Are having a rich and fecund discussion about the duties, obligations, agonies and upper limits of principled Liberal activism in the comment section below decks on this thread.
Well worth bringing a chunk of it up to the front page where everyone can see it.
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bluepillnation said...
@Jasper As someone who also knows the "you don't belong here" look (though due to social class and means or lack thereof rather than melanin levels) I understand where you're coming from. But change in this media-centric day and age is going to be more gradual than it has been in the past. Every generation of western kids seems to understand more implicitly that racism is wrong - so we just have to keep the trend going.
I still think you're being a little over-sensitive regarding some blogs and commenters however. I'm not seeing accusations of immaturity or "whining" in response to criticism of President Obama per se, but I do see it aimed instead at a specific kind of criticism - namely the kind that demands actions that would be political suicide in the current climate and signs off with "...so I'm sitting out the next election/voting third party". *That's* immature, and not unlike a kid who won't eat their dinner or tidy their room unless they get what they want right now, even in the face of an honest promise that they'll get a treat later.
It seems a significant number of otherwise intelligent and empathetic people have yet to understand the concept of deferred gratification. In this case you have a political climate that has been dragged further to the right, inch-by-inch, for the last 32 years at least. Even Bubba Clinton only managed to slow the process down to some extent, and for that he was pilloried by the Right, who spent billions digging up dirt on him until they had something with which they could attempt to impeach him. The only reason their shellacking of Obama (who, as you say, is even less able to halt the slide) is so impotent is because they didn't think he'd beat Hillary to the nomination - what do you think they'd do to a President who gave you everything you wanted?
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Jasper said...
I view change (policy, social, etc.) in our media-centric era as something that comes more quickly than it once did. See: the Komen Foundation firestorm.
I'm not sure about your perception of race and western society, but it's still a contentious issue down this way. And the internet seems to be yet another flashpoint.
I'll accept that I am over-sensitive, in that I want someone to care about my political opinion and not dismiss it cavalierly. My specific demands of our President were promises he made during his campaign and certainly would not have amounted to political suicide of any kind; especially not when he and the Democratic party held the reins of power for two full years.
I know his critics play on this but what defense is there when he had 2 years of a Dem Congress, a populous tired of GOP malfeasance and his tactical decision was to try to reach some sense of accord with the lunatics on the right and take legislative baby steps? Some defenders put this down to a mysterious long form strategy but I cannot see it.
I agree with your charge our generation's want for immediate gratification, but it cannot be dismissed that Obama played to that desire with his "Hope" campaign and with his heady campaign promises—he didn't just lightly tease that bundle of neurons, he gripped it with both hands and yanked it like a friar tolling a church bell until it pealed far and wide. And then he rode that endorphin rush all the way to the White House. For him to do this and then a couple of years later say, "Whoa, whoa…slow your roll, everybody" and *not* expect cries of foul play from those fervently caught up in his rhetoric just seems unfair.
Again, civil liberties and social justice were the hill I chose to die on and as such it will be a bitter pill to swallow to vote for him again. But I probably will. I just wish the dialogue with those left disillusioned and (seemingly) disenfranchised were less of a dismissive, accusatory nature. There are legitimate complaints to be heard.
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bluepillnation said...
Of course there are legitimate complaints to be heard - however at the same time achievement is constrained by possibility, and it is a sad truism that the higher up the pyramid you get, the less room for manoeuvre you have.
Today Clinton is vilified almost as much by progressives for not doing enough during his two terms as he was by conservatives during his time in office - and yet those same conservatives howled from the rooftops that he was some kind of un-american socialist for the changes he did make. I suspect that a lot of the things progressives now vilify him for (passing NAFTA for example) were essentially a quid pro quo to get some leeway for small progressive reforms with a pathologically antagonistic Republican Congress - but his greatest legacy in office was turning a sizeable deficit into a respectable surplus, which I'm sure he intended to pass on to Al Gore to keep things moving in the right direction.
Instead, you had the Bush Administration piss the whole thing away on military and security boondoggles (most of which were resurrected Cold War projects - completely useless against terrorist cells), which has left Obama even more limited than Clinton was in terms of room for manoeuvre in terms of financial standing alone - and like Clinton, even the little he has managed to do has come at the expense of being called an un-american socialist by the Right, which has consolidated it's hold on media even more aggressively than it was in Clinton's day.
If President Obama were to do all the things being asked of him by progressives, I could guarantee you a one-term presidency followed by a lurch even further to the right. Both Clinton and Obama know this - they (and the Democratic Party as a whole) saw what happened to Jimmy Carter and changed tack accordingly - just as the Republicans did following Nixon's defeat in 1960 and resignation following Watergate.
The issue is that the very nature of progressives, being humanist in nature if not in name, is that they tend to take "First Do No Harm" as a baseline. Even self-proclaimed "fighting liberals" like the beloved and much-missed Gilly took the fight only to those who were causing harm and deserved to be rhetorically threshed and politically sidelined. Regressive conservatives don't care who they steamroller as long as the result suits them. This is why Democratic politicians try to find consensus even as the Republicans wilfully double down on the crazy - because the former care what's at stake and the latter clearly do not. Combine this fundamental drive with the woeful financial situation and the aggressive antagonism of the right-wing media and you have your answer.
Yes it's frustrating, but it may bring some comfort to remember Aesop's tortoise and hare. Push too far too soon and you'll get cocky and lose (which is particularly true of the previous administration). Slow and sure is the way...
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Jasper said... Fair points all around.
I have the Gilliard Doctrine tattooed on my heart and it's probably among the chief reasons reason I haven't checked out of the game.
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bluepillnation said...
Thank you sir.
Steve Gilliard was an exceptionally talented and visceral writer, and he was also a very concise and precise wordsmith. In the paean to being a "fighting liberal" that we all know and love he used the phrase:
"I want to stop them".
He didn't want to kill, annihilate, crush, dismember, maim or hurt them in a physical sense - even as he pointed out how destructive and morally bankrupt they and their creed were, and I like to think that was because he knew in his heart that to cross that line would be to become like them, and make any eventual victory over them an empty, pyrrhic one.
14 comments:
Well if we are continuing this discussion,
My list of problems with this President can be dwindled down to the fact he has Lyndon Baines Johnson Syndrome.
LBJ was one of this countries most progressive presidents and one of the best (in my own view).
This President and LBJ have many similarities, most notably, considerable success pushing progressives reforms through Congress.
But they have another crippling similarity that their power in the Executive Branch is crippled with a fear of what Conservatives might call them.
LBJ started the Vietnam War.
Not Congress
Not the Supreme Court.
President LBJ started the Vietnam War, and he could have ended it. The President does not have the power to declare war but he has the power to end it.
For some reason he chose not to.
Barack Obama, President, the man in charge of the Executive Branch, steadfastly refuses to prosecute war crimes by the Bush Administration or prosecute anyone related to the financial collapse of 2008.
He does not need Congressional authority to do either of these.
LBJ not ending the Vietnam War, cost thousands of lives, split the Democratic Coalition in way that exist to this day, and gave rise to Richard Nixon and the Conservative Movement.
Barack Obama's decision to not prosecute anybody so far has legitimized torture for the Executive Branch and Perpetuated and two-tier criminal justice system, I expect worse to come.
I don't see how asking the President to use the powers given to him by the Constitution to uphold the Law is asking too much?
...."Today Clinton is vilified almost as much by progressives for not doing enough during his two terms as he was by conservatives during his time in office - and yet those same conservatives howled from the rooftops that he was some kind of un-american socialist for the changes he did make. I suspect that a lot of the things progressives now vilify him for (passing NAFTA for example) were essentially a quid pro quo to get some leeway for small progressive reforms with a pathologically antagonistic Republican Congress...."
My problem in the last round was that Cesca didn't really go back far enough in explaining the mindset the so called Obama "apologists" have with regard to the "lessor of two evils" argument.
If you were around to watch Carter get "malaised" out of office in favor of a doddering empty suit, who then proceeded to dismantle every good gain that had been made over the previous 30 year...the term "enemy of perfection" became quite a living principle.
Over the last 5 decades, it has been my observation that when one side gains power, they destroy every thing they touch...in a kind of exponential cycle of arrogant incompetence. Eventually, the country collectively stirs from its slumber, puts the other side in power, who are then forced to spend a great deal of time and political capital cleaning up the mess.
Is it wrong to want to see this cycle broken...permanently?
I would venture to guess, that the combined administrations of Regan and Bush II, set this country so far back, socially, economically, and yes..as a consequence even technologically that had those elections gone differently, I would be telepathically writing this from my the seat of my solar powered flying car!!
The enemy of perfection indeed...
Relevant.
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OK, so I must admit I nearly had to ask Mrs. Blue to get the smelling salts and burn some feathers under my nose - because I nearly swooned clean away when I saw this (I kid you not, Drifty - remember how you felt when Gilly promoted your comments? :).
@RobSPL:
I think it's a question of degree here - for all the good he did, Vietnam will forever be LBJ's albatross as far as progressives are concerned, but put yourself in his shoes. His predecessor ended up with a significant portion of his brain splashed across the inside of a limo - admittedly JFK's enemies were numerous, but it's a matter of record that he was beginning to waver in terms of committing the military to Vietnam any further. Compared to that the infamous horse's head in the bed scene from The Godfather seems a mere gentle hint! It certainly wasn't just "fear of what Conservatives would call him" behind that decision, I'm sure of it.
Both prosecution of former administration officials and those behind the financial collapse fall into the financial limitations he inherited. We like to live with a comforting reassurance that justice cannot be bought, but again reality gives the lie to that. Both the former administration officials and the Wall Street crooks will be able to afford the best lawyers available to man and they will tie the DoJ up in knots until the end of time, bleeding billions of dollars from the public purse at a time when money is scarce. In any case it's a lose-lose situation for Obama, because even if he went after them on principles alone - the media would castigate him for wasting money, the Republicans would surge back into power and even if prosecutions were successful before that happened, it would be pardons all round.
@blackdogg:
Carter told the US public some uncomfortable truths that they didn't want to hear - in fact technological progress might have slowed for a time as the computer/semiconductor industry would have had to spend a significant amount of money in order to comply with the regulations they flouted openly during the Reagan years (e.g. MOS Technology, producer of the 6502 CPU used in most micros of the time ended up as a Superfund site).
That's not to say that things couldn't have caught up eventually, but you do have to take the "big picture" into account when thinking about this.
You're right about the "empty suit" though - and I believe that Bush Sr. was to Reagan as Cheney was to Bush Jr. The president couches policies in comforting "down-home" homilies, but to find out what's really happening you have to keep your eye on the veep. Just as "Morning In America" was the cover for "The concentration of wealth and power into higher, tighter and righter hands", so was "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job" [sic] a cover for "Go fuck yourself".
Ultimately I can't do better than the Aesop analogy. For all their flaws - LBJ, Clinton and Obama have done the best they could with the miniscule amount of wiggle room they have. Candidates like a Kucinich or a Dean are wonderful vessels to pronounce where we want to be in the future, but the sad truth is that the money and odds are stacked heavily against a political shift of that magnitude happening any time soon.
"Delayed gratification" means that, at some point, there will be gratification. In other words, it assumes that the Obama administration is gradually making leftish policies more acceptable to the mainstream, with hopes of enacting them later.
That's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing Obama get lambasted as an Iranian Muslim Commie Atheist while governing like a Republican.
That's not choosing delayed gratification. That's choosing a beating over a stabbing. It's the best choice available, but I'm sure not going to thank him for it.
@Jay:
He's governing like Clinton - you could describe that as governing like a Republican (many do), but from the outside it looks like he's governing like a Democrat with a massive deficit hanging around his neck and a well-oiled right-wing propaganda machine trying to destroy him by any means possible.
This is entirely a post-Reagan phenomenon, in fact if you wanted to be more precise you could call it a post-Fairness Doctrine phenomenon, so the only historical precedent you can compare is Clinton. The tragedy is that the last 32 years in US politics have proven categorically the old maxim that it is easier to destroy than to create - as well as dragging the discourse to the right, the Reagan, Poppy and Junior administrations bled the Treasury dry by cutting taxes almost exclusively for the ultra-rich and funding almost every multi-billion dollar defence project that crossed their desk. This has the knock-on effect of making it extra hard for incoming Democratic administrations to enact significant change because the money simply isn't there, regardless of the political will. Put bluntly, you could have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic President - but you can't pass legislation enacting things like single-payer healthcare, strong environmental regulations and a national renewable energy policy if the money isn't there to fund those programmes, and thanks to the last three Republican administrations, it isn't.
Obama's no fool - "Hope" is the very embodiment of delayed gratification and "Change" sometimes has to happen gradually. He knew what he was offering and did so honestly.
@bluepillnation: "He's governing like Clinton"
You are ignoring the fact that Reaganism, and Bill Clinton's contributions to it (e.g. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000) failed spectacularly in this decade.
And you are ignoring the fact that the elections of 2006 and 2008 represented massive repudiations of the right-wing agenda.
Obama had a very strong hand to change those policies thanks to those elections. It's what he campaigned on.
No one made Obama fill his cabinet with Republicans and right-wing Democrats, that was his choice.
No one made Obama create a bipartisan deficit commission, let alone appoint two opponents of Social Security as its co-chairs.
No one made Obama take the Bush-Cheney civil rights violations in the name of so-called "War on Terror" and expand them, rather than repudiate them.
He promised change. He's spent the last three years ensuring that there would be none that might negatively impact the plutocrats.
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We certainly have "a political climate that has been dragged further to the right, inch-by-inch, for the last 32 years at least."
There is NO influential progressive media.
We are in perhaps THE Great Depression requiring bold "actions that would be political suicide in the current climate" to reverse.
Then, the punch line: "Put bluntly, you could have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic President - but you can't pass legislation enacting things like single-payer healthcare, strong environmental regulations and a national renewable energy policy if the money isn't there to fund those programmes."
So here's a question for the self-avowed adults: what, exactly, is the time frame for this "delayed" gratification if we are running a $trillion deficit and the fascist media will simply make impossible any "overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic President"?
Add to that 1) the recent NDAA (and its limp signing statement as opposed to promised veto)
2) assertion and use of presidential power to assassinate US citizens without judicial review AND 3) recent reports that drones are both coming to your town and already target foreign rescuers and mourners (http://tinyurl.com/6vgf3s9) and 4) another superb Superbowl Sunday interview that did NOTHING to avert the specter of NEEDLESS, if not suicidal, war with Iran
It looks like our tribe is tying itself in rhetorical knots justifying or ignoring political actions it was howling about when Bush II was committing them.
Next we'll be getting "well-reasoned" arguments that abortion and contraception must
be banned to insure the production of the many, many robust generations of "adult" thinkers that will be needed to finally realize progressive gratification.
John Puma
Let me present this forced-choice scenario:
You can choose between two possble futures. In one, your wife is taken hostage and murdered. In the other, she is taken hostage and raped, but allowed to live. Your choice has a measurable but infinitesimal effect on the outcome, but one of these two scenarios will play out, whether you make a choice or not.
So - do you choose the murderer, or the rapist?
One argument states that you must choose because refusing is based on a naïve and immature expectation of reality, which will proceed apace regardless. A sub-argument states that it is immoral not to choose, because if you don't, there is a greater chance that it will be the murderer and you would bear some responsibility for that. This is fundamentally an outcome-based argument.
Another arguement states that it is pointless to choose because the effect of your choice is negligible and both choices are undesirable. A subset also argues that choosing is immoral because it validates the process at work and rewards either the murderer or the rapist while denying the possibility of avoiding both. This is fundamentally a process-based argument.
* * * * *
The two arguments are based on different ways of seeing the world, because they act on different points of the scenario. Thus the two camps have been fruitlessly circling one another for many months now, with little progression in either direction.
This whole thing is getting tired, and I'm getting tired of hearing the side I disagree with make the same points, just as they are tired of hearing me make the same responses.
Frankly, I've been more than a little disappointed that you (drifty) have not been able to muster more than anyone else in this - I see a lot of repetition of the same arguments, the occasional new bit of pointed snark, but I've been waiting and hoping for something more penetrating into the problem than this.
NS
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
I assure you I'm ignoring *nothing*. I know damn well that Clinton signed some extremely dubious legislation into law from 1994 onwards, but I think it is disrespectful to the man to assume that he did it without weighing up the options. By building up that surplus he had basically set in place a financial cushion to take the hit if things went south.
I think you forget just how much of an upset the Bush "victory" was - for all his faults, Clinton planned for the long-term and always did - reasoning that if he had to capitulate to the Republican Congress's demands for deregulation that it could be circumvented by other means later. Without the trillion or so poured into the hare-brained response to 9/11, even if Dubya spent money like a drunken sailor it would have taken him a while to deplete the surplus with tax cuts alone and if Gore had won then the money could have been put to better use.
I dispute the notion that the results of 2006/2008 were a "repudiation" of the right, they were simply acknowledgement by the voting public that whatever the Executive and Legislative branches were up to wasn't working for them anymore.
"He promised change. He's spent the last three years ensuring that there would be none that might negatively impact the plutocrats."
And as long as the money from those plutocrats is the only thing capable of winning an election, change is going to go at a snail's pace.
@John:
"what, exactly, is the time frame for this "delayed" gratification if we are running a $trillion deficit and the fascist media will simply make impossible any "overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic President"
To which the only answer can be "A damn sight longer than it would have been if some progressives hadn't sat out the elections in 2000 and 2010".
No-one's justifying the policies here - there's no doubt that they are a blot on the reputation of the United States. What I'm saying is that faced with the Mighty Wurlitzer and a financial situation that will get worse before it gets better (and that's pretty optimistic), he does not have the political capital to repeal them wholesale. Not that I like the policy at all, but playing Devil's advocate, there's always the argument that by extending the anti-terrorism policy to include US citizens, he's finally acknowledged the fact that home-grown far-right militias deserve to be on the same terms with the US government as foreign terrorists. But that's what you get with a system based on legal precedent - how exactly does one reconcile the rights of a US citizen engaged in a terrorist act with the oath to protect the US and her citizens "against all enemies, foreign and domestic"?
OK, I've gone on far too long here, but one last thing. Compared to the late Gilly's mastery of military and political history I am but a mental midget, but one thing he and I shared was absolute revulsion at the misappropriation of WWII-era rhetoric. That said I'm going to appropriate some in a manner I feel is correct.
Being a limey, I learned that the war started for us two years before it really started for you. During those two years we saw France fall despite our best efforts - which admittedly weren't very good because we did not understand who we were fighting and still hewed to the tactics of the previous war. When the Battle Of Britain began, the only way to hold the line was to adopt those tactics that worked, even if it meant borrowing from an enemy that was as ideologically corrupt as the modern world had seen. To hold the line we had to throw away a lot of the principles of fair play and approaches to warfare that we held dear, but at the same time not allow it to taint what it was that we were fighting for. Knowing that the enemy was so well-funded and had enough resources that even forcing a stalemate would cost us dearly in human and financial terms, we held that line and hoped that one day circumstances would change and we could start pushing back hard.
Holding the line against an enemy that has the resources to flatten you and doesn't give a stuff about "collateral damage" requires acceptance of unpleasant truths and unpleasant actions. It requires acceptance of assistance from anyone willing to help even if the compromises made are distasteful. When the stakes are that high - and believe me they are - you hold that fucking line as far as your conscience will allow, and if all else fails no matter what else you have to do, because the alternative is too awful to bear thinking about.
@Anonymous/NP:
Your forced-choice scenario presents two unthinkable options and disregards how the situation became that desperate - If you'd permit me to extend your analogy by adding some preconditions.
You hear on the radio that an escaped murderer, thief and rapist has been spotted on the outskirts of your town (Carter), but figure the chances of your home being attacked are slim. The first thing your housebreaker had to do was cut the alarm (The Reagan/Bush Sr. years), and you held him at the front door. Then he blasts his way through your front door and burgles your house (Dubya). You're injured and holding him at the bedroom door (Obama).
Now your options are to continue holding him at the door and do your best to attract help, or you can jump out the window and try to fashion yourself a weapon from the tree you can see through the window. This is going to take time, and you may even eventually inflict harm on him, but not until after he's raped and murdered your significant other, robbed you blind and ruined your life.
These are the stakes, make no bones about it.
Jimmy Carter warned you that continued reliance on foreign oil and military spending would end in tears. Enough people didn't want to hear that to elect Reagan, which led to a military spending boom, deregulation of finance and media, which unleashed the Wurlitzer. Clinton put the brakes on as best he could, but the fact that he had to compromise with the right to even do that meant that enough progressives abandoned the Democrats to allow Dubya in, who resurrected policies that even Reagan's crew blanched at.
Like it or not, Obama and the Democratic Party are the only ones capable of holding the next Republican gouging off, and you're seriously contemplating allowing that gouging to happen because he isn't moving fast enough for you?
If you can't see that - if you really think that the people who will suffer as a result of that are acceptable losses for the sake of principles, then that makes you more like the Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Gingriches of this world than any Blue Dog could ever be.
I want to go one better than Gilly's admonition to "stop them". Merely stopping them is only good enough if we also wipe out their ideological nests. What's to keep a new generation from forgetting the lessons we learned the moment our policies return us to prosperity and security?
I'm old enough to remember when a guy like Carter could get elected and when Reagan was a laughingstock. I've spent my lifetime watching all the good work of my ancestors undone.
So stopping this latest decades-long onslaught is not enough. I want to know what we are going to do to set the right course for the long term.
bluepillnation:
Your analogy serves your purpose, but not mine, and so it's not a very good "addendum" to my point. And so you've sidled past it, back into the same arguments again.
I consider that, for all the good things Obama has done and which I agree with, he has absolutely done several things that I consider to be objectively harmful and damaging to the nation, things that for decades I have objected to and fought against.
Specifically, we are progressing further down a road toward unchecked preisdential power, governmental control of personal privacies, and moneyed hands pulling all the levers. There has been no bump in these trajectories since Obama took office, and some have accelerated. I take the long view that short-term tweaks in health care do not offset long-term devastations in habeus corpus, etc. etc. So please do not replace my argument with your own different one and then argue againt points I did not make.
The murderer versus rapist analogy illustrates two different kinds of evils on purpose, and is the point that your position needs to address directly. Coming at me with these same issues again and again presumes only that I cannot read, because there is nothing new here, nor anything that actually bears on my main point.
Which is - if for some people the only difference is the slope of our descent into ruin, then what is the fucking point? I am not trying to punish anyone, or be petulant about this. I am serious. Without some hope of actually climbing out of the hole we are in, and which we are digging deeper into every day, do you really expect me to act up in favor of digging more slowly??
NP
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