Tag: liberal

There have been a spate of articles in places as varied as the WaPo, Huffington Post, and the usual places where leftists publish articles (CounterPunch, TruthDig, here, and so on) about what is at stake in this election. Most of these articles do not tell us to vote for Obama but rather to seek some kind of alternative at best and something close to despair at worst. One of the best of these articles by Henry Giroux (Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism) has just been posted on CounterPunch. This article should be read by all here and offers about as exhausting an analysis as you could want on where we are at politically at this point in time.

Here Giroux provides a clear statement:

A catalogue of indicting evidence reveals the depth and breadth of the war being waged against the social state, and particularly against young people. Beyond exposing the moral depravity of a nation that fails to protect its young, such a war speaks to nothing less than a perverse death-wish, a barely masked desire for self-annihilation-as the wilful destruction of an entire generation not only transforms U.S. politics into pathology, but is sure to signal the death-knell for America’s future.  How much longer will the American public have to wait before the nightmare comes to an end?

None of these articles provide us with a viable course of action (Giroux may be an exception), not because there isn’t one as I’ve often pointed out, but that, from a cultural perspective it is out of the question. For example, I have, for  years, made the point that power comes from organized, committed and focused communities who are willing to go to the barricades if necessary to assert themselves. I’ve suggested communities, communes, cooperatives, and even creating leftist-oriented corporations either for-profit or non-profit. From that base power can evolve and be used to influence public policy. At this point in history the cultural reality is that people who profess leftist views can’t or won’t cooperate with each other but prefer to live, in large part, fairly atomized lives with occasional bursts of spontaneous chaotic action (Wisconsin and Occupy) during which they fill themselves with fantasies and illusions about their own sense of righteousness.  Much of the fantasy around Occupy went like this: “isn’t it obvious that we represent the 99% and once we get out in the streets most people will join us.” Well that didn’t happen, in fact, most people, on balance, opposed these efforts in part because they were chaotic and disorganized and thus inspired little respect or trust with people who know, as a pragmatic reality, that that is not how the world works.  

A recent series of posts written by a blogging friend of mine raises some serious questions.  In it, he discusses ways in which many of us who mean well go completely wrong.  We live in a post-Christian society, but we carry over aspects of religiosity of which we may not even be consciously aware.  In seeking to be Good Liberals™, we reveal our indebtedness to the same relative framework, one held also by our ancestors.  Before I introduce my larger point, I need to assert here that I am not arguing that anyone ought to hold racist ideas or that doing so is acceptable.  Rather, I’m critiquing the means by which we often resort to eradicate them.  Here is the first.

Welcome to the Progressive Platform Project!

The Progressive Platform we are building will be a sort of blueprint that we believe all progressives, especially candidates, should follow. It will be our beliefs as progressives, where we stand on various issues, and in many cases, what we believe needs to be done on those issues.

In the first post, the idea of creating a Progressive Platform was introduced. I had posted links to various political platforms, so everyone could get an idea of what we are trying to accomplish. Then you were asked to vote on what planks we should include in our platform.

This week we will briefly discuss planks for our platform.

Author’s Note:

This is a loving parody, not to be taken too seriously. I myself identify as Feminist, but I wanted to try my hand at satire. It is Friday, after all. Apologies are due to God, Moses, or whomever compiled the original text of Genesis.  

Welcome to the Progressive Platform Project!

In the past few months, there have been a lot of discussions in the media and on the blogs about what a progressive is. Many, especially in the media, are of the opinion that a progressive is the same thing as a liberal. But is that really the case? Chris Matthews considers himself a liberal. The DLC folks consider themselves liberal. Most Democrats consider themselves liberal. But are those folks progressive?

Is a progressive the exact same thing as a liberal? If not, what is a progressive? And better yet, what does a progressive, in this day and age, stand for?

These last questions are ones that we will be answering over the course of the next several months while we draft our Progressive Platform.

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.  

This feels like a crazy time. Almost nothing political in this country seems to make sense. I feel a little crazy too. Maybe this whole diary is nuts but it comes from my heart.

I think there are reasons for this crazy time here are a few of them:  

1. There is little correlation between what is reported in the mainstream media and anything we might agree to call “reality”. This fact is true because there has been a deliberate attempt to mislead the public through mind-control techniques which are partly engineered and has partly emerged from the logic of public relations and advertising.
2. We have,right now, a population that is, for the most part, addicted to “entertainment” and amusements almost as if they were the essence of life. This creates a need for meaning as a matter of fantasy. If it feels cool then it is true or desirable. We take positions on public policy, for example, based on messages from our lower brain. While this is normal for human beings the fact that the stakes are so high right now makes this a catastrophe. We are headed for a world described by the movie Idiocracy
3. Those people who ought to know better and who have had a liberal education and are reasonably cultured have lost, as Yeats said, “lost all conviction.” In other words the educated are dealing with the influence of modernism and the scientific view of the world where you cannot, by definition, be convinced of anything. You must hold all judgement until you have all the facts and it is hard to know when that point arrives. So the point gets pushed somewhere far away and that becomes a habit. Ultimately this form of modernism is value-neutral. It is hard for a modernist or post-modernist to say “here I stand” even when the question is to abolish the modernist project. This can be seen by the astonishing quiet on the part of the American intelligentsia (other than derision and wry asides, with some notable exceptions) in the face of several decades of active and unrelenting work on the part of the right to institute a return to religious fundamentalism, American Exceptionalism and feudalism with all its comforting certainties.

 As the House convenes today, Tuesday, August 10, to vote on some Senate last minute leftovers, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs shows the House members hesitating on voting for more stuff how to communicate effectively with the voters when they resume their 6 week August vacation and fundraising break.

http://thehill.com/homenews/ad…

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.

Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.

In the spirit of bipartisanshipthingee, I’ll quote Fox News now on what happened next:

http://www.foxnews.com/politic…

Tues Aug 10

WASHINGTON — In a rare moment of bipartisanship Tuesday, the House approved $600 million to pay for more unmanned surveillance drones and about 1,500 more agents along the troubled Mexican border.

Getting tougher on border security is one of the few issues that both parties agree on in this highly charged election season. But lawmakers remain deeply divided over a more comprehensive approach to the illegal immigration problem, and it’s unclear if Congress will go beyond border-tightening efforts.

The House passed the bill by an unrecorded voice vote after brief debate.

In fact, although Pelosi was supposedly calling the House back into session during break to vote on a “jobs” bill, ( which went flying under the radar as some Senate amendment to a House Amendment to a Senate Amendment,)   the HR 6080 Emergency Supplemental for Border Security for Fiscal Year 2010 was the very first thing they debated and suspended the rules and passed by voice vote today, at 10:54 am EDT.  You can see the Clerk of the House’s record here, look up Aug 10, 2010, because there will be NO ROLL CALL VOTE RECORD of this.  http://clerk.house.gov/floorsu…

text of bill from THOMAS here:  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak informally at length with several college-aged young adults. Most were at least a decade or so younger than me, and it was interesting to compare how a younger generation’s perspective was both different and similar to that of my own. We covered a wide variety of subjects in a relatively short period of time, but one particularly interesting discussion grabbed my attention. To some extent, it might as well have sufficed for the main idea of every related topic we covered. Many were within a few semesters of graduation, and starting to contemplate what life after college would have in store for them.  

A Quaker minister recently spoke my mind and, as it turned out, the minds of many.  The thrust of his message asserted that we who are people of faith (and even those who do not identify as such) have over the years split into two camps.  One of them seeks to love his or her neighbor by means of social justice and direct service.  Some build houses for the poor.   Others seek to educate and empower those who live in Third World countries.  Still others take jobs in helping professions or non-profits designed to assist the less fortunate and the needy.  It is this aspect that is emphasized most heavily in progressive faiths and certainly by liberal unprogrammed Friends.