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Monday, December 24, 2012

Depressed GOPers Understand What Obama Represents Better Than Many Dems Seem To Do

My evidence is taken from, of all people, the terminally awful Jonah Goldberg, describing the ignorant mean whiny old white rich guys of the National Review cruise this year:
“This is a more downbeat bunch this year,” he said. “We lost in 2008, but it was almost boisterous and fun. This, a little less so. People were dyspeptic. Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully ­de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”
They lost. Not just the election, but a generational project to dismantle the Real America of the New Deal and the Great Society. They were wrong about the so-called emancipatory efficiencies of "free men in free markets" -- which was never anything but an apologia for white power, patriarchy, plutocracy, and unsustainable race to the bottom globalization -- and everybody knows they were wrong, everybody has seen the endless evidence of deregulatory looting and fraud, nobody wants to be them anymore, nobody buys their phony America is a "Silent Majority" or "Moral Majority" or "Values Voter" or "Real America." The barely but still intact New Deal and Great Society forms the foundation for progressive reform toward universal healthcare, public education, basic income, sustainable utilities, equity-in-diversity in a United States that is partner in a planetary polycultural social democracy. They lost. We have work to do, but they lost and we are winning. We should act like it.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

You make the assumption that Obama is a real Progressive, when his record is poor in human rights (the NDAA alone with its Executive mandate to detain indefinitely and also execute with no 5th Amendment rights...) Obama is a corporatist, a willing puppet of the Plutocracy. He has shown no sign of acting on the Progressive politics he promises. Obama has kept the Bush era secrecy and human rights obliteration agenda alive, and he has worsened it.

Dale Carrico said...

I make the assumption that demonstrable progress is real progress.

I don't have much context on which to base an assessment of your comment, given that it amounts to a quick impressionistic hit from a position of anonymity, but you seem perhaps to have ascended to a level of critique from which you are no longer capable of attending to differences that make a difference. I think that is usually as useless as lacking a critical perspective at all as far as working for progressive change (defined as sustainable equity-in-diversity on my terms).

Perhaps you are not a regular reader of this blog, but I am a green democratic socialist feminist queer trained in non-violent civil disobedience who has gone to jail for Queer Nation and who teaches critical theory at UC Berkeley and a San Francisco art school. I publish under my name and you can read more and look me up to know where I am coming for before you fling cartoonish accusations around.

Given the prevalence of corporate-military incumbency against which any progressive reform must ambivalently intervene I am assuming when you call Obama nothing but a plutocratic puppet either you regard ANY non revolutionary not now engaged in active revolution as a plutocratic puppet (in which case you need to get off the internet and start kicking ass my friend, oh, and do enjoy jail) or else you are indulging in a reactionary provocation all too comparable to right wing accusations that Obama is nothing but an Islamofascist puppet.

Although one has to push from the left to achieve progress, the pre-emptive demoralization that attends the endless expectation and demonstration of betrayal is ultimately reactionary and usually reflects a position of privilege in my experience.

For what its worth I am a strong critic of Obama's civil liberties record and amplification of the Unitary Executive and drone/ assassination policy -- and am paying close attention to the moves coming from State and Defense and the AG's office about what it means to declare an end to the war on terror and the terms of the 2001 congressional authorization. If you are serious enough and smart enough to engage with the complexities of actual human rights advocacy in the context of real-world corporate-military hegemony you might find me a more willing and able partner than your throwaway comment allows.

Anonymous said...

Obama's friends and backers are all from Goldman Sachs or GS peers/subordinates in the financial Super Mafia. Obama is owned by the Plutocracy. He will never engage in real Progressive Politics. He won't even stop the Justice Dept. from harassing legal state medical marijuana dispensaries! All current democrats are more or less Reagan era Republicans and all current Republicans are more or less the John Birch Society reborn. Wake up, Dale! Smell the Tyranny! You are green, gay activist, etc. et al! Great! Those are fine values and admirable positions. Obama does not share your Progressive liberal concerns. Obama serves Goldman Sachs and that is all he serves. And he has trashed habeas corpus at their behest!

Dale Carrico said...

Well, you sure hate you some Obama. Good luck with that.

Black guy from the future past said...

Dale, reading your blog has made me despondent. Through reading your blog I find that the world is FAR more complex than I could have ever hoped to imagine. What do I do in this world? Many people have told me I should just try to be just another wealthy bastard and screw the world , but my sensibilities point to the opposite of that notion. However, the opposite of the will to become "trillionaire rich" is an equally preposterous and daunting task of going against intransigent interests and power structures that have more power than I can ever hope to have. Trans-Atlantic slavery took over 400 years to dismantle, and then after that, in America, Jim Crow had to be dismantled. What motivates you to continue this blog, your activism? Are you trying to establish some utopia wherein everybody has equal rights and lives in harmony with each other? Is that even feasible? What is the purpose of all this struggle? The contest between ideologies of left and right? I can't see where it's going.

Anonymous said...

I am a Green, Socialist Muslim who strongly supports gay rights and 1st wave feminism. Nonviolence, also. Don't make assumptions, Dale. Crank the hostility down _just_ a notch, mkay? The internet is too public these days, so I am anon. Just getting a job these days, and your names and aliases are googled microscopically. Please cease to hate on anonymity, it is vital to healthy public discourse and was a special concern of the Founding Fathers, many of whom agitated for Independence from Britain under a cloak of anonymity.

Anonymous said...

I want a real Progressive, socialist 3rd Party in the USA. Now _that_ would be something to get behind!

Anonymous said...

It is sad that someone as genuinely Progressive and keenly intelligent as you, Dale, is falling for the Obama Delusion. Obama has always been a Wolf in Progressives' Clothing. Obama will not even support legal, clean needle exchange to curb the spread of HIV! He came out against that!

Anonymous said...

Obama punk'd the entire Progressive Movement, that might just earn him some hate, no?

Dale Carrico said...

In the US third parties only function as spoilers of better outcomes on their own terms. Even socialists caucus with Dems now, as would good greens.

There are reforms that could change this state of affairs, of course. IRV such as we fought for and now have here in Oakland, public financing of elections, equal access to all endorsed candidates, etc. But most of the reforms to bring about this state of affairs are even harder to get through the present duopoly than getting the more progressive ultimate reforms themselves through the present duopoly that one presumably thinks one needs a third party for. Think about that. This is not a council of resignation or despair but a recognition of priorities.

Few third party advocates seem interested in advocating for and actually organizing to achieve institutional changes to render third parties viable in my experience (is yours honestly truly different?), leading me to think too often third party advocacy really is just a pretext for narcissists to justify complacency or to frustrate work within the system to achieve the better in the name of their parochial version of the perfect, present company no doubt excluded.

You know, even if a third party existed that mobilized a massive constituency behind a more radical vision than the Democrats -- which I personally doubt is plausible, having actually read the Democratic Party Platform, by the way, have you? -- one would still have to engage in reform and stakeholder politics through a constitutional terrain demanding endless frustrating compromises and heartbreaking exhaustingly slow progress.

I joke, but maybe you just aren't cut out for real politics and just want to fling insults from the peanut gallery? Sorry if that seems harsh and full of assumptions, but I am actually eager to hear that it is not true, that I am wrong to fear this of you, that you take such admonitions to heart, that you understand the road is hard, that you have lived a life in struggle and resistance in the service of sustainable equity-in-diversity and understand the hard lessons of experience that provoke me to say such things. Surprise me, exceed my expectations.

PS: I think I benefit enormously in my thinking from publishing my views under my own name, even my hasty, incompletely formulated, and controversial views. Some risks are worth taking. Integrity mobilizes virtuous circles.

Anonymous said...

and I god damned LOATHE the Randroid Transhumanist cabal... fortunately, they seem incompetent to successfully create anything at all, and their endless "conferences" and "festivals" are entirely incestuous, repetitive and and recursive ; they get no real attention from real stakeholders and policy makers.

Anonymous said...

Obama handing single payer off to the same private, murderous insurance companies that created the current disaster called "Amercian Health Care" was the final straw for me and supporting Obama or the current Democratic party... and don't get me started on Pelosi and her perverse molestation of the "regulation of interstate commerce..."

Anonymous said...

I work in a field where if it were known I am a Muslim? I would be worse than out of work... I probably wouldn't make it home from my patrol.

Dale Carrico said...

reading your blog has made me despondent

Knowledge is power, to know more is always to be better, but one never can know enough to be justified in despair. Grasping the complexities of power reminds us that those who would do evil face as much resistance as those who work for sustainable equity-in-diversity. In my experience the fight for justice is an end in itself just as kindness is: every amelioration of suffering, every opening to creative expressivity, every connection to difference makes the world better and more beautiful for all of us.

I do not doubt that some people become rich or become famous as an accidental result of the pursuit of their passions and vocations, but I know that the vocation gave no less meaning to their lives before they achieved that wealth or fame than after it did for as long as it did, and I know that it is impossible to accomplish either wealth or fame as an end in themselves without first mutilating yourself so much as to be unfit for meaningfulness or abiding happiness.

I am not a special person at all, I am not smarter than anybody, I spent more of my life being ignorant than most of my students and readers seem to me to be, and I am not more virtuous than anybody, I am just a cranky old cuss actually. Don't be despondent! Amor Mundi means love of the world, love of the world we make together, peer to peer in the struggle of history, I hope it eventually provides you food for thought but also nourishes that love of the world to which the blog is ultimately dedicated.

Dale Carrico said...

I god damned LOATHE the Randroid Transhumanist cabal... fortunately, they seem incompetent to successfully create anything at all, and their endless "conferences" and "festivals" are entirely incestuous, repetitive and and recursive ; they get no real attention from real stakeholders and policy makers.

There is truth in what you say here, but I strongly recommend you read this: extreme transhumanoids clarify our understanding of more mainstream views and also tech-ceo's are giving them enough real money to do real damage on their own terms, don't forget the Neocons, marginal nutjobs who say what moneyed elites want to hear can do more damage than their obvious idiocy would otherwise disqualify them from.

Dale Carrico said...

Obama punk'd the entire Progressive Movement, that might just earn him some hate, no?

No offense but this is just nonsense. Comparing actual Obama campaign promises for 08 and 12 with actual Administration efforts and accomplishments tracks more closely than the overwhelming majority of historical antecedents. Some Obama supporters seem to have a tenuous sense of what Obama actually claimed and actually accomplished (I leave to the side the even more daunting question of what is practically accomplishable under the rubric of electoral politics and policy making and reform campaigns) compared to incredibly transcendental hopes desires expectations they slapped Obama's name and then wanted to slap him for failing to realize.

Dale Carrico said...

I work in a field where if it were known I am a Muslim? I would be worse than out of work... I probably wouldn't make it home from my patrol.

Well, that is illegal, and it pisses me off more than I can say, and I want to insist that frameworks do exist for your protection and to provide you legal recourse. I was a queer activist in Georgia, I haven't always been teaching artists in San Francisco about socialism so luxuriously! If you real world circumstances demand a level of closetedness that is really getting you down, I can only say I am truly sorry, I have experienced versions of that too. It sucks, and not in a good way.

Dale Carrico said...

Look, we didn't have the votes for single payer. Wingnut govs letting the fed set up exchanges on their terms is expediting the emergence of a public option if you could get beyond being aggreived and notice what is in the actual legislation you revile. The wingnuts have a much more realistic grasp of the implications of those 2000 pages of access and cost-cutting at the management level than Dems do (to circle back to the theme of the post under which all these comments have appeared). At some point you have to allow such realities to have an impact on your assessment of existing and possible accomplishments. There are a number of easter eggs in the ACA that set the stage for CA, VT, MA, NE to establish single payer and set the steamroller rolling rather like Gay Marriage or Marijuana legalization. Stop whining and get organizing. Single payer isn't here but it isn't over either, and for those with eyes to see it has been facilitated by ACA.

Anonymous said...

I want to be the 'social worker' kind of cop, and almost all of my colleagues?
they are the "find innocent brown people and beat the shit out of them, they might be Muslims anyway" kind of cops....

Anonymous said...

Islam and Marxism/Socialism actually share some primary and foundational concerns and theory. Muhammad (pbuh) was inspired partly by the plight of widows and orphans, and the newly wealthy elite of his tribe who were ignoring them. Hence the zakat tax, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Zakat is paid out to the indigent only. It isn't just a tax on cash, it is a 2.5% tax on one's total assets. It is designed to redistribute wealth, Muhammad compared hoarded wealth to blood which does not flow in the body and clots, causing death.

jollyspaniard said...

Having multiple parties doesn't mean that you don't have to comprimise, it involves more comprimise. To implement it in the USA you'd have to change the nature of your political system which favours two parties. Its a lot easier and infinitely more realistic to overhaul one of the exsisting parties than to do either of the above.

Merry christmas Dale, blog on.

jimf said...

> Dale, reading your blog has made me despondent. . .
> What motivates you to continue this blog. . .?
> Are you trying to establish some utopia. . . ?

Why should it be necessary to think that any kind of
"utopia" is plausibly attainable (let alone to think that
one's own actions can **visibly** move the world in
that direction) in order to muster up the motivation
to write a blog (or write a book, or teach a class,
or even have a conversation)?

People like to talk, and to share with each other
the way they see things. We happen to live in a
world (or at least in one of the fortunate countries)
where that's more possible than ever before in human
history, thanks to widespread literacy,
cheap and accessible communications technology,
(relatively) abundant leisure, and (relative) political
liberty.

Why should "utopia" have to come into it?

> Given the prevalence of corporate-military incumbency
> against which any progressive reform must ambivalently
> intervene I am assuming when you call Obama nothing but
> a plutocratic puppet either you regard ANY non revolutionary
> not now engaged in active revolution as a plutocratic
> puppet (in which case you need to get off the internet
> and start kicking ass my friend, oh, and do enjoy jail. . .)
>
> In the US third parties only function as spoilers of
> better outcomes on their own terms. . .
>
> [T]oo often third party advocacy really is just a pretext
> for narcissists to justify complacency or to frustrate work
> within the system to achieve the better in the name of their
> parochial version of the perfect. . .
>
> [M]aybe you just aren't cut out for real politics. . .

Yes, "real politics" doesn't leave much room for ideological
purity. In fact, clueless idealism can be used as
a tool by the other side.

I've mentioned this before, but Dan Savage waxed entertainingly
harsh on this topic with a college-newspaper interviewer in an
exchange that was uploaded to YouTube some years ago:
Daily Pennsylvanian Interview with Dan Savage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDzbTyz3_VI&feature=related

Oh and, uh, see Steven Spielberg's _Lincoln_ if you
haven't already. ;->

Anonymous said...

Just like Obama, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus too!

Dale Carrico said...

Just like Obama, Lincoln declared war on Christmas and put all the whites in FEMA camps after replacing the Constitution with Sharia law.

Anonymous said...

Every incoming president is ushered into a smoky, dim back room. There the top party hacks and their Corporate Puppet Masters run a film projector. The POTUS is motioned firmly to sit down and WATCH. What he sees is similar to the Zapruder film, but from a completely different street corner and viewing angle. After this short film ends, the Plutocrats and their lackeys say ANY QUESTIONS? And Obama springs up and says "ONLY QUESTION IS... WHAT IS MY AGENDA?" and they light a cigar for the terrified, twitching fool....

Dale Carrico said...

Nice lampoon of the worldview of a paranoid racist tool.