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Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Sucky Summary

Dedicated to the Bravely Pseudonymous Commenters "RadicalCoolDude" and "Thanatz" from the Moot.*

Obama sucks! He sucks! He sucks! He sucks!

Because Dale won't say Obama sucks, Dale sucks, too (and not in a gay way he would enjoy)! Dale sucks! He sucks! He sucks! He sucks!

By refusing to admit Obama sucks Dale is applauding every Obama policy, including policies Dale has said suck.

Radicalism is saying Democrats and Republicans all suck, everything they do sucks, and that they have and can accomplish nothing since they suck so bad.

In this way, progress will be made. If you think that doesn't make sense -- you suck!

*If you think this summary is unfair -- suck it!
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2 comments:

The Mathmos said...

Count me in the "He 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.

10:44 AM
Dale Carrico said...

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. I won't deny that these attacks from my left make me feel angry and tired and a little hopeless sometimes (I hoped for something very different from blogging), but 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 (not mine) is electable at all at this time, and, if not, you think it is a matter of indifference to the left to elect a better rather than a worse one? 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 criticisms of some specific issues (as regular readers of the blog know I do, inasmuch as I endlessly draw attention to these myself, not that that should interfere with 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.

1:21 PM

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