After almost thirty years of creeping, corporatist takeover, the very intellectual ground we stand upon has been tilted heavily in favor of the corporate solution to all problems. The election we have just had was really a fight between lunatic military-industrial complex corporatists and "kinder, gentler" corporatists who at least recognize the limits to U.S. power (and, incidentally, some rights of citizens and some duties of government).
Nevertheless, we still see, at the strategic level, a continuation, with tactical modifications, of the same old corporatist policies. (See the note at the very end.) My hat is off to Howard Dean - whose reward for saving the Democratic Party was to be shown the door - for taking a stand for health care reform. I am in awe of people who have the motivation to persist in the face of total hostility. My thoughts on persistence, below the fold, are better expressed by Jacques Ellul.
The equilibrium we seek between technique and freedom...is not stable. It is continually put to the test and must be ceaselessly re-established. The tension required of the individual in this struggle seems to me to raise a grave question. Is it feasible to obtain from the individual ceaseless effort to establish the very framework of his activity?...The human being, left to his own devices, will not choose the most difficult path or the tightest situation He will choose the line of least resistance...
The average man...has no great desire to maintain his equilibrium at the expense of a ceaseless re-creating of a failing virtue...He far prefers a simple solution, summary, no doubt, and brutal, but assuring him an easy road.
- Jacques Ellul, "The Technological Society"
In other words, at a certain point, you just feel like quitting. As a progressive tries to tell his story in America today, even in the face of economic and military catastrophe, he must constantly knock down zombie talking points. After a while, you wind up mumbling those points to yourself even before you speak, because you keep getting bushwhacked by them. The corporate media offers its defenders an unending supply of such deliberate, carefully crafted propaganda. (That, by the way, is the definition of propaganda: a continuous, organized attempt to dominate the flow of information.)
We have all witnessed thirty years of corporate defense of antiquated laissez faire economics - up to and beyond the point where it has driven our economy over a cliff. Can you say Rick Santelli? We have also witnessed the packing of the Federal court systems with the partisan, anti-government hacks of the Federalist Society. We have watched the military and prison and drug war budgets grow without limit, all justified by the propaganda of fear.
What is an ordinary, progressive citizen to do? I will be the first to admit that I have only one "frame" for political action: Hannah Arendt. You must admit, she was prescient in her understanding of both Hitlerism and Stalinism as the same animal - totalitarianism. Its really a problem that, today, illiterate dittoheads compare Obama to both Hitler and Stalin, to both Fascism and Communism, without a speck of historical awareness. These ignorant thugs have poisoned the true message of Ms. Arendt about totalitarian takeovers.
All these (professional party organizations) were primarily duplicates of existing non-corporatist professional society, paraprofessional as the storm troopers were paramilitary...The important factor for the movements is that, even before they seize power, they give the impression that all elements of society are embodied in their ranks...The corporatists went one step further in this game and set up a series of fake departments which were modeled after the regular state administration, such as their own department of foreign affairs, education, culture, sport, etc...
This technique of duplication...proved extremely useful in the work of undermining actively existing institutions and in the "decomposition of the status quo" which corporatist organizations invariably prefer to an open show of force. ...The practical value of the fake organizations came to light when the corporatists seized power and were ready at once to destroy the existing teachers' organizations with another teachers' organization, the existing lawyers' clubs with a corporate-sponsored lawyers club, etc. They could change overnight the whole structure of society...precisely because they had prepared its exact counterpart within their own ranks...The technique of this "co-ordination" was as ingenious and irresistible as the deterioration of professional standards was swift and radical...
- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism", p 371-2
In the above quote, I have substituted "corporatist" for "totalitarian" and for "Nazi". For party, think "Party of Davos"; and you will have the picture. As with all Arendt quotes, they stand the test of time very well. In this diary, I want to argue that the DLC (Dirty Lying Corporatist) wing of the Democratic Party is the "party/movement" trying to "decompose the status quo" within the Democratic Party.
Since the GOP has ceased to exist as an effective force, the battlefield for the creeping corporate takeover has moved inside the Democratic Party. The DLC presents itself as an elite organization, within, but above, the Democratic Party. The DLC and the New Democrats and the Blue Dogs are always thick with all of the corporate-sponsored professional organizations, carrying corporate water. This is the classic M.O. of "burrowing from within".
Howard Dean is simply the first case in point. A functioning, grass-roots DNC is not in the interest of corporate America. In fact, the DNC grassroots and the DLC corporatists (yeah, you, Rahm Emmanuel, and your brother, too) have had a hate-hate relationship for years. After failing with Daschle, Obama has now appointed two sturdy corporatists to preside over healthcare reform - that puts single payer off the table before it begins. After two failures at Commerce, we now have a governor who took the corporate side in the Seattle WTO demonstrations - which became police riots. We have Wall St. insiders continuing to run Treasury, and a Bush insider running Defense.
And yet, the DLC wing tries to tell me that this is "change". They try to get my sympathy for pro-corporate Gov. Sebellius because she is attacked by religious nutters - the same tactic that got people to defend Bill Clinton despite NAFTA, GATT, and Telecom deregulation. They plead necessity. They plead "its only been six weeks".
Essentially, they want me to "define down" change. They want change to be the minimal band-aids that even the corporatists recognize must be applied. But they want me to go that far and no further. I recognize what is going on; but I am tired. I am soooo tired. I ask myself the Ellul Question: Is it feasible to obtain from the individual ceaseless effort to establish the very framework of his activity?
As a progressive, it is now harder than ever to get your message out. If Obama is "a socialist" or a "communist" for carrying out a corporatist program, that must make a progressive into an anarchist. Essentially, the Obama campaign has co-opted, hijacked, and silenced the progressive platform. This is not news. It has been blogged about extensively. That, essentially doubles my "ceaseless effort to establish a framework". First I have to cut through the Fox/CNN/CNBC noise machine. Then, I have to separate my argument from Obama without causing a split within the Democratic Party. It is simply too much for me as an individual.
The logical conclusion is that real progressives must fight the DLC for control of the Democratic Party. From what I can gather, the caucus is split about 50-50. Given the state of the GOP and the distance to the next election, now is the time to fight.
The GOP are irrelevant in such a fight. First, because they are in their own fight. Second, because which side would they pick? Suppose the progressives vote against some of the corporatist versions of Obama's recovery. If the GOP vote with the progressives, Obama loses. If he says he is a "centrist" attacked by extremists, I say "a centrist is someone who puts corporations ahead of voters". OTOH, if the GOP vote with Obama, the progressives can say "Obama's position is approved by the batshit crazy GOP". Of course, the DLC will say that "even the GOP agree with us - that makes the progressives insane". Either outcome is fine with me. It gets publicity for the progressives, and it makes the DLC corporatists show their true colors.
The only thing preventing me from acting on this logic is Obama's mastery of being inscrutable. We know he is very good at head-fakes. But the question is, who is he faking? Is he just using Rahm and the DLC as cover to help the middle class? Or are the few crumbs he is offering just a head-fake to the middle class to sit still until the corporations are done robbing us blind? Or are the Chinese threatening to pull the economy down if we try anything that costs them more money or loosens their control over their own citizens?
I.just.don't.know.and.the.clock.is.ticking.
Can some activist progressive give me a hand here?
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[NOTE] Corporatist strategies:
- the unwillingness to prosecute members of the Bush Administration for war crimes, for contempt of Congress, for violations of law at the level of Cabinet Officials
- the continued attempt to let Wall St. keep its crooked gains
- the escalation in Afghanistan and the ever-shifting definition of how and when we will leave Iraq
- the newly launched attempt to have the insurance and pharma industries define national healthcare, beginning by shutting out any discussion of single-payer