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Inviting Our "Bastard Brothers" to a Political Showdown
As reported yesterday on TPM, Democracy Corps released a report that outlines a case to be made that the GOP base is "being motivated by a fundamentally different worldview than folks in the middle or on the Dem side."
This report is particularly helpful in getting the discussion about teabaggers and other right wing "activists" past simple attributions of racism and ignorance and other uni-dimensional explanations for the extreme hatred, fear, contempt and outright whackiness we seem to encounter from the Glen Beck/Michael Steele/Congressional Leadership Wing of the GOP Party. (Did I miss anyone?)
I'm not quite ready to accept the report's premise, however, that this anger and degree of incivility in GOP politics is an aberration. Whereas it is indeed a serious threat to our democracy if allowed to fester and burst forth from its present attitude, we act at our peril if we now attempt to simply de-legitimize the anger, fear and contempt expressed by this "persecuted minority" that we see showing up at various corporate-sponsored "teabag" events.
We best understand that there is a genuine foundation beneath this "angry, persecuted mob" that needs be addressed. In many ways, they share the same feelings of powerlessness that the Left rails about regarding the debilitating corruption in Wall Street and Washington; the ever-increasing economic injustice within our system; the lack of any sense of community that a healthy democracy (dare I say socialism?) offers in terms of an ability to have effect on one's own environment.
In essence, what I am saying is that in observing some of the "tea bag" activities and rallies and rhetoric, I found myself uncomfortably looking into the eyes of what might be considered my bastard brothers and sisters. Their anger is too painfully legitimate to be ignored. Yet they are perversely set upon by demagogues like Beck and Dobbs and other corporate "sponsors" and handlers who encourage them to identify the very tools of self-determination and class empowerment that would improve their situation (i.e. anything "guvmint" or "socialist") as the source of their oppression. Like mad dogs on a leash, they lash out in every direction to which their handlers project them - an exercise that conveniently keeps them occupied in a way that precludes any risk of having them turn on their handlers and at last slip their leash to good (albeit perhaps bloody) effect.
Ultimately, and without trying to go all meta, I have to say there is a real whiff of revolution in the air unlike anything I've felt in my years. This report offers nothing to diminish that sense of foreboding, but it does clarify a perverse opportunity for such a "revolution" to go horribly wrong in institutionalizing the very injustices that it seeks to remedy. The threat presented by this "persecuted minority" in the GOP base, after all, does not arise from the source of their anger and their fears but instead in the way these are being dangerously manipulated in effort to actually preserve an unsustainably unjust status quo. This is the most alarming aspect of the political landscape outlined in the Democracy Corps report.
Indeed, my biggest fear as I look into the eyes of these "bastard brothers" comes not from so keenly understanding the pain looking back, but instead in a realization that they lay beyond any effective remediation of that pain for so long as they are encouraged to seek the revenge offered by fascism as their preferred treatment. If we are to truly reach out and diminish this threat as we must, we need to more effectively identify the source of the pain we all feel in today's political reality. We must then encourage justice for ALL as the salve that can ameliorate this pain that we so commonly share with one another.
But guess what? Even we progressives have little to offer at present in terms of effectively countering the oppressive interests that rein over the middle class. Nearly 20 years of Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) style triangulation and compromise has installed a "liberal" elite more interested in political expedience than democratic rule. We need an aggressive populist movement that strongly and unremittingly challenges the incredible abuses perpetrated by Wall Street over Main Street; that finds wholly unacceptable - illegal, even - the democracy-defeating pay-to-play politics that allows legislative goaltenders like Baucus, for example, to stand in the way of any legitimate health care or other reform efforts; and that disallows even a popular Obama from perpetuating the overall Washington corruption and all other manner of unacceptable injustices that are now too often accepted as simply the way business is done.
We need, ourselves, to at last determine that we are going to take no prisoners in our OWN search for justice. And then we need to invite these "bastard brothers" to at last join with us in a political showdown that finally pits the "good guys against the bad" in an alignment where justice has at least a chance to prevail.
Yes, if you want peace, work for justice. It really is as simple as that.
And every bit as difficult, as well.
This report is particularly helpful in getting the discussion about teabaggers and other right wing "activists" past simple attributions of racism and ignorance and other uni-dimensional explanations for the extreme hatred, fear, contempt and outright whackiness we seem to encounter from the Glen Beck/Michael Steele/Congressional Leadership Wing of the GOP Party. (Did I miss anyone?)
I'm not quite ready to accept the report's premise, however, that this anger and degree of incivility in GOP politics is an aberration. Whereas it is indeed a serious threat to our democracy if allowed to fester and burst forth from its present attitude, we act at our peril if we now attempt to simply de-legitimize the anger, fear and contempt expressed by this "persecuted minority" that we see showing up at various corporate-sponsored "teabag" events.
We best understand that there is a genuine foundation beneath this "angry, persecuted mob" that needs be addressed. In many ways, they share the same feelings of powerlessness that the Left rails about regarding the debilitating corruption in Wall Street and Washington; the ever-increasing economic injustice within our system; the lack of any sense of community that a healthy democracy (dare I say socialism?) offers in terms of an ability to have effect on one's own environment.
In essence, what I am saying is that in observing some of the "tea bag" activities and rallies and rhetoric, I found myself uncomfortably looking into the eyes of what might be considered my bastard brothers and sisters. Their anger is too painfully legitimate to be ignored. Yet they are perversely set upon by demagogues like Beck and Dobbs and other corporate "sponsors" and handlers who encourage them to identify the very tools of self-determination and class empowerment that would improve their situation (i.e. anything "guvmint" or "socialist") as the source of their oppression. Like mad dogs on a leash, they lash out in every direction to which their handlers project them - an exercise that conveniently keeps them occupied in a way that precludes any risk of having them turn on their handlers and at last slip their leash to good (albeit perhaps bloody) effect.
Ultimately, and without trying to go all meta, I have to say there is a real whiff of revolution in the air unlike anything I've felt in my years. This report offers nothing to diminish that sense of foreboding, but it does clarify a perverse opportunity for such a "revolution" to go horribly wrong in institutionalizing the very injustices that it seeks to remedy. The threat presented by this "persecuted minority" in the GOP base, after all, does not arise from the source of their anger and their fears but instead in the way these are being dangerously manipulated in effort to actually preserve an unsustainably unjust status quo. This is the most alarming aspect of the political landscape outlined in the Democracy Corps report.
Indeed, my biggest fear as I look into the eyes of these "bastard brothers" comes not from so keenly understanding the pain looking back, but instead in a realization that they lay beyond any effective remediation of that pain for so long as they are encouraged to seek the revenge offered by fascism as their preferred treatment. If we are to truly reach out and diminish this threat as we must, we need to more effectively identify the source of the pain we all feel in today's political reality. We must then encourage justice for ALL as the salve that can ameliorate this pain that we so commonly share with one another.
But guess what? Even we progressives have little to offer at present in terms of effectively countering the oppressive interests that rein over the middle class. Nearly 20 years of Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) style triangulation and compromise has installed a "liberal" elite more interested in political expedience than democratic rule. We need an aggressive populist movement that strongly and unremittingly challenges the incredible abuses perpetrated by Wall Street over Main Street; that finds wholly unacceptable - illegal, even - the democracy-defeating pay-to-play politics that allows legislative goaltenders like Baucus, for example, to stand in the way of any legitimate health care or other reform efforts; and that disallows even a popular Obama from perpetuating the overall Washington corruption and all other manner of unacceptable injustices that are now too often accepted as simply the way business is done.
We need, ourselves, to at last determine that we are going to take no prisoners in our OWN search for justice. And then we need to invite these "bastard brothers" to at last join with us in a political showdown that finally pits the "good guys against the bad" in an alignment where justice has at least a chance to prevail.
Yes, if you want peace, work for justice. It really is as simple as that.
And every bit as difficult, as well.
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At first I was reading this along the lines of normal gop politics. I mean Buchanan writes two--not just one--book about how we are on the wrong side of WWII. Praising Hitler. Talk about hutspa. Even his conservative friends call him an anti-semite. I mean he goes on and on about Jewish bankers.
But that is not your point here. You are certainly not speaking of 'intellectuals'. You are talking about movements.
They are our bastard brothers and sisters. You do not forget that all those divergent groups of racists and abolitionists, small business idolizers as well as straight out socialists and so on...they all saw in FDR whatever they wanted to see. Which is how the entire coalition broke down in '48. Henry Wallace had nothing in common with Thurmond.
And yet Wallace did have many things in common with Thurmond. They both hated big business.
It is too bad, really too too bad that we cannot somehow get to that pain and demonstrate that it is the economic system presently in place...not lazy people, not socialists, not liberals...that are the real enemy.
It is just too easy for tens of millions of people to identify with uneducated, unlearned, unread and soulless people like Bachman, Palin and Beck.
Like you say, there is real danger with regard to our bastard brothers and sisters.
October 17, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
My husband and I talk a lot about this, Jeezus. That we can agree with some of the less whacky Tea Partiers' complaints. Some are even getting cranky at Republicans, especially the Ron Paul wing. I would even bet that many of them are registered Independent, making it silly to conflate all their positions or even antics as "Republican." Ron Paul's Investigate the Fed" bill? Go for it! Too many of them forget that the bailouts started under Bush, but the Dems sure signed on, so Obama is taking the heat, not that he doesn't deserve plenty after choosing his Economic Hell-team.
If there were some ways to unravel the crazy conclusions and directions their rage takes them, it would be a good thing. They are mostly uneducated, so they don't have history or critical thinking to steer by. They are, as you say, being cynically manipulated much in the way that Christianists have been manipulated for the past decade or more.
Excellent, excellent, post, Jeezus!
October 17, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
They also forget that the deficit was doubled under Bush. It happened without so much as a whimper from them. Why? Because Bush kept promising that no one would ever have to pay for it; as long as they kept on shopping everything was fine.
Here I go, undoing my comment below.
October 17, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent analysis, and thought-provoking, Sleepin J. A wise person once told me that the way to deal effectively with someone you dislike (or who dislikes you) is to try to empathize with them. You have demonstrated how to do that. Thanks
October 17, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes CVille, exactly. Put much better than me. And the way Sleepin calls them our brothers and sisters though bastards they be.
October 17, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The first Quakers sure thought so; a person was advise to be still and, in effect, try to become that person in order to find a common way to speak about things. Or that's my understand from reading about Fox, et.al. I think one novelized story was The Peacable Kingdom. I do try it; that, and the idea of trying to slide in under a person's defenses, to speak to the Human Heart within. Fear is most often armored by overly-available anger. It is one of the reasons why telling our own stories is disarming to the overt bullies among us.
October 17, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's also very instructive to keep an awareness of who it is that is oppressing you or who it is that otherwise stands between you and your "pursuit of happiness." Despite their shrill voices and their obnoxious posturing and their wrong-headed ignorance and even their hypocrisy, the teabaggers have no direct bearing upon my daily existence in this regard.
Goldman Sachs? Yes. Our Treasury Dept., which is seemingly about to be overtaken in a LBO by Goldman Sachs anyday now? Yes. Lobbyists and the politicians they own? yes. The Patriot Act and the scum who promote it for our "protection?" yes. NAFTA and other "Free Trade Away Your Job" acts? yes.
There are plenty of places in which to pursue justice for the middle class (working class? proletariat? I never know what nomenclature to use). It is important here to understand that if you dig down on the complaints of the teabaggers, you actually find they carry most of the very same list of oppressors as do the rest of us. Somehow, there's got to be a way to build upon that toward an effective populist movement to raise the prospects of justice for us all.
October 18, 2009 4:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Except that they believe that it is Environmentalists who are causing jobs to be shipped overseas. And taxes that are too high for businesses. And too many government regulations, though not many can name them when I ask. The utter folly of Trickle-down economics that were so fully discredited are still believed by so many on the right. I hear "The wealthy are the ones who provide jobs, so their taxes should be low." It reminds me of the poorest Catholics who give their pennies to the Church to fund more gold chalices, etc. They believe that it is just right.
October 18, 2009 9:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
They are on the same side as us progressives in their mistrust of the powers to be. But we are intentionally being divided by people who are scared shitless by the thought of us ever successfully uniting. I feel their pain and understand their anger...they have just been lied to by snake oil salesmen about who is to blame.
October 17, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
But who is the bigger snake oil salesman? The Glen Beck's who tell their disaffected audience that the guvmint/socialists/others are to blame for their backsliding quality of life? Or the DLC/Rahm Emanuel types who "assure" us that we are being presented with all the justice and security that our corporate owners will allow?
My point is that there is common ground here between the teapartiers and the left, and it lies in a populist response to real failures in representative government. We do well to get in touch with this and direct this populist anger toward nearly all things Washington at present. We otherwise await going along for the ride as this anger is co-opted by the oligarchs themselves and is directed instead on a march toward fascism.
October 17, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
All things being equal the DLC types and the conservative screaming mimi's are all doing the bidding of the same masters...and I have said it over and over and over again.
Don't get me started on the DLC, SJ, they might be more insidious than the political right. At least the political right is up front with who they are and who they support. The DLC tries to say they are selling us out to improve our collective lots. They are a big reason why I am not a registered Democrat.
But your bottom line is balls on accurate...the oligarchs (aka "The Pigs") are playing both ends off each other so we fight each other and don't unite and come after them. I say corporate fascism has been in place as a governing model as far back as when Eisenhower warned us to be wary of the M-I complex. Actually it has been in place since the Gilded Era and the Robber Barons.
October 17, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Co-opted by the oligarchs? It's the oligarchs who are creating it.
The Lucrescenti are in the habit of doing lots of things, very efficiently, that narrowly benefit them. Buying votes and encouraging partisan activities that function as distractions and smokescreens are part of what works. I'm not calling it an outright conspiracy, just pointing out that they do what works for them.
And you're right--the thing to do is to show those who are being used exactly how the Lucrescenti are using them and suggest that we all refuse to stand for it.
October 18, 2009 4:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly! (Now, if it were as easily said as done! ;O)
It is most frustrating to see these teabaggers successfully encouraged to in fact work against their own interests in, for example, refusing health care reform as "socialism," etc., all in service to the Lucrescenti. Yet it is difficult to connect the dots for them due to their dogmatic adherence to "truth" that is provided by others rather than any kind of logic that is genuine and self-generated.
October 18, 2009 4:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Most of the TeaBaggers I see look like they're on Medicare anyway!
October 18, 2009 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's going to be difficult, but I agree with you that these are dots that must be connected. We need to stop telling people "You are a Rethuglican Idiot" and replace it with "You Are Being Used" (YABU for short) and demonstrate, respectfully and over and over again, that it is true.
Our future depends on it, because the Lucrescenti have a lot of momentum and a ton of money to work with. We need all the help we can get, and we can't afford to freeze anybody out of the effort just because we'd rather insult them than bring them over to our side.
October 18, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
My Republican to the core Aunt and I spent last weekend battling to get my mother some Medicare benefits she was entitled to - it's hard to figure who is on your side these days. Maybe we could find agreement around the idea that darn few of them are in Washington.
October 17, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, our bastard brothers are being used. As are we all. They fear tue government. We fear big business. But in these times, can someone please show where the difference lies?
There is no distinction between government and business any longer. The tea-bagger movement is a rage outlet and a corral to herd public opinion. They are helping to confuse the public's perception of our nation.
What I see currently shaping our politics are competing visions that have nothing to do with reality. There is the small government utopia and the socialist utopia. What neither sees is that we are in a form of government that is shaping into nothing more than high tech feudalism while we bastards argue over ephemera.
This is what class warfare looks like on the losing side. The defeated factiona fight over perception while the winners take the spoils.
October 17, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant comment. We have been manipulated by our fears since at least the end of World War II by an increasingly sophisticated melange of varied interests.
I hesitate to call it a conspiracy because of the wide-range of people involved, but it has led to a strange sort of reality where the status quo suits the needs a very small group of people who are now committed to maintaining it.
The keep the American people divided arguing over irrelevance differences in political theories that have very little to do with their real lives.
It really is quite impressive from a Machiavellian standpoint.
October 18, 2009 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'm glad to see that you guys (Zip and Jason) are a little more on the same page here.
It seems to me that Jason is focused on reforming the parties, while others are pointing out that there's a game afoot that's organized outside of party lines entirely.
My take on it is that there will be no party reform as long as it's this useful for the Lucrescenti to use partisanship as a distraction and discourage change by keeping people's opinions about government in general as negative as possible.
Nothing will change until a significant number of people figure out what's up.
October 18, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
See my comment below.
October 18, 2009 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops, I guess that should have read "above."
October 18, 2009 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was in high school, I learned that most folks I was going to school with thought they were wasting time and they were just biding their time until the last day of 12th grade. More than a handful never made it that far.
These folks are left behind in a world that needs people who have developed their thinking skills, not their manual labor skills. But more than that, these folks are easily manipulated by every demagogue who ever gets a 30 minute radio show.
Yes, I have empathy for their needs and their economic and social fear, I grew up with them. But, I don't think they are willing to do one thing that every member of Alcoholics Anonymous has to do to begin taking control of their lives. That thing is, accept that they have made decisions that helped put them where they are.
I am not prepared to say every teabagger is a self-created dope, I haven't met them all. But I am willing to say the large underclass of education-averse Americans is the fertile field the demagogues are hoeing.
It is hard to reason with people who don't know how to reason.
October 17, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I am not prepared to say every teabagger is a self-created dope, I haven't met them all."
That made me actually lol. Where is Dickday? These two lines deserves the understated joke of the day award.
October 17, 2009 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Marquis, I am considerably less sanguine about this "skilled worker" meme than you appear to be. The argument that we can simply trade away our manufacturing base and its jobs with consequence of only needing to train workers for a "new economy" is a sham. Exporting jobs to make products for domestic consumption is simply unsustainable, and I think this is reflected a great deal in the jobless recovery we experience at present.
The pursuit of a life-long commitment to a union job at the paper mill or the tire factory in my hometown was a highly reputable career choice when I grew up. Such a career choice didn't reflect upon the ignorance or lack thereof of the person making the choice. It did, however, represent a solid way in which that person and his family (Most families were single income - the father employed outside the home) could gain wealth from this economy - something that is increasingly difficult for anyone outside the financial industry to achieve in these latter years.
Being angry about no longer having such an option to support oneself and one's family does not indicate ignorance or an aversion to education on the part of the person registering the complaint. No, it's a justifiable complaint and we do well to recognize just how profoundly the loss of our manufacturing base has borne impact on the middle class and its aspirations to wealth and security.
October 18, 2009 4:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
And the folks at the top of the pyramid laugh as we set about each other. Division means their continued rule.
Too many convenient wedge-points fro there to be easy answers on this. Race, religion, immigration, and more - all exploited diligently by those who benefit from seeing us at each other rather than picking up the pitchforks.
No suggestions here, just observations...
October 17, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"We need an aggressive populist movement that strongly and unremittingly challenges the incredible abuses perpetrated by Wall Street over Main Street; that finds wholly unacceptable - illegal, even - the democracy-defeating pay-to-play politics that allows legislative goaltenders like Baucus, for example, to stand in the way of any legitimate health care or other reform efforts..."
Hallelujah brother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hallelujah!
October 17, 2009 11:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Personally, I believe we need to look at how cults operate - the relationship between the individual and the charismatic leader. - to understand the deep cultural divide that we are seeing. I'm no expert at this by a long shot, but I can see so many points of comparison between cults and say, the tea party movement. An enemy, defined or implied. The individual's ritual of testimony. The authority of the leaders. I would argue that is is social, rather than political, but of course it can play out in the political arena.
October 18, 2009 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
And I think you are right on this neoboho.
JEP07 did a good blog looking at the cult aspect of the teabagger mania. It is definitely worth keeping in mind in any attempt to deconstruct this mob and reform it as a legitimate populist movement.
October 18, 2009 4:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link to JEP's blog - I missed that one. Very good, I retro-rec'd it for the record.
October 18, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The manipulators in this are a sordid group of congresspersons and senators on the other side of the aisle who Obama has repeatedly approached and who have repeatedly rejected Obama's overtures and even played them to the crowd. In association with these officials are their benefactors from all across the country who are motivated mostly by their bottom line and not much else.
And then there are all the patriots, the manipulated, some who earnestly brought weapons to public events and some others as perpetrators in the hoax, who complain about keeping government out of healthcare and out of their lives. The two subgroups of these patriots are sometimes indistinguishable but the one is a co-manipulator who is aided and abetted by the same benefactors as their elected counterparts on the hill.
These two major groups are distinctly different and have little, if anything in common. The one would willingly associate with the other no more than the man in the moon.
This is no less than a fraud, having all the common attributes of a fraud we all know and recognize. It is skillfully obscured and directed by those who are running it and who have no interest but their own at heart. It is being committed against well meaning but uninformed Americans very much the same as frauds have been committed in the past against people of other nations at other times.
The task then becomes exposing this fraud. First by calling it what it is and then by unraveling the fraudulent associations that give it sustenance. Where this becomes an issue is this fraud is not limited in scope and is in fact actively supported by a distortion of law and politics with the active membership of persons all across government. To be sure the exposure will never happen from within our nations capitol or be driven by our public officials.
SleepinJeezus, whose handle is contextually perfect and has an exceptionally unique and applicable duality, enlightens us of the irony of this. When and where the masses wake up and what might trigger their awakening and what might be their reaction when their eyes open we cannot know. Predictably though, it will occur. We can only hope it occurs sooner than later and without disturbing the entire household. Inevitably, it will take a loud noise to wake people up.
October 18, 2009 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
That noise, good or bad, will be the sound of freedom.
October 18, 2009 2:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for the thoughtful comments here and for the kind words.
Yes, I do believe there is an awakening happening, or at least the alarm is set to soon go off. And you are correct to claim the target as "the masses" because it includes not only the left who are fed up with the corruption of justice but also the disaffected GlenBeckBots and all the others who are so righteously angry but have been driven to direct that anger inappropriately away from the oligarchs who bear responsibility for creating/reinforcing most of their woes.
The main concern must be to channel the anger in effective ways toward relieving the oppression that is felt across all these groups. It will be accomplished with a noise that is the sound of freedom, as you say, but only if justice is served in place of the present reliance upon bigotry, hatred, and blind zealotry that lays at the core of the teabagger phenomenon.
October 18, 2009 3:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good morning Sleepin'. Can't sleep either I see. I'd guess our sleeplessness is shared by many and for similar reasons. Thanks for the excellent blog.
October 18, 2009 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
In many ways, they share the same feelings of powerlessness ...
Exactly. I blame Congress as the branch of government that has the power to enact the 'justice for all' legal structure But Congress listens to lobbyists, not the people who elected them, and that reality is prevalent on both sides of the aisle.
Another bipartisan and shared trait in Congress is the attention dedicated to re-election. But there again, the lobbyists beat out the people 2 to 1. They provide the money and influence before and after elections, whereas the people are only useful and not at all influential just before the elections and therefore cease to exit right after.
Besides the obvious solution of public campaign financing, increasing the size of the House in proportion to the population of each district (or decreasing when necessary) has been touted as a way to give more voice to 'the people'. (I think the last time the House increased its size was the 1920's.) These two political changes that would increase the power of the people offers one of the few areas of agreement that I can see between the 2 sides.
My 2¢.
October 18, 2009 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I read the new comments posted in the night, I wondered about Campaign Finance Reform possibly being an avenue of approach and common purpose. But as Jeezus said, so often so many are willing to work against their best interests. Will the protest at the Bankers meeting in Chicago draw from their groups? It may be that since it is being organized by Unions that they would balk at participating; how sad it that?
Perhaps it will need to be a person like Jeezus who has ultimate respect for working people, plus a brilliant mind, who will be able to coalesce a true grass-roots movement, able to talk to the commonalities among us.
I really don't want them to start a revolution and come after me and mine willy-nilly in their incomprehension that there are fears that could unite us.
Our next-door-neighbor is an old friend who has effectively become a hermit. He subscribes to one of the newsprint magazines or papers that is put out by anti-government folks, perhaps in Idaho. I don't know the name, though he has said it. He will parrot an article by first stating the somewhat outlandish conclusion, then when I ask questions, he starts to parse the piece. I so often find that there are some threads that are observably true, but in order to reach their most paranoid conclusions, he and they must resort to facts that simply aren't so. Once in awhile he leaves with less anxiety after the discussions, but I do know that he still keeps his loaded pistol under his pillow.
He is very proud that he has disconnected from the Evil Society and the Evil Government, but his fears still still allow his Reality to be utterly shaped into politics. He has nothing but this rag paper and the teevee news to shape his thinking, and not many people to rub his ideas against out in the world, so that his most gelled toxic beliefs are allowed to stand.
Bugger! I need to get going; maybe this rap was going to stall out anyway.
October 18, 2009 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice blog, SJ. Certainly recommended and not just because it is a book-end of sorts to my latest effort.
While I don't agree with all the assumptions or conclusions, I do appreciate the effort you took to empathize with people you normally have very little patience for and to look for a solutions that would bring us together, despite the long-bleeding wounds that keep us apart.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
October 18, 2009 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the answer isn't in finding some split the difference postpartisan faux middle, it's in finding issues that both sides are passionate about and working for what might be seen today as radical change. Consider how we might find agreement on radical reform of the financial system.
October 18, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you mean something like construction of a gallows on Wall Street? Bring pitchforks. I'll grill cheeseburgers.
I think you are absolutely right, bluebell. Triangulating our way to solutions that are "pragmatic" and are the "least offensive" to the majority is a roadmap to nowhere. It simply reinforces the status quo and does nothing to inspire feelings of self-determination nor the authority of the commons upon which democracy thrives.
Instead, as you say, we need to identify common "enemies" and then identify/promote leadership that is willing and able to go after them. The "able" part is important. Obama, for example, is eminently qualified and perhaps even willing at some level, but it would seem his DLC-style orientation and political commitments preclude him from actually stepping outside the Washington cesspool to commence a clean-up.
Dean/Sanders or Dean/Feingold 2012? I have seen this kind of thought promoted recently. I'm inclined to think such a campaign within the present electoral political realm would be pretty ineffective. But it certainly offers a glimpse of an alternative that provides dimension to my critique of Obama and the others who play well the present game as construed.
Ultimately, however, I think the answer will come in a sustained populist movement that pushes hard on the entire political system to be reformed. Such a movement easily has right on its side, given the depths of depravity to which we have sunk in this country. Let's get it started.
Cheeseburger, anyone?
October 18, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Let's get it started."
Ok then.
What are specific issues we can talk about and how do we demonstrate to the teabaggers that they are being played?
October 18, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink