Another Tea Party Analysis

I read this article in NY Review of Books today . . . it pretty much meshes with my analysis, though I think mine has the added advantage of seeing the Tea Party movement within the context of power. It's kinda long, but quit being so intellectually lazy, goddamit. (Hopefully they don't limit it to subscribers only.)

Memo to the President

I know you read my blog, Mr. Obama, so please listen up.

A piece of advice: whenever a calamity happens - like, oh, I don't know, the BP oil spill disaster, you're first priority is to let people know that you care and are involved and doing all you can. We (the voters) don't care nearly as much about whether it works or not, but care more that you try and we don't know you are working on our behalf unless you are publicly seen to be doing something. How different the national reaction to your response would have been if

1) you had immediately flown down to Louisiana and held a press briefing personally letting the public know that you were just about to head into a meeting with BP officials to find out what the fuck was going on and what they were going to be doing about it and if it didn't get fixed in, I dunno, a week? heads were going to roll.

2) When it didn't get fixed in a week you wield that executive power you have under some sort of emergency mandate and take control of the situation. I don't know - nationalize the US operations of BP or something (lol - that sure would piss off the Tea Party people, but if it got the job done, it would win you much respect from the sane constituency who would then see BP as the culprits instead of blaming you for not doing anything except working with the people that caused this mess).

Your biggest mistakes -

1) Holding a meeting on Day 1 of the emergency in your office in the White House where nobody could see you.

2) Claiming in retrospect that you've been doing something and getting pissy with people who question your commitment. You're the President, and as such you need to be in the public eye doing stuff, not just being a celebrity.

Also, it doesn't seem to be your rhetorical style, I guess, but really, your "let's-be-reasonable" rhetoric isn't working for the American people anyway. Historically, it's the politicians who make declarative, forthright, uncompromising statements of action and belief, and then use the "let's-be-reasonable" take w/ the other politicians that win the respect and confidence of the American people as a whole - FDR, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, hell - as much as I disliked him as President, Clinton: who managed to make different declarative statements to different publics . . .

With all due respect Mr. President - get on the ball.

(Oh - and kudos (w/ all appropriate reservations) on healthcare, the nuclear reduction treaty, and saving the economy from utter collapse)

Thanks for reading,

djo

Black Panthers v. Tea Party - An analysis

Once upon a time in high school I got really into leftist movements of the 1960s (what seemed to me, my antecedents, though despite thinking my actual parents were totally square it turns out my Mom was partially involved with organizing mill workers in NC and my Dad was involved in protesting the US attacks in Cambodia - much respect to my parents for putting up with my naive teenage bullshit). I read everything I could get my hands on re: Black Panther Party, Weathermen, Yippies, Che, Sendero Luminso, Ho Chi Minh, etc., etc., etc. My thought was that if the system didn't want me to know about them, I wanted to know.

Apparently, some idiots are comparing the right-wing anti-statists with the left-wing anti-statists and so the Tea Party has become comensurate with the Black Panther Party. Seriously? Please see my last post for my take on this, or see this post for Crystal M. Hayes' take.

The Creeping Police State

It's one of those tropes that the radicals (Left and Right) are always going on about - we're slowly but surely becoming a statist society in which the haves have and the have nots are controlled.

I was reminded of this when I read this post from a colleague and fellow blogger. I think our analyses are somewhat different, but the point is unmistakably clear and the conclusions, I believe, are ultimately parallel.

It also reminded me of the conversation I had with a student the other day about how the nature of schooling itself has changed. I can't speak with any real authority on the conditions of the schools in the city in which I teach from 20 years ago. I grew up in a liberal bastion and received all of the benefits of the education such a bastion might bestow - a liberal arts curriculum that encouraged thinking, a stable teaching core of qualified, competent teachers that cared about children and could make it happen. We had open campus, free periods, common spaces, and so forth. By the time I graduated, all that had begun to change. Open campus was restricted to Seniors (and for all I know, no longer exists), free periods had become study halls, commons spaces were walled off and became offices. Students were no longer asked to be responsible, students were walled in because the system no longer trusted them to be responsible - they were forced to "do the right thing", but since the students lost their agency, their ability to make their own decisions, they were no longer responsible, but rather were dependent on the school to make the decisions for them.

I'm not trying to compare this experience to police brutality, but only to point out that the police state is a creeping thing. After the Rodney King beating, police brutality was something that people I knew talked about. Why aren't we even talking about the killings? What I'm suggesting is that the fact that statist control is creeping into the bourgeois-bastions has made a situation where a constituency that might otherwise have been incensed by police violence against innocent people will only shrug their shoulders.

Which brings me to the right-wing anti-statists and why in some ways I think there is a similar analysis of the state, but that ultimately we are still standing on opposite sides of the spectrum. Firstly, I have a hard time believing that the bourgeois conservative anti-statists are really concerned about the rights, human or civil, of poor people.

Arthur C. Brooks recently argued that we face a culture war in the US - that this is really what the Tea Party is about. I think his analysis of the Tea Party folks is entirely too narrow, but I also think his argumentation misses something essential by those of us who see the socialist states of Europe as having something we don't have. Really, his argument isn't about culture, it's about power. Those who argue that the state should be smaller are in a position where they don't depend on the state - they are the beneficiaries of a society in which some win and many lose. They don't need the state for college tuition, or healthcare, or what have you. The state they are arguing against is the state that provides the proverbial safety net.

Ironically, well, not really, but . . . the state they support is the state that protects them from the rabble, the state that shoots innocent people, the state that controls, rather than the state that provides. They argue from a position of "freedom", but they only want a particular kind of freedom for a particular segment of the population.

And thus, while it would appear that right-wing anti-statists and left-wing anti-statists might be saying a lot of the same things, the implicit meanings of those things is quite different. The left wants a bigger state that is more responsible, the right wants a smaller state that uses power more efficiently.

Intellectuals in America part 8

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor at New Republic, and at first I thought his entry for the Dissent symposium would be overly literary, and in some ways the perspective is informed by literature, rather than political concerns. But I've come to feel that this is an important perspective, at least, since literature tends to be more humane than politics. Wieseltier only makes one major error in my opinion.

Let us begin with the error so that we can concentrate on what is worthwhile. The major gaffe is to flub the question about the academy - does it further or retard the engagement of intellectuals with American society? To which Wieseltier asks to take an incomplete for the intellectually dishonest reason that his "rant . . . might wound some people I admire and even adore." If intellectuals are to be truth-tellers, silence for the sake of propriety is hardly acceptable.

Overall, however, I find Wieseltier's take valuable, and largely in line with my own ideas. For instance, he slams American mass culture "for its transformation of a citizenry into an audience" among other things (perhaps the most entertaining line of the rant is: "for its grotesque sexualization of an entire society, which has the effect not least of degrading sex, even dirty sex").

But Wieseltier believes intellectuals can have it both ways, to be objective analysts as well as subjective participants. This isn't the only answer that Wieseltier proposes that refuses to take sides, but I think his suggestion of how to enjoy the proverbial cake works best in this regard. And his reasons for intellectuals to engage with popular culture are strong: 1) humanism: mass culture is still culture and so says something about our humanity; 2) criticism: in order to be able to critique the culture one has to understand the culture; and 3) hedonism: usually mass culture is about just plain fun. Or as Wieseltier puts it: life.

As for participating in American politics, he lays out a forthright pragmatism that is perhaps a little too pragmatic. He encourages intellectuals to engage in policy, since that is ultimately what affects people, but it's also what people don't get and I am afraid that we are already overly wonky - we need to work on communicating with the masses, so to speak. I happened across the website of the Iranian Communist Party the other day and I was struck with the way that language is used and how different it is from the American left today (though perhaps if I compared it to the CP-USA there wouldn't be much difference). The Communists tend to talk in language people understand - politics rather than policy (even if they sometimes go on and on, which can be alienating in its own way). Left intellectuals in America have distanced themselves from this, in part because the anti-Stalinist left always celebrated humanism and populist rhetoric can be very much anti-human, especially when it preys on fear (Exhibit B: The Tea Party). But it is one of the things that makes us seem like high-minded, ivory-tower academics that don't understand reality. But, I think Wieseltier's ultimate point is to again have it both ways - policy and politics, though I think the case is weaker here.

Lastly, he wants to be "both patriot and world citizen." I think there might be an argument here, but Wieseltier never fully engages with the issue. He imagines a world in which certain times he can be a patriot and other times he can be a world citizen, but the real question is: what do you do when these two frames come into conflict with each other. The sort of question that the Vietnam War posed to young people in the 1960s - a patriot supports their country, a world citizen condemns the United States for aggression. Which takes precedence? Wieseltier never explains the path which helps us to resolve the difficult questions.

Overall, his essay is hit and miss - his main theme is to celebrate the fullness of life and humanity and as such he refuses to take sides. This is laudable in some circumstances, but it can also be morally problematic when it becomes a refusal to engage in the issues seriously.

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In some ways, this post is an accomplishment for me (yay me!). I set out to do this project over the course of a week and it's only taken me the better part of 6 months or so. The project, if you will remember and have been keeping up, was to respond to each of the participants in Dissent's symposium on the role of intellectuals in America. This post concludes the original 8 essays that were written as part of that project and were published in the Winter 2010 issue of Dissent. The Spring 2010 issue contains three more, and so the project continues, but this is a milestone.

The Principled Center

I'm a radical left-wing anarcho-communist in personal philosophy, but I'm also a democrat (small 'd') that believes that 1) it is inhumane to force people to accept political philosophies they disagree with (I'm doing a terrible job of referring to the failed Communist experiment in the USSR) and 2) it doesn't work anyway - thus, why the USSR failed.

So, what does that mean? It means that I believe that my vision of a just, peaceful and caring community (and how to get there) is the best vision and what needs to happen is that other people need to believe in it too. This is basically an exercise in cultural change, which is exceedingly slow, since we humans like our cultures the way we understand them. We don't like them to change on us because, well 1) it means a shifting balance of power which is scary and 2) our cultures are also markers of identity - they belong to us, they inform who we are, and that is something deeply valuable.

Anyhoo - all of this to say that while this is my long-term goal, I also am working on short-term goals: making the most of what we've got at the moment. So, what would make the US a better place today? Well, among other things, if we could maybe have a rationale conversation across the ideological divide. But there doesn't seem to be much of a moderate movement anymore - and while I would hardly call myself a moderate, I respect moderates. I might not respect the Sean Hannitys, but I do have a lot of respect for folks like Lincoln Chafee, ex-Republican Senator from Rhode Island, who was essentially chased from his party for being too moderate.

But I think part of the problem is that moderates are often seen as being unprincipled - they don't seem to have Republican principles, and they don't seem to have Democratic principles. Of course, there's also so-called moderates like Arlen Specter, who really are just unprincipled and don't seem to have any basic values from which to reach conclusions. (Is anybody really surprised that he lost the PA primary?)

Is there a moderate ideology? I suppose the kind of moderates I'd like to see are people who are socially liberal (I just don't think you can be moderate on human rights); fiscally responsible and economically centrist - they should respect workers' rights, but they don't have to be necessarily anti-corporate. I would think that this is enough to wrap principles around. Maybe the antidote to crazy Tea Party people is a nice, rationale Center Party movement.

Moderates - get thee to a convention hall.

Power All Alone

I started subscribing to the White House blog and they posted this recently.

Is it just me or does Obama seem supremely alone? I suppose it is a commentary on the human condition that the more publicly that one is popular (ie - celebrity) and appears to be surrounded by people, the more existentially alone a person really is.

I can't decide what this says about our President. Is this a sign of weakness? Of being ill-suited to the role? Or is it a sign of honesty and truthfulness? At least he doesn't hide his discomfort (though obviously he has to make the motions like we all do - you can't not give your secretary a gift on Secretary's Day, or whatever, especially when you are a President whose every nuance is scrutinized - remember the flag pin incident?

I still think he is a great man who is immersed in a political culture that is exceedingly trying. Our failure as citizens hardly makes his job any easier. He may not be the messiah some of us hoped for, but he certainly could be a lot worse (cough - John McCain (not to mention Sarah Palin) - cough). At least he hasn't given into/pandered to our basest instincts and the lowest common denominator.

(I suppose, you know you are failing as a political movement when you have to argue from a position of: "at least." The lesser of two evils has never been a potent rallying cry . . . oh well. Again, I blame it less on the politicians and more on the jaded, sarcastic, ironic, unpolitical "citizenry" who don't understand the meaning of the term.)

Intellectuals in America part 7

Katrina vanden Heuvel's contribution to Dissent's symposium is a disappointment. Vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation magazine and she seems to flub every major issue she claims to address. She spends much of her argument debating about how to label herself - first rejecting "intellectual" and later embracing it. There is so much here that explains precisely what's wrong with today's intellectuals - quibbling over definitions, refusing to come to definitely conclusions, and ultimately, degrading intellectualism itself. It's kind of pathetic, really, and I blame it all on post-modern relativism. I suppose I've been guilty of some of the same, but I like to think the issues I can't find an answer to are actually difficult ones that bring up human frailty and complexity and not something stupid like what it means to be an intellectual.

Beyond this, she seems to misunderstand the concept of popular culture. Just because its on television, doesn't make it popular culture. Mad Men, Perry Mason, Law & Order, 24: none of these are really popular television series, with the possible exception of 24 (I should probably admit that I don't have a television, which may disqualify me from having an position here, but I don't think I'm wrong). How about American Idol? Or Dancing with the Stars? Those of us worried about the state of popular culture are going to have to realize and come to grips with the fact that the most popular things in our culture are precisely those that require the least amount of thought and have the least amount of meaning. The real question for me is why - why do we seem to have become a less interested and less interesting society? Why are we getting dumber and getting prouder of our stupidity?

Vanden Heuvel does make some insightful comments that help to frame thinking about these issues, which is the silver-lining. For instance, she points out that Michael Moore seems like a left-wing, thinking populist that can really speak the people's language, that takes intellectualism and distills it into language that is easily digestible.

The proliferation of technology has allowed the creation of multiple masses that, as vanden Heuvel points out, "has of course increased the dangers of only listening to oneself." And made it more challenging, if not impossible, for intellectuals to communicate in any meaningful way with the broader public. She quotes Noam Chomsky as saying, "the responsibility of intellectuals was to tell the truth and expose lies." But if nobody's listening then the impact of truth-telling is limited. Worse, the nature of "the truth" is challenged by post-modernist relativism from one direction and by technology which creates a vortex in which lies spoken loudly are mistaken for truth.

US Education, Zambia and the State - A Reflection

Life is too funny, sometimes. Like when I was at home reading a piece about the American educational system that got me thinking about the New Left, the rejection of the state, and the influence on education; and not 10 minutes later was sitting at a table in a pub and talking to some dear friends who have lived in Zambia for the last few years and have gotten to be really frustrated with the lack of a system.

The essay that got started on this train of thought was E. D. Hirsch's review of Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I have issues, of course. I've balked at both Mr. Hirsch's and Ms. Ravitch's contributions to education theory and reform. If Mr. Hirsch represents the center, Ms. Ravitch's new book apparently (I think I'm going to have to actually read this one) has tossed her from his right to his left. He's not too thrilled with her swing, though he condescends to find some merit in her argumentation.

In truth, though, his review seems to be an embittered diatribe against what he frames as "child-centered" (as opposed to "community-centered") education. These are his terms, and he attempts to load them with all sorts of illegitimate connotations, but that's beside the point. The real point, for me anyway, is that I hate to admit it, but I think he's got a point . . . but I also feel that he only has a point if you accept his assumptions.

For instance, he claims that when the US moved (in the 1960s) to a "child-centered" education that sought to build on a student's intrinsic interests, test scores dropped. This, supposedly, means that education got worse. In fact, it wouldn't be that surprising, since a child would be learning what they wanted to and not what was necessarily on the test. (I think this sort of education takes a particularly sophisticated educator to pull off well too, so it's possible that good intentions got in the way of good education). But the real question is, why do we educate? Is it about the development of the human being? Or is it about the development of the community? Or is it about getting a job? Or is it about the economy? (Please note: these are four different questions NOT 2 different questions asked in different ways.) If we value the state, then the question we are looking to ask is #2 (for lefties like me, anyway - for other people it might be question #4 . . . but, let's not go there). If we think the state pernicious, we would go with #1 (or #3, depending, again).

So this line of thinking got me wondering about how education went from #3 to #1 in the 1960s and that got me thinking about my frustration with the New Left (not all that new, anymore, I guess) which started all this modern anti-statist stuff. The Old Left were good communists that saw the value of the state, but I guess Stalin killed the enthusiasm for the New Lefties. Making connections . . .

And then I got into a conversation about Zambia and how life is so unpredictable because the state has so little real legitimacy. As my friend said, people make the system work for them, which is understandable, but also is a problem since it means that the system doesn't really work at all. It becomes an abuse of power by those who can claim it.

Which now brings me back to the old debate between Hobbes and Locke: what is the purpose of government? Why do we have a state? Is it about creating a system of power to be used to create access to certain people? Or is it about creating a system that limits power? Ultimately, how do you have something called "The Rule of Law"? And how do you make sure that those laws respect the individual and uplift the community at the same time? These last questions assume a statist perspective, and the whole concept of public education, and arguably, education in general, assumes a statist perspective. Hirsch has irked me for a long time now, and it's a bitter pill to swallow (is that cyanide?), but perhaps I should pay him more mind.