Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Agree or Disagree?

Upgraded and Adapted from the Moot: In response to my post a couple of days ago in which I declared myself, of all things, to be feeling rather optimistic, the pseudonymous "Radical Cool Dude," was quick to pee in my punchbowl (or, I should say, outsource somebody else to pee in my punchbowl):
So do you disagree with the arguments made by Earl Ofari Hutchinson in his Huffington Post article Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama? If so, why?


"Radical Cool Dude" let me begin by saying the form of your question annoys me.

Rather than actually asserting some point that you substantiate on your own terms with the expectation that we are having a conversation together, you simply peremptorily bark a link at me and demand that I agree or disagree with it.

Does Earl Ofari Hutchinson speak for you in every particular? Or have you assigned me the task of processing his piece for you? And, honestly, why that piece in particular? There are dozens of pieces making comparable cases to his every hour on the hour across the blogosphere (as there are making comparable cases to the one I posted, you might add with justice).

Now that I have read his piece I daresay I inhabit it rather as most anybody with a measure of critical intelligence would -- that is to say, there are things with which I agree in greater and lesser degrees, and things which I weight differently than he does. To cover briefly the highlights from his post (every one of which I must assume you ventriloquize like a dummy given your eagerness to have him speak for you):

(One) Hutchinson says Obama seems "rattled" by the healthcare debate -- I couldn't disagree more. Indeed, I think that is a surreal misapprehension of Obama's performance in every way.

(Two) Hutchinson says Obama was wrong to deride Rush Limbaugh. I couldn't disagree more. Limbaugh has been denominated the de facto leader of the Republican Party, a non-elected and in fact unelectable figure whomping up the most self-marginalizing forces in Movement Conservatism. It shows what disarray Republicans are in that they continue to fall for this rather brilliant gambit of Obama's in my view.

(Three) I'm not happy at all about the Afghanistan quagmire either, in fact our deepening involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan without what seem to me achievable goals or an exit strategy terrifies me -- and so perhaps Hutchinson and I agree here more than we have before. Although it remains to be seen how Obama's policy will play out here, there are signs that he is trying to redefine the mission in a more realist fashion against the inertial mass of a vast ongoing deployment, and I'm not sure I am qualified to judge what it would look like to an outsider if things really were starting to move in a positive direction by my lights.

(Four) I expect accountability around civil liberties is coming, including very possibly some accountability for figures higher up the chain of command than I would have dreamed possible this time last year. Obama is allowing legal processes that are slower-moving than is the circulation of outrage to unspool in their deliberate, frustrated and frustrating ways, while at once seeking to maintain control of inter-sectarian conflicts within agencies that he needs to be functioning all the while. I am very happy that the left is keeping the pressure on Obama here -- card carrying member of the ACLU here -- but I think some of us are sometimes rather quick to declare superficial twists and turns we discern in a complex slow-moving process as signs of betrayal or game-ending gambits. So, I guess Hutchinson and I would disagree about the fatality of unaccountability for the criminal wrongdoers in the Killer Clown Administration now just a couple hundred days behind us, while no doubt we equally forcefully abhor the same acts of criminality and equally forcefully demand a real measure of accountability for them.

(Five) I think it is frankly idiotic to announce a "verdict" on Obama's stimulus and economic policies this early in the game. Clearly, Obama has taken the advice of "the best and the brightest" here (I hope my irony is palpable) and we must all of us hope that grown-ups and professionals -- even the ones who have spent all their grown-up professional lives in the tank with corporatist crooks or teaching corporatists to be crooks in elite Business Schools -- can go a long way toward cleaning up the mess of a generation of Movement Republicans and corporatist-militarists of both parties deregulating the financial sector and stealthing welfare for the rich as Defense. The process of stimulus, the incentivization of shifts into green production and provision, strengthening unions as a countervailing player to chambers of commerce, and re-regulation of banking and finance is piecemeal, it isn't done, it's ongoing. I'm not thrilled with the way it has been done -- but I can admit I'm not a professional economist and that I actually do respect real professionals when they warrant it and I do think the economy is showing some signs of life I worried it would not. Maybe the professionals really do know a bit more than I do about how to generate enough of an economic turnaround to yield a space in which regulatory processes can proceed. Stranger things have happened. Call me a skeptic, but less so than Hutchinson, apparently.

(Six) When Hutchinson imputes to Obama a wish-fulfillment fantasy of misreading 2008 as the arrival of a post-racial America I am almost embarrassed for him that he thinks anybody thinks Obama thinks such a thing. Perfectly absurd. His analysis here is like some sort of cartoon.

(Seven) I personally do hope Obama continues to make his "bipartisanship" noises, contrary to Hutchinson. I think it is funny that people hear the same thing when Obama talks about "bipartisanship" (and then gets everything he wants while painting the opposition as childish obstructionists of the will of the people) as when Harry Reid talks about "bipartisanship" (and gives away the store). That sort of tone-deafness makes me laugh. I happen to think Obama is trying to re-invent the Republican Party from the outside as a sensible opposition by creating a space in which some clever less-evil Republicans can gain a real measure of power by playing ball with him while their alternative seems to be willful self-marginalization by identifying with viscerally ugly stupid hatefulness in their present base that seems at least a century outdated. If you point out that he also uses "bipartisanship" as a dodge to kill some left-of-center initiatives with which he does not agree as a center-left figure but which I do as a figure to his left, I think I probably agree with that, but I also expected it given that I actually pay attention to what people say and do before I elect them.

That's a lot of issues, rather breezily surveyed from the Hutchinson piece. I certainly would have preferred that you actually raised a question or two of your own rather than demanding I "agree" or "disagree" with a piece that provided many occasions for both agreement and disagreement. By way of conclusion, I suppose I can also provide that the shorter answer for me to Hutchinson's question "why the Right is winning" is to say that I will declare the "Right" to be winning when Obama no longer gets all his measures through more or less intact as he has done, when the Right starts winning elections again which they show little sign of doing, or when the poll numbers suggest they are likely to do as they do not at present. None of that seems much in the offing.

Obama was elected as a center-left candidate rather than a progressive as left-of-center as myself, so I daresay those who foolishly imagined him otherwise than he is or ever said he was might imagine the "Right" is winning even as they are losing because they thought Obama's election would mark the unilateral imposition of something like the Swedish government on the US in the first 100 days. I think it would take about sixteen years holding the White House and Congress to turn the US into our own very superior multicultural continent-scaled version of Sweden, and that Obama's first 200 days have been a better start than I could have dreamed to that end.

2 comments:

RadicalCoolDude said...

"Radical Cool Dude" let me begin by saying the form of your question annoys me.

*sigh* I have been debating on online forums and blogs for almost a decade. I have argued with everyone from some of the most respected progressive academics in the world to the craziest cranks of the Christian Right. You are the first and only person I have ever encountered that finds the form of my questions annoying. I find this reaction puzzling...

Rather than actually asserting some point that you substantiate on your own terms with the expectation that we are having a conversation together, you simply peremptorily bark a link at me and demand that I agree or disagree with it.

People interested in my particular point of view often send me links to articles and ask me whether or not I agree with the arguments it contains. I welcome and encourage it.

That being said, I don't see how my form of questioning prevents us from having a conversation together once you have explained why you agree or disagree with Hutchinson's arguments without my having previously informed you that I agree or disagree with them or assert some point that I substantiate on my own terms.

Does Earl Ofari Hutchinson speak for you in every particular?

No. If I didn't specifically say that he does, why would you assume he does simply because I ask you whether or not you agree with his arguments?

Or have you assigned me the task of processing his piece for you?

No. I was simply interested in seeing how you respond to someone who obviously disagrees with you and perhaps gain some insight from it.

And, honestly, why that piece in particular? There are dozens of pieces making comparable cases to his every hour on the hour across the blogosphere (as there are making comparable cases to the one I posted, you might add with justice).

I found the title and summary of the article provocative.

(every one of which I must assume you ventriloquize like a dummy given your eagerness to have him speak for you)

That would be a false assumption beneath someone of your critical intelligence.

Dale Carrico said...

*sigh*

**sigh**?

Fuck off, it's not like I didn't have anything better to do with the hour I spent reading your fucking link and analyzing every goddamn claim in it since you wouldn't give any indication of what exactly you thought was and wasn't salient in it yourself. I don't care if that's how you converse with the Pope and with the King of Siam, babycakes, if you actually have a question for me ask me a goddamn question and I'll answer it, if you actually have a point to make then make a goddamn point. Since I did you the respect of actually analyzing the article you linked to in incomparably greater depth than you did (and we're all still waiting) even though you were the one who was presumably so interested in it, I found it pretty quotidian, I've got to say your latest lame pissy fit is especially rich. The nerve of some people, honestly... By the way, the reason the inevitable cascade of self-pitying histrionics about how mean I am and how nobody should be treated this way and how you'll never read this blog again and so on aren't appearing not because you aren't writing them -- your type always writes them by the carload -- it's because I'm deleting them all on sight as rubbish. Get back to me when you have a single substantive thing to say or a single assertion of your own you are willing to stand behind and substantiate. My blog, my rules, go waste somebody else's time, have a nice day.