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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

For Those Who Truck In GOP-DNC Equivalency Theses

To assume an analytic vantage from which one becomes indifferent to differences that make a difference is too often to lose the capacity to make a difference.

5 comments:

The Mathmos said...

Again with this tripe? Quite the lofty perch you’ve found for yourself, mocking obvious Republican idiocy regarding social mores and other hot-button single-issues all the while massively obfuscating the legitimate debate going on about the bipartisan (yes, bipartisan) Beltway Establishment class war at the fiscal level.

Here’s the ersatz of the kind of sophistry you seem to be peddling every once in a while:

“Since Republicans don’t view gays in the same way Democrats do, certainly any vantage point from which they both appear as elements to be politically opposed must be simplistic and disconnected, right?”

Maybe the extremists you imagine confusing both mainstream parties aren’t forcefully blind to differences of policy regarding matters such as gay rights or climate change posturing ; maybe, just maybe, the extremists put those differences in the context of another, more relevant difference: the socioeconomic viewpoint of the Establishment insiders versus the rest of the population, and the policy results of this disconnect.

For someone as ostensibly pro-labor, pro-New Deal as you, it’s rather unseemly to :

1) Parade your inside-the-tank faith in the personability of a President having written neoliberal platitudes like this : “...those who still champion the old time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100% from the liberal interest groups. But these efforts seem exhausted…bereft of energy and new ideas needed to address the changing circumstances of globalization. . . .” (Obama, 2006), and staffing every crevices of his administration with financial industry stooges.
2) Actively discourage public pressure on the Democrats on the grounds that the criticism lacks civility, subtlety or decorum (all well-trodden pundit clichés), when it is precisely public pressure, even anti-establishment revolutionary trends, which set off the whole New Deal effort at damage control in the first place.

If you manage to work up the necessary good will to seriously consider neoliberal economic policies as maybe an area where Democratic and Republican policy-making doesn’t differ enough to warrant splitting-hair caveats when denouncing the financial oligarchy sacking the country’s public wealth and resources, let me know.

In the meantime, feel free to moderate this comment, as always. Or distract your readers with another rant about those nasty anonymized unSerious kids on your lawn.

Dale Carrico said...

So, presumably, this rant is intended to defend a GOP-DNC equivalency thesis? Are you advocating revolutionary insurrection, a quixotic third party cul-de-sac, or some specific strategy of reform? I get it that it feels marvelous to declare a plague on both houses and to declare my pragmatic impulse as stealth-reactionary and my continued preference for Obama over any other President in my lifetime as some kind of inhabitation of a cult of personality... but I simply disagree that any of this is true or useful in the least. I think you shouldn't read this blog if it upsets you so much. I certainly won't miss you, and I daresay your energies might be put to some actual use if you found a more like-minded cohort to vent with.

And, yes, I don't think you are particularly serious, given my long acquaintance with your particular line of critique. That's obviously my prerogative; as is deleting your comments when they simply endlessly repeat the same points and same attacks. It's boring. I do think you should attack the lunatics who are literally trying to destroy everything that matters to you rather than venting your frustration in divisive demoralizing attacks on those in public life who share many of your values and ends in ways that empower their -- and your -- plain enemies. It's stupid.

The Mathmos said...

"I do think you should attack the lunatics who are literally trying to destroy everything that matters to you rather than venting your frustration in divisive demoralizing attacks on those in public life who share many of your values and ends in ways that empower their -- and your -- plain enemies. It's stupid."

It's exactly my point. Nicely done. The left possess a coherent economic viewpoint from which any fashionable remix on the constant neoliberal tune appears inadequate. I daresay that your goal isn't the empowerment of the neoliberal clique, so you shouldn't seek to demoralize the more radical left critique.

Apply your own maxim.

Dale Carrico said...

Given the claims of mine which tend to spark your ire, brave pseudonynous "Mathmos," it seems to me you regard as "demoralizing the radical left" nearly anything that doesn't amount to Democrats blowing their own brains out in the service of symbolic gestures at the expense of ugly compromises yielding progressive reform. Of course I'm sure you regard this as exactly equally a mischaracterization of your viewpoint as I regard yours of mine, so why don't we nip this latest episode of talking past each other in the bud, thereby circumventing the inevitable conclusion in which we call each other slobbering monsters bent on destruction, and just accept that we have dispositional differences that make conversation unproduction but no doubt share enough ends to make common cause on occasional concrete campaigns?

Meanwhile, I will continue to post about my frustrations and aspirations on my own goddamn blog in the terms I prefer, and if you take massive exception to them you can stop reading or at any rate kindly confine your comments to those in which you have some concrete recommendation to make that is not likely to be read by me simply as a reminder that you think I suck. I get it by now that you think I suck, as it happens, and it doesn't seem to be making me suck less to hear it repeated, so why not try something new for a change? Further comments on this thread likely to be deleted or ignored, as this is becoming a time sink.

The Mathmos said...

"Democrats blowing their own brains out"

Now you've made me smile.

Otherwise, I agree.