Mainstreaming the Militia | 43 comments
The reaction (4.00 / 7)
of the left, generally, to the Tea Parties has revealed its current vacuousness.

However small the crowds might be who turn up for these Tea Parties, how much vitality and breadth does the left itself demonstrate these days for any issue?

It has been remarkable to see how much time, energy, and, truly, all consuming obsessiveness the so-called left has devoted to attacking the Tea Parties. Go to blogs such as DailyKos, and one sees little else; likewise, progressive pundits like Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and David Shuster can't seem to stop talking about them.

And, of course, the sheer vulgarity of those attacks is like nothing else I've seen from either the left or the right. When talking heads on cable like Maddow and Shuster and even Anderson Cooper start talking like 12 years olds giggling over a subject taboo for 12 year olds -- or, in Somerby's analogy, like Beavis and Butthead -- and acting as if it is the highest, most sophisticated wit (we know what "tea-bagging" means! Do you??), then a sickness has descended on our discourse and politics.

Is this the end product of the left blogosphere, the culmination of the sensibilities it has engendered? Does it all come down to repetitions to the point of nauseum of "Tea bagging"?

I can't help but think that if the left blogosphere had had something more constructive to do, it would not be so obsessed with this issue. It is a sign of its own current emptiness that it can find nothing that animates it more than engaging in the most repetitious of childish bile.

Today, I'm sorry to say, the left in aggregate has no meaning or purpose; it has no soul.

Indeed (4.00 / 3)
All this reveals the fundamental hollowness at the core of Obama-centric/Dear Leaderist politics.

Since criticism  or even mere mention of the ever-mounting record of capitulations to Wall Street, defense contractors, and the corporate right generally is off the table, all that's left for the Obamaphiles to do is to snicker at the remains of what it sees as its vanquished enemy.

This is particularly disconcerting since there are many potentially constructive avenues for activism.  For example, on another thread I suggested that we figure out a way to force Pelosi to make good on her call for a new Pecora commission.

But since doing so would involve (implicitly) bringing into question the trustworthiness of the DP leadership,  I'm not optimistic that this, or similar sorts of mobilization (e.g. A New Way Forward) have any chance of getting off the ground.  

I can't say I'm surprised by this outcome.  Ken Silverstein had the right line on this back in 2007 when he came out in support of Hillary based on the logic that with Hillary taking office one could move directly into opposition whereas with Obama, it would take months and likely years for the left to recognize where it was situated within Obama's weltanschauung (i.e. nowhere).

That's where we are.  We are sick and need to get well.


[ Parent | ]
Speak For Yourself (4.00 / 4)
1.  If a story has made it to the MSM, then the different talk show hosts have to bring up the matter. (Also, I did not know the left was strictly made up of Daily Kos and MSNBC hosts.) Yet, if we do not call have context for this "story" and call out its utter bullshit out,  then who will?

2.  The sheer vulgarity of the left is like nothing you have ever seen? What are you smoking, seriously?  Maybe, you should visit the the right-wing echo chamber and get a wake-up call?  Or, make it easy, just go www.mediamatters.org.  I think a few recent murders were linked to different right-wing media personalities of late.

3. I wonder if any you were bitching when Keith Olberman or Daily Kos were fighting back against these sick and hypocritical bastards during the Bush Administration?

4. Oh, speaking about Governor Dean, maybe you should visit his web-site to fight back against the medical insurance through various grassroots and netroots tactics.  Maybe, you could spend a $100 to help the cause along.

5. I don't what "left blogosphere" you have been hanging out in, but there are many different causes and movements to get involved in.  Just visit that vacuous turn-coat left Nation Magazine website or more pointedly go to commondreams.org, and you can find more to do than all your constant whining.

6. Please, cry me a river.
 

[ Parent | ]
frankly0 makes the point more vehemently than necessary... (4.00 / 1)
...but he is absolutely correct that the avalanche of juvenile "tea-bagging" snickers is a sign of an aimless, unserious politics.
[ Parent | ]
I disagree. (4.00 / 1)
Public opinion is kind of chi.

Add to this, authoritarian followers want very badly to fit and be accepted, much more so than normal people. It is an Achilles Heel for them.

Ridicule is a potent weapon, it would be folly to give it up.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent | ]
I'm all for ridicule and mockery... (0.00 / 0)
...but it needs to have substance behind it.  Silly sexual innuendo has none, and it seems like a particularly bad way to try to tap into genuine working class populism--which I think should be the goal of any response from us to this kind of thing.
[ Parent | ]
Actually (0.00 / 0)
I do wish the "respectable" liberals on tv would take the high road and leave that kind of thing to grunts like us in the blog trenches.

It's like listening your parents talk dirty. Embarrassing.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent | ]
Again, Your Equating Certain Media Outlets (4.00 / 1)
with the entire left and progressive political discourse.
I do not think the Southern Law Poverty Center is taking this lightly; nor may I add, the FBI or HLS.  
A quick informative take on this would be Media Matters.
Boehlert has a lot of excellent columns about this subject.
[ Parent | ]
Point taken (0.00 / 0)
As I said above, I don't necessarily endorse frankly0's broad indictment.  Perhaps I've simply been reading too much dKos.
[ Parent | ]
I defy (4.00 / 5)
you to find, even on the worst right wing cable channels, anything like the crudeness of the ceaseless "teabag" and other sexual innuendo jokes one finds on MSNBC and, with Anderson Cooper, on CNN.

Really, it is a new low in vulgarity, and is achieved by the left media, and egged on by the increasingly mindless left blogosphere. And take a look at virtually any left blog (OpenLeft happily excluded) and see how much of the discussion is dominated by "teabagging" and all the unclever wit that they can concoct (say the word slowly! Ha ha ha!) around it.

Fox is certainly terrible in many, many ways. But, on the score of sheer vulgarity in discourse, MSNBC, the most slavish of all Obama supporting networks, clearly has it beat.

And I'd like to see anything going on on the left that represents a genuine movement for policy issues. As small and trivial as the Tea Parties might be, they're a hell of lot bigger, and capture a hell of a lot more energy for change in policy than anything the now pathetic and abject left can seem to muster.

[ Parent | ]
I remember the Monica Lewinsky affair. (4.00 / 2)
They spent $40 million of our money on that, and had the entire corporate media playing along, for months.

Is anything Anderson Cooper said anything worse than the Starr Report? Really?

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent | ]
Again, I Don't Think You Read Any Of The FBI's Or (4.00 / 2)
The Southern Poverty Law Center--or any of the Homeland Security Report.  What goes on the conservative airways and its blogosphere is the biggest cesspool of political discource imaginable.  Not to add, it has had deadly ramifications. Literally.

Again, instead of whining, open up your eyes: Progressive Democrats for America alongside others have been fighting for single-payer health-care; Rethink Afghanistan has a lot more traction; the recent protests against the bank bailouts would helped, maybe if you attended; again go to Howard Dean's site, so we have a definite public option and splurge: $100; these are just a few examples. There a hundreds of movements--just because you don't see people dressed in the flag at a phoney "Tea Bag Party", means that progressives are not doing anything. Do we need to do more? Of course.

Good idea:  Maybe you start a movement.

[ Parent | ]
the point is not that nothing is going on ... (4.00 / 1)
... but rather that not enough is going on.

That good organizations exist and are doing good things is not in question.  Nor that individuals can find virtuous things to do.

But the vigorous outreach, the militant tactics, in proportion to the size of the crisis are not adequate.  That groups are now working to move the homeless into foreclosed homes, and that police are reluctant to move against them, is the kind of glimmer of hope that I have in mind.  Tactics outside the box.  I consider such moves more significant than big demonstrations that reduce to bus schedule logistics.

For chrissake, why would any progressive argue that the left's response is okay?  Who is served by such complacency?

The who is those who are trying to cover the Democratic Party's ass!

[ Parent | ]
I'm so tired of this "debate" (4.00 / 5)
On the one hand, I agree strongly with frankly0.  The response to the teabagging from our "progressives" on cable news has been ludicrous and bordering on the disgusting.  Make all the fun you want of the right wingers - but they are trying to build their movement while we are, judging by the results, doing little but sitting around watching Keith and Rachel.

So, true, what movement are WE building?

On the other hand, all the handwringing about Obama-bots etc. also misses the point.  Frankly0, when will I hear YOU promoting something concrete being done to put left-populist pressure on Obama?  Where's the discussion of the Single-Payer rally or the EFCA rally?  I think we ARE going to need things like this.

sTiVo's rule: Just because YOU "wouldn't put it past 'em" doesn't prove that THEY did it.

[ Parent | ]
OK, I'll bite. (4.00 / 4)
Take, as a concrete instance of the problem, the New Way Forward demos last weekend which Mike Lux promoted here and which I tried to do some organizing for.

Not surprisingly, they were, all things considered a wash out.  My attempts at organizing met with almost universal apathy and there is no mystery why.  Namely, most of those who would be otherwise open to participating have bought into the fiction that, as Lord Mike puts it in a posting below, "the left won the election" so we can safely "take a rest."

This is the attitude which is shared broadly on the left now and is reinforced time and time again, even by those who will readily agree that Obama needs "to be pushed to realize his potential."

The assumption that we have a friend in the White House, that Obama is a progressive at heart, that we need to give him time etc. all this is responsible for why there is no opposition and will insure that his will be a failed presidency.

The reason why some of us spend so much time rebutting these attitudes on the left is that a change in attitude is what is needed for a real opposition to emerge.

And make no mistake: an opposition is exactly what is needed.  

To repeat what Ken Silverstein said, we need to dispense with the fiction that the left is regarded by the White House as anything other than the opposition.  The sooner we move on to that point, the sooner we can start making real progress.

[ Parent | ]
I think you're right about the problem, maybe not about the solution (4.00 / 2)
Yeah, we all would like nothing better than to take a rest.  And that's not what's required.  You're far from wrong.  But it's depressing to think otherwise and I don't think you appreciate why that's important.

I'm not sure Silverstein's right.  The White House won't SAY it regards the left as the opposition - publicly.  To do so would be to admit that "change" was bullshit.  This gives us a lever.  A weak lever, but a lever still.  We need to get smarter about how we apply it.

Obama is going to do what Obama is going to do.  What we say here is of little moment.  But I think you're wrong if you think that our way forward is to remove the blinders by shouting over and over what a sellout Obama is.  We need mass rallies and marches around Universal Health Care, EFCA, etc. regardless of whether Obama is for them or not.  You won't get people to come to them by saying at the top of your lungs "we've been had again".  That demobilizes more than it mobilizes.

As long as the White House won't publicly attack (as opposed to disagree with) the left, we have space to organize.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

sTiVo's rule: Just because YOU "wouldn't put it past 'em" doesn't prove that THEY did it.

[ Parent | ]
Of course we agree that (0.00 / 0)
"We need mass rallies and marches around Universal Health Care, EFCA, etc. regardless of whether Obama is for them or not."

The question is why is there so little energy going into organizing anything of the kind and why is there so little interest in the attempts which are being made.

The answer is contained in the posts below which show a desperate will to believe that the reality of a Obama presidency has some connection with the hype.

Just as the guy who got ripped off buying the used Chevy Vega doesn't want to hear about the duct tape around the fenders, and the wire coat hanger holding the muffler in place a similar denial needs to be punctured among the Obamabots before they will re-emerge as constructive members of the progressive community.

Our job, now more than ever needs to tell the unvarnished truth even when-especially when-the truth is uncomfortable to many of us.

At the moment, they are serious obstacles to progress-as should be obvious.

[ Parent | ]
Mainstreaming the Militia | 43 comments
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