of us have to look to the consequences, and suffer from them.
16 March 2008, 5:28 pmpeggy:
An article on pimps:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/opinion/16kristof.html?th&emc=th
16 March 2008, 6:23 pmStan:
No. I do.
I defy you to show me any list I’ve made of “good guys and bad guys.” This is bordering on scurrilous, Peggy.
That’s not what was said by Wright or me, not that we are coordinating messages. Wright is a student of James Cone, who wrote on Black liberation theology. No such assertions of divine sorcery are employed therein.
This is no longer borderline, it is scurrilous. Fantastically so. Shame on you.
This is an election for the presidency of the United States. This was inevitable. That was not my point; and my point was not subtle. I used it in the title, to say something about the system… not Barack Obama. I don’t say Obama is a snake oil salesman in order to see him defeated. I say that no one get sto where Obama is now unless s/he is a Wall Street snake oil salesman… it’s part of the job description. For that matter, if he’d just state that he would pull the US troops out of Iraq immediately — all of them — I’d suspend my own disbelief and vote for him… twice if necessary.
My point is that telling the truth is politically radioactive in the system of US politics. I think I can support that; and did so with this post.
Puleeese. When did African American Christians or any other general demographic ever tune into W-GOF-FM for their news and information? What I’m saying is no different than what Glen Ford or Margaret Kimberly of Black Agenda Report are saying (and I linked to them in the post).
My comment looks pretty mild-mannered compared to Ford’s.
The point I will attach on, in response to your unusually venemous misrepresentation, is that what we can or should say — especially if its true (there are more truths than “objective” ones, btw) — is not determined by electoral pragmatism.
The last time you race-baited me, Peggy, I left the marxfem list because I have neither the time nor the inclination to put up with that shit just because you’ve run out of other debating gambits. I have two sons in uniform right now, both African American, one daughter who is also Black and barely getting by, another (white) daughter juggling two jobs in Arkansas, two grandkids who are going to inherit this horrific mess we’ve left them, and a low-paying job that is connected to construction. I am a stakeholder in this election every bit as much as you are.
The problem is that there are no fundamentally real choices… they are all going to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, just a bit differently between them.
16 March 2008, 6:56 pmpeggy:
How many times on Feral Scholar has the point been made that white American men are privileged, in many ways they don’t even know? You, Stan, belong to that category of white American men, and I feel you are taking one of those privileges for granted. Call it race-baiting. Think about it.
If you think that all the three people currently running for nomination to the presidency are the same, please just say that and argue that point clearly and specifically. I feel that you are singling out Obama for particularly virulent attack.
I, for one, consider that Obama is different from the other two, and better. Yes, he is soiled, and he will get more soiled as the campaign goes on. But of all the things to choose to throw mud at him, why must you choose this one? God, you should see how many splats of mud have already been thrown on him at various internet sites (like ABC) for his being associated with this pastor. I am not sure why you should throw one more splat at him for his partial dissociation from that pastor. Mud is mud, no matter what direction it comes from.
What you say about Obama is fundamentally different from what Ford and Kimberly say above. They are addressing blacks and progressives. You are neither one of those. You are, as you said above, a provocateur. Your aim is not to make the system better, but to expose the flaws in the system by “unmasking the powers”. So you “unmask” Obama. Together with countless other people. And some of his previous supporters may turn against him. And we may lose the best chance we’ve had for a very a long time to turn the U.S. around, just a bit. The alternative that you’re contemplating could be way worse than anything even you can imagine.
I won’t say anything more right now because I am too angry.
16 March 2008, 9:43 pmStan:
White male privilege does not determine the validity or lack of validity of everything I say. Surely what I write (or re-post) can be measured by more than this yardstick.
The sameness of the candidates — my main point, argued earlier with empirical data from the Center for Reponsive Politics — is that Wall Street locks up all the nominations by playing the role of universal contributor to all viable campaigns.
I just went back through posts; and there is no special — or even frequent, given that this is an election season — maltreatment of Obama. I am hard on Democrats, but I have been pretty clearly contemptuous of both of them. Let’s be clear. Our point of disagreement, Peggy, is becoming clearer as this exchange continues. You think that Obama (Democrats) is some new hope. I think the whole “change-experience” debate between him and Clinton is a snake oil competition. You think Obama is “the best chance we’ve had for a very a long time to turn the U.S. around.”
That’s the disagreement.
My “aim” is to post ideas and perspectives that are marginalized by the system, but which some of us feel are more important than the pragmatic hands-off attitude generated by fixed elections. If I had the power, and I don’t (this is just a blog), to try to make the system better (something I don’t feel is possible for a long list of reasons… the legitimizing effects of fixed elections being part of the problem), it would be by means far more practical than a national personality contest for who will get to occupy the Oval Office.
The “mud” thrown at Obama — and this is what I said from the first — is not mud. It’s the hard truth about a state that crushes lives, species, ecosystems, and the possibility of a humane future. The reason it’s used as “mud” is because in our system of politics, these kinds of truths start the rumor that the emperor is unclothed. That’s what unmasks power… systemic power… not Obama.
Now Barack Obama is confronted — not by me — by the whole media-government nexus with this preacher’s truth-telling. That had already happened. What I said was that Obama would play Peter; and he did. It’s an analogue, not a claim that Wright is Christ.
In the gospels, the close friend — Peter — is confronted with a lynch mob, whereupon he saves his own skin by “denying” his association with the one about to be lynched. I still think it’s a good analogy. A good Easter week analogy, in fact.
As for the alternative I am “contemplating,” can you tell me what that is?
17 March 2008, 6:47 amaudrey:
Part of privilege, white or otherwise, is being able to question how things affect us and our communities without having to be aware of the larger picture, the effect on the rest of the world.
A concern with Obama is that people are buying into the idea that if we elect him, it will represent a real departure from the power structures that are upholding and justifying white privilege. I think the only way we can believe that is if we use the same sorts of filters we wear when we enjoy white privilege, or western privilege, or class privilege, when we listen to him. I’m not seeing this big change that some others are seeing in his actual words. I’m seeing that he’s giving the illusion of turning the US around by glossing over the real effects on those “other” people.
In his words, I see that he’s not willing to take military force off the table when talking about Iran. With or without force, he argues in favor of tough sanctions against them. He sounds exactly the same as we did when we were prepping the nation for war against Iraq. When we had tough sanctions against Iraq, we killed as many of the Iraqis through sanctions as we have under the current administration through warfare. If we kill a million Iranian civilians through Obama’s sanctions, this is not a new turn for the US. It’s the same exact road we’ve been on, the same deaths, the same imperialist mindset that says we have the right to starve children on the other side of the world in order to influence the leaders of countries who haven’t attacked us. It’s privilege for us to see that as a different course for the US – and we can do it because it’s a invisible in our own communities. Quiet starvation of the other doesn’t require our own troops to get deployed and return home in wheelchairs.
I believe this is exactly the mindset that led his pastor to say “god damn America.”
In my head, the more important betrayal is not that Obama denounced the words of his pastor – really, I don’t care about the relationship directly between him and his pastor. I’m not a stakeholder in that, although I do see that his actions have the effect of silencing voices of dissent in the black community as “unpatriotic” which is dangerous – and perhaps an inevitable result of trying to play within the system we have. I care more that his policies are a betrayal of what’s behind the Reverend Wright’s words - teachings against imperialism, against violence, against institutionalized racism and colonialism.
17 March 2008, 3:12 pmpeggy:
Well, here is one person who agrees with me about Wright:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/how-wrong-is-wright_b_91991.html
I do love Arianna Huffington, who posted this on Huff.
17 March 2008, 7:17 pmpeggy:
Stan, since you asked. A few months ago you articulated a strategy of supporting the Democrats so that when they got in power, it could be demonstrated that the whole governmental system is, at the least, badly damaged, and Democrats and Republicans are essentially just the same. Correct me if I’m wrong about this.
Now you are attacking the Democrats before they have even won the election. If the attacks of you and others are successful, McCain will win the election. Then we’re really in for it.
If we take the Titanic as a metaphor for the sinking ship we are all on, then I think we should do all we can to rescue, if not the ship (= United States) then the people who are most likely to be drowned in the sinking of that ship, including those on nearby ships that will be pulled down by the huge ship’s suction.
If you consider that the elections are just moving around the deck chairs, then don’t waste your time railing at the deck chairs and their movers. Do something to help rescue the people and the planet, like what you are already doing on Insurgent American.
I who will vote for Obama am just trying to slow the sinking of that ship, so as to give rescuers more time to build lifeboats. I do think he could make a positive difference, even if it is just a little bit. That little bit of difference could give us a little bit of time, and in the current situation, even a little bit of time is crucial.
17 March 2008, 7:40 pmStan:
That was for the 2006 elections. And I’ve never said Republicans and Democrats are the same. Their popular bases are differently composed… eg, Black folk vote overwhelmingly Democrat, white southern males vote overwhelmingly Republican, etc. What I said then was that the Democratic Party leadership (far different from the rank and file they manipulate) was able to hide from the war as a minority in Congress, and that the way to make them expose themselves was give them a majority.
They are a majority. The war continues two years later. And it’s essentially off the table as a campaign issue… we are back to how we should properly “manage” the war.
Your honor, the prosecution rests.
18 March 2008, 4:36 ampeggy:
This isn’t perfect, but here it is
From Barack Obama’s website:
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.
McCain says on his website: Bolster Troops on the Ground. A greater military commitment now is necessary if we are to achieve long-term success in Iraq. (And so forth)
Hillary Clinton does not have a clear stand on the war in Iraq.
The contrasts could hardly be starker. Yes the Dems when they had control of Congress chickened out on the war. But the upcoming presidential election will be about the war in Iraq more than anything else - whether the war should be “managed better”, whether the U.S. should stay in to win, or whether the U.S. should get out.
The next president will be commander-in-chief and will decide which of these three directions to follow.
Iraq is not off the table.
I’m sorry, Stan, that my mind telescoped years into months. One of the weaknesses of old age, I guess.
18 March 2008, 6:29 ampeggy:
p.s. Hillary Clinton has posted a plan to withdraw the troops from Iraq on her website on March 17 - TWO DAYS AGO, as of this writing. She has finally decided that she must do this. Wonder why. The plan is more detailed than Obama’s, but boiled down, it is not much different. Is this not evidence that Iraq is on the top of the table right now?
18 March 2008, 7:51 amaudrey:
Senator Levin (D) sent out an email today. It begins:
“I want to know why the struggling American taxpayer is getting stuck with the bill for rebuilding Iraq.”
Senator Levin has been voting to fund the war (while speaking out against it) and now he wants to know why we are getting stuck (passive voice) with the bill. I would like to know why Senator Levin stuck me with the bill. (active voice)
From there, the email goes downhill, blaming the Iraqis for not giving us their oil revenues to us to reimburse our expenses during the occupation, and demanding an investigation into how those ungrateful wretches are spending their own money. Michigan needs to “fix its roads” (seriously, that’s in the email), and the Iraqi people are not doing enough to funnel their resources to us so we can get that taken care of.
And Levin is an “anti-war” senator.
I admit to being one of the slow ones to get it, but really, I don’t know how much more unmasking needs to be done here before we all sit back and say “Ohhhhh, so that’s what you look like.”
18 March 2008, 4:14 pmMark:
Does anyone else see a double standard here with Obama and his “troublesome” preacher friend? John McCain goes down to visit the Rev. John Hagees mega church in San Antonio Texas. McCain recieves an official endorsement, and then makes a statement to the news media about how “pleased” he is to have the preacher and his followers support for the campaign.
At the very least McCain should be asked if he shares Hagee’s views that “Christians need to stand with Israel and the Jews today with as much fervor as God does.” What are the implications for future Mid-East peace talks? Does McCain share Hagees views? Will the Hagee endorsment have an effect on policy decisions in a future McCain white house?
Obama is being forced to explain his “relationship” with the Rev. Wright for two main reasons: because he is from the left (Well sort of…. as far as anybody running for president of the US could acyually BE of the left) and because he and Wright are black. To the 30 or 40 million white evangelical voters in the US that means “kinda scary.”
18 March 2008, 8:03 pmHoward:
I’m not sure that war will be the #1 issue in the elections. The economy might actually be too distracting — unless the current admin. risks an october surprise-like attack on Iran or something.
18 March 2008, 11:17 pmStan:
Until proven otherwise, my hypothesis is — and this is my aside from the initial point of the post — the sermon was dug up by Clinton detectives. They are strangely silent as the “revelation” takes its course. The Clintons know the American body politic; they’ve been successfully manipulating it for years now… and they know how to use white negrophobia to gain an advantage. Bill Clinton killed and imprisoned and attacked Black people to get elected by whites, and still got a lot of Black folk to believe he was a partisan of African America. Talk about skills! Senator Clinton moved into a Senate seat for a state she didn’t live in like she was changing condos.
What a spectacle of amorality.
Meanwhile, a social tsunami mounts just over the horizon that will hit the performances and arcades like they are Banda Aceh.
I am reading the galley for a book called The Carbon-Free Home, that has a lot more to say on the subject of how to prepare for this than all the election commentary in the world.
19 March 2008, 6:10 amStan:
FULL
19 March 2008, 6:38 amCharles:
I rest my case.
^^^^^^^^
This is the passage we are giving each other high fives on around
here.
When you mess with O on race, you are about to get a whuppin’
Charles
> I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I
19 March 2008, 1:38 pmcan no
> more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who
helped
> raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman
who
> loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman
who
> once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the
street,
> and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic
> stereotypes that made me cringe.
Charles:
I respect both Peggy and Stan. Your debate reflects the truth which is contradictory ( if that
is not too formulaic). Obama’s campaign may a bit deeper than it seems. We’ll see. It may not be the same old snake oil, despite the obligatory fundraising from the rich, support for Israel, denouncing of Farakhan, distancing from Wright ( though see above he specifically says he cannot disown him anymore than he can disown his own grandmother !), etc.
I think the key thing to focus on is what I mentioned in my first post. The actual campaign itself is causing masses of Whites to vote for a Black person for President. This is profoundly important in America, where racism and Black or Colored/White division is central to politics, and maintaining the system. The campaign itself is a uniting practice.
If O wins the presidency ( still a long way off), it would be comparable to the _Brown v Bd of Ed_ case that was a major event in the Civil Rights Movement Reform. So, O winning would be a _reform_ not the revolution. It would not be the end of capitalism, or the dominance of the state and presidency by the bourgeois ruling class. But it wouldn’t be “snake oil” anymore than the Civil Rights Movement was snake oil just because it was only reform and not revolution. It wouldn’t be anymore snake oil than the New Deal was.
A problem here is underestimating the importance of reforms, or conceiving of reforms as part of revolutionary struggle. Check out _Leftwing Communism_ on the role of reforms for revolutionaries.
Speaking of LouPro’s Marxmail, where ,as you know, Democrats are very much criticized and denounced, interestingly, the discussion is not all anti-Obama.
19 March 2008, 2:16 pmxenia:
i don’t see why anyone who is honest to themselves about iraq and hiroshima would get upset about wright’s comment. you have to be incredibly brave to say things like that in public. hearing wright and people from his church actually made my heart softer, because i realized that some americans are truly and deeply good, good to others and not just their own…i almost cried.
but so many liberals believe that the US is god’s own country…in some ways, i prefer hard-core conservatives. they are at least explicit about their american exceptionalism and imperialism. liberals want to have it both ways: yeah, non-americans are kinda human, just as we are, but america is still one special place. give me a break.
20 March 2008, 8:34 amDeAnander:
Maybe I’m off on another planet, as is so often the case, but in this pressure from the MSM to get Obama to denounce Wright’s statements I see, basically, a jury of whitefolks trying to coerce an uppity Black man to deny and dissociate from an even more uppity and radical Black man. The test of his character, for me, is how well he stands up to such pressure and pushes back, not how nimbly he manages to play both sides.
I wish that O had just quoted the famous saying (which I may not have quite right here, being in haste to catch a Greyhound bus for a long journey): if forced to choose between betraying my country and betraying a friend, I hope that I would have the decency to betray my country.
I wish I thought that O, or any “leader” from the US elite, had the integrity and guts to make an open, frank criticism and call for reform on the essential, (literally) burning issues: resource liquidation, looting the third world by every possible means, finance (usury-based) capitalism, white supremacy, environmental racism, patriarchy… you could put a pound of lipstick on this pig we call Western Civ and it would still be galloping off the same damn cliff. The region of discourse open to a US “leader” or any “leader” of a Western industrial nation is so very narrow that I don’t see how any of them can make an intervention that will make any difference w/in the critical time window (which is now).
I can’t help feeling that e.g. Joel Salatin is doing more to “save us” — despite his appalling views on a number of issues close to my heart — than any presidential hopeful.
20 March 2008, 10:34 ampeggy:
Maybe it’s time to think about actual human beings, rather what we think this man we have never met, who is running for nomination to the presidency, should or should not, in our cruelly exacting and hypocritical imaginations, do.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21063
21 March 2008, 3:03 amStan:
These “exactions” are not speaking to the personhood of one man, which I acknowledge freely, and for whom I wish the best (even when that may not square with him ambition). They are a message in a bottle (on a little site like this) about the continuing and expanding peril against which we (the collective “we”) continually invest our hopes in personalities (not persons) and in cults of personality. One cannot critique a system that uses competing cults of personality (dressed up as elections) to legitimate itself and conceal its true nature without pointing to that dynamic in its actually-existing form.
When the nascent crisis we are watching fully actualizes, there will be a reaction. That much, at least, is inevitable. People change their behavior as they experience increasing anxiety and pain. But the form of that change can be the difference between amelioration or exacerbation of that crisis.
Both nature and history are temporally characterized by periods of gradualism and catastrophic punctuation. Adaptation cycles during periods of gradualism can and do remain fairly predictable and stable; but during catastrophic punctuations, behaviors that were functional are no longer adaptive.
How will this election adapt to what is coming?
How will various social groups adapt (or react) to what is coming?
What are the implications of legitimizing elections in this period?
Disoriented mobs frighten me.
Right now, there is a whole generation of young people who are suddenly energized by the “change” message of Barack Obama. They by and large have not a ten-cent clue what is in store for them in the macro-historical future. They watch America’s Top Model, fer goodness sake. When this guy becomes the prez, and the messainic “change” doesn’t coast in on his wake, how will these people react? And how does that reaction prefigure the reaction they will have when the material economy comes crashing around their heads?
These issues transcend the ambitions of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and all the rest. Elections are a fixed game; and that is — at this moment in history — absolutely inescapable. How are we to demonstrate that without naming names?
These are three human beings who will likely escape the worst consequences of the coming period. Billions of others will not.
It certainly is time to think about human beings; and the place to begin is thinking about their stomachs… not whether a select few are nice people.
One of Obama’s key advisors was the architect of a coup d’etat against the popular government of Haiti. Is it too exacting for me to consider that?
21 March 2008, 10:31 amDeAnander:
Here is Obama in full kiss-up mode:
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
So… white racism is not endemic, and conflicts in the ME have nothing to do with “stalwart ally” Israel and are wholly the result of “perverse and hateful ideologies” among Arabs/Muslims? and I’m supposed to think that this is Change with a cap-C? This is AIPAC as usual and keeping-whitefolks-comfy as usual… sure, he “has to” recite this drivel to get elected, but then he will also have to walk this talk to stay in office. So… plus que c’est la même chose…
21 March 2008, 3:38 pmDeAnander:
I was about to write something about this myself, but BAR of course scooped me, and far more eloquently/carefully than I could have written it too:
I was about to make just this point about US exceptionalism and denial being the real state religion of this allegedly “tolerant” country where multiple private religions are permitted. The one religion that cannot be challenged or questioned in the US is that exceptionalism — and the infinitely renewable innocence of whitefolks which occupies somewhat the same place in its mythic structure as the Virgin Birth. Somehow a great empire was born, but no one lost their virginity, no crimes were ever really committed, and there are no real consequences.
On a similar note white anti-racist Tim Wise sounds off:
What Obama’s done in this distancing from Wright — plus saluting the Israeli flag on primetime — is a calculated genuflection to the State religion of US exceptionalism and white innocence, and that means — has to mean, there’s no other way out — betraying radical critics of America, radical anti-racists, anti-imperialist activists, anti-colonial struggles, etc. But at this point in history, is there any solution or any hope for progress without challenging exactly that mythology of US exceptionalism and white entitlement and innocence? Is it possible, in other words, to move forward at all from where we are, while still hugging those mythologies close and marginalising/demonising any who openly challenge them?
My feeling is no, there isn’t — and that the work of the progressive movements of my youth foundered on just this inability to commit successful heresy. I could not agree more w/the commenter at another blog who said that Obama was our Tony Blair — compared to M Thatcher he looked like the noble knight riding to the rescue, but what did he deliver? privatisation, more wealth for the hyperaccumulator class, slavish backing for Bush’s wars, financial improbity, more of the suicidal growth cult. The UK is several Blair terms less prepared for the hard times ahead than it should have been, and imho no matter who is elected at the end of this annus horribilis, the US will be yet another four years less prepared than it should have been — and a whole lot of bright-eyed believers in Change will be disappointed and heartbroken, as a whole generation of Bill Clinton true believers were before them… but here I am just repeating what Stan already said, so I’ll just quote my misanthropic but delightful friend rootless:
I have been trying to promote the slogan, “This time, skip the infatuation and go straight to the disenchantment,” but somehow it doesn’t seem to catch on. I already know that whoever is the Democratic nominee, my old left friends will urge that they be supported as the only way to hold off the fascist danger. (Just as in 2004…) My prognostication this year is that (a) either a Democrat or a Republican will be elected President, (b) the next Security Council resolution criticizing Israel will be vetoed by the US delegate, (c) most US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq over the next three years but 30-40,000 will remain indefinitely, (d) neither single-payer health insurance nor labor law reform will be introduced. I think a Democrat might be marginally less awful with respect to Federal court appointments, science, and regulatory agency competence; those are worthwhile things, but hardly the stuff of inspiration. But every four years, the Left has to whip itself into this frenzy, by representing the Democrat as a hero and the Republican as evil incarnate, when we all know that both of them are cardboard cutouts.
This doesn’t mean that BO is an exceptionally evil man, it just means that I don’t believe for one minute that all his promises of Change are more than piecrust. Little-c changes, maybe — I’d be happy if he could remove the Bush apparatchiks who are screwing up the US science academy so royally, reduce or reverse the censorship of scientific publications, etc. But the problems facing us so urgently — imperial overstretch, peak oil, climate change and environmental bankruptcy — are directly related to the US state religion of exceptionalism and white entitlement, and I don’t see any way to address those problems without an open and frank discussion of the absurdity of these mythologies and an open and frank accounting of the damage they have done and continue to do — to those who believe in them as well as those who are sacrificed to that belief.
21 March 2008, 4:22 pmRichard:
Here is another good piece about Obama and Jeremiah Wright, at I Hear a New World:
He goes on to compare Wright’s use of “goddamn” to Nina Simone’s in “Mississippie Goddamn”:
21 March 2008, 6:30 pmJames M:
“This time, skip the infatuation and go straight to the disenchantment” … brilliant.
It pains me to see all this precious naive youthful idealism being squandered on a political candidate of all things, when it could be directed to far more productive ends. This is coming, by the way, from someone who 8 years ago believed all that “straight talk” bullshit and was penning pro-McCain editorials for his college newspaper (which I don’t feel so bad about, given the admissions of certain people on this site about their youthful affinities for Ayn Rand ;-).)
I have to be fair here — an Obama presidency would be a major turning-of-a-corner for this nation, in many senses a bright milestone in an otherwise dark history … but I’m afraid it isn’t going to be enough. The sooner the disenchantment starts, the better, imho.
21 March 2008, 9:12 pmpeggy:
“What are the implications of legitimizing elections in this period?”
I guess the answer to this question is a point of disagreement between Stan and me. I agree that we are at an extremely dangerous point in history. I am afraid about what will happen, and want to soften the blow, slow the sinking, however one may put it, because billions are already suffering from the run-up - the increase in global warming, droughts, hurricanes, disease, hunger, while the rich get richer - and those billions of people will suffer more, and so will others who are not already suffering so much, as this process unfolds.
We have seen what happens when a government suddenly becomes unstable - even an “evil” government like that of Saddam Hussein, and many other examples could be cited. Things do not get better. Things get vastly worse. And therefore I am not in favor of delegitimizing elections at this time. Things would just get worse, maybe way far worse.
I got caught up in a wave of youthful enthusiasm during the sixties. We were calling for revolution. Tear it all down! Show the bosses what real life is all about! Let them suffer! They deserve it! The people will triumph! I believed all this. But now that I have seen more of the world, I realize how incredibly stupid that was, and I thank the stars that we didn’t get our revolution.
We of the sixties, despite our stupid ideas about what we could do and do easily, were not stupid people. We were students at Harvard and Berkeley, we got good grades, studied Lenin and Mao and lots of other stuff. What we were was arrogant. We thought we knew it all. It took our own little children to teach us that actually, we didn’t.
If I idolize anyone, it is those children, who now are grown up, working adults. They hate it when I idolize them. They say I am not really seeing them for what they are, and of course they are right. Still, I trust them more than I trust myself, and I think that is a realistic assessment of them as they are in relation to me as I am.
I believe the upcoming generation, the generation of my own children, is better than we were, way better. They (the smart ones, the ones who actually think about the world and what they can do to help, and equally importantly, what they might do out of fervor that will not help at all) are not into personality cults. They are not into war and they are not into revolution. They are into learning from others, making careful, well thought-out decisions, and whatever they do, doing it right.
So back to Obama. Everybody knows he is not Jesus. But many people think he is the best hope for the near future of the United States. He has good ideas, ideas that we agree with. Maybe we may not agree with everything he has to say, but on the whole, he is head and shoulders above the others still in the race. He may or may not win the nomination. He may or may not win the presidency. If and when he becomes president, then is the time to tell him what he should and should not do. Of course he won’t be enough. He has said in public he won’t be enough. No one person can be enough.
I feel that, if and when Obama becomes president, he is likely to be destroyed by the process of trying to run the country, because, unlike some of his predecessors, I believe he will take the job seriously. He has enough youthful enthusiasm left to believe that he can survive and do a good job. That job will not be good for his personal well-being. That’s what I think. So maybe it will be better for him, as a human being, not to win the presidency. But maybe it will be better for the people of the country if he does.
Many individuals become enthusiastic about some idea or person, and then get let down. For many individuals, this happens again and again. How many times I have fallen in love and lost my heart to someone who let me down. But I’m still alive, and not embittered at all about love.
This is certainly different. This is a whole big country, not just one neurotic person falling in love at the drop of a hat. But I don’t think this country is in love with Obama or anyone else. The people of this country, by and large, are very cautious these days. Much of what has been posted here is just a sign of that caution. You who are afraid of excessive enthusiasm are certainly not alone. But we are in a tight spot and just for that reason we have to make a decision which way to go from here.
21 March 2008, 10:45 pmpeggy:
Here is mildly funny, vaguely pertinent article
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/2
22 March 2008, 12:34 ampeggy:
“One of Obama’s key advisors was the architect of a coup d’etat against the popular government of Haiti. Is it too exacting for me to consider that?”
Absolutely not, Stan. What was done in Haiti, what you were made to do in Haiti, was monstrous, and must have put in you a pain and anger that nothing will ever assuage. And other people will feel the same kind of pain and anger over other atrocities they have suffered, or witnessed, or been made to commit. And I guess that kind of pain and anger was what Obama was talking about in his recent speech. How could he say those words and let that man be his advisor? Was Obama rewarding that man’s cruelty by deciding to listen to what he had to say, indeed to put him so close that Obama could listen really well? Or was he responding to him the way he said he would respond to foreign leaders whom the U.S. considers its enemies? Because he really did say that, and many people were very angry with him for that. Maybe he thinks its a good idea to keep his friends close but his enemies closer. Maybe he thinks that dialog with anyone is more productive than intransigent hatred and anger. Or maybe he had more cynical, political reasons. I really do not know what his motivations were. I suppose we could look it up somewhere, or even ask Obama himself somehow.
Sorry for blabbing so much. I’m avoiding work.
22 March 2008, 3:04 amLegume Sam:
What Obama isn’t, however, is Clinton. Clinton’s “health plan” is really bad news. Add “health insurance scofflaws” to the immense number of people already in trouble for the violation of meaningless laws. Yeah, that’s just what we’ll need in the coming era of tent cities.
22 March 2008, 9:26 amShaukat:
In 1992, shortly after the film JFK was released in theatres, Chomsky wrote the following in an article entitled “Vain Hopes, False Dreams:”
At times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not uncommon for millenarian movements to arise to replace lost hopes by idle dreams: dreams of a savior who will lead us from bondage, or of the return of the great ships with their bounty, as in the cargo cults of South Sea islanders. Some may yearn for a lost golden age, or succumb to the blandishments of the new Messiahs who come to the fore at such moments. Those more cognizant of the institutional causes of discontent may be attracted to an image of hope destroyed by dark and powerful forces that stole from us the leader who sought a better future. The temptation to seek solace, or salvation, is particularly strong when the means to become engaged in a constructive way in determining one’s fate have largely dissolved and disappeared.
Chomsky was refering to the Kennedy phenomenon, but his words could just as easily be used to describe the Obama rage. It is clear that many intelligent people on the left and across the political spectrum have been sucked in by the deliberately MSM constructed image of “Hope & Change,” which have no more resemblance to reality than the image of McCain “the maverick.” Thus, even if it were possible to ask Obama about the political contradictions that have emerged between what he says and what he does, his response would be utterly meaningless, as it would simply reflect the filtering process built into US politics. Those truly pose a threat to the establishment, such as Ron Paul or Ralph Nader, never even get close to where Obama is today.
22 March 2008, 2:38 pmDeAnander:
good point Shaukat…
“we’d have been all right if only Gore had won” and so on.
my personal ticket is Kucinich/McKinney. but… the Ice-capades will be held in Hell before that happens in today’s America.
22 March 2008, 5:06 pmkathy miriam:
I keep on repeating myself here but I am not even optimistic enough to dignify the “hope”-engorged Obama followers with the kind of terms that Chomsky used for millenarian movements.
I am familiar with the tendencies that Chomsky describes, having indulged in these kind of visions myself of -not a messianic figure- , but a kind of messianic moment– movement/revolutionary-time — the ‘now moment” of history- Walter Benjamin called it- and there are aspects of this utopianism that yes can point to a certain escapism from the here and now, but also- show visions of an alternative way of being, alternative mode of world and this is essential for/to radicalism.
hower this utopian element, this notion of alternatives, is completely absent in the Obama phenomenon. There is no vision of other possibilities- the rhetoric is vacuous, circular in logic, stuffed with reality-tv/oprah-opiates– There is NO THERE THERE.. this is what is so scary. I do think that something emotionally compelling is going in in relation to the figure of Obama - that surrounds race relations… And Obama’s writers were able to brilliantly tap into this in the latest speech on “race.” AS a friend commented, there was a powerful refrain of commonalty and difference, while centering around this odious islam-hatred, Israel-exaltation, and of course hypocritical and empty and dangerous distancing from the pastor– as others have noted, Wright’s statements are not so far fetched and have a lot of truth to them.
I don’t know how to link to anything- but here is the url for a great article on Dissident Voice by Juan Santos that eloquently captures and deconstructs Obama’s appeal (the tamed savage) in relation to race issues..
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/barack-obama-and-the-%e2%80%9cend%e2%80%9d-of-racism/
at any rate- my point is that I do not see any silver lining in this cloud- I don’t read this phenomenon as misguided hopes and desires, but I see these hopes and desires as the misshapen plastic product of converging forces of depoliticization. The passions here are the passions as shaped by Reality-TV–the latter (reality TV, OPrah talk tv) is a central arena of privatized public life, and points to –as well as helps shape–the commodification of everyday life in this culture more generally. Along with commodification–somehow wedged into it- there is therapeutization– a radical individualism that is at once completely pyschologized and completely commodified. I’ve been working and working on making sense of it all– i think that this O-movement is a rosarch blot pointing to much much bigger and deadlier in political life/ death of the left, of feminism, etc…
23 March 2008, 10:14 amStan:
They are deaths, I suspect, that were as inevitable as that of the Soviet Union. They began as ideas, as deconstructions, as challenges that jumped ahead of history one fatal epoch. The bourgeois epoch did no such thing. It fermented; and its revolutions were not even concieved of until the conditions were over-ripe. My own turn with organizations, “vanguards” if you will, are a constant source of reflection; and what I now see so clearly over and over is that the diagnosis of the disease in no way constitutes a remedy. Our recognition of injustice gives us this terrible urgency, an urgency that sets us up with impatience, and leads us to conjure our remedies out of pure moral outrage. That’s when we make the leap from description of the disease to the home remedy of the ideal-program. It’s also where we leap from being more right than most to being completely and frustratingly and repeatedly wrong. We jump from what-can-be-done to if-only.
When the great social upwaves of the 60s and 70s happened, the left (and perhaps radical feminism — in my mind the most fertile of the ideas arising from this period — was midwifed fropm this very state of social disequilibrium) became involved with those upwaves, amplified themselves through those upwaves, participated in them, and finally, convinced themselves — making the error of confusing correlation with causation — that they created them.
But the Epoch of the Commodity and the Epoch of Therapy, perhaps the same epoch with different facets, had not run its course… the way an epidemic runs its course.
In reality, what was possible and what is possible are overdetermined in ways that make mockeries of the finest programs and the most earnest of vanguards. There are Martin Kings and Ella Bakers aplenty in the world, at all times. Geniuses, saints, orators, prophets, leaders… plenty of them. But no seed germinates in parched, sterile soil. A million different circumstances, within a thousand regional tendencies, within a dozen macro-trends, created exactly the conditions that constituted the period of fecundity in the 60s, where many tings grew, some grew tall, and many withered and died when that period passed. Many seeds were left. Many of those seeds are still laying there, waiting for whatever… flood, rain, a fire?
I think this epoch, whatever we want to call it, whichever aspect of it concerns us most immediately, is closing out, painfully, dangerously, tragically, and inevitably. Seems to me that what lies within our capacity is to create a few garden plots, figuratively and literally, and try a few seeds. That won’t give us any guarantees, won’t stop the inevitable pain, danger, and tragedy.
This is just my absurd faith.
23 March 2008, 4:26 pmDeAnander:
@kmiriam, thanks for Santos article link, very powerful stuff and imho right on target.
it strikes me that if H Clinton were to win this election, the End of Sexism would be similarly declared, and she would serve the same function for gender justice struggles that Obama would serve for racial justice struggles: to discredit them and render them “obsolete” and “so yesterday” (this is, I guess, the way in which the hip, “conscious” centre-left contingent can be turned away from the same justice struggles which the insecure wingnuts loathe less cleverly, on the pure revanchist, resentful instinct that their privileges/certainties are being eroded).
it strikes me that structurally, no one can win this election at this time who will do a damn bit of real good. which still leaves us with “Obama better than McCain” I suppose, but jeez, that’s not saying a whole lot. what it means from my POV is that the antics of our “leader” class, like those of the imperial families of a rotting Roman Empire, are less and less relevant, and the actions we take locally to help each other and ourselves are more and more important. I don’t think anything can prevent some serious “adjustment” of geopolitics and the “global economy” at this point. it is already happening. the issue for each of us now is how well our local bioregion will weather it, and what we can do to help… as Katrina taught us, no help is coming from outside. even if it tried to, those in power would do their best to prevent it from arriving.
23 March 2008, 6:21 pmDeAnander:
… afterthought… so what I meant to say was that we cannot vote for anyone who will stop the war, but we can work with young people to try to alert them to recruiters’ lies and false promises, and we can work with returning disillusioned veterans. we cannot vote for anyone who will institute sane energy policy, but we can start reducing our own fossil fuel dependency and carbon footprint. our leader class will only enact one corporate-ag handout after another in their “farm” policy, but we can defy them and support local growers, join the food underground, plant our own gardens, trade OP seeds. and so on. and we can vote for whomever — Obama, Nader, a write-in candidate — but without any illusion that this will change anything; change, if it comes, will have to come from us, from below.
somehow I cannot see large crowds chanting
23 March 2008, 6:31 pmtwo, four, six, eight!
myceliate and Rot the State!
but that is more or less what I hope for in my wildest dreams… that the insane thanatophilic State/capitalist apparatus is quietly rotted away over time by a thriving mycelial network of susti/justice/noncoercive efforts.
peggy:
Stan - the was an excellent and thoughtful post above. Thank you. Also De, good post right above. Thank you too.
One thing that has often been said of the radical left and the extreme left is that they meet in their hatred of the middle. See for instance this that I just read: http://halturnershow.com/
The radical left is disappointed with Obama and won’t support him for that reason. The radical right will do what they can to kill him straight-out.
23 March 2008, 8:56 pmkathy miriam:
re: Clinton and end of sexism. What’s interesting is how the rabid misogyny that differentiates attacks on her campaign (Robin Morgan is right about this) from attacks on Obama– coincides with the pervasive idea that indeed sexism is over in this country. There was a just a weird poll where the opinion was that 1- gender trumped race in terms of sexism in the elections but that 2- racism was the bigger problem in the country.
On the movement building thread: I don’t know what the answer is –but I do think without hearing more about what you think about this (and I hear similar comments from Stan), that the action “from below” that you speak of sounds “individualistic”- I’m sure that cultivating self-sufficiency is critical for survival in the broadest sense, and is healthy and grows resources in the case that explicitly political, collective concerted mobilization occurs. I don’t think that this kind of work “from below” will bring about this mobilization. Now what the hell will? Stan is so right that the conditions do not seem to exist for the MLKs and ella bakers who indeed still do walk around–and I’m sure I have known and still know them–to take root and flower as leaders… I have known throughout my life several individuals who I was sure at one point would ‘grow up to become” leaders of some significance in this world but almost all of them now are absorbed in the cultivation of careers and family or other individual or family or friendship-network forms of joint work and domestic life- I’m not blaming them because I agree with Stan about the importance of conditions. In a parallel world, perhaps like the sixties and seventies, these individuals would have flowered into important leadership positions. what would change these conditions–and create the context in which political vision and visionaries can grow? The context in which the resources you and Stan and others are building in your local, micro-regions would be available as a resource for substantive change in the social order (not just in the quality of lives of a few individuals or communities- as valuable as that is in its own right)?
23 March 2008, 9:19 pmI do know that a diagnosis (which, no, is not the same as remedy) is absolutely critical- and this includes criticism of decay of the Left and feminism which I do not think is due only or primarily to the problems with orthodoxies — (this is why i’m obsessed with diagnosing the O-phenomenon)
more on this??
Josiah:
I’m learning a lot from this thread. Thanks to Deanander, Stan, Kathy, Charles, James, Sam, Peggy, Richard, and everyone else for all the rich food for thought!
It’s got me rethinking organizing strategies, for damn sure. I’ll have to put some of it into practice, as soon as I pay off my tens of thousands of dollars in college debts working this crazy job :)…
23 March 2008, 9:31 pmDeAnander:
that the action “from below” that you speak of sounds “individualistic”
well… not really, as it requires entire networked communities cooperating for any person to take this “individualistic” action. i.e. if you want to eat locally, that involves networking with others, supporting local farmers, possibly defying state and federal laws — it is a radicalising/politicising and socially bonding experience — we have to step out of our consumer individualism to go this route, and many people are getting radicalised in this way. that is why I keep thinking “mycelial” as I think about new models of social organising — not militaristic/hierarchical with selected “leaders” … the “vanguard leading the charge” is a cavalry or infantry metaphor and has not much parallel in biotic systems, where even the “advance forces” of a plant succession series are not singular, but multiple and pervasive.
I recollect the Flo Kennedy character in Born in Flames saying something like, “you’re the Man, and you’re locked in your room with your gun… now what would you rather see come through that door at you? one angry lion, or a thousand angry mice?” so I tend not to think so much about “leaders” (large charismatic lions) who set up flags to follow and yell “Charge!” to the troops — or even martyrs or Shining Examples — but about catalysts, spores, a distributed leaven of radical praxis throughout the culture (note the ambiguity here of the word “culture”!) that produces a major state change after a certain threshold is reached. our “leaders” I think should be spore carriers, shedding memes as they travel, leaving little burrs of uncomfortable ideas stuck to the clothing of as many people as possible.
so hmmmm…. I don’t think that notoriety, stardom, personality cults are of much use to us any more, because the capitalists have figured out how to commodify sainthood and mass-produce celebrity. they can create and render obsolete and reprocess idols and ikons faster and more successfully than we can. they can turn el Che into a brand image, they can put the US flag on a shopping bag and call it “patriotism.” I think the day of struggling over iconic banners and high-profile leaders is gone and we need to think about a strategy far more humble, elusive and diffuse: sporulation, seeding, succession planting, mentoring, many-to-many, peer-to-peer networking.
I think the Obama Media Moment suggests why “leaders” are no longer a very useful idea: they can now be media-produced like the latest boy- or girl-band, and regrettably this works. charismatic personalities are now an industrial product.
23 March 2008, 10:20 pmStan:
Much as I hate to hold them up as a success story, the bourgeois revolutions in the US and France were far more stable than either the Russian or Chinese revolutions (one collapsing under the managerial effort to build socialism, the other folding itself into the bourgeois epoch like Pinochet’s Chile writ large). The reason was that there were strong social networks operating at every scale in all dimensions prior to the politically decisive breaks (in the bourgeois revs).
The assumption concealed within the very notion of “building” movements is already peeking out through the metaphor. It’s the blueprint. The program.
I’ve been studying theology quite a bit lately; and the first thing one gets — unless one listens to the biblical literalists — is that the canon (let’s just assume as a hypothetical standpoint that it contains something of value) is written in third and fourth translations, across continents, cultures, and millenia. I can find use for the Parable of the Seed (as I did above) if I translate it into an existing context. But if I take it literally, or attempt to apply its details and categories to the Now, the theology that results is an anachronism. It even leads to retrojection of new categories into a past era when they didn;t exist. “Healing,” for example, was not a medical term in the 1st Century. Medicine, as we think of it, was not even thought of. It was a sociological term; but we can’t know that if we subscribe to what Tillich calls the “dictation theory” of the Bible.
As the Left, and I further distinguish that for myself and others as rad-fem left, we see the same thing. I myself am very fond of the terms “fetishize” and “reify.” I think the notion of left-right-center is a reification, eg, the thingification of a metaphor that leads us to see it as real (and Lassiter’s work on Suburbia has shown pretty convincingly that this continuum is as dead as a dodo). Yet the term “naturalize” is often better and more accessible than “fetishize,” and the concept behind it is more revelatory from both a feminist and eco-centric standpoint, as Mies and Shiva have shown.
Just as technology and social evolution have led to an impasse in the strategic doctrines of war (Iraq is demonstrating the approaching obsolescence of imperial war doctrines), I suspect that our epoch is presenting us — in a different but related arena — with the obsolescence of our own unexamined assumptions about how to practice a politics of resistance. We carry the burden of dead strategic theories, which include ideas that are positively Clausewitzian… Mass, Unity of Command, Security, Objective, et al.
When we did the Gulf March, our initial idea was to call it “Light the Fuse,” and our original hopes were equally grandiose. In its execution, however, we became caught up in the realities of moving hundreds of people through a disaster area; and even as the grandiose hopes (hope is half-assed faith) evaporated as the sun rose on Bayou Le Batre, another learning process set in unexpectedly. We started to get glimpses of the microprocesses that De alludes to above.
I was discussing this with my friend Reverend Greg Moore, who loans me his theological books:
Another notion that I failed to fold into that exchange with Greg was Malcolm Gladwell’s idea of a tipping point… something MG describes without claiming to fully understand. It’s an epidemiological analog; and what Gladwell watches is the grwoth toward tipping point in fades, etc, but we should also attend to the subsequent dissolution of these trends.
De and I have been throwing these ideas around for a minute now; and it would be very fruitful methinks if we had ten or 20 other people taking some time out to play — in the best sense of the word, as a learning activity — with these ideas, and with their implications.
We should not litmus-test the discoveries and insights away of those who do not share our particular worldview. Gladwell is an example… he is obviously not the least bit interested in revolutionary transformation (and is himself a kind of “maven”). But these are insights that have emerged relatively recently, and which we need to incorporate into our own analyses.
Here is wiki on tipping point (think Obama-mania here):
Sorry for the over-long post.
Oh yeah… here is a link to the Donella Meadows archive.
24 March 2008, 7:16 ampeggy:
This may have already been said, but the point may be made that many individual human beings are not fully bound to one particular group, but are partly bound to many. So, for instance, I may be relatively close to 150 people, but those people do not all belong to any one group, and many do not even know each other. Moreover, there may be tensions and even quarrels among two or more of the groups to which I belong. Then I may choose to stay out of the quarrel, and take a stand - based not on a sense of loyalty to one group over the other, but to other principles.
There are disadvantages to such a way of being, the greatest of these, perhaps, being the danger that one may find oneself totally alone when loyalty to a given group is the primary source of protection (as in combat warfare). But there are advantages, too, perhaps the greatest of these being. Some communities have developed this mode of being as central to their survival. It seems to happen a lot in politics, where partial and tactical alliances are common. I am not sure whether such political tacticality is destructive or constructive or both.
When small groups are intentionally formed for the purpose of achieving some particular very specific goal that all the members want to achieve, they can work quite well.
Guess I should finish this, but if I tried I would just go on and on.
24 March 2008, 11:17 pmpeggy:
left out part of a sentence
the greatest of these being the fact that your world is not circumscribed.
24 March 2008, 11:19 pmStan:
Here’s a link to an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, the guy who wrote Tipping Point.
25 March 2008, 5:31 amDeAnander:
I really like that interview, as it jibes neatly with my recent thinking on mycelial, compost-like, or fermentation-like social transformation; the most important processes may be happening at the micro level, outside our narratives of Big Names and high visibility charismatic actors.
Our intuitive/working view of biology has been so wrongheaded for multiple generations — focussing (a) on determinate chemical processes controllable by engineering, and (b) on the large, visible, and charismatic — refusing to understand that it is we large mammals who are an accidental byproduct of the spontaneous self-organising activity of soil organisms, plants, and invertebrates. The most important conditioning factors in biotic systems are the ones we don’t see, the networks beneath the ground, the life inside the “inert” (ha!) soil. The most important processes and activities are not orchestrated, managed and controlled, but self-organising.
Even corporate capitalists have come to understand this, in their vicious and narrowly obsessive way, with the “invention” of viral marketing to emulate artificially the influence-networking described in the interview.
25 March 2008, 11:57 amDeAnander:
The other engaging suggestion from the interview is one I’ve been wanting to write about for some time, but haven’t had the thinking time to put the ideas together; and that is that idea that human behaviour is far more guidable with conducive environments than it is controllable with authority and force. You could take a person off the street and say, “You! torture this Arab man!” and the odds are that they would stand there looking bewildered, or refuse, or fumble, or throw up — but if you put them in a context like (a) the armed forces or paramilitary police force with its discipline of obedience, (b) a prison environment where the dehumanisation of the prisoners is structural, the conducive environment is likely, except in the most stubbornly principled individuals, to create the desired behaviour. An Enron environment fosters malfeasance even in people who might be honest in a different environment.
This is a very familiar concept if you are into microbial cultivation like wine or cheese making. You cannot command each invidual microbe or spore to do your bidding, but you can create a conducive environment for the ones you want to thrive. You can encourage them to out-thrive their competitors that you don’t want in your cheese or wine.
The underlying optimism is that — taking the NY subway graffiti experiment as a guide — people will behave more humanely in certain environments conducive to humane behaviour. There will be outliers, psychopaths, hard cases — but those under the bell curve will be nicer people if they are in an environment conducive to being nice.
Now we have to consider what environment — mental and physical — we are creating over the last 2 generations with corporate consumer culture. My feeling is that the corporate/capitalist industrial environment — whether the ad-saturated urban architectural clutter or the boy-in-bubble sterility of the carburbs — is not conducive to the virtues that we (as lefties) wish to encourage: virtues like neighbourliness, caring, sharing, responsibility, reflection, analysis, respect. We are, in fact, doing social engineering, mind control, crowd management every day — under the guise of “individual liberty” — by forcing people to live in environments where all visual referents are commercial, all spaces are privatised, all visible surfaces are artificial, cars and machinery dominate over life forms, structures are monumental and way beyond human scale, surfaces are textureless and ungraspable, seats and benches deliberately made uncomfortable and unsleepable, and so on and so forth.
These are undigested reflections, but I think they give rise to both despair and hope: despair because our engineered corporate environment is so totalising — if it really is influencing people to be more selfish, uncaring, violent, etc. then how the hell are we to address that when the built infrastructure of selfishness and atomisation is so enormous and all-encompassing? but hope, because it suggests that “human nature” is more malleable than we think, and it may be possible without excessive violence to wreak a social transformation by creating an environment more conducive to cooperation and sharing/responsible behaviour.
Meanwhile I think it falls to all of us as our political responsibility to be busy little microbes and influence as many people as we can in as many ways as we can, trying to be the “restaurant reviewer” who subtly contributes to the choices of a widening — hopefully contagious — circle of opinion.
25 March 2008, 12:10 pmpeggy:
In the case of the present-day U.S. military, people are not legally forced to join (yet) and therefore members of the military are to a great extent self-selected. Similarly, in many other situations, people select for themselves many aspects of their environment, starting with how they are going to live. I know that many people do not have these kinds of choices, and I know that the idea of an individual being responsible for his/her situation is wrong-headed, but so is the idea that individuals don’t have any say whatsoever in how they live.
Thus, to get back to the military, there are many people who would not let themselves get anywhere near a situation like the one you posit above, where people are indoctrinated, trained, and ordered to torture other people.
In general, human beings are as hard to herd as cats. They may go along with something for a while, especially if that something continues to benefit them personally (like white Protestant German-born Christians in Nazi Germany, or Sinhalese in Sri Lanka).Operant conditioning works as long as it is consistent. But wherever there is power there will be resistance, and ultimately the resistance will crack the power to breaking.
Those who are or have been parents know that no matter how carefully you arrange the environment of your child to enable that child to become what you want, that child will eventually go his or her own way, regardless of your desires. The way the child chooses may or may not be more or less accordant with what you would have wanted. But you, the parent, are the one who will have to adapt.
Normally, communities form themselves. You as an individual within a community may and should try to influence the development of that community in a direction you believe is good. But you are not a microbe among plants. You are a plant among plants, or a microbe among microbes, whatever. Some of those others may have aims in opposition to yours. Life is not all symbiosis.
So probably the best thing you can do is set a quiet example. Be an experiment that others around can simply watch. If recycling, or whatever, benefits you as an individual on a day-to-day basis, and you don’t stand on a soapbox to preach the benefits of recycling, but simply do it and benefit from this practice, then others may follow suit. If you attempt something that turns out to be a disaster, others will learn from your mistake, and this will be a good thing, too.
25 March 2008, 10:03 pmrequired:
This discussion is one of the most exciting/promising I’ve read in a while.
25 March 2008, 11:19 pmStan:
Stanford Prison Experiment
Television
Consumerism & loss of control
26 March 2008, 5:58 amCharles:
NYT article
Michelle Obama Thrives in Campaign Trenches
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Michelle Obama at a rally last week at the University of California, Los Angeles, with Stevie Wonder in the background.
By SUSAN SAULNY
26 March 2008, 3:29 pmPublished: February 14, 2008
CHICAGO — There is no confusing Michelle Obama for her husband on the campaign trail.
James M:
To Stan’s list I’d like to add The Milgram Experiment.
(Youtube link)
In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment’s final 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so … No participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks before the 300-volt level.
I like where this train of thought is heading, but I think we shouldn’t downplay the power of (perceived) authority overmuch here.
26 March 2008, 3:31 pmCharles:
Must comment on Ferraro’s comments that being Black is an advantage in an election in the US (!). This is literally the current KuKluxKlan line. The KKK claims that Black people in America are privileged and White people are the disadvantaged relative to Black people. This is exactly what Ferraro is claiming: that O is advantaged in the campaign _because_ he is Black.
^^^
26 March 2008, 3:36 pmJust a note on Ferraro. In ‘84, Black people voted 90% or more for Ferraro and Mondale over Reagan and Bush. Did Ferraro forget that ? If White people or just White women had voted 90% for Ferraro and Mondale like Black people did, they would have won. In ‘84, Black men voted in a higher percentage for Ferraro for vp than white women voted for Ferraro for vp.
Ferraro’s false statement about Obama having an advantage by being Black in order to hurt his campaign is made treacherous by this history.
Charles:
Obama is demonstrating that many, many more Whites will at least participate in debates on race in response to more neutral rhetoric. In current the flashpoint around Wright and Ferraro, many more Whites than usual (in the media at least) are arguing against racism than from a position of defending Obama. These are people who don’t usually argue so vigorously against racism. They support Obama in the first place because he is using neutral language on racism. There is a certain psychological complexity to this, several steps. I’m not so sure many of the Whites fighting racism in this context would do so if Obama hadn’t taken a “soft” approach in the first place. First they get on “his side” in the campaign. Then they are motivated to oppose racism vigorously because they are defending Obama. I heard mainstream White journalists saying things I’d never heard them say before in relation to Ferraro and Wright.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/hayden_et_al
Progressives for Obama
Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher Jr., Danny Gl