Open Left - conventional wisdom

Veepstakes - Why not Bonior?

Englishlefty — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:03:58 GMT

The Democrats have plenty of strong VP picks this cycle. Amongst those who get a lot of blogosphere attention I'm particularly partial to Sherrod Brown, Brian Schweitzer, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Kathleen Sebelius and Bill Richardson.

Nevertheless, the blogosphere doesn't make the decision. And we have less influence than the media. The conventional wisdom in the media is that Obama needs to pick a moderate elder statesman with defence and foreign policy credentials. A lot of people seem to be backing Sam Nunn.

This would be a truly appalling choice. He's been good on nuclear non-proliferation issues and is no doubt a dab hand at negotiating with banana republic despots, but he's terrible on economic issues and routinely favoured regressive social policies.

He supported the Iraq war and he mulled an independent run this year. The only saving grace is that he's too old to run as Obama's successor.

Thankfully such a choice appears unlikely at present. Obama's decision to interview Patty Murray suggests that he's not fooled by the beltway consensus that Unity 08 was a great idea.

Nevertheless, there's still an outside chance that Nunn, or similar wastes of space like former Indiana congressmen Lee Hamilton and Tim Roemer. And even if that doesn't happen, this kind of media discourse pushes the Overton window leftward, so figures like Feingold are not perceived as remotely plausible candidates.

To that end, I have a solution: David Bonior.
David Bonior was a Democratic representative from Michigan for more than two decades and was the Whip of the Democratic Caucus from 1991. In 2002 Republican redistricting divided up his district, so he ran for Governor instead, losing in the primary to Granholm. This cycle he was John Edwards' campaign manager and has since become a forceful advocate for Barack Obama.

He's got close ties to labour and has been an opponent of all manner of free trade agreements. He'd probably be able to bring Michigan out of McCain's reach and his background would be helpful in the Rust Belt and parts of Appalachia.

I won't pretend he's a perfect candidate. His base is white union members, which is not a demographic Obama has problems with, and it's far from certain he could also help in non-union households. Also, he's pro-life.

Yes, this is a major problem. Ordinarily, I'd say it disqualifies him. Except he's not going to succeed Obama, the judges he'd name would be economic populists more than they'd be pro-lifers and, most importantly of all, we're not trying to make him get the nod.

I don't think David Bonior should be VP. We have a lot of good candidates already and we should pick someone who can carry on after Obama. But putting him forward as an acceptable elder statesman is the best counter to Nunn. If change must be balanced with experience, let's have someone on the side of the working man. Let's have an opponent of the Iraq war. Let's stop pretending that sitting on Intelligence and Defence committees automatically makes you an expert on national security.

Why not David Bonior? There are good reasons why not, but all of them should move the narrative in a more progressive direction.

Where's Obama? Questioning v Reinforcing [Foreign Policy] CW #3 (Political Duality of Rep v Dem 6c)

Paul Rosenberg — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:38:54 GMT

This diary combines two streams of thought. One comes from Chris's diary yesterday, "The Mutual Distrust Of Insider and Outside Rebellions", dealing with Obama's support among the foreign policy rank and file, the other comes from my ongoing series, "The Political Duality of Rep v. Dem" and its current sub-series "Questioning vs. Reinforcing Conventional Wisdom." I've already posted a diary ("The Elite/DFH Progressive Foreign Policy Split") more directly oriented to following up on Chris's discussion. This one seeks to draw on both streams.

I'm in basic agreement with Chris's view:

for the rank and file of professional, progressive foreign policy types who were opposed to the Iraq war from the start, the Obama campaign is the equivalent of the 2002 Nancy Pelosi leadership, 2003 Howard Dean presidential, and 2006 Ned Lamont Senate campaigns were for much of the activist rank and file. However, while this rebellion is analogous to those earlier rebellions of an anti-war rank and file against a pro-leadership, the cultural gap between wonks and hacks, between insiders and outsiders, and between professionals and the grassroots have prevented it from gaining the same traction as those earlier campaigns.

There is, however, something more that's missing. Quite simply, Obama is missing a counter-hegemonic position that challenges the "war on terror" narrative. He is not the leader here. Edwards was the leader in challenging the narrative frame, and Richardson was the leader in making a decisive commitment to withdraw from Iraq. This is not a minor matter. While the "war on terror" is a disastrous policy, one that does much more to help our enemies than ourselves, Democrats cannot run successfully against it without have an alternative vision-which they do not yet have. They have alternative strategies, but this is not the same thing.

On the flip, I go through a rapid-fire review of some examples in recent history of missed opportunities for challenging foreign policy hegemony at the level of vision, in order to give a better sense of what the missing elements might look like, and thus, what is needed.
Pre-9/11: Breaking New Ground On Four Fronts

In this section, I want to address four challenges to foreign policy orthodoxy as it existed in the 1990s. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, merely an illustrative one.

Jihad vs. McWorld--Benjamin Barber's Challenge to Neoliberalism's Impoverished Vision

In the afternath of the Cold War, the ideology of neoliberalism-basically a return to pre-Depression laissez-faire on a global scale-became virtually unchallenged in official circles. Both Clinton in America and Blair in Britain cut off their parties' populist left wings, and marketed themselves as better than their rightwing opponents at running the world for business interests. While the blinder sort of true believers no longer saw any alternatives left on the playing field (The End of History), the more perceptive sorts did see an opposition to neoliberalism, in the form of religious and ethinc/nationalist tribalism seeking to reclaim and rebuild lost identitites. In 1995, political philosopher Benjamin Barber wrote a highly insightful critique, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World, [1992 Atlantic article of the same name here] in which he argued that neoliberal globalization (McWorld) and its tribal ethno-religious opponents (Jihad) are actually mutually reinforcing in many respects, and both are hostile to democracy generally, and, more specifically, the regulatory/social democratic tradition that saved the West in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. Barber's analysis was a classic example of Shawn Rosenberg's systematic thinking (analogous with Kegan's Level 4) with multiple causes and effects, including circular causation.

Misreading The Public--PIPA's Challenge To The Myth of A New Isolationism

In 1999, I. M. Destler and Steven Kull's book, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism challenged the conventional wisdom that a new isolationism had arisen in the American public with the end of the Cold War. The publisher's website blurb explains:

Do American policymakers really know what the American public wants in U.S. foreign policy? Through extensive interviews with members of the policy community, the authors reveal a pervasive belief--especially in Congress--that, in the wake of the cold war, the public is showing a new isolationism: opposition to foreign aid, hostility to the United Nations, and aversion to contributing U.S. troops to peacekeeping operations. This view of the public has in turn had a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy.
However, through a comprehensive review of polling data, as well as focus groups, the authors show that all these beliefs about the public are myths. The public does complain that the United States is playing the role of dominant world leader more than it should, but this does not lead to a desire to withdraw. Instead people prefer to share responsibility with other nations, particularly through the UN.
The authors offer explanations of how such a misperception can occur and suggest ways to improve communication between the public and policymakers, including better presentation of polling data and more attention by practitioners to a wider public.

Kull has continued the work begun in this book as head of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA's website is unaccountably down at the time of my writing this. Google's latest cache was Nov. 3.), which has also done detailed polling on the nature of widespread misconceptions-such as beliefs that Iraq had WMDs, and that it was involved in 9/11-and how these relate to other factors (partisanship and media sources in the case of Iraq War myths). PIPA's work remains incredibly valuable as a reality-based counter to the conventional wisdom about what the American people want, as well as helping to identify how support for some policies is based on myths. PIPA has expanded its work into international polling as well.

The Frameworks Initiative

The Framework Institute describes itself thus:

The mission of the FrameWorks Institute is to advance the nonprofit sector's communications capacity by identifying, translating and modeling relevant scholarly research for framing the public discourse about social problems.
FrameWorks designs, commissions, manages and publishes communications research to prepare nonprofit organizations to expand their constituency base, to build public will, and to further public understanding of specific social issues. In addition to working closely with social policy experts familiar with the specific issue, its work is informed by a team of communications scholars and practitioners who are convened to discuss the research problem, and to work together in outlining potential strategies for advancing remedial policies.
FrameWorks also critiques, designs, conducts and evaluates communications campaigns on social issues. Its work is based on an approach called "strategic frame analysis," which has been developed in partnership with UCLA's Center for Communications and Community.
Susan Nall Bales established the FrameWorks Institute in 1999 and serves as its president. Funders of the Institute include: the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Advocacy Institute, Aspen Institute, W. T. Grant Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Benton Foundation, National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention, Center for Communications and Community at UCLA, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Caroline and Sigmund Schott Foundation, Washington Dental Service, and the National Institutes of Health.

The fact that you probably never heard of the Frameworks Institute is yet another indication of the fragmented nature of progressives as opposed to conservatives in the ongoing hegemonic war of position.

In 1999/2000, the Frameworks Institute did impressive work on its Global Interdependence Initiative (GII). In her Message Memo [PDF], Bales explained:

This memo reports on communications research conducted by a team of scholars and communications practitioners under the direction of the FrameWorks Institute for the Global Interdependence Initiative, a project of the Aspen Institute. Originally drafted in July 2000, it has been updated to include more recent research results.
The purpose of this Message Memo is to demonstrate ways to apply the research results to the overall task of reframing American attitudes about international engagement. Written from the perspective of a communication practitioner, its intent is to complement, not replace, the actual research reports. It is designed to answer the following questions:
How can the FrameWorks research help communications and policy staff better understand what they are up against in attempting to win public support for policies that recognize global interdependence?

How can this research help individual organizations become more strategic as they attempt to win support for specific positions?

How can it help foster collaborations across organizations, recognizing how cross-issue work enhances each organization?

How can this research help direct organizational energies to the most important issues and audiences?

How should this research inform our day-to-day communications about global issues?

I discussed two of the papers that came out of this initiative in my previous diary. Here, I want to focus primarily on the one that played a secondary role in that diary, George Lakoff's The Mind and The World: Changing the Very Idea of American Foreign Policy [PDF]

Lakoff begins his paper thus:

This study has a grand purpose: to begin a change in American foreign policy - not just in particular existing policies, but in the very idea of what foreign policy is. New realities have emerged since the end of the Cold War. But they have largely been ignored in American foreign policy. The Global Interdependence Initiative was designed to address those vital concerns. They are:
the environment,

human rights,

women's rights,

children's issues,

global public health and the spread of disease,

poverty and the powerlessness of the impoverished,

fair labor practices,

violent ethnic conflicts,

the rights of indigenous people to preserve their traditional ways of life, and crucially

an economics of sustainability that promotes quality of life rather than an unsustainable economic growth.
When one looks more closely, further details come into focus: the immense danger of global warming, the freedom of women to get an education and engage in public life, the connections between women's education and world population growth, AIDS in Africa, the spread of tuberculosis, the enslavement of children and child labor, and so on. These concerns might sound to some like a laundry list of unrelated topics. As we shall see, they are anything but that. They are a natural category of concerns - a category that has never been adequately described or named. Our job is to forge a general approach to foreign policy where each item on this list is a natural special case, a natural and obvious concern for American foreign policy conceptualized in a new way.

Lakoff goes on to say, "Our job is to change ideas, to imagine and implement a new way of thinking." He then describes two contrasting frameworks for thinking about foreign policy: Self-Interest Versus Moral Norms, and formulates the central argument:

The use of international moral norms as a basis for foreign policy is based on the following central idea:
It is better to live in a world governed by international moral norms than by the pursuit of self-interest and the potential for conflict that comes with self interest.
In ordinary communities, security comes not just from police power. Real security comes only when the community members follow moral norms. The US is the only superpower -- it has superior air power, enough bombs to destroy the world, and is wealthier than any other nation. But that does not make the US really secure. Its wealth and military security are threatened by the possibility of the collapse of markets elsewhere, and by events internal to other countries:
a. "rogue nations" harboring and supporting terrorists,
b. the sale of nuclear weapons and missiles to such nations,
c. large flows of immigrants fleeing oppression,
d. global warming and other dangers to the world ecology, and
e. looking bad in the "court of world opinion" (which could effect trade and hence wealth and military treaties).

It's important to realize that Lakoff is not simply repackaging the old distinction between foreign policy idealism and realism. He is saying that there is a very realistic and pragmatic reason to adopt a moral norms perspective-and conversely, that there is something wildly utopian in the notion that going it alone on the basis of narrow self-interest could ever produce the sort of future we desire.

It's an extremely enlightening paper, the main body of which is bookended by a look at the 2000 Bush/Gore foreign policy debate. Lakoff uses that debate as a high-profile example of how the failure to grasp the basic nature of the moral norms framework undermines the articulation of a coherent alternative to even the most cretinous forms of self-interest arguments. As Lakoff explains it, there was much more going on in this debate than other analysts-even very good ones-have previously suppossed. He is particularly astute in explaining how Gore became essentially tounge-tied in debating an opponent with virtually zero foreign policy understanding, but a firm grounding in the self-contained logic of his own position.

There's a lot more of great value in the papers produced for this initiative. But Lakoff's paper, together with the Aubrun/Grady paper ("10 Differences Between Public and Expert Understandings of International Affairs" [PDF]) I discussed in my previous diary, should be sufficient to drive home my two main point here: first, that ideas about how to break out of the foreign policy conventional wisdom were being actively pursued, with intelligence and creativity, and second, that this involved, in part, a challenge to elite narratives. Yet, those ideas were virtually unknown-and remain so today-among the larger progressive activist community, much less among the American people at large. The very people who were potentially the most receptive to these ideas remained unaware of their existence.

The other reserch papers generated for the Global Interdependence Initiative include:

"Framing Studies and Global Interdependence: An Introduction to the Research" by Susan Nall Bales
"The Myopic Neighbor: Local and National Network Television Coverage of the World' by Daniel R. Amundson, Linda S. Lichter and S. Robert Lichter
"Four Habits of International News Reporting" by Susan Moeller
"A Window on the Storm: How TV Global News Promotes a Cognitive 'Refuge Stance'" by Axel Aubrun, Ph.D. and Joseph Grady, Ph.D.

These and all the other research papers generated can be downloaded from the Global Interdependence Initiative (GII) webpage.

The Hart-Rudman Commission

The last pre-9/11 example I want to consider is the Hart-Rudman Commission (The United States Commission on National Security/21st Century). It was established by the Secretary of Defense in 1998 with a charter that explicitly called for it to:

1) conduct a comprehensive review of the early 21st Century global security environment, including likely trends and potential "wild cards"; 2) develop a national security strategy appropriate to that environment and the nation's character; and 3) recommend concomitant changes to the national security apparatus as necessary. This review should be advanced in the form of practical recommendations that the President of the United States, with the support of the Congress, could begin to implement in the Fiscal Year 2002 budget, if desired.

The Commission issued three reports, one for each of it's assigned tasks. The reports represented a bipartisan consensus of elite, insider experts. While their "expert" side leads them, in some respects, to an illuminating critical perspective, their "insider" side limits their ability to agree on ideas that are truly "outside the box."

The Hart-Rudman Commission issued three reports, reflecting a three-stage process, first looking at expectations of future changes, then developing a strategy in response, and finally recommending specific changes in organization and commitment of resources to implement the strategy "or, indeed, any strategy that would depart from the embedded routines of the last half-century," as explained in the last report.

It was not a namby-pamby report. Nor was it inherently obscure. As Harold Evans wrote in The Guardian, less than a month after 9/11:

They and their staffs went to great lengths to acquaint the press in advance with the gravity of their findings. "Hell," says Rudman, "it was the first comprehensive rethinking of national security since Harry Truman in 1947."
The conclusions were startling. "States, terrorists and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers."
Hart told me: "We got a terrific sense of the resentment building against the US as a bully which alarmed us." The report was a devastating in dictment of the "fragmented and inadequate" structures and strategies to prevent and then respond to the attacks the commissioners predicted on US cities. Hart specifically mentioned the lack of readiness to respond to "a weapon of mass destruction in a highrise building".

Yet, for all that the Commission failed to do one very fundamental thing: it failed to look back at the era before it, and assess the successes and failures that preceeded it, particularly the rethinking of national security under Truman that Rudman referred to, and the tragic failure of Vietnam, that was obviously-if not exactly clearly-connected to the framework developed under Truman. I would argue that the failure to look back critically at the era before was both an symptom and a cause of the Commission's essential timidity, despite its apparent boldness compared to the brain-dead thinking that has followed since.

The report offered recommendations for organizational change in five key areas:

ensuring the security of the American homeland;

recapitalizing America's strengths in science and education;

redesigning key institutions of the Executive Branch;

overhauling the U.S. government personnel system; and

reorganizing Congress's role in national security affairs.

Included under the first topic, the report stated:

The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine U.S. global leadership. In the face of this threat, our nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.
We therefore recommend the creation of a new independent National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security.

Unlike the Bush-created Daprtment of Homeland Security, Hart-Rudman's vision was both carefully-tailored and constitutionally conceived:

NHSA would be built upon the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the three organizations currently on the front line of border security-the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol-transferred to it. NHSA would not only protect American lives, but also assume responsibility for overseeing the protection of the nation's critical infrastructure, including information technology."
.... The legal foundation for the National Homeland Security Agency would rest firmly within the array of Constitutional guarantees for civil liberties....
The potentially catastrophic nature of homeland attacks necessitates our being prepared to use the tremendous resources of the Department of Defense (DoD). Therefore, the department needs to pay far more attention to this mission in the future. We recommend that a new office of Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security be created to oversee the various DoD activities and ensure that the necessary resources are made available.
New priorities also need to be set for the U.S. armed forces in light of the threat to the homeland. We urge, in particular, that the National Guard be given homeland security as a primary mission, as the U.S. Constitution itself ordains. The National Guard should be reorganized, trained, and equipped to undertake that mission."

Yet, for all this clear-sighted thinking and more-including recommendations for revitalizing science and technology education, and "doubling the federal research and development budget by 2010"-the report never pulled back to look at America from a world historical perspective like that of Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000. It never evaluated America as part of a world system, never abandoned the elite version of the assumptions of American exceptionalism, and never looked back to see what sorts of mistakes we had made the last time such a sweeping analysis had taken place.

Which is, precisely, what I want to do right now.

The Two Cold Wars: Kenan's and Nitze's

In a remarkable paper, "Kennan's Long Telegram and NSC-68: A Comparative Analysis," East European Quarterly, Vol. 31, no. 4, January 1998, Efstathios T. Fakiolas analyzed two key documents from the formative days of the Cold War. Kennan's Long Telegram, which first formulated a comprehensive picture of the Soviet threat, and laid the foundations for the doctrine of containment, and NSC-68, the national security directive primarily authored by Paul Nitze, which formed the blueprint for how the US fought the Cold War throughout most of its duration.

Fakiolas used the framework of foreign policy realism for his analysis, but he determined that the two documents employed significantly different models within that tradition. Although they seemed to many people to be kindred documents, Fakiolas uncovers striking differences. I'm going to do a separate diary delving deeper into his argument, but the bottom line for us now is this: Kennan's Long Telegram and Nitze's NSC-68 appear similar, they depend on different models of international relations within the same realist tradition.

Kennan relied on the "tectonic plates" model, in which there many other non-state actors, the world is not "zero-sum," and there is often opportunity for mutual cooperation. Nitze relied on the billiard ball model, which sees the international system as "composed solely of egoistic sovereign states interested in maximizing their relative power capabilities at the expense of others," and sees "world politics is a 'zero-sum' game in which national security conceived of in military and territorial terms is the one and only states' national objective."

As a result, Kennan favored a strategy of containment that emphasized strengthening the West socially, economically and culturally, addressing its flaws which the Soviets exposed. In contrast, Nitze ignored issues of the Wests internal flaws, and focused almost exclusively on military force to combat the Soviet Union.

It's my own observation, based on this analysis, that we fought Nitze's Cold War, but we won Kennan's. It was not, in the end, our military strength that defeated the Soviet Union, it was the appeal of our culture of openness and freedom. The history of Eastern European resistance movements, especially in Checkoslavakia and Poland, makes this abundantly clear. Through their influence on dissident culture, Frank Zappa and Lou Reed did more to win the Cold War than any division of tanks ever did-or even a wing of nuclear armed B-52 bombers.

Post 9/11: The "War On Terror" Response, And It's Invisible Alternative

9/11 was a terrible crime, but it was not an act of war. Simply put, al Qaeda was incapable of waging war against the US. But Bush and Cheney were simply too frightened-not to mention perversely inclined-to realize this. And so they gave al Qaeda exactly what it wanted-a dramatic over-reaction that made America seem exactly like al Qaeda's cartoonish propaganda said we were.

Within days of 9/11, Gallup International conducted a poll 35 countries on 5 continents. It gave people a choice between supporting military action or a legal response-extraditing the terrorists and putting them on trial.

Given this choice, only 54% of the American people supported military action, 30% supported extradition and trial, while 16% were undecided. (The US was one of just 3 countries where more people favored a military response-India and Isreal were the other two, both with spectacular records of failure based on doing exactly what they recommended we do.) During the same time, elite opinion was far more bloodthirsty and monolithic.

In the first three weeks after the attack, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran 46 op-eds that dealt with the issue of how to respond; they were overwhelmingly in favor of war, by a margin of 44 to 2 (32-2 in the Post, 11-0 in the Times) according to a analysis done by the media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). The two columns supporting non-military responses were both by guest writers. Thus, neither the Times nor the Post, both long assailed by conservatives as bastions of the "liberal media" had a single staff writer representing 46% of the population-much less the overwhelming majority of people around the world, except for Israel and India.

More than 6 years later, the failure of the war option is undeniable, and yet there is barely any discussion of a truly, fundamentally different approach-one that might actually have a chance of success. And this, quite realistically, is what we might reasonably expect from a candidate like Barack Obama, who tells us that our politics is broken, that we have to transcend outmoded ways of thinking, and that promises us "The Audacity of Hope." Looking back at the examples I've sited in this diary, we might expect a vision that

(1) Recognizes--ala Jihad Vs. McWorld-- that globalization without democratic regulation feeds terrorism, and talks about the need to create a more humane world order, in which people have the means to collectively control their own destinies.

(2) Appreciates==ala Misreading The Public-- the American people's desire to engage the world multilaterally, takes responsibility to inform them accurately, and takes seriously what they have to say about foreign policy, rather than relying on myths.

(3) Embraces and enthusiastically articulates the moral norms approach to foreign policy, and lays out a thematically unified approach that places the struggle against global terrorism in a larger context together with addressing other vital concerns including:

the environment,
human rights,
women's rights,
children's issues,
global public health and the spread of disease,
poverty and the powerlessness of the impoverished,
fair labor practices,
violent ethnic conflicts,
the rights of indigenous people to preserve their traditional ways of life, and crucially
an economics of sustainability that promotes quality of life rather than an unsustainable economic growth.

(4) Has the courage to re-examine the Cold War, and learn from our mistakes last time to avoid repeating them this time.

(5) Recognizes that while our enemy is far too weak to defeat us militarily, it can illuminate flaws in our own system, and that the best way to combat it is to do our best to eliminate those flaws, and strengthen the political, cultural and social virtues that are our greatest strength.

In short, what we want in the way of an alternative progressive foreign policy vision is one that expresses America's core values, and continues the struggle to overcome her flaws, instead of one that contradicts the very core of our being as a nation.

Who's Your Daddy??? Questioning vs. Reinforcing CW #2 (The Political Duality of Rep v. Dem Pt 6b)

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:33:06 GMT

In my last diary, I drew a distinction between "cultural hegemony" and "conventional wisdom", with reference to how they function in terms of Kegan's model of cognitive development:

Conventional wisdom can be thought of as the rationalization of specifc roles and relationsihps [things which define the Level 3 self], while hegemony is the rationalization of the entire level three subject of realm-the totality of all roles and relationships. The way that one moves from Level 3 to Level 4 is not by one big jump, but by gradually becoming aware of of specific roles and relationships-at first, only in specific situations, then gradually more generally, and finally as part of a larger structure that eventually encompasses all of Level 3-at which time you have evolved to full Level 4 consciousenss.

I'm now going to turn my attention to something that has a bit of the character of both--that is, the myth of the GOP as the "Daddy Party." I'm going to start with the more concrete, specific aspects of this, which are more in the way of conventional wisdom--that the GOP is the party of "real men," while the Democrats have nothing but "girly-men."

In one sense, this is a very broad notion, more on the order of hegemony. But when you see it specifically invoked, enacted or represented in various concrete instances, it is much more like conventional wisdom. Certainly, the idea that Bush--who ducked out on his National Guard service--was more of a man and more of a warrior than Kerry, who had gone to war and won a number of medals, was a very concrete piece of conventional wisdom.

Because the myth of the "Daddy Party" has this dual character, it is particularly useful to take on. What's more, it's very much in the news lately, with heightened attention to Hillary Clinton's gender, Obama's play to black homophobia, and increased attention to the military policy, Iraq and the "war on terror." I'm going to touch on some of these issues in future diaries, but in this diary, I want to focus specifically on the notion of "real men," and just how phony the Republicans are.
The Chickenhawk Giveaway

Perhaps the most obvious giveaway that Republicans aren't really the "daddy party" is the almost total absence of military experience in their warmongering core. It's not that war makes you a man, though this is a myth that Republicans obviously embrace. Rather, it's that using war to define one's manhood, and having other people do it for you is about as far away from real manhood as one could possibly get. The term "chickenhawk" virtually exploded on the internet after 9/11 in response to the realworld explosion of chickenhawk fever, but the term goes back at least to the 1980s. In particular, Wikipedia notes:

A notable example of this response [to conservative critics of Clinton in the 1992 campaign] was liberal satirist Al Franken's 1996 book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, which included a chapter called "Operation Chickenhawk." The story details the exploits of a fictional Vietnam War squad made up of Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Phil Gramm, Clarence Thomas, and George Will-all conservative Republicans who were of draft age during the Vietnam era yet did not serve in the conflict. In the story, the cowardly and incompetent squad bungles a surprise attack on a North Vietnamese Army company and ultimately extricates itself from the battle by fragging its gung-ho lieutenant, Oliver North (a conservative Republican veteran of the war).

The chickenhawk syndrome is hardly the only expression of disordered masculinity on the right, however. It's just one of the shinnier facets. To really grasp what's going on, we have to pass...

Beyond The Valley of the Chickenhawks

The other side of war and fear of war is fear of peace. Fear of being still with oneself. This is particular terrifying for men, Stephen Ducat argues in his book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity. It's a fascinating book, full of insight, but the essence of what's needed for my argument here was laid out in his answers to the first two questions in an Alternet interview :

What is the central thesis of your book?
First let me throw out the term "femiphobia" as a way of naming this anxiety. Femiphobia is the male fear of being feminine. The underlying premise of my book is that the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This imperative to be repudiate everything feminine - whether it's external or internal - is played out as much in politics as in personal life.
In politics - where there is an enormous potential for personal gain or ruin - what this leads to is a concerted effort on the part of candidates to disavow the feminine in themselves, and to project it on to their opponents.
That was the central function of the Republican National Convention. Once you got past the moderate sweet talk, the purpose was essentially to make John Kerry their woman. There were a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle code words in this attempt to feminize him. This is a strategy that Republicans have long employed. They've just been more brazen about it lately.
In the book, you argue that this anxiety about the feminine defines not just American politics but has been a part of the history of Western culture.
The problem with our current notion of masculinity is that it's a definition of manhood based on domination. The problem with definition of manhood based on domination is that domination can never be a permanent condition. It's a relational state - it is dependent on having somebody in the subordinate position, which means that you may be manly today, but you're not going to be manly tomorrow, unless you've got somebody to push around and control. This definition goes back to the ancient Greeks, and it makes masculinity a precarious and brittle achievement - which has to be constantly asserted. It has to be proven over and over again. It is the ultimate Sisyphean pursuit.
It has characterized politics going all the way back to the ancient Greeks. They had their own version of the "wimp factor." The worst thing an ancient Greek politician could be accused of is being a binoumenos, which loosely translated means "fucked male." Manhood for the ancient Greeks - just as it is for us - was a difficult and transient achievement. It wasn't the gender that you had sex with that determined your masculinity, but what position you occupied in a relationship of domination. If you were penetrated, you were rendered essentially a woman. If you were the penetrator, then you were the man. In a way, we still hold that definition.

The larger context for this, I would argue, is the emegence of agricultural societies with large surpluses, which corresponds with the emergence of the first signs of war in human pre-history. As William Ury argues in Getting to Peace, prior to that our competitive urges were generally trumped by our cooperative side. It was only with the development of large, hierarchical social structures that the balance tipped the other way. Those who dominate are able to extort and exploit the fruits of continued cooperative behavior of the rest of society, and thus there is an extreme premium on domineering behavior.

However, Ury argues that the pendulum is swinging back toawrd cooperation, and has been doing so for several centuries now-primarily due to the increased role of knowledge and information since the invention of the printing press, since this shifts us toward a cooperative logic, in which advances benefitting the large mass of society tend to predominate over those benefitting only the few. This is anything but a smooth or easy transition, but Ury argues persuasively that it is well under way, and the major peacefully transitions of recent decades-most notably, the end of the Cold War, and the abolition of apartheid in South Africa-are a good indication that non-violent conflict resolution has indeed come a long way in a seemingly very short time.

But if the flow of information in general is a transforming force moving us in the direction of greater cooperation, and undermining the logic of domination, there is no guarantee that this must always be the case. Indeed, hierarchical control of information is all the more understandible as a process of social control when we see it as a move directly countering the natural logic of information. And this offers yet another perspective on the significance of hegemony, conventional and the material structures (tv networks, telecom companies, etc.) that help sustain them.

It's important to note that there is a general congruence of many different sense of "penetration." It's not just a physical sexual act. The power to control and dominate is intimately related to means of penetration-insight into how things work is necessary to alter or control them. Physical penetration into the inner workings is usually necessary to bring this about. Physical invasion of another's space is needed to establish dominance and control. And so forth.

Penetration and Analysis

It's worth noting that Bush Sr. was famously fearful of being analyzed, of efforts to penetrate his thinking: "don't put me on the couch," he said on more than one occassion. Bush Jr. is similarly fearful, but much more aggressive in his manner of resistence. When his oppositon to fully funding SCHIP as Governor of Texas was briefly brought up during the 2000 campaign, he struck back hard, saying that no one but God could judge what was in his heart.

This is part of a more general resistence to analysis that pervades the conservative movement, and with it the Republican Party as well. Several different factors converege here, actually, above and beyond the underlying femiphobic fear of being penetrated.. Most significantly (1) the disbelief in analysis as a source of useful knowledge is deep-seated on the right (science [bad] asks questions, religion [good] gives answers), (2) analysis is strongly associated with their enemies on the left, (3) analysis for the purpose of maintaining power and dominance is the exception, and there is a strong desire to control such analysis as thoroughly as possible.

All this serves to reinforce the tendency on the right to develop simple messages and repeat them ad nauseum, which in turn greatly strengthens their hegemonic discourse. They repeat endlessly that they are the Christian Right, and everyone believes them-despite the fact that there is very little about them that Jesus would recognize as his own teachings. Similarly, the entire ediface of the "daddy party" is built on repetetive insistence, rather than reality. Republicans are not particularly competent at any of the male-gendered tasks of government. They're not great leaders in war, their economc record pales comparted to that of Democrats, and they're generally quite hostile to science. Yet, they repeatedly insist on their daddy status, and they get away with it because of a lack of penetrating analysis, and a public discourse to match.

Of course, this is changing on the internet, where discourse in general is far more penetrating, where feedback loops are everywhere and feedback times are short. It's our job to drive that change further.

On the other hand, liberals and Democrats are subject to constant criticism, constant "penetrating" analysis in the sense of analysis intended to poke holes in what Democrats affirm. It matters not whether what is said is true or not, the point is to attack and dominate. I will return to these points in future diaries. But for now it's simply worth noting that when someone like Barack Obama comes along and echoes rightwing criticism of Democrats-attacking unnamed secular liberals as hostile to religion, for example-they are aligning with a truly vast and sweeping dynamic, the full extent of which they almost certainly have no idea. It would be quite different if left and right played by the same rules, but the difference in the rules is central to the difference between right and left.

The GOP/Authoritarian Daddy Thing

Last August, Sara at Orcimus wrote a very insightful diary that's highly relevant here, Leering Old Men: Another Take. She was responding to two other diaries, one by Digby, and the other by Orcinus founder David Neiwert. The diary begins:

As Dave discusses in a post below, Digby thinks the conservatives are a bunch of whining babies who can't take a loss. Dave responds with the observation they're leering old men who can't get it up any more. Both views suggest that our national corps of conservative talking heads, taken as a group, has a very warped relationship with masculinity. But I've got a third take on it, which sort of takes in both their arguments and then goes a little deeper.
Over the years, my online ex-fundie community has spent a lot of time puzzling over the ways in which fundamentalism arrests the moral, social, emotional, intellectual, and sexual development of anyone who embraces it. (And I could argue that, inasmuch as fundamentalism is authoritarian religion, this observation may well hold true for political and social authoritarians as well.) Specifically, we've come to a consensus that the belief system traps people somewhere around the age of five or six -- and keeps them there for as long as they continue to believe.
In fact, that naivete -- deceptively packaged as purity and innocence -- is one of the main things people are seeking when they're drawn into authoritarian systems.

What Sara is talking about here is Kegan's Stage 1. I haven't talked about it much because it doesn't figure much in the creation of political policy discourse. Authoritarian followers mostly just regurgitate what is feed to them, and this usually comes from Level 2 regressions from the Level 3 vantage point at which conservatives normally functioned before being subject to the stress of the modern world. However, this doesn't mean that this level isn't politically significant. Indeed, the name-calling that runs constantly throughout rightwing political discourse is deeply rooted in this level-as well as the even more primative Level 0, although that's beyond the scope of the present discussion. Remember that I said before that Level 2 is characterized by durable categories. Level 1 is not. It is much more fluid. And the struggle to maintain order is fierce indeed for those who should have outgrown this stage long ago.

Skipping a little, Sara continues:

Unfortunately, seeking this regression means giving up on quite a few of the most important attributes of adulthood. First, there's the intellectual sacrifice. There's a huge cognitive leap that occurs around the age of seven (it usually comes in right alongside reading fluency) that enables a far greater level of abstraction -- typically, at the expense of magical thinking, which drops off dramatically once kids learn to read. At this age, kids give up fantasy play and Santa Claus in favor of a more empirical approach to life, and more serious pursuits leading to the mastery of adult-world skills. Developmental psychologists call this leap "the age of reason."

Indeed, the transition to Level 2 has been recognized by Catholic and other moral teaching traditions for thousands of years, as was the even more widely recognized transition to Level 3 in the form of initiation rights that mark the transition to adulthood.

The whole diary is incredibly rich with insight, and it just won't do to quote the whole thing. But what comes next is really crucial, because Sara connects this regression with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA):

Right-wing authoritarian (RWA) followers have little use for reason; but are very invested in their fantasy lives. They take myth and metaphor absolutely literally, because interpreting them requires a level of abstraction they aren't comfortable with. In other words: they are voluntarily choosing to operate at the intellectual processing level of a first-grader.
They also have to give up on adult-level emotional functioning (which, as I mentioned, may be welcomed as something of a relief after adult life has blown up under you a few times). Authoritarian followers crave someone who will keep things ordered and safe, someone who will provide and protect and set firm rules and boundaries; someone all-powerful and all-knowing who can teach you right from wrong and keep the harsh parts of the world at bay. Someone, in short, who looks like Daddy looked when you were about five years old.
RWAs would far rather curl up in Daddy's lap -- even if it means abandoning reason and taking the occasional spanking -- than try to deal with the world by themselves, on adult terms. This is also why RWA family and community relationships (as Lakoff has explained) are necessarily hierarchical.

Oaky, okayu, I've got to stop quoting. Here's a little synopsis, instead. This regressed stage of development requires authorities setting the rules and enforcing them. But it's also at the threashold of oncoming control, it's the age at which kids spend a great deal of time and energy focused on rules. Sara then notes that this is also the age of "over-the-top behavior around masculine gender roles." (I got a Davy Crockett costume for Christmas at about this age, for example.) This is why, she notes, the male Kewl Kids are so gaga over Bush playing out these roles for them:

The fact that so many mainstream and conservative media guys are suckered by this posturing shows that they don't really have a clue about what a Real Man looks like -- though, somewhere deep down inside, they're pretty sure they don't qualify. That's why they're so easily wowed by men who can put on the costume and make it look good.

And now, the KEY point:

But they're even more easily cowed by men who can actually fill the boots. John Kerry. John McCain. Colin Powell. Bill Clinton. (You don't have to agree with their politics; but nobody can say these men haven't comfortably worn the full measure of male power and responsibility for some critical stretch of their lives.) Like little boys, the media guys are so awed by the outward forms of masculinity that they eagerly make a fetish out of them; but they also actively fear and resent men who display the authentic internal goods that make an honest-to-God man. These guys' very presence incites such a strong sense of personal inadequacy that the Boys On The Bus can only resort to attacking them in ways that are openly calculated to feminize them -- that is, to bring them down to their own level. He look French. He's whipped by his powerful wife. He's preoccupied with his hair. Translation: This guy has more balls and more maturity than we do -- and we need to take him down before everybody figures out how inadequate that makes us feel.

This is so profoundly important, that I just want to end my diary here. The bottom line of all the constant feminizing attacks on Democrats is that they are pre-emptive strikes meant to drive away examples of real male competence, which is endlessly threatening to the Versailles punditocracy and their rightwing masters.

I have only two quick points to add:

(1) This provides another angle on the point of this whole series. The dynamic that Sara is talking about is directly parallel to the way that the policy competence of liberalism operating at Level 4 drives conservatives into making pre-emptive strikes on "character," "loyalty," etc. Liberals and Democrats do not respond in kind partly because it just seems too incredibly juvenile to take seriously. And that's true. But it's not too juvenile to put a stop to.

(2) There is a general principle here worth naming, so that we can communicate it to others. When rightwingers and Versailles pundits who are gender insecure pre-emptively attack Democrats to feminize them (or attack Democratic women to both hyper-feminize and de-feminize them), we need to be very clear that they are talking about themselves. And so, we need to make a label for this.

My initial suggestion--just to get the ball rolling really--is "counter-talk," as in what they are talking about is directly counter to what is actually going on--specifically with them.

Linguistically the term is similar to "contradiction," which could be good or bad. But I'd be happy to have someone come up with a better word. The point is, it is so important that we need something to name it, to nail it down, and to begin holding people accountable with it in a much more economical way than we've been able to do up to now.

Questioning vs. Reinforcing Conventional Wisdom (The Political Duality of Rep v. Dem Pt 6a)

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:00:00 GMT

Last weekend, I did a couple of diaries about how Democrats could challenge the customary rules of the game without becoming "just like them." This was part of the longer series constrasting the policy ineptitude and political prowess of conservatives with the policy prowess and political ineptitude of liberals. I did this under the rubris of "'Breaking The Rules' To Fix The System." The first one used the example of Thoreau's civil disobedience (going to jail rather than helping to finance the Mexican-American War) as a touchstone, and considered how it might have been applied in response to the lawlessness of Bush v. Gore. The second one, looked at how impeachment could have been used to delegitimize Bush-and conservatism more generally-if removing Bush from office had been set aside from the beginning.

This weekend, I'm taking a doubly-related tack-talking about conventional wisdom. First, this is directly related to what I was suggesting should have been the primary purpose of impeachment proceeding, to delegitimate Bush and conservative rule. Second, I want to discuss how conventional wisdom functions as part of the Level 3 infrastructure that liberals and Democrats allow themselves to be trapped and defined by. The irony here is particularly deep, since the term "conventional wisdom" was originally coined by John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the great liberal public intellectuals of the last half of the 20th Century. He first recognized and articulated the concept, but over time it increasingly became a tool of conservative power. So we'll start with a brief look at some of Galbraith's ideas, and how they've been messed with, then we'll take a look at what it means today.
"Conventional Wisdom" and "Countervailing Power"

Galbraith was an iconoclast, a prominent Keynsian economist, author and social critic who served as a high-level administration official in the FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He wrote two of the most important books of the 1950s, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952) and The Affluent Society (1958). Although they had much else to say, I want to focus on just a few key points. First, as wikipedia notes:

In American Capitalism: The concept of countervailing power published in 1952, Galbraith outlined how the American economy in the future would be managed by a triumvirate of big business, big labor, and an activist government. Galbraith termed the reaction of lobby groups and unions "countervailing power." He contrasted this arrangement with the previous pre-depression era where big business had relatively free rein over the economy.

Second, in The Affluent Society he critiqued the assumptions of economic theory as being based in 19th Century societies still dominated by pervasive poverty. In contrast to the reality of post-WWII America, such assumptions constitute "conventional wisdom" that blinds practitioners to what is right in front of them-an impoverishment of the public sphere, even as the private sphere is increasingly affluent, persistent poverty which need not be, and the potential emergence of a ''new class'' of citizens able to pursue work they find inherently enjoyable. The things Galbraith wrote about in the still-staid late-1950s emerged explosively in the 1960s, as persistent poverty moved center stage in the political areana, an entire generation of college students from working-class backgrounds looked not just for middle-class careers, but for meangingful middle-class careers, starting with a meaningful college education, and environmental degredation sparked the modern environmental movement.

Yet, if these events proved Galbraith prophetic in criticizng the conventional wisdom of traditional economics, they also helped fuel a rightwing backlash that severely undermined the structure of counterveiling power he had written about in the early 1950s. The result, from the 1970s onward, was an accelerated return to the big-business dominance of the pre-Depression era, but with increased sophistication in the deliberate shaping of conventional wisdom-not just in the field of political theory, but across the full range of social, political economic and cultural issues. "Conventional wisdom" in this much broader, more deliberate sense merges with Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony

Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony

Wikipedia provides a good capsule introduction to Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony:

The analysis of hegemony (or "rule") was formulated by Antonio Gramsci to explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected, in industrialized Europe. Marx and his followers had advanced the theory that the rise of industrial capitalism would create a huge working class and cyclical economic recessions. These recessions and other contradictions of capitalism would lead the overwhelming masses of people, the workers, to develop organizations for self-defense, including labor unions and political parties. Further recessions and contradictions would then spark the working class to overthrow capitalism in a revolution, restructure the economic, political, and social institutions on rational socialist models, and begin the transition towards an eventual communist society. In Marxian terms, the dialectically changing economic base of society would determine the cultural and political superstructure. Although Marx and Engels had famously predicted this eschatological scenario in 1848, many decades later the workers of the industrialized core still had not carried out the mission.
Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make an anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs, workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.
Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a "war of position" and a "war of movement". The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of movement, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

Now, one doesn't have to be Marxist to appreciate Gramsci's analysis. Even if one takes the position that not everything Gramsci points to is really all that "false" a consiousness, there is certainly a significant element of truth when you have poor whites voting to send their jobs overseas in order to keep the blacks off welfare, so that America can be great again.

I want to suggest a more pluralistic recasting of Gramsci's analysis. First, I think that the concept of hegemony can apply generally to a division between those who are fundamentally authoritarian and hierarchical in their orientaiton vs. those who are fundamentally egalitarian and heterarchical. Second, I think the concept can be applied specifically to the project of movement conservatism mounted since 1964 Goldwater campaign, with nothing comparable on the other side. (That's our job!) Third, I think it can be applied to differing divisions in other societies, which generally have an economic component to them, but that cannot be mechanistically pre-determined on the basis of simple class identity.

Hegemony and Health Care

In particular, one example of how hegemony works is highlighted by the recent Rockridge analysis on health care, which talks in terms of three different models: conservative (Strict Father), liberal/progressive (Nurturant Parent) and neo-liberal (nurturant values devaluated in favor of an efficient system, overly prone to compromise). I diared about it, quoting at length about all three here. Here, I just recall the quick-and-dirty essence of the "third way":

What we term "neoliberal" thought shares progressive values and the ethic of care. At the same time, it has an Enlightenment-based faith in universal rationality as logical, unemotional, and serving human interests. To argue on the basis of care would be emotional and hence irrational and weak. To argue on the basis of interests is seen as rational and strong. The neoliberal strategy is to serve the ethics of care by serving the economic and other material interests of demographic groups.

The problem with this approach, which, in the field of healthcare (as in many others) often leads primarily to "technocratic changes to existing markets" is what might be called "backwards mission creep":

The neoliberal emphasis on "systems" often causes a loss of focus upon the progressive morality that lies beneath their political and policy solutions. Specific references to progressive values disappear from their messages. So do references to the government functions of protection and empowerment. Neoliberals may begin with the morality of empathy and responsibility for oneself and others, but their faith and focus soon shifts to the abstract, to complicated systems and intricate public/private solutions. Empathy, the moral force that holds together our democracy and the engine of community, is reduced to sentimentality and shunted aside.

Thus, what Lakoff and co-authors Eric Haas, Glenn W. Smith [who posts here occassionally] and Scott Parkinson are pointing to is, in a very real sense, one of the mechanisms by which the hegemony of the market logic swallows up the progressive/egalitarian ethic of care.

Hegemony More Generally-And "Conventional Wisdom" More Narrowly

A more general example of hegemony along these same lines is the faith in markets and privatization, no matter how many times they fail-the Enron-engendered California energy crisis, Haliburton and Blackwater in Iraq, the failed post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans, etc., etc., etc. Likewise, the notion that terrorism must be fought in a war-as opposed, say, to being cured, like a disease-is a product of deep and broadly-held hegemonic thinking.

If we want to make progress in taking on these monolithic ideological behemoths, it helps to be able to break them down into smaller pieces, and I suggest that conceptually this makes it useful to preserve a distinction between "hegemony" and "conventional wisdom"-at least in how we use the terms. "Conventional wisdom" is a good term to use for a belief, assumption, perception, factoid or narrative construct that can readily be named and recognized, and therefore is ripe for being challenged, contradicted, undermined or refuted.

The conventional wisdom that America has "the best health care system in the world" clearly falls into this later category-although it didn't not so long ago. On the other hand, the larger notion of "private=good/public=bad" is more in the realm of hegemony. That's why it's so important to win fights by challenging conventional wisdom-because once people have the lived experience of how a public health care system can work so much better, then they have an expanded frame of reference that moves what was hegemonic much closer to the realm of merely being "conventional wisdom."

Or, in the terms I have used earlier in this series, it's part of the process of moving what was context or subject into the position of being content or object. Let's refer to a specific slice of Kegan's hierarchy of developmental levels:

Kegan's Subject/Object Schema of Cognitive Development (Abbrevieated)
Stage	We Are: Subject (structure of knowing)	We Have: Object (content of knowing)	Underlying Structure
3 Traditionalism	Abstractions MUTUALITY/ INTERPERSONALISM Relationship Inner states	Concrete POINT OF VIEW Enduring Dispositions Needs, Peferences
4 Modernism	Abstract Systems INSTITUTION Relationship-Regulating Forms Self-authorship	Abstractions MUTUALITY/ INTERPERSONALISM Relationship Inner states Subjectivity Self-consciousness

Conventional wisdom can be thought of as the rationalization of specifc roles and relationsihps, while hegemony is the rationalization of the entire level three subject of realm-the totality of all roles and relationships. The way that one moves from Level 3 to Level 4 is not by one big jump, but by gradually becoming aware of of specific roles and relationships-at first, only in specific situations, then gradually more generally, and finally as part of a larger structure that eventually encompasses all of Level 3-at which time you have evolved to full Level 4 consciousenss.

Now, with this distinction in mind, let's consider the role of the punditocracy. They are, in general, reinforcers and gatekeepers of conventional wisdom. As such, they can either function at Level 3 or Level 4: Level 3 if they are utterly clueless about what they are doing, Level 4 if they are perfectly aware. At Level 3, they could not possibly do otherwise. But a Level 4 pundit could just as easily (cognitively, if not emotionally) challenge conventional wisdom as reiterate and reinforce it.

This brings us squarely to the issue of Democratic Party leadership-be it at the local, state or national level. The role of political leadership is not just to get things done, but to change the nature of the possible, so that new things can get done that were not possible before. In other words, the job of political leadership is to challenge hegemony by tactically and strategically altering conventional wisdom. All too often, however, we see political leadership doing exactly the opposite-reinforcing hegemony by reflexively (or worse yet, intentionally) repeating and rearticulating conventional wisdom. We see them either sucking up to the punditocracy, trying to blend in with them, or even trying to outdo them.

Now, sometimes it may be necessary to repeat conventional wisdom, altering its significance only slowly and gradually over time. So I don't mean to take a mechanistic position of rejecting accomodation outright in all situations. A racially enlightened white Southerner in the 1950s had to take things slow in trying to change the minds of others, or else jump wholeheartedly to the other side, and risk becoming a target of violence. I'm in far too privileged a position where I sit today to comfortably condemn such a person who chose the gradual route. But needless to say, that situation does not describe the vast majority of political struggles today-it describes only a tiny fraction of them.

I'll conclude this diary with a few examples and comments:

Last week, Barack Obama reinforced the conventional wisdom that faith communities and homosexuals are hermetically sealed off from one another, thus demeaning them both. He could have simply owned the mistake his campaign made. He could have said, "I screwed up. I'm human. I wanted to bring people toghether, and instead, I've needlessly divided them. But because I can admit my mistake, I can move forward. It may not be easy, but it is possible. And that is what distinguishes the kind of politics I beleive in." That would have really challenged the conventional wisdom, simply by implicitly affirming a key aspect of genuine Christian faith-the role of repentence, forgiveness, and redemption.
Yesterday, Russ Feingold, who is usually a shining counter-example, indicated that he might vote to confirm Michael Mukasey Attorney General . And at Dkos, Kargo X discussed it
in terms close to those I've been using here:
How completely through the looking glass is this "administration?" The nomination now pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee for Attorney General serves to crystallize the issue by shattering all meaning behind two comfortable platitudes that used to function to satisfy all onlookers that all was right in Heaven.
First, there was the assurance from the nominee and his supporters that he'd respect the "rule of law." That used to be a fine phrase to toss out there without having to worry about it meaning too much one way or the other, until we learned that everything we once thought was a "law" was now a "hypothetical."
And now Senator Russ Feingold is testing the limits of the remaining currency of another shopworn but previously serviceable platitude -- the old throwaway explanation for a bad vote on a nominee:
Senator, I'm afraid I'm going to have to challenge you on that. This "administration" has taken us well past the point where stock phrasing will be sufficient.
You must explain to us what -- given the limitless view of executive power Judge Mukasey has endorsed -- his being "the best nominee we can get" even means, and why anyone, including you, should care about that.
Feingold's alternative here must be painfully obvious: He could have said, "Ordinarily I might argue that he may be the best nominee we can get from this administration in this respect. But clearly that is simply not good enough. The Attorney General must be someone who is unambiguously committed to the rule of law."
The result of Feingold-a known beacon of principle-wimping out like this was entirely predictable. Top weasles Feinstein and Schumer swiftly announced that they would vote to destroy the rule of law by approving Mukasey.
Nancy Pelosi (via Matt):

"I know that Congress has low approval ratings," Pelosi, D-Calif., said at her weekly news conference. "I don't approve of Congress, because we haven't done anything that - we haven't been effective in ending the war in Iraq. And if you asked me in a phone call, as ardent a Democrat as I am, I would disapprove of Congress as well."
Need I say more??? Can I say more? Is there anything more to say?

Your turn!

Moveon Sends Out Primary Challenge Email

Matt Stoller — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:20:49 GMT

And the Democratic leadership has fully capitulated on the war.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are calculating that it is futile to continue their months-long campaign to force an immediate end to the war, particularly after Republicans and a few Democrats returned from the summer recess intent on opposing legislation mandating a strict timetable for pulling out U.S. troops.
The change is both rhetorical and substantive. Reid and others are increasingly talking of "bipartisan compromise," while top Democrats are reworking legislation erasing a date certain for ending the military operation. The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush's hand.
"We are trying to manage expectations that we can't end the war today or next week or next month," said one Democrat involved in the discussions. "We have to make sure everyone understands that."

Rather than making up ground this summer, we lost ground, and the antiwar movement has lost political credibility as all bark and no bite. We didn't break down the Republicans, but allowed the Republicans to split our base on the war.

Strategic shifts are already underway. Moveon sent out an email just now questioning whether activists should run primary challenges.

Polls show that a majority of voters everywhere support an exit from Iraq. That means that there isn't a single Democratic member of Congress whose constituents don't want to bring our troops home. Representatives who vote with President Bush on Iraq are voting against their districts.

Sound familiar?