Watching Obama's presser today I feel more sure than ever that progressives have more to cheer than to fear from Obama's choices.
While it is true that Obama is not delivering anything remotely like the substance of radical democracy progressives like me crave and demand he is unquestionably altering the profile of what passes as "centrist" "bipartisan" and "pragmatic" in the American imaginary leftward in a way that will facilitate the emergence of radical democracy if progressives educate, agitate, and organize to make it so. It seems to me that the very choices that are causing so many good progressives real concern about Obama because they do not represent the implementation of progressive ideals are in fact indispensable to our actual accomplishment of those ideals.
I have never bought the broadcast-mediated narrative that America is a conservative, Christianist, or even "center-right" Nation, but neither do I think America is on board for my own brand of democratic world federalist permissive peer-to-peer permaculture supported by universal basic income guarantees, either. If Obama moves the pragmatic consensus toward multilateralism and international oversight and diplomacy through the use of DLC types and a marginally less psychotic than usual Bush Administration figure that's fine with me.
It's true, I am deeply skeptical and dissatisfied with much of what passes for "centrism" even in its "center-left" mode. But I think it is foolish to denigrate the progressive import of a redefinition of centrism leftward, however far it remains from my sense of the possible and the important.
The economic catastrophes of neoliberal financialization, the security catastrophes of a military broken by neoconservative militarism and an infrastructure crumbling from neoliberal privatization and tax-cutting, and the climate catastrophes of pretrochemical industrialism will all continue to create conditions in which "center-left pragmatism" can be redirected to ever more radically democratizing ends, especially if progressives keep their eyes on the prize and on the ball.
Just in the nick of time there has been an opening of the door to progressive planetary possibilities, and it seems to me progressives should be seizing the moment (and don't get me wrong, many are doing just that) rather than decrying the realization that we aren't already in paradise and that our next Administration seems to be conducting itself in a way that is more sensitive to the implications of that fact than we are.
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9 comments:
Aside from a few handwringers and circular-firing-squad participants on Dkos, I don't see anyone seriously panicking that an Obama presidency won't be progressive enough. You need to get your ass out of Berkeley once in a while, Dale.
If someone's offering me a ticket to Paris, I'm all for it!
permaculture
I haven't seen this mentioned here before. Do you have a take on all those doom-green, de-industrialization, re-localization, Kunstler-style issues? The big urban rethink has to happen but it's a very challenging topic. E.g. it's obvious that communications networks introduce new possibilities to the organization of urban life, but what makes for the difference between ending up with an ex-city of wired squatter-farmers in crumbling suburbia, and retaining something of the functional cosmopolitanism of the truly urban existence?
My comments tend to skew in the direction of permaculture hereabouts when I happen to be teaching more Green themed content -- which actually is likely to be happening quite a bit next AY, since I'm teaching my Green Rhetoric class again in the Fall at UCB and am likely to teach ecocriticism at SFAI in the Spring. Keep your eyes peeled.
Dale, it's about time for you to post another blog entry. You need to give me something to read!
End of term -- things are getting hectic. More to come.
While pundits insist that Obama will lead more from the right because of his offhand references to Regan Satan to assuage and entice Reg*n democraps, the man plays his own strategy and does pull from the same tired pre-millenial playbook. This man was PRESIDENT of the Harvard Law Review and kicked the Clintons' butt to get where he is. He's by far the smartest and most savvy public servant to rise up to this level in 20 years.
My question is that if it turns out that the center has been retaken in this presidential cycle, isn't it finally time to press the green/permaculture agenda and push center more left?
Doesn't beginning to do this mean redirecting the green agenda from the folly of seeking chief executive positions for the time being and focus on the hard work of populating the ranks all the way up that might support a green chief executive when one emerges?
Dan Coyote
Hi Dan --
I feel it would be irresponsible if I didn't admit up front that back when I was an Edwards supporter I was one of the ones who read too much into Obama's savvy genuflections to Reagan and various insipid "centrist" formulations. I have come to think I was as wrong as I could be about his strategy, and I am repeatedly impressed by Obama's intelligence and pragmatism in the service of the left wing of the possible.
Anyway, to your larger concerns about mainstreaming permaculture premises and proposals into American politics if it is truly the case that Obama has managed to re-take the center, yes, I do think this is vital.
I'm not sure about the actual specifics you are proposing (not a complaint, I'm a bit up in the air about the specifics, too) when you refer to the follow of greens seeking a ring to kiss and mistaking this for progress.
I mean, that makes sense of course, but it's also true that climate catastrophe is pretty palpable and the institutional layer may clumsily stumble into throwing so much money and weight around that really extraordinary things might get done in spite of their inherent inertias, parochalisms, ugly opportunisms, will to ignorance, and power-madness.
I do believe that given a sufficiently conducive legal-media-political environment there are an enormous number of already broadly and widely disseminated practical material and aspirational threads of permaculture theory/practice that are waiting while working to come into their own -- no doubt in a way that will appear very sudden and spontaneous both to those who approve and who disapprove of them when they do, but won't in fact have been spontaneous at all. When those threads weave and cross-pollinate (there really are virtuous circles in history -- so many of us have been worrying and warning and warding off the vicious ones that we can forget that sometimes) there is the possibility for another unexpected outbreak of History.
I can remember well the popular Green Consciousness of the seventies (I was just a kid, but it was definitely in the air, it helped shape me) and I don't think it ever died -- even when we all sang along to Madonna's "Material Girl" -- and I expect the flabbergasting weight of our problems and the willingness of progressives to address them at all coupled with the reconsolidation re-emergence and re-imagination of popular permaculture will be a force to be reckoned with.
As for your suggestions about "pushing the center more left" and "populating the ranks with good greens," of course, all I can say is right on with your right on... although I will prefer pragmatic and inspiration variations of the former to puritanical and demoralizing variations, and I strongly prefer the notion of anti-corporatist and anti-militarist greens taking over the Democratic over any futile and wasteful Third Party nonsense (nonsense given the actually-existing institutional landscape, obviously not necessarily nonsense at the level of programmatic preferability).
I do think there is a real risk that industrial elites will manage to commandeer sustainability through "existential risk discourse" and an endless focus on "geoengineering"-strategies to derange emerging green consciousness from popular permaculture to just more variations on terror and war (hey, go with what you know, after all). The reason I don't see this obviously awful and all too familiar eventuality as any kind of inevitability is because of the startling conjuncture of conditions conducive to the emergence of popular permaculture together with the emergence of peer-to-peer formations that bedevil conventional industrial-elitist strategies of misinformation, divisiveness, disenfranchisement in the service of incumbent interests. That conjunction of climate catastrophe and p2p agitation, education, organization means all bets are off as far as I can see.
Speaking of P2P agitation...
Have you seen this?:
http://www.carrotmob.org/make-it-rain.html
This is something I have been talking about in terms of "punishing" corporations through blocks of consumers wielding their awesome power of the purse.
What is SO much better about this idea is that it is wholly positive whereas my angle was to punish corporations by buying from the more progressive ones, this is about organizing to reward businesses that agree to embrace a permacultural perspective!
BTW, Speaking of punishing corporations I must admit I also started out this election cycle in support of Edwards. I do so wish these dudes would be more discreet and stop breaking their most basic commitments. While I don't think infidelity is grounds for impeachment, the lack of judgement involved doesn't fill me with confidence either. So sad for Mr. Edwards. What was he thinking?
My hope is that Barak will keep his vice of smoking instead of taking up womanizing. This in itself would be a break from Democratic tradition!!!
Cheers Dale!
Your devoted,
Desert Critter
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