(11AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
I went to the One Nation rally today–walked around as much as I could took photos and so on. The day was beautiful–this is the best time of year in the Washington area.
The focus of the rally was really on organized labor and the multi-cultural community and it very much reminded me Jesse Jackson’s old rainbow coalition. It was a pleasant outing with some a lot of speeches, Marian Wright Edelman speech struck me as important–the rest, with the exception of Harry Belafonte’s (rightly warning us about the spreading authoritarianism) speech weren’t much to write home about.
I liked the fact that labor unions were so well represented. It always makes me sad to see unions try to organize and represent people–it’s such an uphill battle for them and all the cards are stacked against them and they know it.
The rally wasn’t that large, it was, as the papers say, in the tens of thousands–for once they got the crowd size reasonably right.
The rally was overwhelmingly working class–not much in the way of better off suburban liberals at the rally. A few sons and daughters of said class, mainly radicals and reds were present–it is always pleasant to see the young people of all classes and races together but the turnout of white students was dissapointing.
I didn’t feel much “juice” at the rally. I think Obama has dispirited everyone. The vibe I picked up was tired and the focus and ideology of the rally was formless and full of platitudes. There is no inspiration on the left–it looks like and acts like a defeated movement. It’s nice for us to air out and see that unions can still move people around the country–you can see echoes of that great movement, which is moving in itself.
As I’ve said recently the left is, essentially dead. We need a new paradigm because the old reformist Left Democratic Party game is just getting increasingly silly. There is no “One Nation” and I felt so bad for people at the rally. Not only are the American people deeply and hopelessly split into small groups, clans, tribes and so on but the government has not the slightest interest in the welfare of the people who live in the geographical entity known as the United States of America. It’s over, ladies and gentlemen. There is no USA other than a convenient fiction that the mind-control mavens use to control the populace. We live in an International Empire ruled directly through fiat by an international oligarchy that uses mind control and fear to divide and rule.
Predatory capitalism is turning to Empire on the macro level and variants of neo-feudalism on the more local level. As I am trying to point out in most of my posts 42% of Americans consider themselves conservative (only 20% consider themselves as liberal) and let me make it clear that today’s conservative is way to the right of traditional conservatism. Modern conservatism has two interesting interests: 1) they want to cut taxes for the rich not because they (the conservatives) are stupid but because they see the rich as the natural leaders of society–they believe the aristocrats are the only ones that can provide order and jobs because they succeed because they have muscle–they are worth following, say conservatives, because they have proven their worth by out-fighting the competition; and 2) they want to eliminate the federal government’s influence on public life to military operations in support of the Empire for reasons that are more psychic and cultural than practical–though there is a practical component which most conservatives are too dim-witted to articulate (but their bosses believe this) and that is that an imperial army guarantees oil supplies and keep the shipping lanes open and that give those that command those armies dominant power over the world and the Empire. This Empire is, like all empires, based on military dominance and that will not change.
I don’t believe the left has any maneuvers left. Its organization is vulnerable–for example, if the unions are too militant in an industry the company will just pick up and move to India or Guatemala or somewhere else–then what? Better to keep things as they are win little victories while benefits and wages go down and your children’s education becomes shittier each year–the alternative is to be unemployed and that could well lead to starvation in a few years.
What about the largest component of the rally today, i.e., African Americans? What a tragedy! Did Civil Rights really do anything? I wonder. The new plantation system for oppression is called prison–I can go on and on about this but Black people make up 12% of the population but 44% of the prison population which is growing at astronomical rates. Think about it! Think of how the fuck they are going to make a living after they get out of prison! Racism is not dead in this country it has been reborn and maybe even worse than it was before.
We need to rethink everything brothers and sisters and start from another point. The old left paradigm even the class-struggle idea is dated. Class struggle was possible in the industrialized U.S. with it’s protective tariffs. But corporations now can largely ignore labor and it can ignore intellectuals because it controls the media so absolutely that now idea that is not approved by the Central Committee can get heard on the mainstream media except to be ridiculed. They airbrush people like Scott Ritter right out of the picture, for example and nobody not even the left rallied to his side.
Back to the drawing board I say. We must create alternative institutions or perish.
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While writing this essay I’ve been listening to Sigur Ros–aesthetically, they point the way to something—not sure what thought.
as a “support Obama” rally. I’d take that to be the spin the rest of the MSM will put on it too…
do you live right in DC, Banger? I used to lived in Arlington – across the street from Yorktown High School.
before we can even begin the business of institution-building, we need social bedrock to build on and right now we have none. That’s what my idea of “base groups” is all about, creating that social and cultural bedrock.
between a rock and a hard place. They need cheap domestic labor, but they can’t tell the people. They know that rallies can attract hundreds of thousands in a blink of an eye; even the Catholic Church gets involved. There are seeds of a larger movement hidden in there somewhere.
Despite the election of Obama, a huge factor in the regressive politics of America is still the fear of the Old, White Power Structure crumbling.
The elite are terrified of multiculturalism, although they love their token minority converts. Our job right now is to continue the dialogue and brainstorm. Education is an essential component also. Often, disparate dissatisfaction can coalesce quickly into a large political movement. Would intimidation, the courts and martial law shut it down?
While borrowing liberally. I absolutely believe that there not only is a way out of this mess, but also that it could be accomplished relatively quickly. (Say, 8 years.)
Now, to be sure, I’m talking about an ascendance of majoritarian viewpoints over the plutocracy. Some progressive ideas have majoritarian appeal, already, and some don’t. I myself don’t like everything this implies, however our current trajectory is suicidal.
Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I would substitute for the old saying “Question authority”, the newer saying “Question leadership”. As far as I’m concerned, there’s little out there that I respect in terms of progressive leadership. I suppose that I’m partly blinded by my own psychological predispositions, but I will say that if a person can’t or won’t speak the unvarnished truth to power, and that person is considered a “leader”, then that person is more part of the problem, than the solution.
Take, e.g., the Trumpka dude. I kind of like him, on a personal level, but even though he looks like a middle linebacker, he’s weak. He’s too much of a weakling to criticize the Dems strongly, and to be a thorn in the side of Obama, also.
Years ago, I had a landlord who, in his younger years, was involved with the labor unions. (This would the 20’s, I’m guesstimating.) In those days, the bosses would be happy to crack your skull open. He told me (his name was Marty Dige) that he’d have a couple of big, muscular guys standing behind him with sticks when he gave speeches.
Now, that still took some guts. I mean, the bosses might pay a Mafia dude $100 to follow him home, and crack his skull, there.
Would the Trumpka guy ever do what Marty Dige did? I doubt it.
One reason to support a Dump Obama movement is to generate new leaders, who aren’t so damn weak. I’m of the considered opinion that weaklings like Trumpka, likable though he may be, bear a good deal of the blame for Obama’s failed Presidency. They basically punted on their opportunity to “make him do it”, using moral suasion. But now, Trumpka wants people to turn out to vote for the Dems? Pardon me, but Trumpka is not the kind of guy I’d want to follow into any sort of battle. If he’s saying vote for the Dems, and couldn’t trouble himself to excoriate them for their failures and back-stabbing, well pardon me if I don’t feel the motivation.
Can you imagine being in a war, with a leader named WeakHeart? WeakHeart announces that there’s going to be a big battle as dawn, tomorrow. He wants everybody to be there, with battle axes sharpened.
However, he himself won’t be there, because he wants to go bowling.
I’m sorry, but is this any way to fight a war?
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As an aside, Dige became a bit of a capitalist in his later years, and I remember him telling me that the unions got greedy, and also that he’d be all for rent control, as long as the government also controlled the price of oil, electricity, water, and materials.
I don’t disagree with the latter part of the above. I don’t know that much about unions, so won’t say anything about their alleged greed. I will say, though, that I consider the auto worker unions very stupid. They should have screamed bloody murder when, in the 70’s, Detroit was turning out cars that developed “cancer” in 3 years. The unions should have had the attitude of taking care of business, also, not just looking out for their paychecks. Not that that’s worked out too well, either, for rank-and-file.
I’m going to come back to this to thoroughly read all the comments.
I did, however, get a chance to see Free Speech TV and listen to Harry Belafonte, who gave a phenominal speech, as did Educator, Marion Edelman — both were awesome.
Belafonte noted that we had billions upon billions on these immoral wars to combat a probable total of some 50 Al Qaeda members! Can there be any greater crime than that? People everywhere, including here in our own country are becoming mere “collateral damage.”
Prisons? There is three times the amount of money spent on prisons than on education. How disturbing is that?
Jobs and education were the main focus of the rally! I only caught a small part of the rally, but I don’t recall global warming being an issue.
Keeping up the momentum will probably be the problem, unless there are more ideas to “push” things in the right direction.
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I had some thoughts that I posted the other day, but the thread was pretty much over by then, so I’m posting it here, just as idea possibilities — thoughts!
First, is Banger’s comment:
I missed it, will try to listen to it now…. 10 minutes:
Instead of breaking free of capitalism or socialism or authoritarianism, the Greens offer a way to break free of an ism that encompasses all of them – industrialism. Now, I’m in favor of a kind of “big tent” Green Party/movement where people like Cassiodorus who favor ecosocialism can coexist with more liberal-minded reformers and they can all coexist with eco-libertarians and others. I think that the idea of political ecology (that is, a holistic approach to politics) could be something not just for the left, but for resisters of many stripes, to unite around.
That doesn’t mean there should only be a green movement or that it should just be electoral. There needs to be room for a lot of things. If we limit ourselves too much, we will fail.