politics

Just as much as I find myself cringing whenever politicians use phrases like “Main Street” and “Special Interests,” it’s worth noting that people outside the mainstream — my own people, so to speak — have just as many sucktastic language tics.

At the moment I’m reading The Army of the Republic, which was right there next to the just-finished Chronic City in the “Hip Lit” section of the U of O bookstore when I swooped in a couple weeks ago. Downshifting from Letham’s prose is rough, but Stuart Archer Cohen’s subject matter — domestic terrorist/patriots vs. water privatizers — is right up my Red Dawn alley. It’s a fun read so far.

However, it’s reminding me that it’s just as irksome to read leftist cliches about taking it to the streets and whatnot. Even the more radical dialogue can make me wince. The revival we want to see is going to take a new language, purged of these cliches and their anti-meaning. Paging Dr. Lakoff...

Although, it could be closer than we think. Maybe I’m just an old softie, but this still gets me:

And I wish to god that someone would stick all of Perot’s stuff on youtube for posterity. There’s a huge amount to learn from what he was able to do:

And finally, if you made it this far, you are Steppin’ Razor.

Apropos the previous posts about political power-grabbing and whistful public longing, and after a quick trip through the Jon Robb link farm, another thought I’d like to log for the register: in this crazy modern era of ours, in which the existing system is fumbling more than the San Diego Chargers, how long before we really start to think outside the box. Like waaaaay outside the box.

For instance, just off the top of my head:

• Why not real international solidarity between people of the same generation?
• Why do we still grow food in the dirt? Why not just go ahead and use engineering?
• Why not start your own tribe? Literally.
• Why is it only old people get to live in dedicated communities? Own a home with your roommates.

My parents generation was willing to question pretty basic assumptions about how they were supposed to live. It didn’t all work out, but it was a worthy exercise I believe. I think my generation is in an even more (potentially) radical space, thanks to these here internets. Not only can we interconnect with like-minded folks around the world with unprecedented ease, we can self-publish, self-learn, and figure What Actually Works in ways that were completely unthinkable to previous generations.

It looks bleak in some ways, but in other ways it looks pretty bright and wide open. Bears remembering.

I’m an opponent to conspiracy theories, see them as disempowering distractions which create endless rationalizations for complacency. At the same time, I am an unabashed fan of conspiring. It’s my own little paradox of proactivity: don’t waste your time trying to unravel a hidden coterie behind why the world is what it is, just get busy making your own.

Spent last night talking Redneck Socialism over pizza and beer with Face and The Girth. We’re bandying the ideas of rolling up on California’s Canada and implementing a takeover. Prosperous though our lives have become here, the golden state feels like barren ground for the revolution, and we’ve sometimes a great notion there’s an opportunity to do something more than live what passes for the bourgeois American Dream (home ownership, retirement savings, etc) in this 21st Century. At the risk of some material comforts, we can be heroes. After all, risk is our business.

As Eric Schlosser points out, it’s been liberals attempting to “look tough” who are largely responsible for the prison industrial complex. This kind of hollowness, this essentially immasculine fear of appearing weak, the willingness to do truly terrible things to literally millions of people… this is the quintessential malaise which infects the contemporary Democratic party, and prevents real reform.

Redneck Socialism is our answer. Simply put, we see politics not as a deliberative exercise, where senatorial comity and “bipartisanship” are the ideals, but rather as the pragmatic and utilitarian pursuit of the Public Good, which is a very real thing, and which has very real enemies. We’re blowing fat lines of Huey Long style populism here. It’s impossible to contemplate the requirements of the post-modern Public without confronting the realities of inequality, and the abusive nature of much contemporary corporate/other power. We have to stop poisoning ourselves, our planet, and developing a massive underclass for profit, and find more and better ways of making money. It ain’t really that hard to do.

This can also be seen as the boots-on-the-ground extension of The New Freedom Movement, which has a broader cultural agenda to help wake up the zombies and usher in a golden era for the species. By taking on a large but not impossibly huge chunk of territory — bigger than a compound, smaller than the world — we’re looking to enact our ideas for change by directly engaging and altering the course of the existing system. In other words, DC looks like a lost cause but it seams reasonable we might crack Salem or at least Multnomah County.

In sooth, “Socialism” is a pretty meaningless phrase. Almost as amorphous as “Capitalism” in light of how our twin dynamos of Wall Street — “I drink your milkshake!” — and the sad ghost that politicians blithly catchphrase as “Main Street” have collapsed. Finance has devolved into scheming con games and outright gambling, and I don’t know where these fucks live (Disneyland?) that they think bloviating about “main street” can be anything but a reminder of how Wal*Mart used and abused most of regular America, but there you have it.

So we’re looking to move beyond. Our belief is that by outing elephants in the room, having the courage to address unspoken issues and bring up sacred cows, while at the same time remaining totally pragmatic and ready to play bare-knuckled politics with all comers, we can advance something much more meaningful than “bipartisanship” or “centrism.” Splitting the difference isn’t leadership.

Having beat a lot on the national drain-circling, I feel compelled to point out a counternote: Oregon just passed progressive tax measures to fund little things like schools and healthcare at the expense of the wealthy and corporations. In other words, the People beat the Powerful. It can be done.

How, you may ask? Well the first thing about progressive populism is you have to talk like a progressive populist, meaning you explain in no uncertain terms that you intend to address the massive inequality by requiring those who can easily afford to do so to step up and support the social contract which has benefited them so much:

Second thing you to is engage your base for God’s sake. Maybe campaigning among young people or engaging unions. Give ‘em something to jump and shout about at least.

Do those things, and you can win.

Behave as if you live in thrall to Zombie Regan, or as if you’re an aristocrat, and you will be crushed.

This seems like a pretty simple thing to understand to me, but most national Democrats seem consigned to going out with a whimper anyway. Hard to believe.

It looks like President Obama is about to consign himself to irrelevance:

In 1982 Ronald Reagan gave his first State of the Union address. His approval rating was about the same as Barack Obama’s now. His economic track record was considerably worse: instead of presiding over the end of a recession, he had presided over the beginning of one, and the economy was in free fall. Nonetheless, Reagan mounted an unapologetic defense of his economic ideology, combined with a harsh critique of his precedecessors.

We haven’t heard Obama’s SOTU yet. But the big news seems to be the spending freeze. What I hear from bat-squeaks is that it’s not a big deal on economic substance, and that admin officials hope it will clear the way for some modest job-creation efforts. We’ll see about that. Rhetorically, however, Obama is clearly, conspicuously endorsing his opponents’ world-view — which will buy him precisely nothing in return.

I can't really find words to capture the level of EPIC FAIL that we are approaching here. It's truly baffling. While Obama seems on balance to be a nice guy, and I don't doubt his basic smarts, he or the people he's listening to are showing themselves to be utterly politically incompetent. Meanwhile the actual dude who got him elected has been reduced to writing op eds, which the White House is ignoring.

As per Atrios, it really does seem as if the people in charge have no idea what they are doing. I think I'll probably stop writing about this until there's some change in the general downward spiral action.

So, the news from the centers of power is grim. Exceedingly grim. The Democratic Party is, as an institution, putting on a world-class clinic in organizational dysfunction. In complete control of the government, they have failed to make any significant achievements over the course of a full year. Their only big move, last winter's stimulus plan, has been roundly understood to be too timid, and as a result the economy, while still existent, is in a prolonged "jobless recovery" limbo.

Then last week's one-two combination of truly devastating news. First the pseduo-aristocratic nomination of a Kennedy-family apparatchik to succeed old Teddy in Massachusetts going down in flames to a right-winger in a pickup who flat out wanted it more. Scott Brown did five times as many public events as Coakly, had a hot-shit new media team (running Drupal), and surged at the end to take the win. That's Edward Kennedy's seat, going to a rather immoderate Republican, and bringing an end to the 60-vote theory of power in the Senate.

Republicans Seize 41 - 59 Senate Majority

That seems ridiculous, but it's more or less true. As a fighting entity, the Democratic Senate is somewhere below slime-mold in effectiveness. They lack any coherent vision, and the leadership simply does not have the will to utilize power. Obama's plan of rational and honest engagement with his opposition has yielded zero policy results, and his inability or unwillingness to strongly define himself or his agenda as anything other than "the establishment with brains" has resulted in an epic collapse in his polling numbers. Meanwhile, unemployment remains at 10% and people are fucking pissed off that Hope and Change appears to have been merely a slogan, used to elect a very eloquent chump.

Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court has ruled once again that Corporations are People and have 1st amendment rights to political speech, meaning they can now spend unlimited sums on influencing the outcomes of elections. Organized Labor being a shadow of its former self, it seems the near-term outlook of the US political system is pretty damn dim. Established economic interests are going to continue dominating national politics for the foreseeable future, likely until some external/existential event forces larger-scale change.

In terms of how this plays out, I think the Democrats are going to get shellacked in the upcoming 2010 elections, which will likely result in increased timidity on their part should they retain majorities. Net-net: two years of gridlock in DC. While the economy will likely improve organically by the time 2012 rolls around, it seems unlikely that it will really get zooming since the ability of the state to effectively re-orient things away from massively unproductive activities like tract home building and financial skimming appears to be nil. People will still be upset, underemployed, angry, and looking to blame. Meanwhile the coalition of unlikely voters who rallied behind Obama in 2008 are demoralized and may stay home, as unlimited corporate money pours in to fill the void.

In brief, the Black President is looking down the barrel of a one-term legacy with no policy achievements. His putative successor on the right would almost certainly lack substantive remedies to the problems of our time — "let the market sort it out" will, um, not work — but would almost certainly possess a will to utilize power and a savvy team of political manipulators. The hegemon becomes most militarily active in its period of decline.

While I hope to be proven wrong — there's always a hope in my heart that we'll have an awesome montage-worthy darkest-hour-turnaround, but I can't do anything about it but hope — the vegas line favors a real shitshow. Even if we get a crappy beachhead of Health Care Reform, that's all we'll get, and we'll likely have to wait for generational turnover to get a chance like this again.

Thus: back to the drawing board. In the emerging environment, agents of change will need to move laterally, so simply/directly set about acquiring power and building parallel institutions to the establishment. We will need to out-compete large corporations to regain control of the state, or possibly to obsolete the state by finding other ways of doing for ourselves. Either way, no small task. Demographics are ostensibly on our side, but without a lot of organizing that won't mean much. We'll need to develop a whole set tools and the reasons to use them if we're going to have much of a chance.

Thus: mission statements.

This is an experiment, a process of becoming. I don't know the answers, but I have a sense of the questions. I know the future will be different from the past, and I'm though with waiting for that to be defined by anyone else. The sooner we start living the way we want the world to be — the more contagiously, courageously and publicly we do this — the more influence we can have over the changes to come.

And change is coming, no doubt about it. It's time to roll the dice, shoot the moon, bet the farm; because if not now when? If not us who? If not this, what? Risk is our business, fortune favors the bold, and I believe right-thinking people can take over this planet and usher in a golden era if only we have the will to do so. I want more power and more freedom and I want to bring joy to the people around me, to people around the world.

I take it on faith that a better world is possible, one in which all humans lead good lives, where we all work less and play more and no-one dies for stupid tragic reasons like a lack of clean water or mosquito bites. I take it on faith that war is an unnecessary evil, and that we can (indeed, must) recognize a shared fate as a species, and learn to get along together. I take it on faith that it is our destiny to explore the universe, to unlock its secrets, harness its energies, to dive deep, to fly high, eventually to live on other worlds. I take it on faith that the rate of human progress is more or less up to us, and I want to get there faster.

This is where I develop my theory and keep track of what happens when I try to put it into practice. This is where the structural hole becomes a node, where we cross the streams. This is the story of the rubber and the road, of what happens when you stop taking things on faith and start taking them into your own hands.

With a little help from my friends, I had a greatly restorative holiday weekend. Bailed on Oregon travel plans, slept enormous amounts, got out into nature and into the hot tub.

So I don’t have a lot to say. I’m kind of simple Buddha happy and looking forward to upcoming travel to LA, NYC, NOLA: final whirlwind before the end of the year.

In the mean-time, I suggest Dr. Krugman’s brain-growth brew. He’s got a couple great posts up today. One on the creeping undercurrent of political doom which mirrors my own thoughts pretty closely:

I hope I’m wrong about all this. But my sense is that to have any hope of breaking out of this trap, Obama and company have to take risks — they have to propose new initiatives that might not pass, and be prepared to run against the do-nothing Republicans if the initiatives fail. That’s not happening now; as best as I can tell, the administration strategy is to insist that only a few minor course corrections are needed, and to wait for the jobs to start coming in.

The other alerting us to the reality of PIG IN A VAT!!!:

SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.

This is probably a good thing. A petri dish will probably yield tastier meats than feedlots, and without all the greenhouse-gas-causing methane (or ethical objections, according to PETA).

Via Atrios we bounce to BoingBoing:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.

There are several parallel struggles going on right now to define the form and structure of the 21st Century economy both globally and here in Estados Unidos. Some are in the headlines (health care, transitioning off carbon-based energy and dealing with climate change, reforming finance) and a couple other big ones are not.

The two things which fly under the radar are that classic favorite, the military industrial complex, which is verboten for polite political discussion, and the struggle to define the balance of power around information. In this latter struggle, we have some real choices to make, and they’re pretty important.

If something like this treaty goes through, the future looks pretty damn dim for internet-enabled innovation, culture, and industry. In essence, the treaty denies non-creators any meaningful ability to “own” the information contained within products they purchase. It also creates highly restrictive requirements for “policing” infringement which will create enormous legal overhead for what are today simple staples of online life (e.g. forget about Flickr or Youtube).

The mindset behind these treaties is a dictatorial one. The powers that be in the information economy — large scale copyright holders — want the rest of us to remain dutiful non-threatening consumers of their data, digital serfs. If they are successful in cementing that vision in law, it will create at best a two-teir economy, with the conventional/commercial “mainstream” plugging away as a sort of digital shopping mall of culture, and a secondary, underfunded, alternative information underground of Free Culture competing. At worst, the shopping mall will strangle the alternative, and the underground will be reduced to simply grey/black-market activities.

This isn’t what any of us want, really. We want the whole of culture to be Free (as in speech, not as in beer) and for all the mighty talent and resources currently contained within the mainstream to be a part of that. This means change, which isn’t pleasant for the powers that be. However, it really will be better for everyone if the focus is on creativity and delivering value rather than hoarding and punishment.

So, it’s unclear what kind of leverage can/should be exerted on these secret treaty negotiations, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Where we beat up on USC, and white men vote Obama.

Health Care Reform is on the table:

This is a history- making fight, one of those huge moments in American history, and if we win, this progressive movement will be written about in the history books the way the big change movements of the 1960s, 1930s, 1900s, and 1860s are. This is our time to deliver, too.

Now would be a good time to familiarize yourselves with where your local representatives stand. A couple points:

• We can/should be able to make the plan better in committee and by amendment. If you like to follow inside baseball I’d stay tuned to all of that.
• It’s time to dust off some of those Bush/Cheney buzz phrases: “elections have consequences” and “up or down vote” come to mind.

• Overall, the more noise we can make in support the better. Do whatever you feel, but keep in mind the broadest things are harassing lawmakers who look soft/skittish, rewarding those who lead, and beating the drum of general public opinion support. This is what the people want, so lets do it.

Anyway, good times.