Back In My Day, All the Kids Were Revolutionaries

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 16:37


In an article where I agree with nearly everything he writes, Les Leopold becomes the latest progressive to ask "what's wrong with all the non-revolutionary kids these days?" From the article:

One major difference between the Great Depression and the Great Recession is the death of a visionary progressive movement. Yes, the Republicans and the media like to call liberal Democrats "Left," but that just means they are slightly more moderate than Attila the Hun.

Many in the 1930s believed that capitalism needed a major overhaul.

It is pretty remarkable how many progressives lament that the current incarnation of progressivism is just do damned un-progressive and ineffectual compared to the grand progressive movements of the past. After all:

  • Longing for the good ol' days of progressivism is kind of, well, conservative.

  • Past incarnations of progressivism did not achieve any victories in terms of civil or economic rights beyond what we did today. Social spending as a percentage of GDP has not receded. While real income has not increased much at all for the bottom 90% of the country, it hasn't receded, either. In terms of civil rights, acceptance, and improved socioeconomic status for women, ethnic minorities, and the LGBT populations, there have been demonstrable gains.
While it is fair to say that over the last thirty years progressives have not kicked the can down the road relatively as far as our predecessors, the can has still been kicked further down the road in absolute terms. All of which makes the longing for progressive movements of the past, ala the 1930's or 1960s, a little strange coming from other progressives. In absolute terms, it isn't like those movement did any better than our own.

The exact causes for the relative inelasticity in social policy are difficult to explain. I am sure, as a few comemnters here suggest, it has something to do with bloggers like me and email organizations like MoveOn not demanding single-payer 24/7. Still, while I am sure that my incompetence has something to do with it, at best I am probably a minor factor. For one thing, it is hard to imagine that the stagnation of public spending as a percentage of GDP throughout all of the original (that is, pre-1975) OECD countries since as far back 1982 is somehow caused by a lack of properly articulated policy visions by current progressive organizations. Frankly, I also doubt that it is connected to a lack of strategy or organization, either. Something deeper is at play in the political stagnation of the world's wealthy democracies. While I don't know what it is, or exactly how to change it, I doubt that being cranky about how the kids these days aren't revolutionary like they were back in the '30s or '60s is going to change it much.
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Back In My Day, All the Kids Were Revolutionaries | 88 comments
In 67-68 all the kids weren't revolutionaries -- just the coolest ones (4.00 / 13)
I got recruited into the movement cause that's where all the cutest young ladies I wanted to talk to were.  There was an actual culture of struggle we felt ourselves part of at an early age.  We were afraid the Freedom Movement would end before we got big enough to go down South and join SNCC.  And actually, it did.  We knew about the wars of liberation in South Africa and Mozambique and Angola when we were in high school.,,, but I digress.

The point I am trying to make is that the biggest difference between this time and the time when I came of age in the late sixties is that it was cool to want to change the world.  Now it's cool to keep your head down, or party or whatever it is young people do, depending on class and station and other variables.

The establishment has gotten a lot slicker, a lot more adept at getting inside our heads than it was in the thirties or the sixties.  Marketing and advertising are far more effective at creating false needs and offering solutions in "lifestyles" and products that they ever dreamed of being back then.  

The solution is that we have to get better too.  No use being cranky about how these young-uns ain't motivated like we wuz, and all that.  If anything, it's a lot harder for some of them.  I'm black, obviously.  In '68 the black incarceration rate was a miniscule fraction of today's, we and other nonwhites were NOT the majority in America's prisons and jails.  Now the black incarceration rate of Wisconsin, for instance is over 4% of every man, woman, child and old person, with one in four black males  between 18 and 28 in jail or on probation.  We didn't have anything like that to wrestle with in 1968.  So some of the comparisons ought to take into account the real differences.  

The rulers have gotten better at what they do.  We need to get better at building communities that support long term struggle --- and by struggle I do not mean blogging for whatever you think can pass Congress this session or next.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

Incarceration rates (4.00 / 4)
I'm actually a bit shocked this hasn't been a raised as a bigger issue over the years.  The statistics are amazingly appalling, yet there doesn't seem to be a major movement to reverse this.  One would think there would be continual protests and marches over this, but there is not.
[ Parent ]
if incarceration rates are a measure of anything things have never been worse (4.00 / 7)
this goes especially for the black incarceration rate.  we are an eighth of the US population and about 45% of the prison population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Our black misleadership class will not touch it as a political issue, they pretend it's something natural like the rain.  They'll talk a little about reintegrating ex-offenders and such, but nothing about the system that managed to create the world-beating numbers of them.  The  fact is that the US is locking up five times as many people per 1000 crimes as in 1980.  Most of that increase has been black inmates.  That's not progress, so Chris's contention that things are getting better is arguable, at least from my side of the tracks.

The nation's policy of black mass incarceration itself should be a political issue.  The only politician I ever heard call it that was the new senator from VA, Webb.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

[ Parent ]
It comes down to (4.00 / 1)
"personal responsibility."

One of the great accomplishments of the left in the 60s and 70s was to make understandable and accessible the notion that many problems that manifest on an individual level are actually socially caused - the myriad social movements, through their outreach and "awareness-raising," were essentially making very specific forms of that more general argument.

The growing problem with racial disparities in prison population has been a harder nut to crack - because in at least the vast majority of cases, the people there actually committed a crime. For many people when confronted with that statistic, that's the explanation they fall back on to shrug it off as just a shame. It doesn't help that the causes of (and solutions to) high minority incarceration are much more nebulous and not as easily linked (as, say, the issue of unequal pay for equal work, or the mercury from the plant upstream giving kids cancer downstream).

Join the fight to give students a real voice on campus: Forstudentpower.org.

[ Parent ]
I disagree that racial disparities in prison is a harder nut to crack (0.00 / 0)
Laws were passed that made prison sentences MANDATORY for even the smallest of drug crimes. I don't have facts and statistics to argue this, but drug laws are a major factor. This is not nebulous. Neither are high rates of poverty, bad schools and toxic waste dumps in minority neighborhoods nebulous, and these are easily linked with crime.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
[ Parent ]
Agreed (0.00 / 0)
The problem with crime policy is that Democrats came to believe that being "tough on crime" was central to their ability to win elections.  I generally think this sort of politics of inoculation was overrated, but whatever its merits, I think the power of the crime issue for conservatives had considerably weakened.  Consider the death penalty - conventional wisdom said that was a bad issue for Democrats, yet legislators in NJ and NM have repealed it with no political repercussions, at a time when both parties agree on this issue at the national level.  Democratic office holders and strategists need to realize that it is not 1994 anymore.


Support a Pennsylvania Progressive for Governor - Joe Hoeffel
[ Parent ]
Oh yes they are harder to crack. (0.00 / 0)
The October issue of The Progressive describes the racial problem in prison.  Among other offenses, prisoners are segregated along racial lines, making tensions within the walls between racial groups more pronounced.


[ Parent ]
My "not harder to crack" was in reaction to this comment (0.00 / 0)
The growing problem with racial disparities in prison population has been a harder nut to crack - because in at least the vast majority of cases, the people there actually committed a crime. For many people when confronted with that statistic, that's the explanation they fall back on to shrug it off as just a shame. It doesn't help that the causes of (and solutions to) high minority incarceration are much more nebulous and not as easily linked (as, say, the issue of unequal pay for equal work, or the mercury from the plant upstream giving kids cancer downstream).

I don't agree that the reasons for high rates of incarceration for Blacks are "nebulous," or "not as easily linked" to societal causes (I'm finishing the thought for the commenter). As I'm sure you know there are many, many societal causes for the predominance of minorities in prisons.

These real world situations may be hard to solve, but they are not nebulous.

In no way did I mean to minimize racial problems either in prison or out of prison.  

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

[ Parent ]
there are easier ways to make the political argument against mass imprisonment (4.00 / 5)
than pointing to closed factories and stuff, though those are serious arguments too.  And it has to be a political argument, an argument that a public policy of mass incarceration really has existed for a generation and must be acknowledged and altered.  How 'bout this....

In my native Illinois in 1970, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were a little over 7,000 people in the state prison system.  By the year 2000 there were 47,000.  Similar stats for CA, PA, MI, and other large states.  That is a sevenfold increase, and nearly all of it black and Latino.  So what happened here?  Was there not a sevenfold, but about a twenty-fold increase, a true epidemic of criminal insanity among minority populations in that generation, or did we just manage to craft ostensibly race-blind strategies that targeted communities of color for a mass imprisonment binge?  You decide.  There seems to be no third possibility here, as crime rates were essentially level throughout that generation, and rates of minority incarceration continued to climb steeply and uniformly even in states and years where crime rates dropped.

There are some scholars who have suggested that the mass imprisonment binge directed at minorities, chiefly blacks, was actually payback for the Freedom Movement (which the establishment prefers to call the civil rights movement), the much predicted "white backlash" they used to tell us was definitely coming, back in the day.

Again, for black youth in the 60s and 70s (I was born in 1950) this phenomenon of mass imprisonment was something we never had to contend with.  So I do not simply wag my disapproving old finger at today's black youth.  They are truly up against it in a way we were not in the 60s and 70s.  

Our so-called leaders have mostly just walked away from us on this one, preferring their careers to any kind of truth-telling advocacy on this issue.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

[ Parent ]
. (4.00 / 2)
Two questions about how you're measuring this.

The first is why you use public spending as a measure of progressivism. Do you believe that if the government were, tomorrow, to pull the names of four industries out of a hat, that would be a progressive action (all things equal)? In other words, do you believe that it is inherently, rather than instrumentally, good for the government to spend money?

Second, do you really believe that it is as much an achievement to maintain a status quo as it is to change it? I actually agree with the "there is something deeper at play" conclusion, but it's obviously facetious to say that the current progressive movement has had as much of an impact on the direction of our country as those of the 30's did.

Economics (4.00 / 5)
Liberal economics got a big hit in the 70's.  Not a fair hit, mind you, but one most believed.

Then Reaganomics seemed to work for a while.  Wives entering the workplace covered up the stagnation of wages and free trade made things cheaper at what appeared to be little cost.  Add in superior consumer electronics and the housing bubble, and one can see why the illusion was so strong.

True liberal economics basically disappeared for a long time.  I know a lot of people here fought to make that not true, but there was little wind in their sails, regardless of how big the sails might have been.

The bulk of liberalism has been focused on social and environmental issues.  What economic liberalism there was focused on lessoning the damage, not making progress.

But pressure has been mounting.  Last year, everything went poof.  This is the beginning of new economic liberalism in this country.

Analytical FAIL (4.00 / 3)
straw-man

Obviously, nobody demanded that Bowers go single payer 24/7. I agree with Howard Dean, who, interviewed by Susie Madrak:


So then I asked him what he thought the strategy was behind the administration starting with the public option instead of single payer. "I think it was a terrible mistake," he said. He said he thought they were afraid of it being labeled as "socialism." I agreed with him (that it was a terrible mistake).

So, it's too bad that, back when it might have mattered, the "progressives" with the big megaphones didn't advocate for the only health care legislation on offer that can actually be shown, with evidence, to save lives and money. It's also too bad that "progressives" -- with very rare exceptions --- have faithfully maintained, to this very day, the single payer news blackout, along with our famously free press and the Democratic leadership.

As RFK said:


"Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'"

Then again, there's strategery to consider!


I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.  
Interesting (4.00 / 6)
It interesting how you enjoy attacking strategy with... strategic advice about what we should have done.

It is also interesting how the perceived failure of your policy goals never has anything to do with you. It isn't that you failed to organize enough support for single-payer, but that people like me failed to organize it.

You have a blog that gets substantial traffic. What are you doing with it in terms of measurable activism? Virtually nothing, from what I can see.

Democrats.com, which has less traffic than your blog, is actually involved in organizing. They actually put together more activism than Open Left, despite their small numbers. They are putting in an effort. I don't even know what it is you are doing, besides sniping at progressives who are actually usually the tools at their disposal to join in the fight.

I don't see you having any more success than any of the people or organizations you complain about. You don't even seem to be trying to organize anyone. Basically, you just seem to like sniping at the potential allies who are at least trying to organize. I hope that is working out for you.

[ Parent ]
Duh, Chris (4.00 / 2)
Only people who have achieved anything get to be held accountable.  Losers like Lambert and I who don't actually do anything can't be criticized!  Duh.
[ Parent ]
Following this line of thinking (3.43 / 7)
The MSM's handling of the Iraq War was vastly superior to that of Atrios, Digby, et al., since the former was much more impactful.

Chris, we criticize because we recognize the special ability the big blogs have to galvanize activism, and we question the decision to shun single-payer stories, as we questioned the process by which the "creative class" coronated Obama as our "deeply progressive" savior.

Because of the BMOC culture that your response to Lambert exemplifies, no such criticism was ever taken in earnest on either topic (though Open Left, AFAIK, was less uniformly glazy-eyed and/or muzzled during the primaries than most of its peers).

We're adjudged wrong not because you have a demonstrably more-sensible approach, but because we don't have comparable popularity and leverage.

Instead you offer straw-man descriptions of what our objections are, and by no means for the first time here.

For goodness sakes, Obama, Daschle, Baucus, et al. outright lied to the American public -- promising an open and transparent process that considered all health-care options. Doctors and nurses needed to get arrested to get the words "single payer" uttered in Baucus's hearings. Weren't these relevant stories in the pursuit of meaningful reform? Speaking of "potential allies," what was the upside in helping marginalize people who advocated a particularly vigorous public approach?

And the big blogs, having gone all-in on public option, did nothing about this. It apparently bothered them not one whit that their president disparaged single-payer advocates as "liberal bleeding hearts" and sold them out in a secret deal with Big Pharma.

Though he's not as critical of the process as the contemptible Correntians, IMHO Glenn Greenwald gets it right here:

The industry interests which own and control our government always get their way.  When is the last time they didn't?  The "public option" was something that was designed to excite and placate progressives (who gave up from the start on a single-payer approach) -- and the vast, vast majority of progressives (all but the most loyal Obama supporters) who are invested in this issue have been emphatic about how central a public option is to their support for health care reform.  But it seems clear that the White House and key Democrats were always planning on negotiating it away in exchange for industry support.

There has been much focus on holding Obama's and others' feet to the fire to deliver that "public option," but amazingly little on whether (if there is one at all) it will be anything like "robust" or "strong." To raise such questions is to blaspheme against the in-crowd's shibboleths.

So, if it makes you proud, keep building straw-man descriptions of our objections, since A-listers are beyond meaningful reproach, and the likes of us are easily mocked and ignored, just as the DFH's who got it right on the Iraq War were. Rank has its privileges.

[ Parent ]
logical fail (0.00 / 0)
Following this line of thinking...
The MSM's handling of the Iraq War was vastly superior to that of Atrios, Digby, et al., since the former was much more impactful.

You are comparing apples and oranges. The MSM are supposedly doing journalism, not activism. The argument here is one over activist strategies. I think it's clear that everyone here would prefer single payer. No one is advocating anything remotely comparable to "we should invade Iraq."

I think that Bower's point is basically "I'm busting my butt to make the situation less shitty using the best strategy I can think of. If you think your strategy is better, than show me some results. Don't just be an asshole and shit on my efforts."

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
Double-fail (0.00 / 0)
1. Chris Bowers:  "You might notice that this is journalism"

2. Chris is a high-visibility blogger, helping execute a plan that has unanimous support from other high-visibility bloggers. In so doing, he and his cohort have effectively eliminated single-payer from the discussion at A-list blogs, and in communiques from MoveOn, etc. I admit it, I can't get results like that! So, thanks for passing the well-earned STFU! Mighty progressive of you!

[ Parent ]
You seem frustrated. (4.00 / 1)
Perhaps your strategy of trying to press the restart button and going for single payer is the best strategy. If your efforts to achieve this goal by insulting Chris Bowers are yielding frustrating results, perhaps you should try to think of some new tactics. [I am not trying to be sarcastic.]

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
Which comments of mine at Open Left would you classify as insults? (0.00 / 0)
I do speak truth to bad policy, and I don't shy away from using snark, especially in the face of absurdity and bullying.

[ Parent ]
insults (0.00 / 0)
"Absurd" and "bully" are generally considered insults. Snark is generally insulting.

That was easy. I didn't even have to look up any of your other comments.

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
How about "dick," which seems to be your preferred and gracious term of choice? (0.00 / 0)
You've consistently stepped over the substance of my comments to take potshots in favor of the local status quo, most of your defenses of which have been laughably wrong, such as your "not journalism" trope.

I'm not here to insult Chris or anybody else, but to challenge the stultifying A-list status quo that is squandering a vital opportunity to reshape our politics. You find it necessary to recast that as something worrisomely uncivil. Oh, well.

[ Parent ]
Do what I say, (0.00 / 0)
not what I do. Don't you know that advice is easier to give than to follow. ;-)

worrisomely uncivil

There are much bigger issues to worry about than incivility. I was just expressing my opinion. I think the "A-list" bloggers are A-list partially because they got there first, but also partially because they kick ass. I appreciate what they do and I'm glad they're on my side. They're not perfect, but they are part of the solution IMO. You seem to think they're part of the problem. You're entitled to your opinion. So am I.

I happen to mostly agree with you on pushing for single payer, except the idea that the toothpaste can be put back into the tube now. A public option is a disappointing consolation prize, but it's a consolation prize that I really need. I am self-employed and my premiums have doubled in the last three years. If we don't get a strong public option, health insurance will soon be unaffordable for me. I don't want to dick around with unrealistic tactics at this point. But do whatever you can to push the issue. It can't hurt. But I'm glad "A-list"ers are doing whip counts, getting calls and petitions and running ads right now to keep the strongest public option we can get into law as soon as possible. A pile of shit is way better than a pile of poisonous rattlesnakes.

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
Ooh, a real conversation! (0.00 / 0)
Here's my agenda:

1. Single-payer advocacy moves the Overton Window to the left, which creates leverage for a relatively "robust" compromise, if there be one. Or, potentially, something not-so-compromised. By neutering single-payer from the get-go, those benefits have been blunted since health-care "reform" reached the front burner. The benefits of showing what real reform looks like, and its proven successes, could be impactful even now, in the face of hysterical Commie scares and nonsense about "death panels"
2. Obama and Congress should be pressured not to lie about transparency, which they blatantly did. Letting that happen without criticism is not in our interests.
3. The A-list (along with the MoveOns) has, as it did with the coronation of Obama, sealed the deal for a questionable agenda. Letting that happen without criticism is not in our interests. Their definition of what's an acceptable "pile of shit" carries a lot of weight and is, it seems, impossible to debate in polite company. That, methinks, is a recurrently proven problem that ought to be surfaced.

[ Parent ]
We don't have the benefit of your position. (4.00 / 1)
You, on the other hand, do - and you chose to waste it pushing for fourth or fifth best when you should've gone for the best (and maybe settled for something between that and second best).  I want you to do us a favor, Mr. Bowers.  Write up a new post first thing tomorrow saying you're starting over from scratch, that you're going to work to defeat the sham being foisted upon us and start pushing strategies for getting H.R. 676 passed.  Try it and see what happens.


[ Parent ]
Quelle surprise (4.00 / 3)
You have a blog that gets substantial traffic. What are you doing with it in terms of measurable activism?

***crickets***

[ Parent ]
Oh, by gum, yes! (4.00 / 3)
Who'd imagine you'd glom onto that classic get-out-of-logic free card -- the deus ex machina demand for some specific task on the part of the questioner.

If Lambert can't produce satisfactory metrics for the countless calls for activism that have appeared on Corrente, he has no right to question the approach taken by Chris and the entire A-list.

The crickets from Chris's side of these many interchanges, of course, are not at all your concern. Funny, that.

[ Parent ]
Funny, that. (4.00 / 1)
Who'd imagine you'd glom onto that classic get-out-of-logic free card

I was poking fun at someone who uses that "classic get-out-of-logic free card" frequently here (and here and here) at Open Left.

Now, when does your shift of positive PROGRESSIVE (no quotes!) activism start in Digby's HaloScan pop-ups?  I'd hate to see you be late. Real reform hangs in the balance.


[ Parent ]
I do hope someone pays you for all your wit and wisdom (4.00 / 1)
I'm not sure what the status quo would do without you.
[ Parent ]
George Soros pays me, silly (0.00 / 0)
And I'm sure the status quo shakes in its boots when it sees the mighty vastleft stumble into the comment sections of A-list blogs to set everyone straight. You seem to be pretty effective at it.

p.s. Since Corrente gets nearly 3x the traffic of my blog, I believe it's my duty to question your approach.  That's how it works, right?

[ Parent ]
Let's hear it for the status quo! (4.00 / 1)
And let's razz the losers who are outgunned by it, regardless of the merits of the argument.
[ Parent ]
Well... (0.00 / 0)
I think the point Bowers was making is that since you're "outgunned," maybe it's time you chose some new weaponry. Stomping around like a petulant child in A-list blog comment sections and spewing thick layers of condescension doesn't quite seem to be working.

Unless your goal is for every "progressive" to despise you as much as Digby does.  If so, well, carry on.

[ Parent ]
I welcome their hatred (0.00 / 0)
Someone in the blogosphere ought to be more invested in being on the right side of policy than on the right side of popularity. Don't worry, it doesn't have to be you.
[ Parent ]
FDR was welcoming the hatred of... (4.00 / 1)
business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. Digby generally opposes those same forces. So by welcoming the hatred of Digby, you are pretty much aligning yourself with business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

Wha happened???

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
Funny, but ass-backwards (4.00 / 2)
Digby is telling the likes of me and Lambert to eat the shit-sausage coming out of a Democratic administration beholden to those forces you list. I argued that she ought to hold them to a higher standard. Oh, well.
[ Parent ]
"she ought to hold them to a higher standard" (4.00 / 1)
I can see it now.

Harry Reid: "Hey Mr. President. I wanted to take the political path of least resistance and not piss off the giant insurance corporations, but Digby doesn't think that's good enough, so now I'm going to tell the Senate they have to vote for single payer."

Obama: "Umm.. I don't think they'll go for it."

Reid: "Sure they will. I'll just tell them that Digby is holding them to a higher standard."

Good plan! If you could only get that evil Digby to go along with it. DIGBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
Quite a thread... (4.00 / 2)
One minute, C-list bloggers are being condemned their failure to wield much influence.

The next, the notion that A-list bloggers could wield any influence is laughably absurd.

[ Parent ]
Trained by Democrats? (4.00 / 1)
When others fail, its their fault.

When they fail, its the fault of others.

That's pretty much the Party Line.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

[ Parent ]
Don't just eat it (4.00 / 1)
Eat it and be grateful.  

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
Who's being condescending? (0.00 / 0)
It's Messrs. Bowers and Rosenberg, and the sycophants they have here making excuses for Obama and the other right-wing Democrats as well as bullying dissenters around, who are being condescending.  Small wonder those of us who are sick of being talked down to choose to respond to such outright hostility with our own.


[ Parent ]
I haven't seen Paul be much of a sycophant to Obama (0.00 / 0)
Actually, I haven't seen Chris be much of one, either.

But the latter has, indeed, been quite condescending toward those who have questioned his ringleading and cheerleading on "public option." Worse, he's repeatedly misrepresented their arguments and has contributed to an abusive culture to those who dare criticize A-list orthodoxies. Sadly, he's far from alone in that.

[ Parent ]
They're no fans of Obama, but... (0.00 / 0)
...Neither are they exactly helpful in coming up with clear solutions to the problem.  Try suggesting a third party as a means of helping to drive Democrats to the left (a process that, admittedly, will require years and a lot of efforts to pull off successfully), and they'll join in with the third party haters - effectively trying to discourage any viable route outside the two-party system.


[ Parent ]
I'm trying to be optimistic about the folks here (0.00 / 0)
They've all written some good stuff, and I admire their penchant for activism.

I can't say as I'd recommend it to any sort of contrarian, though. The tribal force is strong here, and I haven't found a single regular poster here who will sustain a legitimate debate.

[ Parent ]
I'm just trying to put them into perspective. (0.00 / 0)
Yes, some of them mean well, and I'm quite sure that despite themselves Messrs. Bowers and Rosenberg are trying to accomplish something good.  The problem is in their method of execution, which has the effect of alienating the very people whose support and efforts they need.


[ Parent ]
third parties (0.00 / 0)
I can get behind a third party in a state that has run-off elections. For President? No way. The system is rigged against it and you can end up with a Republican winning with a minority of the votes.

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
You are right, but... (0.00 / 0)
I agree with you that Bowers can be defensive and dismissive. Probably not helpful. But I can sympathize with his reaction. Think of someone who volunteers to be president of her homeowners association. She is doing all kinds of work and spending all her spare time doing things that help all the other homeowners and gets paid nothing. On top of that, she has to constantly deal with various homeowners bitching about every decision they disagree with or demanding her to do more when she's not even getting paid for all the shit she already does. I think that the natural attitude of most people would be "Fuck you. I'm not getting paid for this shit. Instead of complaining and second guessing every decision I make, why don't you join the board and take on some of this shit yourself." I can understand an attitude of, "Well if you don't like the way I blog, start your own fucking blog and do whatever you want with it." Maybe not the best way to deal with people, but I can empathize.

By the way, just because someone else is being dickish doesn't mean you have to be a dick too. You have free will.

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
single payer (4.00 / 1)
Wow! I didn't know that Chris Bowers was in on the meeting where Democrats decided to pre-compromise and drop single payer. Thanks for enlightening me on this!

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
I didn't know you were in on the meeting (4.00 / 1)
When progressive activists were forbidden to push the Democrats to adopt good policies they had decided to pre-compromise and drop.
[ Parent ]
spilled milk (0.00 / 0)
Seems to me you're crying over spilled milk. The best strategy would have been to push single payer and compromise to strong public option as a last resort. But that route was not taken by Obama and other party leaders. At this point many progressive bloggers and other activists are trying their best to deal with the hand that has been dealt to us all and are concentrating on saving the public option. I agree with you that it could be an effective strategy for Obama and congressional Dems to regroup and revive a fight for single payer. I don't know if it's realistic to expect this to actually happen. You seem to be pissed that bloggers like Bowers are unwilling to spin their wheels on a cause that has little likelihood of results.

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
Perhaps modern America's greatest achievement... (4.00 / 3)
... is our genius for STFU.

We have an Eskimo's snow-vocabulary of tools: "get over it," "we're looking forward not backward," "that ship has sailed," "it is what it is,""let it go," and so many more.

When the Democrats and a lock-step consensus of big, influential blogs and major activist groups are trading in vital policy for a placebo, that ought to be a good time to stand up and be counted.

Chris himself recently mocked reflexive judgment about "we don't have the votes." You get the votes when leadership creates enthusiasm and pressure and provides air-cover. When you win the national debate. And despite the shunning, the majority of Americans are on-board with single payer -- it's our elected bought-and-paid-for weasels who need to be pressured, along with our low-aiming blogosphere betters, who are our best hope for providing that pressure.

We're advocating for good policy, honest politics (such as busting the Dems for their costly lies about a transparent process), and a progressive blogosphere that's a meritocracy of ideas. I guess that is spilt milk, come to think of it.  

[ Parent ]
So what do we do about it, then? (0.00 / 0)
You sum up the problem nicely:

The best strategy would have been to push single payer and compromise to strong public option as a last resort. But that route was not taken by Obama and other party leaders.

But it goes even farther than that.  As was pointed out, prominent bloggers and activists such as Mr. Bowers actually joined with Obama and other party leaders to push a failing strategy which began with the compromise and proceeded to be bargained down from there.  Now, at best, any "public option" will be in name only and won't even kick in until 2013 - after Obama has presumably either been drummed out of office or secured his second term.  Either way, everybody else loses.

So what's to be done about this?  I'm not asking this question lightly.  It's a serious one, and it needs an answer.  Obviously we as progressives cannot allow this disastrous blow to health care reform pass.  If it does, it'll kill any and all chances for genuine reform for at least a decade, perhaps even a generation.


[ Parent ]
I don't know. (0.00 / 0)
It seems that the realistic alternatives to a public option are either nothing or a mandate with no public option (worse than nothing.) It's a shitty predicament. The current strategy that Bowers and FDL and others are taking - finding points of maximum leverage (via the CPC or against Harry Reid) to save the public option - makes as much sense as anything. The public option may be weak, but the likely alternatives are much worse.

prominent bloggers and activists such as Mr. Bowers actually joined with Obama and other party leaders to push a failing strategy which began with the compromise and proceeded to be bargained down from there.

Really??? I was not aware that prominent bloggers and activists such as Mr. Bowers were in on the original decision-making process when Obama and other party leaders decided to push a failing strategy which began with the compromise and proceeded to be bargained down from there. My perception is that they have merely been reacting to a fait accompli by Obama and the Dem leadership. Correct me if I'm wrong.

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
Here's an idea. (0.00 / 0)
Stop pushing the weak public option, and start the health care fight over from scratch.  Let this pretense of reform die so we can push for the real thing.  Help convince Mr. Bowers to promote single-payer as the ultimate goal, and encourage readers to do everything in their limited power to ride their Congresspeople's asses until it or something like it is passed and signed into law.  If Bowers and other A-list bloggers can do what they've been doing to keep a gutted and ineffective "public option" alive in this health care battle, they can do the same for single-payer.

And yes, prominent bloggers have joined with the establishment to push this doomed-to-failure pretense of reform on us.  It's like this: sites such as the Mediocre Orange Hype, Open left, Booman Tribune, My Left Wing, Digby, and others have grown the netroots into a force that Democrats were savvy enough to recognize as a source for grassroots activism.  When the owners and main-page bloggers on said web sites could and should have been pushing hard for things like single-payer, prosecution of war criminals, genuine environmental protections, and end to war, reigning in the bankers, and so forth, what was being pushed instead?  Half measures we all know won't get the needed job of bringing us back from the brink done.  Consider Mr. Bowers' condescension on health care reform.  From the beginning, without any valid justification for compromising on progressive principles, he was writing in favor of an ill-defined and ineffective "public option" that many on the left recognize for the fraud it is.  Why wasn't he even trying to push single-payer, with the angle that while we may not end up with it in the end, we'll at least have something closer to it than we look to be getting now (assuming we end up with a "public option" at all)?

No, the people who have voices in this mess have chosen not to use them on behalf of the left or of America.  Instead, they've used their voices in efforts to ram bad legislation down our throats and then lecture us about what's possible, and whine about how we don't shut up like good little dogs and be happy with it.


[ Parent ]
start over from scratch (0.00 / 0)
If I were king of the world and could control congressional dems like puppets, I would do exactly that. But I sincerely don't think that, even with a massive blogospheric effort, that's realistic. It might have been if the effort was started in Jan of 2009 or earlier. I just don't think congressional leaders are going to "start the health care fight over from scratch" when they're already so far down the path they've chosen.

And I don't want you to "shut up like good little dogs." Just admit that there is an honest difference of opinion regarding strategy. You could be right about your strategy being the best, but you don't know that for sure and neither does Bowers, etc. Make your case, but just don't be an asshole about it.

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
Progressives in the 1930's (4.00 / 9)
Did not grow up watching television.

TV has been the most effective tool in the last 500 years for establishing an unquestioned centralized authority. Not since the reformation has a country had a population so inclined to accept a central authority. Now it is the commercial interests that control TV, rather than a central church.

Net neutrality is a critical issue because is is about how much longer centralized control of communication can be sustained.

Ironically (4.00 / 1)
Virtually every TV show is fundamentally about individuality and the fight against central control.  At least, all the shows I watch.

What programs are you thinking of?  I'll admit I never watched 24... but even there, isn't the main character a bit of a rouge?  Conservative, but not central control.

[ Parent ]
there are a few. (4.00 / 1)
try oprah, and the oprah inspired programs like extreme home makeover.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston
[ Parent ]
Oprah just tells you what is (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Thatcher's (4.00 / 1)
team knew the importance of TV culture. That's why Thatcherites launched TV shows like the sitcom "Yes Minister" to bring home the message that government was rotten and incompetent to the core, and that everything it touches turns to crap.

Join the fight to give students a real voice on campus: Forstudentpower.org.
[ Parent ]
The shows about individuality (4.00 / 9)
The ostensible plot of many show is about individuality and freedom -- but the subtext is always submission to corporate values of consumer behavior as the route to personal freedom. On most TV, monetary wealth is the route to freedom. The message of freedom=money runs so deep that few Americans ever questions it.

Any type of collectivism that might eventually free us from corporate domination is relentlessly attacked on TV. These messages have been very consistent throughout the history of commercial TV. TV promotes (surprise) commercialism, and is the enemy of collectivism, or the idea that people can do anything together that is not mediated by commercial interests.

[ Parent ]
The news. (4.00 / 5)
The main way corporate media impose conformity is by defining limits. Just watch cable and network news. They give the public the illusion of free speech by promoting vigorous debate within a very constrained spectrum. Certain things are just out of bounds.

It seems to me to be pretty much the same with sitcoms, dramas, and reality shows. The type of individuality that is encouraged is only the type that is pretty much apolitical. It's all a game. Don't take anything seriously except personal issues like romantic angst and interpersonal drama. They encourage political apathy in the guise of hipster cynical detachment. Post-modernism has been co-opted by the man. It's the end of meta-narratives. Just have fun. Play video games. Drink beer. Be ironic with your buddies. Play Guitar Hero. Politics is for nerds. None of it means anything. You and your ironic hipster buddies are hip enough to be above it all - just like the ironic hipsters in the beer commercials on TV!

miasmo.com

[ Parent ]
C'Mon Mark (4.00 / 2)
you know damn well that the best way to keep someone imprisoned is to convince them that they're already free.

"I'm free!" Prison t-shirts!  Going fast!  Get yours now!


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Ritual individuality, consumer individuality (4.00 / 2)
Americans are as reginmented as anyone, but there are all these little independence games they play.

You also have all the cop shows, which will have the cliche maverick cop, but ultimately are about teamwork and experts and fighting the bad guys.

[ Parent ]
progressives in the 1930s (4.00 / 7)
Also had a significant political movement to its left, called communism, pushing the envelope.

But I think you're right: TV (especially commercial culture) is one of the means by which corporate power has narcotized the public and co-opted potentially progressive change. The Obama movement is another.

[ Parent ]
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin Six (4.00 / 10)
tells the TV thing like this.  He has been in CA prisons since 1964 or 65, and was a close friend of George Jackson.  He was asked by an interviewer what the difference was between the politicized prisoners of the late 1960s and early 1970s and today's gang-oriented prisoners.  

He said that TV was forbidden on the inside, so prisoners used to read books.  Being already dissatisfied with their social condition, they tended to read a lot of Marx and stuff like that.  A problem for the authorities, this was.

So, Pinell says, they brought in TV.  And that did more to put a stop to the politicizing of prisoners, and a culture of reading inside the prisons than anything.  They might have trouble with prisoners doing crime on the inside, jumping on each other and stuff.  But thanks to the magic of TV, there no more problems with politicized prisoners.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

[ Parent ]
touched by an Angel (4.00 / 1)
that Michael J Fox show celebrating the laissez faire economists

plus, racism and xenophobia at the end of the 80s, expressing the frustration and humiliation of people expecting more and caught in economic vice

but to be frank, what was perceived as the liberal message in the early 80s
- taxes
- more welfare
was not only not popular, few people thought it was working

on welfare, they were right
money to 20 somethings accomplished less than nothing
not all that was happening, but it was happening, and it discredited "liberals" for a generation
also, Dukakis unwillingness to say he would support death penalty against his wife's killer (hypothetical) crystalized a stereotype of foolish and wimpy appeasers

once Repubs had talking points, non-stop propaganda has taken its toll

centrists cannot stop apologizing for the stereotype

and progessives have not found popular new messages

especially damning is failure to have an income policy for farmers
lot of trouble on the farms (economic, environment) and most progressives have no response except proposed punishments

progressives need calm, helpful platform

matching leftwing jibes against rightwing hysterical lies is a losing battle
rightwing has the cultural stereotypes on its side

getting to a new generation will be slow, and must be accomplished brick by brick

[ Parent ]
It will be very slow (4.00 / 1)
When the bricks are built out of disrespect for liberal values.
[ Parent ]
Hours and Hours of TV (4.00 / 2)
Mark Wallace wrote:

"TV has been the most effective tool in the last
500 years for establishing an unquestioned centralized
authority. Not since the reformation has a country had
a population so inclined to accept a central authority.
Now it is the commercial interests that control TV,
rather than a central church."

Right on.

Over the past 50 years there has been a huge increase
in the amount of time that Americans (children and adults)
devote to watching TV.

50 years ago, kids went outside and made friends with the
neighborhood kids and played and had fun (and learned
social skills and sports and how to make their own fun).

Meanwhile their parents were out socializing, and joining
and creating civil society.

Now, for most kids, their fun is adult created and corporate
funded. Children (8-14) spend over 4 hours per day (on average)
watching TV and videos.

http://www.tvsmarter.com/docum...

What is this teaching them? That sitting passively is
how to have fun. Playing for hours and hours with
real kids can seem like a lot of effort when they
can effortlessly hang out with the super cool TV kids.

That is they are being rewarded over, and over, and
over again for sitting quietly and still.

It is no wonder that each generation is becoming more
and more overweight, passive, self-centered, and greedy.

[ Parent ]
"All the kids" are currently 19 years old (4.00 / 2)
People like Chris (and me) are generational in-betweeners. Gen X wasn't so hot, politically, and the next wave is still peaking at age 19, hardly spun up to full capacity.

If we don't fuck this up, and give it 8 more years, there will be a big Emerging Consensus on a lot of issues. That's still going to fly in the face of the establishment, but there will be some real heft behind it.

Couple that with standard mortality rates for teabag-leaning elder generations (not to be morbid, but this is demographics) and the balance should continue shifting.

If we don't fuck this up.

Me | My Work | Future Majority

The draft (3.64 / 11)
The single most radicalizing thing was the combination of the war in Vietnam and the draft.  Only the connected got out and only those who were poretty shameless.  LBJ's sons-in-law went.  Al Gore went to Nam and his father was a Senator.  Rich, middle class, or poor, the risk of death or disabilty was there.

The second most radicalizing thiung was that the media was more or less honest.  Corporate ownership of the big networks?  Nope. Big crowds were reported as big crowds and televised (Martin Luther King).  Small crowds were exposed not hyped up (tea-baggers).

Corporations paid a lot higher taxes.  Rich people paid way higher taxes (the rate was 91%).  The crap about corporations being great not greedy was not bought (or at least sold) nearly as much.

Government was mostly trusted.  Barry Goldwater wanted to privatize social security and he was treated as a loon.

Some cultural differences.

This is a strangely defensive post (4.00 / 3)
The weakness of today's left is a result not of a lack of vision or courage among progressives but of larger problems--the very problems progressives hope to solve. But today's left is weak; that's self-evident, and somehow remains so even in the face of your Nate Silverish stat about social spending and GDP. And while we shouldn't romanticize lefties of the past, we could do worse than look to them for lessons and inspiration (except when we shouldn't).

Relax, Chris! You're doing a good job. It's silly and self-defeating to take an offhand remark about today's left as a personal slight.


Thank you! (4.00 / 3)
Funny how many (but certainly not all) of the '67-'68ers ended up being part of the "emerging conservative majority" in the '80s and '90s.  The DLC is a creation of the "kids of the '60s," to name one example. Maybe it was cool to want to change the world back in the '60s; but, there are a huge number of young people, on college campuses and elsewhere, who are volunteering and organizing and working hard to change the world using the "act locally" concept--and they too think it is cool to want to change the world.

I think the current progressive movement has done a fairly remarkable job of staying ahead of the technological curve, and of developing "rapid response" tactics and other net-savvy strategies to combat the increased pervasiveness of corporate money in our political system.

But, we have a shitload of work to do--the Hydra has grown back five heads for every one that got chopped off during the "glory days" of the late '60s.

"Past incarnations of progressivism did not achieve any victories in terms of civil or economic rights beyond what we did today." (4.00 / 2)
I appreciate the positive activism, the work that you do, and all the rest, but the historian in me has to object vehemently to this extremely defensive and inaccurate statement.  

There was a time when people trying to organise in the United States were getting shot by private guards hired by companies.  Now we have weekends and can at least speak, even if in a totally ideologically controlled zone (part of the answer to your question).

I could care less about people waxing nostalgic, but I think that it's unfair to characterise that as exactly what's happening - I feel the same way as many of these people and i'm 31- it is shocking the extent to which political discourse in the united states is so far to the right.  It is also not coincidental, imo.

In studying industrialisation and economics, I came toa  heuristic that pretty much everything written after 1987 was crap, and learned further that a lot of stuff that's relevant today which was written by lenin (OMG! Commie!) or kalecki or others that I was simply not exposed to having grown up and been educated in the United States.  

But if you learn about how people were jailed (debs, martin luther king), deported (emma goldman, marcus garvey), killed (a whole lot of people in guatemala, el salvador, kent st. and other places), alongside how media emerged as a mechanism for controlling opinion and all the pressure on the u.s. from the arguments of communists outside disappeared - it's not so hard to understand why the range of opinion is narrow, and highly conservative, when considered globally.

I mean, after the most massive financial collapse of a generation, we have the favorite economist of progressives write a history of economics in several paragraphs which omits marx entirely!  And later he argues that if we just substitute keynes for friedman, things will be okay.  You don't have to be a radical to write accurate history or consider pluralism a useful thing after the breakdown of a field (in fact, you just have to read some kuhn, among others).  except you will be described as a radical, simply for articulating the obvious - that karl marx existed and played a role int he development of economics as a field and that replacing one hegemonic economic ideology with another without challenging some fundamental assumptions - at least putting htem to the test - is not 'progressive' - it is a way of preserving established order as best as one can.

there are so many other factors you can look at too, but the one thing i don't think you can do is deny that american progressives are far further to the right than they need to be.  it is what drove me out of the country, after working in ngos and writing for several years.  the politics in the united states for 15 years has been f"£ked beyond belief and it is only now just slowly starting to get better.

and it will get better.  - but we have to try to keep somewhat open minds not just about what is real and what is not real, but about what is structurally possible and not possible in a given time frame and think long run - and then give space to the people who come afterwards.

My thoughts: (4.00 / 1)
It seems to me that the old models of Left/Right, Socialist/Capitalist rhetoric no longer resonate with the "youth"-actually with most people of all ages. The problem is with the Progressives, who are often, in a sense, highly conservative, and more comfortable with traditional class-based political arguments, is that they have codified class-status as the basis for individual identity.

Don't flame me yet.

I know theses socio-economic issues are of paramount importance. What is missing in the rhetoric, or missing from the framing of the Progressive position, is the right of individuals, of all classes, to strive and achieve and succeed (or fail) starting from a relatively level playing field. Call it individual autonomy from class-definition. It's not reality but it is what most Americans want to believe in--in my opinion.

The Republicans are great at exploiting the natural ambition of individual Americans. In fact they are so good at it that they can dupe millions of Americans into believing that the corporatist overloads are actually interested in their success.

Why can't Progressives speak to the same (moral) ambitions? Progressives usually speak of success in paternalistic terms. The message doesn't resonate, even though it should.

I have been fascinated, again, with Charles Dickens and the structure of the moral lessons in his work. In my opinion, the first lesson of Dickens is that individuals have the capacity for personal integrity (or dignity) regardless of their class or position. They create their own integrity through their actions.  Second, their dignity (they 'own' their own dignity) exposes the corruption of the socio-economic system they are forced to live in. The sequence is critical.

Ron Paul understands that individuals want to be empowered as moral actors. Too bad he is a Trojan horse for the corporatist/fascist elite. Still his (utopian snake oil) message resonates with may young people. But why can't Progressives accept language that doesn't typecast individuals in terms of class or race, but in terms of their own-self made-dignity?

The social and economic critique will be entailed.

Obama totally buys this quasi-libertarian framing (4.00 / 2)
It's why Paul Rosenberg here correctly calls Obama a "child of Reagan."

It's very popular, and very destructive to the social safety net, which mitigates the downsides of capitalism (when it's not being torn down by Republicans and Democrats alike).

[ Parent ]
No, (4.00 / 1)
It starts by respecting the integrity of the individual and their moral autonomy. The social critique and the safety nets follow. Don't you think it is odd that with all the good you plan to do, so many people don't seem to care. The FSA photography project in the 1930's did exactly what I am talking about. It granted individuals their moral centers and helped to bring about the New Deal.

The order matters.

[ Parent ]
En anglais s'il vous plait n/t (4.00 / 1)
.
[ Parent ]
Je ne savais pas tu parlais Francais. (4.00 / 1)
Tu m'impressionnes beaucoup.
[ Parent ]
That's mostly already there (4.00 / 4)
it's the origin of the 'we're all in this together against the fatcats' framing.  It's not paternalistic at all.  Sure, conservatives frame it as paternalistic.

But most of the reason that our message isn't getting through is that every left-wing candidate or politician spends half of their speech explaining how much they understand and appreciate the conservative postion before going off on another tack.  Ignore their ideas.  A conversation with them is impossible right now.

[ Parent ]
CAP or SDS? (4.00 / 4)
I do a lot of student organizing work, and in the course of doing research for a book had the opportunity to talk with youth organizers who were active from right now on back to the early 80s.

What I've noticed is that we're seeing a pretty big split among left-of-center youth. Youth and students are tending to gravitate toward either status quo friendly, election-cycle-oriented liberalism (e.g. Campus Progress, Young Democrats), or toward left radicalism (e.g. Students for a Democratic Society, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Student Environmental Action Coalition).

The dominance of moderate Democratic tendencies over the non-radical left this past decade or so makes sense, as coming into a Republican Presidency and Congress after a DLCer like Clinton meant that big donor and foundation money was aimed at either a continuation of Clintonite policy goals, or was geared toward getting as many Democrats elected as possible.

Given that (compared to those on the right) we barely fund leadership development on the left, youth outreach for politics and policy happened where the money was, which was solidly in moderate hands.

Youth on the radical left have never needed much money to organize and get things done, and over the past 4-5 years seem to be growing pretty rapidly (though by the nature of the fights they wage, the activity rarely bubbles up into the national press). The cross-pollination between "reds" and "greens" post-Seattle seems to be really bearing fruit. But, they're radicals: the kind of social change they're working toward isn't the kind for which one writes legislation.

Join the fight to give students a real voice on campus: Forstudentpower.org.

true, and today's students, unlike the 60s, are deep in debt for college (4.00 / 5)
Today, if your parents don't have resources, you are approaching a $70K or more debt along with your first four year degree.  That puts students and recent grads in a far different frame of mind than the 60s and early 70s, when only a small number were dependent on loans, and even those that were didn't have the kind of usurious setup that today's student loans do.

You're far less likely to take a semester off and join the movement, or sit in and risk arrest and your possible career with that enormous debt hanging over you, and less likely to look for a public service movement-oriented kind of gig when you graduate.  Journalism students know they have to write in college for their prospective employers and they do --- and many of the j-schools have mostly PR curricula.  

I interviewed one of the biggest black trial lawyers in Atlanta a couple years ago for a project and he said his first job out of law school was with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  Peanuts for pay, but he got to do real civil rights law for most of a decade.  Youngsters coming out of law school now have $100K-plus shackles of debt on them, with steep penalties for late payments.  They simply cannot afford to do what he did for those first ten years of practice.

We mustn't forget that the late sixties were a long goddam time ago, already more distant from us today than the Great Depression was from the youth of my era.  1969 is a quarter of the way back to Emancipation, OK?  so this thing about drawing lessons from then has to be approached with some attention to what the lineup of forces acting on classes of people were at the time and how that compares to today.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

[ Parent ]
Wow! (0.00 / 0)
That is a really great point that I have never thought about before. I wish I could recommend your comment four times.

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
Right on - (0.00 / 0)
And if you look at some of the most iconic student events in the 60s, most involved a ton of recent alumni. They were able to get a part-time job (if that) and hang around their alma maters, helping organize.

Students now don't have the luxury of learning lessons from those who have been organizing their particular campus for the previous 4-5 years, and youth's ability to mobilize and radicalize has suffered as a result.

I did a year of law school before I realized the staggering amount of impending debt would have kept me from doing anything social justice-y.  

Join the fight to give students a real voice on campus: Forstudentpower.org.

[ Parent ]
While there is much (4.00 / 1)
I agree with here, I think it badly misses what has been wrought by globalization, and misses a crucial and under appreciated success of LBJ and the liberals.

Chris writes:
"vast incarnations of progressivism did not achieve any victories in terms of civil or economic rights beyond what we did today. Social spending as a percentage of GDP has not receded. While real income has not increased much at all for the bottom 90% of the country, it hasn't receded, either."

This is wrong on two levels.
1. As the graph below shows, the great society cut long term poverty in half.  It is revealing that this fact hasn't been brought up in this discussion, because it is arguably an achievement by liberals and not progressives, but consider the graph below, which suggests a level of political success that has not been duplicated since:

.

2.  What this paragraph misses is the relationship between productivity growth and real income growth.  Worker productivity has accelerated, so the fact that incomes have remained significant represents a fundamental change in the balance of power between labor and management.  


Bretton Woods (4.00 / 3)
Notice how the turning point in your graph is right around the time that the Bretton Woods system collapsed under Nixon, allowing the free flow of capital that has been accompanied by a race to the bottom for workers? Elections in the 19th century were won and lost over monetary policy. Modern Americans are economically illiterate. We need populist economic literacy.

miasmo.com
[ Parent ]
income for the bottom 90% has receded (4.00 / 1)
The data you link to shows a tiny gain for the bottom 90% from 2002-2007, but even if you ignore the massive economic collapse of the last year, what that article omits mention of is that standard economic statistics understate inflation. In particular, the impact of soaring housing costs was understated.
When the empire was thriving ... (4.00 / 2)
there was more to redistribute without arousing (quite) so much opposition.

As empire peaked, redistribution moved along identity lines and unimaginable progress was make on gender and race.

As imperial grasp recedes (and the planet fries), how much can we hang on to?


Can it happen here?

Read David Foster Wallace's essays if you want to know why (4.00 / 1)
Especially his one E Pluribus Unum from the book A Supposedly Fun Thing I Won't Ever Do Again or close to that.

The ones from the 60's sold out as soon as they saw a chance to make it. Just not Abbie Hoffman who could have made it super big.

Nice post… (4.00 / 1)
...but this bit stopped me:

Something deeper is at play in the political stagnation of the world's wealthy democracies. While I don't know what it is...

Really? Seems pretty obvious, no? The wealth of the wealthy democracies isn't really being distributed among the citizenry. Lots of reasons for this, but the biggest ones have to do with things like racism. Of course, that's not where it ends.

How do we change that? Well, at this point many of the things that led us here are socially and economically entrenched, but our side caught a break, intellectually speaking, when the bogus financial system--the one that allowed quite a few non-wealthy (mostly white) folk to ascend into the wealthy class--almost collapsed. It's just an opening, but when I read Open Left I see folks working hard to make that hole bigger.

"This ain't for the underground. This here is for the sun." -Saul Williams

Back In My Day, All the Kids Were Revolutionaries | 88 comments
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