True radicalism is insisting on and demonstrating at every turn that you are not a means to an end, but an end in yourself. Your inner life is the only promise of something better, your truth is the only thing that needs to be heard, and your conscience is life itself.
First of all, I want to acknowledge that this diary was inspired by David Mizner's excellent diary, which was on the rec list last night, and which shouldn't be missed, comments included.
I believe that we are outside of both the political and economic cycles, and have crossed through a portal into the hollowed-out world which was the implied guarantee when we were asked to give over our natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, our right to meaningful representation, and our individual and national sovereignty, to global financial interests masquerading as a natural, or even metaphysical, force: so-called globalism. It appears that, at best, our representative government has been reduced to the hired help of those same global financial interests and, possibly, those that try impotently to stanch the bleeding from their mostly symbolic roles in what now looks like a historical reenactment: our United States government.
That might not be true, but that's the best sense I can make of it.
So, what to do?
David Mizner:
You won't be surprised to learn that I don't have clear answers or brilliant ideas.
Exactly. Neither do I. However, I did say this in comments...
I think targeting extreme wealth is the way to go. You can hitch every issue to it as another example of why those a-holes need to pay their stupid fucking taxes. Sit-ins, protests, disruptions, etc., letters to the editor, calling C-Span, all with the express goal of rebuking extreme greed. Rebuke anybody who wants to change the subject. Hold protests outside of supposedly liberal churches that aren't crying out against the greed every single day, citing chapter in verse, hellfire and damnation (no more lame anecdotal sermons or light humor or crap downloaded off of the internet). Hold protests outside of liberal niche groups that work on some boutique cause PETA, Planned Parenthood, your own pet cause, the NAACP, the Ed Show, Huffington Post, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, etc, whatever. The show is over. If they are for real they'll come out and join. They won't be dismayed, but relieved. Energized. But it has to be surprising and intense. Protest the security companies that serve the banks.
And always be sitting down there on Wall Street, milling around, filming, ridiculing, being a pain in the ass.
When somebody asks you what group you belong to, say, "I don't belong to a group, Goddamn it! The show's over!"
...and I certainly enjoyed writing that, but it isn't my final answer.
The question really is: What do we do now that we've done so much and yet we find ourselves here?
My answer, a question: Where will our answer come from and how can we proceed with conviction?
After participating in the above Mizner conversation, I went back to reading my copy of "The Problems of Moral Philosophy", by Theodor W. Adorno, which is a collections of lectures he gave on Kant, and I came across this distinction:
An ethics of conviction is an ethics that seeks refuge in the pure will, that is, that recognizes the interiority of the moral subject as its only authority. In contrast to that, the ethics of goods and the ethics of responsibility take as their starting-point an existing reality, though under certain conditions this may be a mental reality, as perceived by this subject to which it is then counterpoised. -T. W. Adorno
(Emphasis added)
I believe that our culture is saturated with the latter, ethics located outside of the self, which are shaped by a realistic assessment of what appears possible. Adorno is careful to add that this realistic assessment is "a mental reality", or perception, which is easily conditioned by exposure to, say, propaganda, derision, the threat of harm, tenuous employment, austerity, exclusion, moralism, bigotry, the immovability of systems, and most of all, the daunting authority of stratospheric capital accumulation. In other words, I believe that this very conditional and collective ethicality is the weakened immune system that, despite all our striving, and indeed, because of it, has our country, and perhaps the whole of Western Civilization in a critical condition. Whatever chance we have at resistance, I believe has to come from you, your quantum mind, your a priori, irreducible self.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean:
- Obama's message of hope: Obama's message of hope seemed empty from the beginning for those who believe that policy positions are more helpful than high-flown rhetoric, and now they understandably feel vindicated. What made hope and change such a penetrating message, though, was that it relocated political motivation back into the individual and their moral imagination, which animated their efforts in what was a truly historical election. I think people felt instinctively that this message summoned the Enlightenment underpinnings of our democracy.
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." -Thomas Jefferson
What we see now looks more like the external ethicality of political realism, which demands of us that we put aside our misgivings and work harder for half-measures that don't appeal to our conscience. The rhetoric that replaces hope and change falls more in the derision and exclusion categories, which are targeted at shaming us out of ourselves so that we can be useful to those who don't want to hear from us. But as I've said before, when you attach yourself to, and invest precious minutes of your life into, something that doesn't represent your innate sense of justice, for fear of what might happen if you don't, you are like a company that supplies Walmart; you are hollowed out and you wear your label like a death mask.
- People-powered Howard: Aside from the words "hope" and "change", whose power can't be denied, the rest of Obama's campaign approach was a redux of Howard Dean's campaign. When Howard Dean came out and spoke plainly against the prevailing woeful foolishness of the time, a movement of surprising power coalesced around him as if instantaneously. His was an ethic of conviction. You felt that he believed what he said, and, despite humiliation and marginalization, he has stayed true to those beliefs. He emphasized that the power had to be with people and he had a humility that was equally compelling, because he seemed to reinvest in the individual imagination of human beings. His critics on the left felt that his policy positions weren't adequately progressive, and they were blind to the truly emancipatory underlying message of his ethic of conviction, his desire for people to meet as equals and speak their truths.
“Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." -Immanuel Kant
- The impotence of power-coelescing on the Left: These various action blogs, left organizations, think-tanks, Air America, and the MSNBC line-up all contain the fatal flaw of working within, and therefore codifying, the so called "political realty".
Again, David Mizner:
If the start date of the progressive revival was 2002, then we're halfway through those 16 years. How's that change-the-Democratic Party-thing-from-within thing working out for ya?
It isn't. The default mode of the dKos community has always been the nitty, gritty political realism of electoral politics. The hero is the phone-banker, the shoe leather martyr, the fact checker, the keyboardist always on his or her way out the door into "meat space" (I love that term, btw), the scolder of the newbie, the peevish historian, the poster of charts. That's all so patently ordinary, though, as it mimicks the working world, which will be both the ultimate and immediate downfall of humanity. Stolen Water was kind enough to alert me to the term rankism, which puts it all into perspective. The excellence of dKos (and C-Span) is the rant, which is treated here as a luxury only the heros can afford. A good rant, however, has all the strength of the ethic of conviction. It is what is truly radical, emancipatory, and effective about the website. To those restless, workaholic, activist, readers of all relevant material, I have a suggestion. Try sitting down and listening to your tinnitus. Be quiet. Be still. You are alive. If you're tempted to admonish somebody for speaking their minds, by way of advertising all the hard work that you do, read this.
Or this:
Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. - Mark Souka
Rachel Maddow, the Ed Show, Keith Olberman, etc. all joined MSNBC and earned respectable ratings to offset the dominance of Fox News. They work very hard and are sincerer than sincere. Their guests always look concerned. Their production is very professional and looks very much like mainstream news shows on other channels. They've come a long way. They are doing more than most at getting those progressive ideas out there and reporting on the facts. But they can never escape, let alone understand, that they are on a network that spends the majority of time sensationalizing, in lurid detail, the depravity and acute violence of life inside our maximum security prisons. It is the very aesthetic of fascism, unmasked, crushing the sensibilities of anybody foolish enough to watch. It's just a fact. It's an inescapable fact. Game, set, match.
- What is all this talk of morality?: Please listen to Rebecca from California - begins at 23:30 . Then listen to how he answers the question. It's light and dark, beauty and ugliness, vibrancy and boredom, acuteness and banality. It's the ultimate difference between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of external realities.
I've always loved Goya's "El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid"
What does it mean to throw open you arms like that? How would you say that in words? Could it be that this is the moral person, the irreducible self, confronted with the logical conclusion of all political realities?
One thing that's been true since I've been paying attention is that everything The Left does is wrong. By The Left I mean everyone to the left of the basic governing power. Third Parties are bad, sitting out elections are bad, putting pressure on elected reps is bad, protesting is bad, primary campaigns are bad, media criticism might hurt their feefees and is bad, saying mean things about Rush Limbaugh is bad, actually discussing your views honestly is bad, etc. Obviously the failure of The Left to take control and run the country does suggest that it is doing something wrong, but no one ever really offers much constructive advice other than...please STFU. -Duncan Black
Thanks for your patience.