The Disconnect

I find John Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be pretty funny guys. And I think that much of what they have to say is actually important.

On the other hand, I also think that maybe, just maybe, it's a little too cool.

Supposedly, there were 200,000 people at the Colbert/Stewart rally in DC. Which is cool. But where were they a few weeks earlier? You know, at the "One Nation Working Together" rally?

Janet Malcolm makes a good point in the New York Review's blog:

The signage from the Stewart/Colbert rally:

WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF AND SPIDERS
MODERATION OR DEATH
JEW AGAINST INVOKING HITLER FOR POLITICAL POINTS
ATHEISTS FOR MASTURBATION
GAY MAYLASIAN MUSLIMS FOR SARAH PALIN
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS A WHITE SOX FAN? HITLER
SUPPORT SEPARATION OF HEAD FROM ASS

The signage from the Working Together rally:

GOOD JOBS NOW
STOP CORPORATE GREED
GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER EQUALITY
I WANT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE
GET OUT AND VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS

The point being that while the bourgeois liberal youth continue to use snark, sarcasm and irony in a bid to be political without having to actually be political, real people with real needs are getting ignored.

There's something more important happening in America besides a crappy media culture. Stewart and Colbert have hidden behind the excuse that they are "just a comedy show," but they are clearly no longer that. They've started a "movement" - as pathetic and wayward and selfish as it is - and now they've got a responsibility to do more than cry about rhetoric and the system. How about organizing and mobilizing against the class war that the right-wing bourgeoisie, via the Tea Party, is currently perpetrating against the working classes of America in the name of freedom (for some)? The problem, of course, is that the audience for Stewart/Colbert isn't really interested in recreating a society that might not fuck people over in the name of freedom to amass wealth (for some); isn't really interested in doing some soul-searching about how their own actions within the system further the exploitation of human beings in the name of cheap consumer goods.

Here We Are Again

With the election results in, it's time for those of us on the Left to pause, take stock, and make some hard decisions. In some ways, I think this election couldn't have turned out better. I have the suspicion that secretly many hoped that Obama would represent a new, Democratic hegemony to replace the conservative hegemony that has dominated American politics for the last forty years. This election, then, would represent a slap in the face from reality.

It strikes me that the whole problem is that we put all our faith in this one guy, but we don't have a coherent political platform. Who's the conservative wunderkind? The closest you get is Sarah Palin, but she doesn't even really fit the definition. What the conservative's have is a narrative - a story about who they are and what they believe about government. The Left has lost that. Perhaps we want to be Big Tent - and I think that's important. But we also have to balance that with core values. Otherwise, we fall victim to what the Right paints us as.

Why do we concede the argument about Big Government? Surely, government has been and continues to be a problem and a danger - but that's only because the government is a tool, and has been misused. The Left should stand up for Big Government, because who else is going to protect us from Big Business? (This is the Progressive platform going back to Teddy Roosevelt.) Who else has the resources to protect the weak from the strong? What happened to the American Dream of a society based on values of equality? Why can't we portray the Right as the people who support selfish, hateful policies? Why can't we build a real movement around real values?

Of course, we lose the argument the minute the Democrats get into bed with Big Business - see the Wall Street bailout. Which brings me to that constant question from my end of the spectrum - to support or not to support the Democratic Party? Do we continue to try to work within the system to force the Democratic Party to the left? Or do we work to build a third party? I think it's time to acknowledge that the Democratic Party has broken with the left - it recognizes that we represent the base, but it cannot effectively champion our cause because it embraces capital. The Democratic Party can't have it both ways - it's either for the people, or for business. By trying to be both, it loses both.

It's time to build a third party - at least on the state level. I'm not sure the Green Party is it, though. The restive, independent, left-wing unions like UNITE/HERE and SEIU should be looking into the myriad of small third parties to support. Then we should begin organizing in districts with a natural constituency that is represented by tools of the traditional Democratic Party. We can leave the Lefty Dems alone (see: Barney Frank), but we need to take out those that bought into Clinton's centrism. We've got to start getting people to think of themselves as ______ whatever, and we've got to do it now - so that by the 2012 election we can win a few seats, build some momentum, promote our agenda. We also need to look into building a broader movement in rural areas: we need to unite on economic issues, can we find ways to build bridges across the social issues that divide us? Can we talk more about religious values of love and care, than about the religious values that divide us?

We need to find another message and another medium. The Democratic Party is dominated by the liberal, middle-class that cares more about individual rights than it does about the collective welfare. It's time to build another voice.