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

Saturday, June 05, 2010

More Suck

In the Moot, bravely pseudonymous "Mathmos" declares:
Count me in the "He [eg, Obama] sucks he sucks he sucks" crowd. And I wouldn't say that not agreeing on Obama's suckage is reason sufficient to enter the suckage category oneself. One have to be sufficiently aware of Obama's actions here and around the world for that to be the case. Because, of course, once you're sufficiently aware of Obama's actions, namely the expansion of war funds, secret wars, drone wars, death squads, executive privileges, government secrecy; the support for sociopathic regimes around the globe, like the Honduras coup d'état, the Israeli apartheid state; the overall "punching of hippies" iterated at every turn, be it during efforts at so-called reforms or "liberal" nominations, without even the pretense of deliberating on centrist or -- god forbid ! -- leftist options, etc. -- once you're aware of all that and still find the means to apologize for " the team", to excoriate its critics, to focus all your mental energy on some Republican foil, or on the anonymous quality of some blog comments, you indeed suck.


If your hostility to Obama's apparently all-encompassing suckitude cashes out in actual action toward more progressive outcomes then more power to you. I certainly hope, for example, that you are still voting, and for Democrats. I hope you contact your representatives about their stands in respect to pending or contemplated legislation on issues you care about, I hope you participate in actual demonstrations that draw attention to issues that matter to you, and so on.

If, on the other hand, the "radicalism" of your critique yields nothing in the way of action of this kind then I continue to disapprove of it. I don't know if your critique is energizing or demoralizing for you, so I will leave this in a declaration of the hope that it really is energizing for you (as it certainly would not be for me).

You are of course perfectly free to think I suck, but I must say that if one is a person of the left and decides that I personally am an enemy of democratization when I have actually devoted myself to decades of progressive activism and teaching peace, exposing and excoriating exploitation, then I honestly think you have lost your way -- even if I will cheerfully concede that I am far from an exemplar or anything.

As you know, I think too many in the "Obama sucks" crowd are preemptively relinquishing the field on which actual social struggle happens. The unqualified "Obama sucks" left tends in my view to demoralize people in ways that make better outcomes pragmatically less possible and also to miseducate people about the demands and possibilities of legislation and reform which form so much of the actual substance of progress in history.

I get it that I will not convince you or the others who have decided I am a shill or a tool or an apologist or whatever when by my lights I am simply struggling to engage in the work of democratization in terms of the left wing of the possible with the imperfect instruments on hand. So let's just agree to disagree and let me end again with the hope that the terms of your critique mobilize you personally into organization and action for the good.

I am content to declare rage that moves you to actual action for the better good and rage that renders you actually inactive or cynically disengaged bad.

I do think that movement Republicanism is a proto-fascist kernel and that those who think it is more useful to criticize Obama's inadequacies than to resist Republicans are making a miscalculation of epic proportions. I wonder if you think a non-sucky President by your standards is even electable at all at this time, given the state of campaign finance and the force of incumbent media formations, and, if not, I wonder if you think it is therefore a matter of indifference to the left to elect a better rather than a worse President? I personally think one has to be a little bonkers or insulated by privilege to fancy a Republican President would be better for the world than Obama in this moment of Movement Republicanism, even granting your righteous criticisms of some specific issues like secret military actions, use of drones, continued expansion of the Unitary Executive, unqualified support in defiance of decency and sense of Israel (the hippy punching and center-right nominations criticisms seem to me overstated but still in point, and I note that a laundry list containing progressive shifts and policies is also available to anybody with the Google and to pretend otherwise really is unfair and to no purpose that I can understand). You know, I have drawn endless attention to bad policies and problems in the Obama Administration myself, which should presumably make me a "critic" of and not an "apologist" for Obama at least some of the time even by your lights, not that any of that should interfere with no doubt highly edifying cartoon accusations I get that Obama is my personal savior or Saint or whatever.

On a completely unrelated and I daresay not even remotely as urgent note, it is true that I also do think people who post anonymously and pseudonymously on my blog often engage in mischief and in egregious wastes of my time in ways that are facilitated by that pseudonymity that I am perfectly right to despise if I like, especially since I post here myself under my own name. Telling me I suck for stating and explaining this preference on my own blog -- at which you are a guest -- is impertinent in more ways than one, not that I expect you to give a damn about any of that.

2 comments:

The Mathmos said...

I don’t think we disagree on the fascist nature of the Republican Party, and the need to prevent their election in the future. But in my view that doesn’t entail support for the Democratic Party, which are a different but no less dangerous versant of imperialistic power- and war-mongering.

Different but no less dangerous.

The Repugs demagogically establish their political agenda of servitude to a select few permanent factions and lobbies in Washington by appealing to nativist, fundamentalist, exceptionalist and generally bigoted segments of the (rural) American population.

The Dems demagogically establish their political agenda of servitude to a select few permanent factions and lobbies in Washington by appealing to liberal, moderate, environment-conscious, multicultural, and generally pro-diversity segments of the (urban) American population.

Although the segmentation of their voting base may cause both parties to affect sharp differences in their tone and policies, the converging political agenda of protection and expansion of imperial power ensures a lockstep agreement on most of the real, international issues. Hence, Obama’s retreat on most of his campaign promises regarding war, executive power, human rights abuses; and the ponderous deliberations impeding the few propositions he’s actually kept alive.

I think one of the greatest obstacles to real progressivism in this country is the Democratic Party’s intellectual capture of any and all alternatives to the Republicans. This became a reality for me when, in the aftermath of the 2000 election, there was a very effective campaign to blame Naderites for the Bush victory. This campaign of guilt was very effective, and before long, any reference to Nader in political discussion became the province of the loony bin.

And guess which of the two major party was responsible for this blackmailing of Naderites into nonexistence?

In my view, it is precisely this kind of closing off of political perspectives which is driving disengagement, cynicism and feelings of powerlessness in the population. Not overly vigorous criticism of Obama or the Dems.

In terms of political activity, I advocate for third-parties and new popular organizations capable of mediating the views of the public and counterbalancing the two-party monopoly on political discourse. Things like antiwar groups which actually oppose war and don’t go to sleep suddenly if Dems come to power.

Uproot all the damn Astroturf for the Dems and the Repugs and let real grass grow.

Dale Carrico said...

Bernie Sanders caucuses with Dems, it's only through participation in the party system that one gains agency, whatever one's ideological orientation.

So long as we don't have instant runoff voting or the like any vote for anyone but the Dem is a vote for the Repug. And the Repugs right now are fucking lunatics, Darwin denying, Jeebus-Taliban, white racist, gun totin, fag bashing freaks. Can we keep our eye on the ball even if it is more fun to comment here informing me of my deficiencies in the leftism department? Anybody who champions third parties before first implementing a way to ensure they don't function as spoilers isn't understanding the politics here.

And definitely the politics also include all the differences in the Dem Caucus to be accommodated (incl social conservative and corporatist Dems I despise as much as you) to get to 60 to get through the Senate in this insane era -- esp in a moment of unprecedented Repug obstructionism. We can talk about filibuster reform and primary challenges for incumbents to the right of their districts -- I'm for all of those things and have said so plenty of times -- but the process is still the process it is.

Actually trying to understand the processes through which one legislatively shepherds ideas into implementation is key. I might be wrong in my understanding -- this crap is so complex and idiotic -- but that isn't the kind of useful critique I'm hearing from you guys stamping because we didn't nationalize the banks or get single payer. Hell, I want to break up the banks, I want single payer. Those outcomes win on the merits, but we don't have the votes, we just don't. Why wouldn't that matter? Darwin is right not Creationism, the votes are not there for single payer, facts.

Shoot the messenger much? Congress isn't my utopian dream world, you know? It's just the street where we live. This isn't a matter of "closing off political perspectives" -- I would be shocked if your "political perspective" is even particularly different from my own at the level of ideals or aspirations or even in its broad brushstrokes characterization of history and the institutional villains we're up against.

I'm not lying when I point out that I'm an atheist vegetarian queer feminist anti-racist anti-corporatist anti-militarist democratic socialist for fuck's sake! It's not that I don't "get" some Big Picture you guys have worked your way to -- I've probably lead hundreds of people to the Big Picture you think you have and that I lack or have betrayed lecturing for a decade and half on Marx, Foucault, Adorno, Arendt, Fanon, Gilroy, Butler, Debord, Davis, Klein, Harvey, Keynes, you know?

There are differences in Big Picture critiques, position papers about ideal policy, analyses of most progressive plausible outcomes, etc.. These are all important, what progressive critique will look like in each will differ as will analyses from issue to issue moment to moment. That's what I am trying to navigate.

As far as Obama goes, I actually do seem to trust and admire him more than you do, I guess, but the fact is I think there's plenty he's done that sucks terribly. I don't think it's even remotely contradictory to say both that Obama plenty sucks and that Obama will likely be the most truly progressive President since FDR and that we should bear that in mind in grappling with the ways in which he sucks.