Transformative figure, transformed figure?
You know what I think would be fascinating?
Well, among other things, right now I think that an interview with Barack Obama, in which somehow he could be completely honest, would be completely fascinating.
I must admit that, while I’m generally far more interested in the policies than in the personalities, I’m awfully curious about what that guy must think, at this point.
Various observers, including the Sports Curmudgeon, gave the president some ribbing for “taking the chalk” with his March Madness brackets. And while looking to his basketball picks for any sort of deep meaning is the silliest kind of pop-psychology, after two years Obama does seem to be taking a similar cautious, “work with the establishment rather than against it” approach to pretty much everything else, as well.
And alright, that’s what it is; for the moment I’ll let Uncle Paul condemn Obama’s acceptance of reactionary budget debate terms, and let reporters question Obama’s decision to appoint the CEO of tax-avoidance-champion GE to that blue-ribbon panel thing or whatever.
As I’ve noted on other occasions, not only did I expect Obama to fall short of initial hopes but, by this point, I also have the distinct, distinctly-discouraging feeling that America’s political machinery is simply incapable of producing a president much better than Obama has proven so far.
But of course I’m only interpreting Obama and his decisions, from an outside perspective. He has to actually make those decisions and presumably come up with some sort of reasoning for doing so, and he’s also the one who seemed genuinely to aspire to be a “transformational figure” in American politics.
So I can’t help wondering how he squares that with the reality of his presidency. I mean, were all of those lofty goals just campaign hype? Could be, though personally I doubt it; if not, though, then what? Does he really, genuinely believe that he is a transformational figure in American politics, even as the country seems locked in a life-or-death struggle over reactionary efforts to undo almost every progressive advance since the end of Reconstruction?
Does he feel like no, he’s not really achieved his loftier ambitions, but may yet manage in the next two (or six) years?
Or does he just feel like, yeah, I’ve tried, and it isn’t possible? If that’s the case, where and how does he think he tried? I have to say that, while there are valid questions about what form it could take or what good it could possibly do, Lexington’s recent question of “where is the courage?” also seems valid, in and of itself.*
How would Obama answer these questions, if there were some suspension of reality which allowed and encouraged him to genuinely voice his own thoughts, without any concern for political positioning?
Ah well. I suppose that there’s a sort of political uncertainty principle, which constrains even our potential knowledge of people we’re interested in understanding: someone may hold power, or someone may be completely honest with us, but no one can do both at once.
* I would suggest one addition, to Lex, though. I think it’s fair to ask of someone who is after all in a leadership role, “where is the courage,” even in a general sense. But, if one chooses to do this, I think that ideally one should still be able to point to one specific issue where one would specifically approve of more “courage,” and then show how one has demonstrated courage in the same pursuit, or at minimum go on record as willing to support someone else’s courageous move if it is made.
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“As I’ve noted on other occasions, not only did I expect Obama to fall short of initial hopes but, by this point, I also have the distinct, distinctly-discouraging feeling that America’s political machinery is simply incapable of producing a president much better than Obama has proven so far.”
I think that’s pretty much it. At this point, after 30 years of relentless social engineering by conservatives and large corporations – Citizens United was the victory parade – I think we’re left with three basic roles for a POTUS:
1. Get as much shit done as is possible (ie, somewhere between nothing at all and some) while more or less respecting both the spirit and letter of the law (eg, Obama, Clinton, Bush I, Carter, Ford)
2. Get a lot of shit done by breaking the law (eg, Bush II, Nixon)
3. Get a lot of shit done by bending the law in various sleazy directions without actually breaking it egregiously (eg, Reagan, LBJ)
All of the “transformational” Presidents of the last half-century belong in category 2 or category 3. If we want our President to fit into either of these categories, we’re essentially OK with the ends justifying the means. If we want our President to fit into category 1, we have to steel ourselves for glacially slow progress. That’s the system as it exists, and I have no idea how to reform it, but I have zero faith that a single person – even a POTUS – can do it. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between our time and the Gilded Age lately, and it seems apt to me. I think that’s true for the solution as well: a new Progressive Era could only come about as did the first one, with a nationwide movement supported by people all the way up and down the ticket, as well as strong media voices and sane businesspeople. Unfortunately, none of these exist or are likely to exist anytime soon.
So what we need to do is the hard work of political organizing from the bottom up that we in the progressive blogosphere have been pretending is obsolete. With our focus on national offices and the notion that our ideas are good and right and people would love them if only they were aware of them, we’ve spent the last several years fapping away while Rome burns because it feels so much better to vent an epic rant onto the web than it does to organize neighborhood meetings or have uncomfortable conversations with our relatives and coworkers. And, as a result, after years of effort, we’re still a small handful of a few thousands – certainly no more than a few tens of thousands – who remain convinced of our rectitude despite our continued irrelevance. We just don’t matter to American politics because we haven’t really been engaging in the political process in any meaningful way. Wisconsin ought to have taught us all that we can spend hours every day crafting just the perfect blog post, but a guy who spends his lunch break one day holding a sign and chanting is making more of a contribution than we could hope to make in a year.
“I would suggest one addition, to Lex, though. I think it’s fair to ask of someone who is after all in a leadership role, “where is the courage,” even in a general sense. But, if one chooses to do this, I think that ideally one should still be able to point to one specific issue where one would specifically approve of more“courage,” and then show how one has demonstrated courage in the same pursuit, or at minimum go on record as willing to support someone else’s courageous move if it is made.”
A thousand times this. You could also swap in “bully pulpit” for “courage.” I’m not happy with the way things have gone legislatively over the last couple of years either, but it drives me to distraction how many people satisfy themselves by screaming “DO SOMETHING!” over and over at the tops of their lungs and can’t even be bothered to ponder what “something” might be, or whether anything will make a difference. Just as the progressive movement prefers epic rants to real organizing, there’s also a preference for statements and actions that feel good, regardless of whether or not they’ll actually help with anything. For too many of us, Obama’s greatest crimes aren’t the continuation of the security state, or the escalation of Afghanistan, or the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, or any domestic corporate giveaway, but that time when Robert Gibbs whined about the “professional left” and when Rahm Emmanuel called opponents of the health care reform law “fucking idiots.” Who fucking cares? Our progressive movement, as it currently exists, has ideas that could save our crashing nation, but we’re lazy and we’re far more interested in using politics to fulfill our emotional needs than we are in getting our ideas out into the public conversation. Until we get our heads on straight, we need to get used to irrelevance.
On my other comment: it should be clear from all of that that I’m spending way too much time reading Daily Kos, which seems to get dumber every day.
Gray, let me see
I guess it’s an age of specialization. We even have celebrities whose sole function seems to be going through “real life” drama so that, I suppose, the rest of us can go about our boring lives without missing anything. Why shouldn’t we also have people to change society for us dammit?
(Oh wait, we do; it’s just that they mostly change society to suit interests other than ours. Crap.)
Man, I just can’t seem to stay away from sb today. A little context on my second comment:
A few weeks ago there was a recommended diary at Daily Kos that dealt with demographics. These diaries pop up every now and then, and they invariably show that the Daily Kos community is disproportionately male, well to do, older, and white, even more so than similar leftish blogs. This time, the diarist pointed all of this out and suggested that, given that this situation hasn’t changed in years, the Daily Kos community should think about how its demographics shape its discourse, and whether or not the community should make an effort to create a place where people who aren’t male, white, old, and rich will feel more welcome. Unsurprisingly, the comment section was full of excuse making, justifications, and general apologia. Some suggested it was great that the demographics were so skewed because it proved that not all old white men are evil. Some speculated about how people of color are too poor or ignorant to use the internet or follow politics. Some called the whole demographics thing a red herring designed to make people feel guilty for picking on Obama. It went on and on for hundreds of comments, and the one thing nobody was willing to do was interrogate their own privilege, or even acknowledge its existence.
This is just one example of the discourse around there these days. Nearly all of it is tedious back-and-forth between pro- and anti-Obama factions, and any topic will be instantly connected to that meta-dispute, no matter how difficult it is to cram it into that box. All of that would be fine, if boring, but the side effects are genuinely toxic. Probably the worst is how off the rails discussions of race have gotten there. The black community on Daily Kos has always been small and obscure (at least to the vast majority of commenters there), but it’s shrunk significantly in the last few months as white racist attitudes have gradually grown more acceptable. Using the phrase “white privilege” is now all that it takes to instigate a firestorm of angry denial and “race card!” deflections.
But, as I said, this is just an example. Pick a topic, any topic, and read a handful of diaries and comment threads on it, and you’ll come away feeling less informed than before you started, and pessimistic about the future of the progressive movement. Of course, Daily Kos is not the entirety of the progressive blogosphere, but it is undeniably the loudest voice and the largest community, especially since the Huffington Post sold out to AOL and hired Andrew Breitbart. When people who aren’t in our club want to see what progressive bloggers think about something, they’ll go to Daily Kos first, and perhaps they’ll stop there. Progressives who actually give a shit need to either reform that place or come up with a bigger platform if we ever want to get out from under its shadow.
I hope my comment didn’t seem to be a criticism of what you do here, Matt, because I find your contributions to be always thoughtful and helpful. I was probably too harsh in my first comment; it’s not that I don’t think blogs are useful, just that I think we need to remember that blogging is not activism. You obviously grok that, and it’s one of the reasons I still come here to read you. As for everybody else who’s blogging these days? I’m not so sure.
I envy your detachment from Daily Kos. For me, it’s like smoking (or, rather, what I, as a non-smoker, imagine a tobacco addiction to be): a bad habit that has lost most of its capacity to provide pleasure, but remains in my life because I can’t find a substitute for it. Stay away. There’s nothing worthwhile to be found there that can’t be found elsewhere.
I like your idea of specialization. That explains a lot, and it always makes me happy when I can say, “wow, even though he was wrong about a lot of things, Marx really nailed some other things.” More and more I find myself admiring the flawed anarcho-syndicalist society Ursula Le Guin depicts in The Dispossessed. In that system, everybody gets to pick their career, and resources are accorded equally regardless of duties, but all the jobs that nobody actually wants to do are split up so that everybody has to spend a few weeks each year digging ditches or hauling garbage or whatever. Of course, the point of the novel was that even a utopian anarcho-syndicalist state is rife with power imbalances that severely fuck with the operation of society, and that whatever arrangement we as a species settle on for how to govern our interactions, there are some injustices we’ll never entirely get rid of. Still, a world where specialization is kept at a minimum seems better than what we currently have. I’d certainly be willing to scrub toilets for a few weeks a year if that meant everybody’s material needs were taken care of.
And you’re right, I should probably turn that first comment into a post. Lord knows it’s been way too longs since I posted here. Maybe I will.
Gray, I definitely encourage you to pop by and share thoughts whenever you want, whether as post or comment; there are a number of interesting remarks in just this latest comment.
But, before I get completely carried away, I’ll just say: no worries about your observation on the limitations of bloggery. I figured the word “humbling” was a good choice because it says “thought-provoking” without saying “insulting,” and I was definitely not insulted a bit!
After all, I mostly write here and at my other blog simply 1) because it’s good practice and 2) ’cause I’m gonna express a certain number of ideas one way, or another, I’ve realized. That said, that persons do read the stuff and take some value from it is inestimably rewarding knowledge.
Peace!