Forward. Again.

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Tuesday November 27, 2012 · 4:23 PM PST

2012/11/27 · 16:23

Okay, first here’s my confession. I’m a frequent reader but very infrequent contributor, and I’m not much for wading into online discussion and/or controversy.

BUT I feel as though this is a particularly important moment for Democrats and progressives of all stripes, that we got rolled after the 2008 election, and that now is the time to assert ourselves more aggressively. I remember being in San Diego just after the 2008 elections – I think it was the spring of 2009 – and seeing people already with their anti-Obama/tea party signs standing at the freeway on-ramps. I can’t remember exactly what they were demonstrating about, other than the now-familiar take-back-America whine-fest, but I remember thinking, jeez, where did all THAT energy come from? The election is over, right? So why don’t people just settle down and get back to their lives?

And I also thought, that won’t amount to much. But as we know now, this was the beginning of a whole lot of craziness. And the 2010 debacle.

Now we’re all still in the after-glow of another important victory, and I’m expecting another astro-turfed surge of right-wing populist pseudo-rage that will suck all the oxygen out of what passes for our civic life in this country and derail what could be an important conversation/fight over budget priorities for the next decade. My question is how can we prevent that? How can we BUILD on the important moment of the 2012 victories and RETAIN THE INITIATIVE? A few thoughts below the fold.

newhat

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Monday December 12, 2011 · 3:09 PM PST

2011/12/12 · 15:09

Anyone who has existed above ground in America for the past several decades cannot fail to recognize the on-going phenomenon of the celebration of idiocy in supposed leaders and candidates for leadership in the Republican party. Recent examples, of course, abound. Feel free to insert your own relevant examples here, but a mere mention of the names Perry, Cain, Palin or Bachmann should suffice to prove the point. (Gingrich, the faux intellectual, is a variant.) How can it be that these people are being considered for high office by the Republican electorate? It’s not a question, really, about the candidates themselves. Idiots abound in any society; idiots with pretensions to greatness are practically inevitable. But what moves ordinary people to support these idiots, even after they’ve been exposed as dolts and hypocrites?

If you want the long answer to that question, I recommend Richard Hofstadter’s book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It’s nearly 50 years old now, but still rings true. He uses the tools of the historian to trace America’s love affair with ideas and people who are simple, powerful, and totally moronic. But for my money the work of Max Weber, one of the founders of sociology, comes closest to giving a satisfying explanatory theory of dolt-dom.

More below the fold.

newhat

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Monday August 10, 2009 · 8:19 PM PDT

2009/08/10 · 20:19

The recent death of Corazon Aquino reminds me of the the incredible optimism, courage and tenacity she showed during the "people power" revolution in the Philippines in 1986. It was not a new strategy. Indeed, the mobilization of thousands, if not millions, in public demonstrations has been the only way that powerful, entrenched forces have yielded, however reluctantly, to the will of the people. Think Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Iran in the past few weeks. People in the streets. People being bloodied by hostile opposition. That is the way that movements happen. And I defy you to think of an instance in which a movement was born WITHOUT such a public demonstration of people power.

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