After the Future

Thanksgiving Encounters

One of the commonplaces or cliches about conservatives is their devotion to given-ness, their sense of the "rightness" of the old-fashioned and their resistance to the "new fangled". But there's a truth there, especially when it concerns Sarah Palin conservatives. This "rightness" correlates in their mind as "common sense" because it's time tested and has a kind of numinous quality because of its association with the wisdom of the ancestors. This is the way it's always been; you just don’t pass a law to change the wisdom of the ages. That's Liberal foolishness. They just don't get it.

This Thanksgiving weekend I spent time with relatives who are tenacious defenders of Sarah Palin, and I think I understand where they're coming from. They ground themselves in a basic defense of this "common-sense" feeling for the world, which they believe correlates with the American foundational national narrative. She is loved for fighting for its preservation, no matter what her flaws might be, which my relatives have no illusions about. Nevertheless, they enjoy her in-your-face brashness, how much she irritates Liberals, and in the end that's all that matters. And that's fine, so far as it goes.

My relatives think of me as Liberal, even though I'm not. I'm a believing, practicing Catholic, and the phrase "liberal Catholic", while people do use it, is oxymoronic, if the second word in the phrase has any meaning. But I voted for Obama, so the distinction is lost on them, and because I accept a pluralizing modern world for what it is, which they don't--it sounds too much like multi-culturalist relativism to them. They don't see me as belonging to their tribe because I'm not someone who has the same enemies they have, and because I don't share in their "common sense".

Tribal America (work in progress)

Just talking about party affiliation doesn't work anymore, because anybody with any sense realizes the party system doesn't serve the American people anymore. The party system as it exists now is egregiously top heavy and dysfunctional. The current system is neither responsive nor effective; it's a joke. It's made our country ungovernable, and something else will have to emerge to replace it.

I see in the long run some kind of realignment into smaller parties which in turn will form coalitions on issues of mutual concern. Such a realignment will have more flexibility and be more responsive to people's bottom-up concerns. So I've been thinking about this inter-tribal coalition idea, and this a very preliminary attempt to map it out. I know this is amateurish sociology/anthropology--please, point me in the direction of anybody who has done it better.  But I think it's an interesting exercise, and its goal for me is twofold:

The first to give us all some perspective. If we are serious about living in a pluralistic society that means that we have to learn to live with one another, and that we live in a tribe whether we realize it or not, and that our worldview is just one puzzle piece in a larger picture. If you are what I describe below as a Humanist, you may violently disagree with the ideas and values expressed by people in the other tribes, but assuming the "Other" isn't a fanatic, and most "Others" are not, you need to seek out the common ground, some place to begin a conversation.

The second goal is to understand how that common ground can lead to political coaliton building. The Libertarians, while culturally left on most issues, have less of a problem than Humanists in forming a coalition with the Religious Right, for instance, despite cultural or social values that it finds repugnant. Libertarians see that they need the religious right to achieve their larger political and economic objectives. There's more to their success than simply this partnership, but it would be a lot harder for them to have successfully pushed the moderate New Deal compromise to the far left while claiming for itself the  center with a free-market buccaneering mentality that has brought disaster.

So if it's true that the two-party system is broken beyond repair, what should be the focus of organizing work going forward over the next decade or more? The question I'm posing, and I'm not sure of the answer, is whether cultural-left tribes can reach out to some of the more moderate cultural-right tribes to form a coalition on progressive economic issues, as well as other issues of mutual concern. Where are the most natural coalition partners, and how must the development of those partnerships be approached?  What is the proper decorum, so to speak, in intertribal negotiations. You can't make a solid, long-term relationship work unless you understand those things--and know what you can talk about and what you can't.

It's OK to be Tribal . . .

. . . so long as you're willing to work with other tribes on issues of mutual concern.

Your tribe is the group with whom you feel comfortable because there is an assumed shared world view. People from different tribes can get along with one another, even be curious about one another, but they live in different mental worlds or different soul worlds, if you will. Your tribe is where you feel at home, and everyone needs a home. But you also need to get out a little. And you need to let bygones be bygones when there's been some "history."

People from different tribes can unite around issues where they share common ground. When they do so, they form coalitions, not tribes. So what I'm talking about is inter-tribal coalition building. Effective coalition partners recognize that when you're talking with someone from a different tribe, you respect the differences and keep discussion focused on shared objectives; you don't let yourself get sidetracked into arguments about issues where you know you disagree--like abortion or gay rights, or whatever.

Each tribe might feel very strongly one way or the other about those issues, but it's counterproductive to talk about them. Coalition partners should have no expectation of agreement on any issue except the one around which the coalition is built, and they are careful not to offend coalition partners in the other tribe concerning their cultural beliefs no matter how much you hate those beliefs.

As I've been writing here for some time, this kind of coalition building is essential; it can only happen if culturally conservative tribes find a way of working with culturally liberal tribes, and vice versa, about issues in the economic sphere that are critically important to all.  They need to understand who the real enemy is, and use the power of numbers to defeat it.

It's pretty clear to me that the two-party system in this country is dead.  It's worse than dead.  It's like one of those entitities from "Ghostbusters" that slimes everything it comes in contact with. It's become a dysfunctional joke. The only solution in the long run is for these parties to break up and for smaller parties to form as they do in countries with parliamentary systems, and then for those smaller parties to form coalitions. 

It's not a perfect solution; nothing is. But smaller parties will be clearer about their objectives and more responsive to their constituents, and they will have to bargain in good faith with people from other parties.  They could never get away with the kind of nonsense the Republicans have been pulling lately. They have too much power too gum things up even when they're a minority, and they don't have to bargain or compromise. They win by just throwing a wrench into the machinery because they don't want the machine to function. It's in their interests that it doesn't. 

I think most of us can live with a system that works on compromise, but one in which the compromises are negotiated in good faith (for the most part).  We cannot live with a system that is bought.  When the system is bought, there is no real compromise no bargaining in good faith; the highest paying customer always gets what he paid for behind closed doors. 

Quote of the Day: Robert Kuttner (Updated)

The whole austerity crusade is the work of Wall Street and of politicians who want a high-minded excuse to bash government, or who mistakenly think that the Democrats got their clocks cleaned because voters fretted about deficits. The American Prospect recently published a definitive article by two eminent political scientists, Chris Howard and Richard Valelly, titled "Deficit-Attention Disorder," demonstrating that voters are not mainly upset about deficits, but about the continuing economic calamity. The voters are way ahead of the kind of elites that populate this commission.

If the deficit-hawks get their way, that economic calamity will only deepen, and produce a deeper political setback for the Obama administration.

President Obama, who bequeathed this commission, has been encouraging its members to "set aside their partisan differences" and agree on a plan -- as if reducing the deficit had anything to do with the real challenge, namely getting a recovery going.

The best hope, in truth, is that divisions will cripple the commission, that other leaders will start turning to the real issues of economic recovery, and that President Obama will stop listening to the austerity mongers. For more detailed rebuttal to the deficit hawks, see the new website, ourfiscalsecurity.org. (Source)

It doesn't matter what the electorate thinks, because it's an insiders' game until 2012, and the insiders are plutocrat partisans who want make sure the Dems are in no position to do something politically effective and popular. Obama doesn't have a real plan; he's playing reactive politics--just trying to survive from week to week, and that's right where the the plutocrats want him--looking weak and ineffective. Makes it easier for them to get a Republican back in office in 2012.

It's the same strategy they pursued with Clinton--keep the Dem president on his heels; use the time when a Dem is in office to consolidate gains obtained when a Republican was, and get ready to make aggressive new advances when a Republican returns. And if in the meanwhile they can get the Dem to buy into aspects of their agenda, like NAFTA, cool.

Stewart v. Maddow

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."  [attributed to Karl Rove]

I don't know that it was so interesting  it required an hour, but Maddow's interview of Jon Stewart did focus on some issues that we've been discussing at ATF in the last several weeks. I'd like specifically to talk about the interview in the light of my posts last week, "Centrist Politics and Rhetorical Virtue" and "The Rhetorical Strategy of the Power Elites."

Maddow had a beef with Stewart insofar as he suggested during his sanity rally that there was an equivalency between what MSNBC does and what FOX does. Stewart defended that position using a weather/climate metaphor. The weather of specific stories might be fine, but the basic MSNBC climate was as partisan liberal as FOX is partisan conservative. As such, MSNBC is a part of the problem as much as FOX is. For Stewart, Left vs. Right, blue vs. red is the wrong argument. The real argument is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. normal people.

Greenwald vs. O'Donnell, Round 2

I said I wasn't going to talk about politics much anymore, but the election and the the postmortems are interesting to me for what they say about our present confusion. So I was interested this morning to see this YouTube of Greenwald on the Lawrence O'Donnell Show last night which, I think, provides a needed moment of clarity.  Here's the clip, and I'll comment on it below.

O'Donnell's point needs to be addressed.  He says it's not possible for Democrats to have a majority without conservative Democrats.  Greenwald makes the point I've been making, which is that 'conservative' does not mean being owned by Wall Street.

You can be culturally conservative Democrat in a southern state and still support economic programs that are so-called 'liberal'. That's exactly the formula that needs to be promoted. And that's the idea that O'Donnell and others, even progressive types, don't seem to understand.  It's all about how you define 'conservative Democrat'. Put in culturally conservative Dems in southern states, but culturally conservatives who are like Jim Webb, people who want to take on Wall Street not shill for them.

Quote of the Day: JIm Webb

Webb has pushed for a onetime windfall profits tax on Wall Street's record bonuses. He talks about the "unusual circumstances of the bailout," that the bonuses wouldn't be there without the bailout.

"I couldn't even get a vote," Webb says. "And it wasn't because of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren't going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.

"People look up say, what's the difference between these two parties? Neither of them is really going to take on Wall Street. If they don't have the guts to take them on, and they've got all these other programs that exclude me, well to hell with them. I'm going to vote for the other people who can at least satisfy me on other issues, like abortion. Screw you guys. I understand that mindset." (h/t Greenwald)

Read Greenwald's entire post if you want a good eye roll: The Politico reporter who wrote the article quoting Webb conflates Webb's desire to take on Wall Street with the mission of the Blue Dogs.

I'm not a huge Webb fan, but he intriques me and  I respect him. Webb might lean conservative on cultural issues, but he 'gets it' when it comes to the politics of power and wealth. In that sense he's an old-school populist. Most Blue Dogs are corporate Dems who are neither populist nor centrist; they are coporatist. Webb better fits the definition of a "true centrist"; the corporate Dems nauseate him as much as they do any American with a lick of sense.

The Rhetorical Strategy of the Power Elites

Lawrence O'Donnell, now a self-proclaimed Socialist, went at it with "mere Progressive" Glenn Greenwald on Morning Joe the other day.  At one point O'Donnell said that despite his personal politics, he knows that only 20% of Americans self-identify as Liberal while some 40+% identify as conservatives.  So is O'Donnell right?  Is America a hopelessly conservative country for which any attempt at implementing a progressive agenda is hopeless?

I'd argue that when it comes to cultural values most Americans lean conservative, but not necessarily when it comes to power and money issues. The populist movement was pretty hard left when it came to power and money, even though it was rather culturally conservative. Republican communication strategists realize that there's nothing natural that keeps cultural conservatives aligned with the elites who work through the GOP, so they've developed a two pronged strategy that has worked very effectively to keep cultural conservatives in the GOP camp.

Centrist Politics & Rhetorical Virtue

Rhetorical virtue requires having the practical wisdom to achieve your communications goals with a particular audience. What's virtue for one audience is not virtue for another. If you to lead a group of true believers, there's rarely rhetorical virtue in appearing moderate and reasonable, or to suggest looking for ways to compromise with your opponents. True believers are not interested in having their minds changed--they'll shout down anyone who will try to do it, and push him to the side.  Anyone who preaches compromise will not be perceived as virtuous but as disloyal and weak.

The group ethos of true believers requires that members take seriously only those who are the purest, uncompromising exemplars of their already clearly defined and passionately held beliefs. The group wants to listen to people who are going to get them feeling it, get them charged up to fight the good fight. It's all about us vs. them; it's about standing loyally by any other true believer who is under attack, and condeming anybody who isn't a true believer as either weak, stupid, or evil. We see this in the way the NARAL true believers on the cultural left or NRA true believers on the Right treat unbelievers. There is no arguing with a true believer; you're either with them or against them.

But this is a far more robust phenomenon on the Right today. What personalities come to mind when you think of hardcore Left true believers?  Are there any matches on the left for the exemplary virtue of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin on the right?  I'm not saying they're not out there; it's just that they do not have nearly the share of media attention that these three and several others have. To the degree that there is a hard left in this country, it plays no role in our public consciousness, and the people who are designated by conventional wisdom as "Left" are people who would have been considered centrists forty years ago. [BTW: The MSNBC anchors are not hard left; they are primarily reactive, defined by their outrage at the mainstream influence of the Right. They do not represent a positive program or a movement forward.]

These exemplars of right-wing rhetorical virtue have influenced Republican political leaders, even the sanest of them. The mantra for some time now has been "no compromise"--for how can you compromise with evil? And because the unbelievers are by definition weak, stupid, or evil, they must be either dominated or destroyed. And we've seen time and again, whenever a Republican leader says something moderate or conciliatory, he's condemned as weak or disloyal, and has had to backtrack. He has good reason to believe that he'll otherwise be a leader without a parade.

Americans, in giving the House back to the GOP this week, have essentially ratified as virtuous this kind of extremist talk, and any hopes for more reasonable or moderate voices to emerge from the Republicans any time soon are dashed. Moderation no longer has any connection to rhetorical virtue as it is practiced among Republicans. McConnell and other GOP leaders have made it clear that their only objective for the next two years is to destroy Obama. It's ok to talk like this because as an unbeliever, Obama is either weak, stupid, or evil, and Republicans have a civic and moral responsibility to either dominate or destroy him. So the question for me is whether Obama will submit or whether he'll fight back. And if he chooses to fight, as I still have some dim hope he might, how can he do it and win? Just fighting isn't enough; he has to have clear goals, an effective strategy, and the skill to execute the tactics that will enable him to accomplish his strategic goals. 

The rhetorical strategic objective is to capture the center, and as I said in my last post, you can't capture the center by accommodating yourself to the center. The center has no substance.  The center, as it's currently framed by conventional wisdom, is a fiction created by right-wing communications strategists. There's no there there if a "there" requires clearly or firmly held political principles. The American political center is a confused mentality that comprises a mishmash of conflicting cliches and frustrated hopes; it doesn't know what to think or who to blame. It flails mindlessly from right to left and back right again begging for somone, anyone, to earn its respect and loyalty. Neither party has it now, but this confused group is leaning right because, if nothing else, the message from the Right is clear and passionately communicated, while the message from the Left is confused and compromised.

So if Democrats are to win over the center, what kind of rhetorical virtue must they practice? If you're a Dem and your objective is to convey your message to an audience that comprises an equal mix of of right, left, and center, your primary focus must be to win over the center without alienating the left. That's a political commonplace. But it's fatuous to think that Dems must distance themselves from their base by moving more to the right. That accepts the Republican frame, and it confirms that the Right is correct to think that Dems are indeed weak, stupid, and easily dominated. The challenge is not to "move" to the center, but to "define" the center.  Dems must make their case that they are already at "true center". 

The center is a kind of chaos that needs to be molded, and the Right is winning that definition war right now because its message is clearer and more passionately communicated, not because it meets the real needs of the people who inhabit this mushy center. The real needs of the people in the center define the program of the center, and that program aligns with the traditional mission of the Democrats. That should be an advantage to them, but they seem incapable of exploiting it. 

I think there are complex reasons for this impotency on the part of Dems, not the least of which is their cooptation by corporate money--which must of necessity take Dems away from its traditional mission. But there is still a core of Dems that are not co-opted, and if we have any hope, it lies with them. I'm saying here that this "core" must figure out what rhetorical virtue means for the "true Dems" and assert themselves as Dem exemplars. And the key to that virtue is to find a way to capture the anger and frustration of the people in the middle and channel it with a program that gives them a sense of purpose and hope. And they have to communicate their program with a passion and commitment that the confused middle can believe in. Nobody expects this "core" to win in the short run. The most important thing this core can do in the short run is by word and deed show that it is trying to move the country in the right direction.

Rhetorical virtue for the Dems is different than it is for the GOP. For GOP virtue inheres in crafting a message designed to reinforce tribal identity with simplistic slogans about 'no compromise', 'no taxes', and 'wasteful big government'. This is not a message designed to capture the center over the long haul, but it's a message that wins if the Dems offer nothing robust enough to counter it. The GOP currently controls the center by default because the Dems are too timid to fight to define it on their terms. Since 2006 they had their opportunity to capture the center for good, but they squandered it, and this year they were rejected just as the Republicans were rejected in '06. This flailing back and forth will continue until someone takes command of the center. The Dems should have the easier task, but they don't seem to know how to do it.

But here's the point: you cannot give the confused center a message that adequately meets its hopes and allays its frustrations if you accept the definition of the center as it is currently defined by the Right's narrative. You can't accept the Right's definition of "center" as no-taxes, frugal spending, small government, and hope to deliver what the center needs most but is too confused to demand. The Dems cannot cede a rhetorically defined center to the Right; they have to make the case that they represent "true center" and that they better represent the interests of these people who would gladly embrace Dems if the Dems would give them a reason to do it.

It has to regain the trust of Main Street not by running from its traditional New Deal, social democratic heritage, but by communicating its program in ways that will appeal to the frustrated longings of this disoriented group between the 45 yard lines (or is it the 25 yard lines?). The center is clay; it will be molded by whoever does the better job of communicating a message that meets the center's real needs. The Dems are not doing that with even a scintilla of effectiveness right now.

The Dems task is quite achievable; they simply have to fight to regain the territory they lost through their own feckless, clueless idiocy in the 70s through the 90s. And if the Dems can't do it because they are too hopelessly compromised by corporate co-optation, then someone else has to do it. This kind of realignment is going to happen sooner or later, but there will be a lot of unnecessary suffering if it doesn't happen sooner.

***

The Right sees this as a street fight with baseball bats, bike chains, and broken bottles, and it's not looking to take any prisoners. I still have some faint hope that the Dems will wake up and understand what the stakes are, that they will find some fight and some street smarts about how to win back the country.

Accommodation to the current definition of "centrist" is essentially surrender, a choice to let the Right-wing narrative dominate. The willingness being signaled by Obama to compromise and work with Republicans is fine if it's part of a rhetorical strategy to position Dems as the reasonable and flexible "true center" in contrast with the extremist, uncompromising, obstructionist Republicans. But the truth is if Dems really believe that they have to compromise, then they have surrendered, and this surrender will lead inevitably to the destruction of the Dem party as the party that fights to promote the interests of ordinary Americans. It will become as irrelevant as the Whigs of the 1850s. And something new will have to be created to do the job it should be doing.

Right now it's not about getting things done, as if a politics of give and take were still a possibility. It's about whose narrative is going to frame our imagination of future possibility for the next decade and more. If the rightist, corporatist Republican narrative continues to dominate, the economic bottom 80% is in for some very tough times.

 

 

Centrism qua Nihilism

"Centrism in accommodation of nihilism is no virtue." (Commenter 1.1 Elvis Elvisher @ Joe Klein's Time Magazine blog

To win you have to appeal to moderates and the independent center, but people in the center don't really know what they think or believe. That's why the voters there flail this way and that way so mindlessly. They don't know what to think, so they have to be told what to think, and whoever has the strongest message wins. So  the task is not to accommodate to the center, because there is no real center; the task is to take possession of the center by defining it.

Republican communication strategists understand rhetorical technique, and they have understood for a long time that it's in the interest of the GOP and the core constituencies it fronts for to make the  New Deal consensus that defined centrist politics from the 1930s through the 1970s to appear to be the project of the far left.  They have successfully established what was considered as whacky right-wing positions as respectable. They have successfully framed left leaning centrists as extremists, and made it impossible for a real left--the left defined by Chomsky or Nader, for instance--to even be part of the conversation.

It's been masterful accomplishment for these communications strategists on the Right, and a pathetic failure for the Dems who were clueless when it came to defending turf they owned for decades in the American mindframe. Once that turf is lost, it's very hard to win back. And all their attempts so far have been pathetic.  For awhile there I thought Obama had a clue, but he's doing it paint by numbers. He's depressingly malleable to the frame that the Right has defined. 

He had an historic opportunity while the memory of George Bush and the Republican fiasco was alive in the collective memory, but he wanted to make nice. He let them get away with it, and now, apparently the country has forgotten what a disaster Republican governance is, and this election has legitimated them again. It's really an astonishing failure of imagination and a squandering of the historical opportunity presented by the egregious failure of Republican governance over the last decade.

To be a political centrist at this time in America means that you're frustrated and confused.  You don't understand what's going on, your brain is shorting out from holding so many conflicting political cliches, so you're willing to listen to anybody who comes up with a compelling alternative explanation. The Dems had a chance to win the hearts and minds of the center, but they had to make a compelling, impassioned case for themselves. Instead the Tea Party made the impassioned case, channeled much of the fear, frustration, and anxiety felt on Main Street, and that seems to be one of the key factors that swayed the confused middle to the right this cycle.

The Republicans won by default. The Dems were no-shows in this battle to claim the center. The Main Street image of the typical Dem centrist/moderate is the classic corporate Dem like Feinstein, Lincoln, or Bayh.  Dem centrism is not about being reasonable and willing to compromise; it's about willingness to accommodate our corporate paymasters. This kind centrism is not the centrism the country wants or is looking for; it's precisely what nauseates Main Streeters frustrated with the state of American politics. Yes, Grayson and Feingold lost their seats, but overall the Blue Dogs were hurt far worse than the Progressives this cycle. Dems who acted like Republicans didn't save their seats.  They were given a mandate in '06 and '07 to clean up the mess created by Republicans; instead too many of them timidly aligned with Republican obstructionism.

The Dems have only a predictable, conventional, paint-by-numbers rhetorical strategy. They present themselves as people who have only the most tired, passionless beliefs. So it's no wonder they have a hard time communicating what they believe  to  a confused and frustrated center persuasively. The GOP wins by default because their "belief" message is strong and clear. The Dems appear to stand for nothing except to get re-elected with corporate money. 

Why Decency Isn't Enough

Americans have to be shrewd, too.  And if they put the GOP back in the majority today, they clearly lack shrewdness. I understand the country's frustration with the feckless, corporate-owned Democrats, and I understand that the economy is bad. So has it come to just flailing at whoever's in office? Is that how mindlessly lost we have become?

Maybe. But after all we know at this point, it's unfathomable that any American, except those on the far right, should think giving Republicans a congressional majority again is a road to a solution. Are decent, sane independents and moderate Republicans being conned? Maybe. The Republicans are particularly good at it because they understand effective rhetorical technique, while the Dems haven't a clue. And Republicans use it to define themselves as the principled ones, the sane ones, the real Americans who, yes, are angry, justifiably angry, at what has become of us, and have convinced enough Americans that it's the Dems--those far-left extremists--who have destroyed what is good and beautiful about our country. How is it possible that enough Americans are conned into believing it to make Boehner--Boehner--our next Speaker. 

So let's think out loud a little bit, shall we, about the rhetoric of the con artist.