Do you ever look at newspaper articles about worker and student strikes in countries like France or Greece or Argentina-you know, the kind of activity that shuts down the whole country-and think to yourself, "Holy shit, that's what I'm talkin' about! Those people know how to protest!?"
Well, I sure do.
Not to glorify any particular tactic for it's own sake, but geez, the spirit of collective action and common purpose that's displayed in those moments-let alone the negotiating power it awards to grassroots movements, unions, and progressive political parties-is something that sometimes, um, feels a little lacking here in the good old U.S. of A.
So what are you waiting for. Go ahead. Try that here. See how many people you can turn out. See where it gets you.
Likely. not. very. far.
We have a situation here. We're stuck in a Catch 22. As a society, we presently seem to be inoculated against the means necessary for our own collective advancement. (If you're at the top of the plutocratic order, now's the time to congratulate yourself on a brilliant system.) And I'm not talking about any one particular style of collective action or protest - we're not France or Greece or Argentina, and I don't particularly want us to be. I'm fully ready to embrace an all-American style, and I would settle for whatever kind of collective action (within ethical and strategic limits) powerful enough to challenge entrenched power and privilege. Is that such a tall order?
What do I mean, we're "inoculated?"
I'm glad you asked. Have you ever heard someone say something like, "I'm not an activist or anything," or they look at you like you're from Crazy-ville (or they simply don't engage) when you start talking about the protest you went to?
Think about the word protest for a minute. Seriously. Stop. And think about it. Notice. What comes to mind with the word? Now try it with the word activist.
Joe Sestak has a strong record in Congress, supporting health care reform, clean energy, and a woman's right to choose. If he wins the primary on Tuesday, it'll send a powerful message that voters want Democrats in Congress who'll proudly lead the fight for progressive legislation.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Let me offer a slight re-phrasing, however. The reason progressives need to keep engaging in progressive primary challenges against Democrats-pretty much wherever and whenever they are available--is to provide a counterweight to the massive amount of incentives elected Democrats have to engage in conservative and / or pro-corporate behavior.
Let's review what those incentives are, quoting at length from a snarky post I wrote last year, (but hey, just because you are joking doesn't mean you aren't serious), "BREAKING: I am now a conservative Democrat."
After several years of trying to "retake" the Democratic Party and make it more progressive, today I am giving up and becoming a conservative Democrat. Upon careful consideration, the benefits packages are simply too heavily tilted toward the corporate wing of the party. Check it out:
Being a conservative Democrat also makes you far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama's cabinet by 7-1.
Finally, if one of those crazy progressives decides to challenge you in a primary campaign, if you are a conservative Democrat you can also count on the endorsements of 95% of your congressional colleagues, the entire party leadership, and virtually every progressive advocacy organization. They will stand by you.
So really, why would anyone be a progressive Democrat given the different bonus packages that are on offer? I think my move makes a lot of sense. Every Democrat should be a conservative.
The threat of being defeated---or at least seriously challenged--in a primary election is one of the very few counterweights progressives can offer to this massive list of incentives elected Democrats have of acting in pro-conservative, pro-corporate ways. There may be benefits to sounding progressive on the campaign trail, but as far as governing in a progressive manner goes, not so much (except for, perhaps, not creating a sucky economy that results in a sucky electoral environment for incumbents).
Now, there need to be carrots, too. Rewarding the efforts of members of Congress like Alan Grayson can also serve as a form of incentive. If Congresscritters see that being a progressive leader can result in positive outcomes for your efforts at re-eelction and passing legislation, that will also help serve as a counterweight to the bullet points listed above.
But, right now, with several primaries looming over the horizon, it is time to get out the stick rather than the carrot. We need to make the following six upcoming primaries as painful as possible for these six Democrats who have spent most of their careers catering primarily to conservative and corporate interests. We need to do this in every district, and not just run up a white flag saying "oh, its OK to suck up to conservatives and corporations if you are from a red district." That easily translates into "we are cool with you sticking it to us whenever it is politically expedient for you to do so," a proposition that defeats the entire purpose of de-incentivizing pro-corporate, pro-conservative behavior among elected Democrats.
Set out your stick, and get your primary on. Here are six campaigns for you to join (help out in as many or as few as you wish) between now and June 22nd:
Primaries on May 18th
Join Joe Sestak, running for Pennsylvania Senate against ConservaDem Arlen Specter
Join Bill Halter, running for Arkansas Senate against ConservaDem Blanche Lincoln
Join Shelia Dow Ford, running for Pennsylvania's 17th Congressional district against Blue Dog Tim Holden.
Primaries on June 8th
Join Marcy Winograd, running for California's 36th Congressional district against Blue Dog Jane Harman
Primaries on June 22nd
Join Elaine Marshall, running for Senate in North Carolina, and facing a run-off with future ConservaDem Cal Cunningham
Join Claudia Wright, running for Utah's 2nd Congressional district against Jim Matheson.
Hello again. Well yesterday we took a look at laws seven and eight, of The 48 Laws Of Power. Today we look at the next two laws, one of which is incredibly important for Progressives to start following.
Well here we are again. I wasn't sure at first if there was going to be an installment as for most of the morning my 'Net access was down. But here we are. Yesterday I talked about Laws 3 and 4, and now without further Apu....
Welcome back to the special weekend edition of The One About...., known as The One About Book Club. Currently at The Book Club I'm taking an in depth look at The 48 Laws Of Power. Last week I offered an over view of the book, and delved into the first two chapters, or Laws. Today I'll be looking at Laws 3 and 4, and tomorrow Laws 5 and 6.
Yesterday afternoon, former Republican Congressman and 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr had the audacity to say, "Waterboarding is torture." The reason it took audacity is that he was at CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. He was promptly booed.
Instead of adhering to the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions, conservative ideological leaders and Republican leaders have decided to shoot for political expediency, stubbornness, and sadism.
I have been thinking about Obama's psychology for a long time
I start to think about writing it down and then something new needs to be integrated in my thinking. Perhaps just my procrastination tho.
But just for starters: Obama and Michelle are bourgeois in the Marxian sense. They are conservative thinkers and opt for security the way that class chooses. Lower class people are more risk takers. They are uneducated and unskilled and strive very hard to get those things so as to enter the middle class. Think Michelle. Obama is a bit different. His mother was truly a genius and an unconventional person, let alone an unconventional woman. Named Stanley after her father who himself was a risk taker, or might I say gambler, married to a woman who supported that behavior and enabled it by being a steady breadwinner at a bank. This bank connection is important as it allowed Ann to understand the workings of money at that level. She would finally go on to develop micro-lending for which a man got the Nobel Prize after her death. Perhaps had she lived she would have been a co-recipient, who knows. But she did devote her intellectual activities to that subject and did get a PhD in it before she died.
I started out fully agreeing with Rosenberg's recent posts, about inherent differences between Conservatives and Liberals.
But that agreement, and my first posts on the topic, occurred when I was half-awake last night. Today I have second thoughts, which I think we should all consider.
It is true that SOME Conservatives have a completely authoritarian mindset, and some are cynical and power-hungry predators. SOME of those may be that way, due a family tradition or culture that comes from the old landed aristocracy.
But, here is the problem. There are millions of Conservatives in America, and they have a range of traits. Some are further to the Right than others, and likewise each one will vary in the degree of authoritarian ideology, degree of cynicism, and so on.
I think that it would be "naive and dangerous" to believe that we can negotiate in good faith with men like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others that are hopelessly far to the right. The only way of dealing with those far-right fanatics is to remove them from power (vote the politicians out of office, and bring down the approval ratings and audience size of far-right media figures).
But in the long run, we will be most successful if we can convert the Joe-the-Plumber types, and show them that our policies are best. And even if there are millions of Joe-the-Plumber types that have been brainwashed by the Right for so long that they will never see the truth, we can build a media machine to rival that of Limbaugh and Murdoch, so that the children of all the Joe-the-Plumber types will embrace Progressive politics.
If each of us begins to belive that every Republican is actually a ruthless Fascist, we will lose the ability to reach out to, and recruit, Joe-the-Plumbers. And likewise, when we talk about Republicans and Conservatives, we will speak about them in terms of stereotypes.
I will be a lifelong, die-hard opponent of Social Darwinsim and of theocracy. But even though I need to recognize that many of my opponents may be ruthless and cynical liars, I will constantly remind myself not to take a "guilty until proven innocent" view of my conservative opponents.
In the course of my life I have learned to be very careful when I'm drawn to use that terminology---after all, I have lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, and even the election of Reagan himself, among other remarkable and shocking developments.
However, I can't escape the conclusion that we currently face the most severe and numerous set of crises ever. There is a real chance the human race, as we know it, won't survive until 2100. Is that a probability, maybe, most likely, but certainly, a real possibility.
We, the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, started the first eight years of this deciding century, with an unbelievable dumb ass as our leader. Who would have predicted that he'd be as ineffective and harmful as he was? Very few. But, we've just about run out of room for surprises----our chances for survival increase substantially with predictability.
Thus, in an effort to both predict and control the future let me offer the following: if Obama (liberalism) should fail in this country then there will probably be a return to power of the hard-core conservatives. And we have no time at all for 4 or 8 more years of garbage.
I am fully aware that earnest political differences are as old as the ages but, just when we can't tolerate it, and can't afford it, we are faced with what I will call the "absurdists". I won't dwell on it here, but what exactly is Sarah Palin? I follow current events and political developments quite closely and the truth is that I didn't see a scintilla of evidence that she knows anything. And yet she is being hailed by many as the future of the Republican Party. She is popular. Other possible "leaders" of the right include Huckebee of Arkansas (certainly a potential member of the American Taliban, if we had one, or maybe we do), Romney (who will clearly say anything at anytime and comb his hair, to try to get elected), and Jindal (somone who would rather watch his fellow Louisiana citizens suffer with no income than to risk his own personal political outlook): a real "leader" at a time that the situation mandates just that. Can you imagine if McCain had won? What would that old, stupid man be doing now? Continuing the exercise of fairy tales over science? Or is Limbaugh their "leader", a rascist, opiate-addicted, fat and filthy, blowhard? I won't even mention Guiliani and Fred Thompson. Better to leave it unsaid.
They have no real leader, and yet we must be led. I never would have imagined that we'd yearn for the days of the Rockefellars or their ilk, the so-called Liberal Republican who, although they were clearly wrong and misquided, at least appeared to be sincerely intellectual in their approach.
Yes, a relapse to the control of today's "conservative" is to rejoin a doctrine of sheer stupidity, of fable over science, of bigotry over real equality, of greed over generosity, and, yes, of pure hard-core capitalism over shared, spread the risk and reward, socialism. We can't afford to go there, to go back, to choose ignorance over intelligence. If we do, we will lose and be destroyed for sure.
So, out of necessity, Obama must be made to succeed. He's there now, he is president, and he must succeed. There is no choice if we are to survive as a species. And the more that one hears talk of the "stimulus" as not being large enough, and of the banks really "owning" Obama, etc., the more unlikely it appears that he is on target on his own to succeed.
Therefore, logic dictates only one possible solution: activism, with a real sense of urgency, rarely achieved before in America. Yes, this is life and death. It's up to the people. The time is now!!
Out of general fondness, the Washington press corps (which is not just a phrase but a definable community of people) has for almost a decade graded John McCain on a curve, especially in the last eighteen months when he's slipped perceptibly. Now, in response to the bludgeoning and campaign of falsehoods his campaign has unleashed over the last ten days, a number of his longtime admirers in the punditocracy have written articles either claiming that they'd misjudged the man or lamenting his betrayal of his better self.
So my question is, do they and the top editors who with them define the tone of coverage, keep grading McCain on the curve that has so aided him over the last year?
The answer, of course, is "Yes, almost certainly, unless a great deal more pressure is brought to bear. But it is an encouraging sign that we've seen any crack at all in the McCain facade. Josh does a good job of succinctly defining two different major McCain flaws, but doesn't really probe into why the press won't seriously discuss them, or what that means for our country. So I'm going to take up where he leaves off. My argument is simple: this is all quite symptomatic of an aristocratic mindset, much like that which gripped Europe at the time of the American Revolution.
A piece in the Sunday New York Times reports that conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are engaged in hot internal discussions about self-transformation. With support for a conservative president and a conservative Republican party at all-time lows, the Times reports, "policy cooks have returned to the kitchen to whip up a menu of new solutions for conservatives disaffected with the party." Some, like A.E.I. fellow and Bush alum David Frum, are even taking a fresh look at conservative heresies, like the idea that it's in all of our interest to offer people in prison education, mentoring, and support for their children.
Those of us in the progressive ideas sector could also benefit from some self reflection. Few if any transformative progressive ideas emerged from the crowded, marathon primary season, and few are on display in the current debate. And that's especially true when it comes to the concerns of the voters who are bringing the most progressive energy to the race: new African-American, Latino, and young voters. Those voters are struggling with broken systems of education, health care, credit, immigration, housing, and criminal justice, among others. And they are ready for a reinvented, positive role for the public structures that expand opportunity.
Progressive think tanks and advocacy groups have to step up to that challenge. For decades, we've been seeking incremental change and, more often, fighting off harmful proposals. As the Bill Clinton years proved, that dynamic won't magically change just because a more left-leaning Administration or Congress is in office. It will be up to us, and to the new generation of organizers, activists, bloggers, and thinkers, to bring the big ideas and to push them forward in a form and language that resonates with everyday Americans.
While holding tight to our values, we'll need to reexamine some core assumptions. And, perhaps most importantly, we'll have to really listen to the hopes, dreams and concerns of our nation's diverse communities--not just through polls and focus groups, but through tough and honest conversations and the interactive power of Web 2.0. Now is the time to ask ourselves some tough questions, and to change what we do in response.
To organize hatred of something, you need to give it a label. For the political right, the label for what they organize against has, for the last 30 years, been "liberal." What should the political left call its enemy? "Conservative" appears to be emerging as the word of choice. But is it the right choice?
A word can, of course, be turned into a pejorative simply be saying it with a sneer in the voice. If a man with a yarmulke is walking down the street and someone yells from a passing car, "Jew," it is fairly safe to say that the motivation for the shout was not simply a predilection for publicly identifying the religion of pedestrians. Despite thousands of years of such unfortunate incidents, however, unlike liberals, Jews have not shied away from the label. There is nothing intrinsically bad connoted in the word "Jew." A Jew is a Jew and that's either a bad thing, a good thing, or a neutral thing depending on a person's biases (or lack there of). Running from the label would be running from who one is.
Other labels, however, have intrinsic positive or negative connotations. There is a reason we see automobile manufacturors name their cars "Achieva," "Integra," "Trailblazer," "Vibe" and even "Testarossa." Who would drive a "Failura," "Impotencia" or "Fraudblazer?" I once knew someone whose first and middle names were "Joseph" and "Stalin." He didn't make much use of his middle name. In the political realm, Gary Hartpence became Gary Hart.
A third category of labels are those that lack intrinsic meaning but which are basically made-up words intended to be insults. "Yankee," "Redneck," "Mormon" and "Quaker" come to mind. The pattern with these examples is that the recipients de-fang them by adopting them for themselves. Nifty trick if you can stomach it.
But what about "conservative?" I once sat next to a Democratic legislator from South Dakota on an airplane as we both headed home from the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures. We got into a conversation and at one point he said "I'm a Democrat and a conservative." This was a man who favored expanding government programs to address societal problems, raising taxes progressively, boosting the minimum wage and opposed discrimination by race, sex or sexual preference. We didn't go through the entire litany of issues, so I don't know if he passed every liberal litmus test. But it was pretty evident to me that he didn't meet any definition of a political conservative that I would use. What he meant by "conservative" was more personal. He thought that people should behave morally (by traditional standards), be honorable, restrained and responsible. He believed that children ought to be taught values, that you should honor your debts and not live extravagantly or drink to excess. He didn't seem evangelical about this code of conduct but, in his eyes, the fact that he lived by it made him a "conservative." For someone like him, using the word "conservative" as a pejorative for political views wouldn't make sense.
"Liberal," of course, has its own virtuous connotations--generous and open-minded, for example. But, as David Kusnet (as insightful a man as there is on political rhetoric) recently pointed out to me, more people value the personal characteristics associated with "conservative" than those associated with "liberal." "Liberal" in the personal context, even before it acquired the negative political meaning, had come to mean something much closer to "libertine" than "generous." Leading a "liberal" lifestyle evokes free-spending, wife-swapping and drug use more than generosity as the hat is passed in church or a willingness to listen. It's Vegas, Hollywood and Manhattan, not the suburbs, exurbs, church-goers, Peoria, Knoxville or Fargo. "Respectable" citizens (and voters) live conservative lives. When the right picked their label for the left they had more to work with in "liberal" than the left has to work with in "conservative." "Liberal" started closer to "Impotencia" or "Fraudblazer."
That doesn't mean "conservative" can't become a pejorative. It helps that right now Republicans themselves are using it to describe the more extreme elements of their political party. Nevertheless, they are embracing it. Beat them up enough, connect it to all the bad things that the right is doing, and it may become a bad word. But the baggage it comes with is positive not negative. I'm not sure it becomes any more pejorative than yelling "Jew" at a man in a yarmulke. It may be used derisively, but it's nothing to be ashamed of. And that makes me doubt that we'll get as far with "conservative" as the right did with "liberal." How about "reactionary," "extreme right" or "regressives?" Words that marginalize from the start. Any other ideas?
....The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives....
"People see him as a centrist. They don't see him as a conservative," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
"In fact, they put him pretty close to themselves, in terms of ideology, and put President Bush way to the right of themselves," Kohut said.
In a national Pew survey earlier this year, voters placed McCain in the middle, where they placed themselves, when asked to judge the ideology of Bush and the presidential candidates. They placed Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama far to the left.
And Sam L followed up:
It's great
And because the full title shows up in the google headline, I think it would be a prime target for the Google Bombing campaign.
Speaking of which, when is that going to get into full swing, if this is our opportunity to define McCain? I sure thought it would be up and running a while ago.
I think Sam is absolutely right--and his comment is right in tune with the spirit of Mike's diary. But maybe there's an even better candidate out there. If so, we need to find it. Either way, it seems to me that the time to google-bomb is now.
Matt Stoller pointed out that Obama is conservative, and I thought I'd highlight exactly how conservative Obama really is, and really let my frustrations out about the Repub Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
STATE BLOGS
