When I hear calls for progressive political action on and by the Left, I am so skeptical that I keep seeing the three-headed hydra, Medusa. Perseus had the shield of Athena, was able to blind the witches and had the means to kill them and ride away on Pegasus. I see no such strategy, all that I see is a lot of dreaming about politics, the conflation of grassroots activism with some kind of political pony that is supposedly going to appear under the Christmas tree because they have been good boys and girls.
I also love how everyone talks about progressive this or progressive that. Blowing smoke out of your butt in order to mask plain old party politicking because you disagree with the party establishment is more like the teabaggers than progressivism.
Their goal is to protest an unfair system that is not unfair enough in their favor. Sound familiar?
There is history to learn about progressivism and it has nothing to do with Liberal politics, Left politics, neo-Liberal politics, Democratic politics, internal political party revolts or the co-option by the establishment that usually results. It is often apolitical and arises out of a discreet economic issue.
Cynicism has become synonymous with how parents used to label discipline by saying, ‘'Welcome to ‘the real world’. Now, cynicism is as taken for granted as air pollution and just as deadly.
In politics, compromise used to be the model of exemplary behavior, which no longer happens. Parties are polarized between and among themselves in such grotesque positions that compromise with each other is not possible. Instead, people find a solution that they can both agree on and it is always cynical and unethical.
That is what distinguishes compromise from accommodation. Accommodation is the HIR Bill;
- It is an agreement, not a settlement.
- It is unethical
- It is cynical.
- It is the easiest way out.
The progressive movement is not a political party despite its voting record in 2008. The task for the politically needy Left is waking up to that reality. I need a leader, what about you? As a progressive, I feel hurt and betrayed that two of the two messages from the campaign, the fine print took precedent over the hope. It was similar to a credit card offer.
Tea party activists have an inchoate anger in common. The two groups may be terrorized by the same tactic of conservatism which is an unmoderated quest for political dominance; it does not mean that an alliance with progressives and the Tea Party is possible.
An enslaved person could have been educated and another enslaved person could have been an illiterate field hand. That does not necessarily make allies out of these victims. The social division between the two was still present as well as their different relationship with the slave owner.
So, it is today when cynicism is being used as surely as racism was used to keep people enslaved because we are all in a struggle for freedom the government-corporate establishment. Peoples’ bodies were freed after the civil war, now peoples’ minds have to be freed from cynicism.
The worst effect of conservatism is the spread of cynicism, not the rise of the Republican Party. The phony war between the Democratic Party and The Republican Party is only a fundraising show. They may hate each other but that is not enough for them to directly aid voters instead of themselves. Party strategists, party officials and party apparatchiks comprise a self-serving culture that ignores the noble purpose of politics to act as an interface between legislators and the electorate. That is lost.
It is the reason why Progressive initiatives are needed in the first place. That is the unifying ethos of the progressive movement and no single initiative will survive with any integrity until we are freed as a nation from cynicism. There was light before there was fire; no burning issue sheds as much light as does freedom.
Examples of cynicism abound:
Economics: Exemplified by bottom line profit/loss financial accounting with no regard to social or environmental consequences. Stocks are not valued by how they contribute to nation.
Wall Street: Financial profit means more than existential survival. Witness the Gulf disaster.
Big Banks: Greed is morality, like true believers everywhere, they make their rules impossible for us to live with and then change them if we do find a way.
Business: Corporate personhood is the kool-aid served in the boardrooms.
Religion: Mysteriously, morality is composed by God. Godliness is not part of behavior.
National Defense: War is the last thing we think about and the first thing we do. War is injustice, profiteering and homicide.
International relations: Real politic, this is our chance to show cynicism off to the world. Hillary took to this like a duck takes to water.
Science: Entropy, wasted energy is the great plan for automobiles and energy.
Marketing: Consumerism is created when people are reduced to representing manipulated statistics. People are considered humans when it is time to pay the bill and they are consumers when massive marketing mercilessly manipulates them to purchase something. This is a
Entertainment: Hollywood, ‘‘welcome, to the unreal world.’’
Fashion: Illusion is the Sunday NYT advertising. All else is a pale imitation.
Social Networking: Self- delusion multiplied on a planetary scale. It is normal; it’s what we do, only at the speed of light.
Relationships: Denial is the most powerful driving force in marriage.
News media: Profit motive surrounds them; it is sink or give someone a blow job.
Education: Expensive. Credentials for a fair price, your soul.
Marriage: Prop 8. The God before Godliness thing again.
Patriotism: Bravery (of politicians) is infinite but courage is usually absent.
Military: DADT describes the readiness of our forces to throw lives away.
Medicine: Licensing confers protection by white coat syndrome to hide emotional stupidity.
Conservatives: Each offers a faster route back in time; none claims to be smarter than the other, in their falsely humble way.
Republicans: Hypocritical reasoning is the easiest way to explain the dumbest decisions.
Democrats: Excuses we can count on; for everyone and everything.
Liberals: Each offers something smarter; none smugly claims to be the smartest.
Everyone breathes cynicism in and breathes it out, co-mingling the fumes of cynicism until there is a consensus called the real world, as in ‘'Welcome to the real world.” Just as enthalpy is only a relative background effect, it is also not all that there is to reality. Pessimism R’ Us. Very profitable, highly marketable, politically convincing.
Tea party protesters are protesting taxation, as if money were anything but one method of accounting. That is, they are angry although they cannot express it in any other way than complain about a contrived notion of their deprived freedom. What they want is that the unfair system is unfair in their favor.
Those who want to impose democracy are bound to fail. Because that is a cynical notion that will ultimately pull apart. Iraq was a very fast demonstration of the outcome of that experiment. Indeed, it points out the fault in conservative theorizing. It amounts to fiddling with expendable lives. It has always been thus.
Conservatives are not the only ones in the way of progressive politics. The cynical faction of the Democratic Party, out of self-preservation, has always held down the far Left. They were assisted by the fact that it has been open season on the Left for the last 100 years.
Now, the Right, in turn, is contending with the tea party faction, not as dangerous as the John Birchers or the LaRouchers but virulent in its populism and stupidity. It is catchy but benign.
There are more social justice organizations, big and small than there are cities or houses of worship in The United States. There are more people working for social justice in some way or another than there are Republicans and Democrats. There are more people working for social justice than there are Progressives. All are potential progressive voters but make no mistake; progressivism like conservatism, is a state of mind, not a political party.
The nonprofit sector is 1.5 million organizations. They are well motivated, they know what they are doing, they are local grassroots organizations in most cases; they are protected by law and regulated by the IRS. In 2006, they accounted for a little over 8% of wages and salaries in the U.S. They already align with private enterprises for mutual promotion. Sometimes they serve to dispense care that is financed by government.
Those relationships have to be nurtured by lobbying for them, advocating, volunteering and funding them. As they grow into these roles, necessity will impose structure on them. They have the potential to insulate government against the conservative onslaught on government.
For the last thirty years, conservatives have maintained that government does not work; to lend credence to that theme, they have sought to dismantle and cripple government with dilatory parliamentary procedures, legislation, inept political appointees and denial of senatorial confirmations.
Any desire to impose a non-organic structure or organization on this maturing system is misguided.
Most importantly, this is not primarily a political movement. Keep politics away from progressivism. The urge to add structure or organize an already organized nonprofit sector is the best way to syndicate this process for both political parties. This has to be an apolitical movement that produces good citizens because of social service. That will, in turn, produce good politicians.
Progressives were the margin of the electorate needed to elect Obama and Obama has jilted Progressives in favor of the political center, the most cynical section of the political landscape because it is so far to the right. That is true for Washington politics but not necessarily main street politics. The message was, “You kids did a good job, now let the adults work in peace.”
He announced that the train was leaving but he did get on board. He watched United States leave to go nowhere. He needs the movement and we do not need his establishment solutions, which are only a restructuring of the status quo.
We must recognize that our progressive movement has to choose a leader from the existing corps of grassroots directors from Father Dan in inner city Cleveland to the esteemed Howard Zinn (sadly, now deceased. I reference him as an example when he was still alive).
A leader has to choose us but not for narrow political gains to join the long sad line of models for presidential portraits. The Backbone campaign, for example, has a roster of progressive cabinet alternatives to back.
Progressives are not children; they are not young canon fodder.
We need a MLK figure so that we on the Left do not get lost. In a just and fair society, what is the Left today may be the Right tomorrow. In a brighter world, after much work, undaunted by fear and pessimism; I may not be a Democrat.