PANNING FOR HOPE
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
A Progressive Review Special
PANNING FOR HOPE
Sam Smith
Weary of a political landscape where every prospect deceases, trapped in a virtual manic depression that oscillates between the dirge of Democracy Now broadcasts and the hysteria of Jon Stewart, exhausted by a parade of official perfidy and prevarication in the drag of profound policy, I decided the other day to go out looking for some hope.I stopped doing what I have come to think of as painting animals on the Lascaux cave walls of our time and stepped into the sunlight to see what I had been missing. What follows is not a prediction, it is not a recipe, it is not even a draft agenda. It is merely some hunches of a guy who has seen hope before, knows what it looks like, would like to find it again and suspects that it may look like this:
ENVIRONMENT - The growing evidence of ecological catastrophe caused by human decisions has enormous potential to change public thinking. It becomes hard to carry out the GOP robber baron scams if what you're stealing is someone's air, water, or decent weather. The triptych of modern conservative values - greed, narcissism, and deceit - may all falter as the public discovers that we really are in all this together. Rapacious capitalism is also in trouble as it is based on such unsustainable principles as the exploitation of nature, endless population growth, and the argument that the market is a sufficient judge of human virtue.
TENSIONS WITHIN THE GOP - Both true conservatives and true libertarians are showing signs of stress as the Bush administration betrays such classic principles as the decentralization of power and budgetary restraint. A roundtable sponsored by America's Future Foundation raised an aspect of the question: "Conservatives and Libertarians: Can This Marriage Be Saved?" It noted in its invitation that increasingly the "ideological marriage has been punctuated by long, sustained spats: over war, gay marriage, stem-cell research, and a host of other issues. Just another rocky patch, or is it time for a divorce?"
LABOR - There has been more talk, debate, action, and excitement about labor of late than has been apparent for years. It may be too late, given the decline in union membership, but the mere fact that labor's future is now considered worth arguing about is a good sign. My own pet project is a non-union organization modeled on the American Association of Retired People: millions of organized and unorganized workers joining together to accomplish politically what they have not been able to do at the bargaining table. Such a group would provide the political clout to accomplish not just progressive aims but pro-union reform of labor laws. But whatever the solution, it's nice to hear the noise again.
ECONOMIC POPULISM - Perhaps after the last campaign, more liberals may start to understand that you don't win elections on social issues like abortion and gay rights. You win elections first and then you deal with such issues from a position of strength. And you win elections with policies that help a large number of ordinary people in a significant way. Despite the indifference of the social liberals and the active distaste of the Vichy Democrats, the route to winning elections has always been and remains an economic populism that comes up with real solutions to real human problems such as housing, healthcare, working conditions, and pensions.
YOUTH - The young are blessed by their indifference to history. Each freshman class has so little to remember and so much to discover and decide that they can create those sudden shifts the scientists call phase transitions. Before you know it, you have another generation to name.
INTERNET - As recently as last year, we almost got a decent presidential candidate as a result of the web. It has long been clear that the major division on this planet is between the peoples of the world and their government. The Internet is our army, our CIA, our pulpit, and our media. If a Dean-like campaign for peace and fairness goes global the world will change.
SPINOIDS - Beginning in the 1980s, the productive and creative of America were overwhelmed by a rising class of spinoids who had the external characteristics of their propaganda without internal substance. Today the major business of Americans earning more than minimum wage is selling false or faulty dreams to each other. As with Willie Loman and the Yellow Brick Road, this only takes you so far. Then it's time for something different. One of the reasons Dean did as well as he did because, like him or not, he was real. It was an astounding change from the spinoids who dominate politics, media, and what passes for thought in Washington. As more people weary of fraudulent semiotics, their willingness to rebel may grow.
MARKS - People such as our president are not really politicians; they are confidence artists. As such, they need a constant stream of new marks to deceive. The voting age population may not be growing fast enough for this. Further, the mere accumulation of thievery and thuggery tends to make these characteristics more visible even to the most naïve and deluded eye.
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE - Like the environment, it's a high price to pay for progress, but it will be hard to remain a Bush fan if the Chinese and Japanese stop supporting his deficits or if the economy otherwise decays. It doesn't even have to be dramatic. As with lies, economic woes can just start to wear people down and make them more ready for something different.
LOCAL RESPONSE - From the over 100 towns that have passed resolutions critical of the Patriot Act to the over 100 towns and counties that have passed living wage legislation, state and local politics remains the great underrated salvation of the American system. Progressives should - as progressives did in the 1960s - embrace the idea of what the Catholic church used to call subsidiarity: it's best to do things at the lowest practical level. Liberals have been profoundly off-track on this, most recently with people like Ted Kennedy giving support to the disastrous federal takeover of public education. If progressives were to stand up for the rights of states and localities they might soon find themselves with a nice White House from which to share their federal revenues.
SOLIDARITY - Another idea that liberals and progressives have forgotten is solidarity, the idea that there's something bigger than yourself or your favorite issue. The rise of liberal special interest groups since the 1960s all but obliterated any sense of common purpose, but if the old left idea of solidarity were to return, America's politics would be dramatically different.
THE RED STATE MYTH - The red state myth is the latest form of self-abuse by liberals. In 39 states Democrats are either comfortably ahead or could win by changing the minds of just five percent of the electorate. Further, the number of states solidly Republican has been declining since 1972, not surprising since the party's strength has been based on unsupportable economic, social, and environmental ideas. If the Democrats would stop worrying about the red-blue business and start being nicer to people in the red states, they will be on their way to a far more successful politics.
ARCHAIC MEDIA - The establishment is losing control of the media. Print circulation is going down, the Internet is for the elite painfully democratic, and the public no longer treats members of the archaic media with respect. All this favors positive change.
UNMANIFESTED DESTINY - The most important new political idea since social democracy - the Green movement - has now spread to over 90 countries and won a Nobel Peace Prize. And all as viral politics and without an overarching organization. Whether you're a Green or not, the growth of Green politics and values is an impressive example of how the world can be changed for the better without either war or the help of a carefully selected elite.
EUROPE - As Europe becomes far more powerful than the declining powerful of America will admit, it may serve as an alternative to America and its present enemies. That alternative might well be succinctly described as this: sanity. In the end, none of us can well predict how and when change - either salutary or disastrous - will occur. But we can make the most of the former and prevent the most of the latter by following the old dictum that fortune smiles on the well prepared.
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com
A Progressive Review Special
PANNING FOR HOPE
Sam Smith
Weary of a political landscape where every prospect deceases, trapped in a virtual manic depression that oscillates between the dirge of Democracy Now broadcasts and the hysteria of Jon Stewart, exhausted by a parade of official perfidy and prevarication in the drag of profound policy, I decided the other day to go out looking for some hope.I stopped doing what I have come to think of as painting animals on the Lascaux cave walls of our time and stepped into the sunlight to see what I had been missing. What follows is not a prediction, it is not a recipe, it is not even a draft agenda. It is merely some hunches of a guy who has seen hope before, knows what it looks like, would like to find it again and suspects that it may look like this:
ENVIRONMENT - The growing evidence of ecological catastrophe caused by human decisions has enormous potential to change public thinking. It becomes hard to carry out the GOP robber baron scams if what you're stealing is someone's air, water, or decent weather. The triptych of modern conservative values - greed, narcissism, and deceit - may all falter as the public discovers that we really are in all this together. Rapacious capitalism is also in trouble as it is based on such unsustainable principles as the exploitation of nature, endless population growth, and the argument that the market is a sufficient judge of human virtue.
TENSIONS WITHIN THE GOP - Both true conservatives and true libertarians are showing signs of stress as the Bush administration betrays such classic principles as the decentralization of power and budgetary restraint. A roundtable sponsored by America's Future Foundation raised an aspect of the question: "Conservatives and Libertarians: Can This Marriage Be Saved?" It noted in its invitation that increasingly the "ideological marriage has been punctuated by long, sustained spats: over war, gay marriage, stem-cell research, and a host of other issues. Just another rocky patch, or is it time for a divorce?"
LABOR - There has been more talk, debate, action, and excitement about labor of late than has been apparent for years. It may be too late, given the decline in union membership, but the mere fact that labor's future is now considered worth arguing about is a good sign. My own pet project is a non-union organization modeled on the American Association of Retired People: millions of organized and unorganized workers joining together to accomplish politically what they have not been able to do at the bargaining table. Such a group would provide the political clout to accomplish not just progressive aims but pro-union reform of labor laws. But whatever the solution, it's nice to hear the noise again.
ECONOMIC POPULISM - Perhaps after the last campaign, more liberals may start to understand that you don't win elections on social issues like abortion and gay rights. You win elections first and then you deal with such issues from a position of strength. And you win elections with policies that help a large number of ordinary people in a significant way. Despite the indifference of the social liberals and the active distaste of the Vichy Democrats, the route to winning elections has always been and remains an economic populism that comes up with real solutions to real human problems such as housing, healthcare, working conditions, and pensions.
YOUTH - The young are blessed by their indifference to history. Each freshman class has so little to remember and so much to discover and decide that they can create those sudden shifts the scientists call phase transitions. Before you know it, you have another generation to name.
INTERNET - As recently as last year, we almost got a decent presidential candidate as a result of the web. It has long been clear that the major division on this planet is between the peoples of the world and their government. The Internet is our army, our CIA, our pulpit, and our media. If a Dean-like campaign for peace and fairness goes global the world will change.
SPINOIDS - Beginning in the 1980s, the productive and creative of America were overwhelmed by a rising class of spinoids who had the external characteristics of their propaganda without internal substance. Today the major business of Americans earning more than minimum wage is selling false or faulty dreams to each other. As with Willie Loman and the Yellow Brick Road, this only takes you so far. Then it's time for something different. One of the reasons Dean did as well as he did because, like him or not, he was real. It was an astounding change from the spinoids who dominate politics, media, and what passes for thought in Washington. As more people weary of fraudulent semiotics, their willingness to rebel may grow.
MARKS - People such as our president are not really politicians; they are confidence artists. As such, they need a constant stream of new marks to deceive. The voting age population may not be growing fast enough for this. Further, the mere accumulation of thievery and thuggery tends to make these characteristics more visible even to the most naïve and deluded eye.
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE - Like the environment, it's a high price to pay for progress, but it will be hard to remain a Bush fan if the Chinese and Japanese stop supporting his deficits or if the economy otherwise decays. It doesn't even have to be dramatic. As with lies, economic woes can just start to wear people down and make them more ready for something different.
LOCAL RESPONSE - From the over 100 towns that have passed resolutions critical of the Patriot Act to the over 100 towns and counties that have passed living wage legislation, state and local politics remains the great underrated salvation of the American system. Progressives should - as progressives did in the 1960s - embrace the idea of what the Catholic church used to call subsidiarity: it's best to do things at the lowest practical level. Liberals have been profoundly off-track on this, most recently with people like Ted Kennedy giving support to the disastrous federal takeover of public education. If progressives were to stand up for the rights of states and localities they might soon find themselves with a nice White House from which to share their federal revenues.
SOLIDARITY - Another idea that liberals and progressives have forgotten is solidarity, the idea that there's something bigger than yourself or your favorite issue. The rise of liberal special interest groups since the 1960s all but obliterated any sense of common purpose, but if the old left idea of solidarity were to return, America's politics would be dramatically different.
THE RED STATE MYTH - The red state myth is the latest form of self-abuse by liberals. In 39 states Democrats are either comfortably ahead or could win by changing the minds of just five percent of the electorate. Further, the number of states solidly Republican has been declining since 1972, not surprising since the party's strength has been based on unsupportable economic, social, and environmental ideas. If the Democrats would stop worrying about the red-blue business and start being nicer to people in the red states, they will be on their way to a far more successful politics.
ARCHAIC MEDIA - The establishment is losing control of the media. Print circulation is going down, the Internet is for the elite painfully democratic, and the public no longer treats members of the archaic media with respect. All this favors positive change.
UNMANIFESTED DESTINY - The most important new political idea since social democracy - the Green movement - has now spread to over 90 countries and won a Nobel Peace Prize. And all as viral politics and without an overarching organization. Whether you're a Green or not, the growth of Green politics and values is an impressive example of how the world can be changed for the better without either war or the help of a carefully selected elite.
EUROPE - As Europe becomes far more powerful than the declining powerful of America will admit, it may serve as an alternative to America and its present enemies. That alternative might well be succinctly described as this: sanity. In the end, none of us can well predict how and when change - either salutary or disastrous - will occur. But we can make the most of the former and prevent the most of the latter by following the old dictum that fortune smiles on the well prepared.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 8:32 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home