The "Centrists" keep trying to co-opt progressives
There is a war raging inside and outside the Democratic Party. The war's origins go back to the beginning of the Clinton Era in 1992, when corporatists took over the party machinery and began excluding (and then demonizing) the progressive wing of the party, when irredeemable neoliberal assholes like Rahm Emmanuel became the public face of the Democratic Party. But, it was the 2016 campaign that put this civil war on the front pages. We had the DNC not only stacking the deck against Bernie, but also illegally passing through contributions to Hillary's campaign. Even after Hillary lost, the DNC fought off an attempt to make Keith Ellison the chairman and argued in a court of law that the party had no obligation to be impartial in running the primaries, no matter what its bylaws said.
It was at this point that even the most loyal progressive Democrat started to wonder if it was worth staying inside the party, which had repeatedly revealed itself to be actively and absolutely hostile to progressive policies and politicians. Of course, politically-aware people recognize that third party movements in America are doomed by the first-past-the-post rules of elections, plus the onerous rules for third parties to get on the national ballot. It was this dilemma - powerless inside or powerless outside the DP, but always powerless - that has come to preoccupy progressives in the run-up to the 2018 elections.
After several high-profile "outsider" primary victories in the 2018 primaries, and the dubious prospects for a "Blue Wave", the corporate media have been forced to address the fact that the "Democratic wing" of the Democratic Party remains disaffected and has no faith whatsoever in the honesty and fairness of the corporate wing or the corporate media. In other words, the Democratic Party has a serious credibility problem with its rank and file. In its usual manner, the corporatists are trying to sheepdog the progressives back inside the Democratic Party where they will continue to be powerless.
Outline of the discussion
This essay reviews several recent answers to Lenin's perennial question, Что делать? (What is to be done?). In our case, that means by what strategies can progressives escape from the clutches of the corporate Democrats without handing elections to the increasingly savage Republican Party.
1. I begin by referencing Paul Street's recent post claiming that Bernie isn't the answer, a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.
2. I then move on to Seth Ackerman, a prolific and engaging writer at the sorta-left, fleas circus known as Jacobin.
3. I quote Louis Proyect's criticism of Ackerman's take on things, and I try to fill in some background on Proyect, with whom I am unfamiliar.
4. Then I move on to a Counterpunch article by one Richard Moser, who seems to be a leftie, except that he promotes some hard core centrists. These centrists push an organization called "No Labels", with which others here have had issues.
1. Bernie ain't enough
To me, today, Bernie is a sheepdog. He may well have been shown "the Bill Hicks movie" in 2016, so I will not judge him. But the important point here is that, even after what was done to Bernie by the DNC and Hillary, a lot of naive people still believe that politics in this country and in the Democratic Party have some chance of making a difference. It is to that audience that the corporatists/DNCers address themselves. They invented a name for themselves, "centrists", to disguise the fact that they are well to the right of the traditional Democratic Party, and that large numbers of them are radical neocon hawks.
Paul Street has a recent post pointing out the uselessness of thinking that Bernie is the answer:
“The only thing that’s going to ever bring about any meaningful change,” Noam Chomsky (a Sanders backer to some degree) told teleSur English’s Abby Martin in early 2016, “is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don’t pay attention to the election cycle.”
...as Dixon observed, “while there are no institutions under US law and custom that can hold leftist candidates and officeholders accountable to left constituencies or organizations…there are a galaxy of institutional levers and pressures operating inside the Democratic party aimed at flipping progressive elected officials rightward.”...
The CIA Democrats
(Danny) Haiphong was right to note that the dismal Democrats are dead and buried as a means of progressive transformation:
“The Democratic Party is incapable of reform and serves not as a vehicle for change but rather as a graveyard of social movements.
With all due respect for the progressives and social democrats (“democratic socialists”) running in Democratic primaries this year, this (is a) broad imperialist “CIA Democrat” slate that Bernie Sanders will be asking citizens to mark ballots en masse for in the fall. This is Sanders playing his well-established role as a leading voter-turnout “sheepdog” not just for the nation’s not-so “leftmost” major war party but also and more broadly for the “election madness” Zinn tried to warn us against.
- Paul Street, Sorry Bernie, We Need Radical Change
Street correctly identifies the need for movements outside of parties, and the worthlessness of the current Democratic Party.
2. An outsider party
Moving on from the futility of betting the farm on Bernie, Seth Ackerman squarely addresses the issue of powerlessness that I highlighted in my intro. Ackerman explains how abnormal the US political parties really are.
In most places in the world, a political party is a private, voluntary organization that has a membership, and, in theory at least, the members are the sovereign body of the party who can decide what the party’s program is, what its ideology is, what its platform is, and who its leaders and candidates are. They can do all of that on the grounds of basic freedom of association, in the same way that the members of the NAACP or the American Legion have the right to do what they want with their organization...
In the United States, the law basically requires the Democrats and the Republicans to set up their internal structures the way that the government instructs them to. The government lays out the requirements of how they select their leaders and runs their internal nominee elections, and a host of other considerations. All this stuff is organized by state governments according to their own rules. And of course when we say state governments, who we’re talking about the Democrats and the Republicans.
So it’s a kind of a cartel arrangement in which the two parties have set up a situation that is intended to prevent the emergence of the kind of institution that in the rest of the world is considered a political party: a membership-run organization that has a presence outside of the political system, outside of the government, and can force its way into the government on the basis of some program that those citizens and members assemble around...
The United States is the only democratic country in the world where two governing parties automatically get on the ballot, and every other party has to petition to get on the ballot with an enormous series of obstacles, such as signature requirements. And then the two parties send their lawyer goons to strike those petitions off and keep the other parties off the ballot.
- A New Party of a New Type: An interview with Seth Ackerman
The bottom line for Ackerman, as for Street, is that the Left needs an independent organization that can stay flexible about running as Democrats but behaves with the discipline of a real party. For me, that is consistent with the chorus of "lefties" arguing that the current duopoly is completely corrupt and completely non-responsive to the concerns of anyone except its corporate and billionaire funders, and therefore reform must come from the outside.
3. Louis Proyect's Rebuttal to Ackerman
At this point, I am beginning to walk beyond my knowledge of leftwing factions. I know that Ackerman and Jacobin are pretty much compromised letitsts who will not rock the political boat too hard. So, I'm hardly surprised to see Ackerman criticized from the genuinely Marxist left (or what Marxism has mutated into these days). The critique comes from one Louis Proyect. His name has popped up a few times for me, always with a negative comment attached. (I would welcome anyone educating me about Mr. Proyect.) Nevertheless, I am in agreement with Proyect's critique of not only Jacobin, but also Ackerman's ever so calibrated call for a leftish political organization.
The rest of Ackerman’s article takes up minutiae such as establishing a PAC, etc. But they are incidental to the overriding question of whether DSA’ers like Ackerman and the rest of the hustlers at Jacobin have any intention of breaking with the Democratic Party.
The title of the article is a complete fraud. When you penetrate through Ackerman’s prose, you will understand that it is not a “new party” he talking about at all. Instead it is a caucus of the Democratic Party that will not be encumbered by the need to go out and collect signatures to gain ballot status like Jill Stein did.
And if you think a bit more deeply about what this is about, it is really less about the onerous task of getting on the ballot that Ackerman exaggerates but remaining acceptable to the prevailing mood of the middle-class intelligentsia that Jacobin orients to at Vox, The Nation, Dissent, etc. Do you think that you will see fawning articles about the young intellectuals involved with magazines like n+1 or Jacobin if they got involved with a project that took a clear class line? Forget about it...
Finally, there is the liberal establishment itself that the DSA’s umbilical cord is attached to. It is the source of both intellectual and real capital. It exerts pressure on people such as Seth Ackerman that he is probably not even aware of. Like many of the contributors to Jacobin who are PhD students, there is a tendency to tailor their Marxism to the prevailing sensibility of the academy—one that encourages careerism and servility. The dissertation process is ultimately geared to reining in radicals and housebreaking them. When the rewards are a tenured professorship with the prestige, emoluments and job security that go along with it, the temptations to play it safe are irresistible.
- Louis Proyect, Reading the fine print in Seth Ackerman’s blueprint for a new party
I gotta agree with Proyect that anyone getting a Ph.D. on Marxism at a name university today is never going to be a serious revolutionary. The days of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are over. TPTB are never going to allow that to happen again.
3A. Who is Louis Proyect?
I tried to figure out where Proyect is coming from. From what I googled, he has been a pretty hardcore Marxist for many decades. He writes about some interesting, relevant, and under-reported political history. For example, he is a film reviewer; and he has reviewed some documentaries about various leftwing political parties in the US midwest in the early 20th century, which he comments on in a recent article at Counterpunch.
In an article titled “The Ballot and the Break”, Blanc finds considerable merit in the NPL’s decision to run in both the Democratic and Republican Party primaries. This supposedly allowed them to present their radical message without worrying about being tied to the duopoly’s capitalist agenda. Additionally, he extols the NPL’s role in helping to launch the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota as proof that a “dirty break” (what I would call half-assed) with the Democrats can midwife third parties, even if only temporarily. Without mentioning the DSA electoral strategy, it is clear that Blanc endorses not only their running in the primaries like the NPL but getting elected as open Democrats.
-Louis Proyect, The Socialists of the Prairies
Proyect's discussion is quite relevant to the "inside/outside" debate that this essay keeps bumping into.
However, at this point I have definitely lost my political bearings. Should I buy into Proyect because I agree with him about Jacobin/Ackerman? Because he preserves and publicizes rare documentaries about legitimate leftwing US political parties? Or should I lump him together with the die-hard Trotskyites at WSWS, as someone who has a very specific ideological axe to grind? I just don't know.
4. Richard Moser - Another Corporatist or a sincere leftie?
So let me move on to the article that got me started writing this essay about the whole inside/outside question for progressives. It was posted at Counterpunch, but originally posted at the personal website of the author, Richard Moser. (After previous c99p discussions, I tend to agree that Counterpunch is not ideologically pure. Sometimes it publishes good leftwing stuff. Other times it publishes corporatist crapola.)
The article is:
Richard Moser, Bernie or Bust: Strategy, Sheepdogs and Synergy
(Originally published as Bernie Or Bust: Pioneers of Electoral Revolt)
Moser's article is another version of Ackerman's call for a leftish party that is not part of the Democratic Party per se, but runs candidates inside that party when advantageous. Both Ackerman and Moser are arguing for more Bernie/Ocasio-Cortez-like candidates to run inside the DP. The problem for me is the completely "centrist" nature of Moser's argument. Moser's website is fixated on inside-baseball political tactics, the so-called "inside-outside" strategy, which comes from some completely corporate people at the Harvard Business School.
Moser praises and recommends as valuable, an HBS report that is completely "centrist", a report produced by insiders from the "No Labels" centrist movement.
This valuable report from Harvard Business School, of all places, proposes structural reforms and concludes that it is the two-party system that has spoiled American elections. And, they are right. The goal of any revolutionary electoral strategy should be to restore real representation by reforming the electoral process — including the creation of a multi-party democracy. We need to unspoil it not spoil it.
The authors of the HBS report are Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about them:
Katherine M. Gehl (born 1966) is an American business leader, entrepreneur, policy activist, and political reformer. She was the President and CEO of her family-owned company, Gehl Foods, Inc. She served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a role to which she was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2010. She is the daughter of former Gehl Foods CEO John P Gehl.
Before her departure (MY NOTE: she sold the family firm to a private equity firm - how progressive!) from Gehl Foods in 2015, Gehl began supporting No Labels, a national organization working to break the political gridlock in Washington, D.C. She also serves on the CEO Fiscal Leadership Council of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, and is a board member of The Centrist Project. Katherine Gehl and Michael E. Porter from Harvard Business School, are working together to analyze the political industry through the lens of industry competition. They published an article with a short summary of that work in March 2017, in Fortune (magazine), entitled "Why Politics is Failing America. Gehl is a sought-after speaker on the topic of non-partisan, systemic political reform.
- Wikipedia, Katherine Gehl
Michael Porter is the author of 18 books and numerous articles including Competitive Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Competitive Advantage of Nations, and On Competition. A six-time winner of the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, Professor Porter is the most cited author in business and economics.
-Wikipedia, Michael Porter
4A. Is Mr. Moser genuine or co-opted?
For me, praising corporatist insiders like Gehl and Porter, and flogging "centrist" initiatives like "No Labels" are huge red flags. "No Labels" recently turned up at c99p
Joe Biden and Hllary Clinton top 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in new poll
What a surprise! A polling group owned by a close friend of the Clintons, finds that people love Hillary and hate socialism. That's shocking. Who could have guessed? Penn's wife is Nancy Jacobson.
Jacobson is the "undeterrable" founder and leader of No Labels, whose mission is to bring leaders together to solve the nation's most pressing challenges. No Labels is described by David Brooks as "the most active centrist organization" in politics, and has focused specifically on creating a durable bipartisan bloc in Congress capable of getting to "yes" on key issues. In early 2017, No Labels inspired the creation of the active Congressional Problem Solver Caucus which features 44 members —evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans—committed to finding bipartisan solutions
A political match made in heaven.
-gjohnsit, I call bullsh*t
That really made me doubt Mr. Moser's bona fides. So, I did a little digging into Mr. Moser. His self-description reads like a pile of corporate boilerplate with the same minimal, sheep-dipped credibility that fooled a lot of folks about Obama.
Richard Moser has over 40 years experience as an organizer and activist in the labor, student, peace, and community movements. Moser is author of "New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era," and co-editor with Van Gosse of "The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America." Moser lives in Colorado.
Be Freedom is aimed primarily at activists and organizers who already understand that their campaigns and projects are part of a broader movement for social transformation. If the history of the last 100 years has not convinced you of the need for fundamental change then this blog may not be for you. This blog hopes to articulate strategic concepts that activists and organizers can translate into practice depending on their situation and capacities. We need a practical theory that can help us find ways to work the big changes while immersed in our day-to-day political struggles. Transformative activism requires both “eyes on the prize” and “feet on the ground.”
So Moser wrote a book about Vietnam. So did a zillion other people. According to himself, he is quite the authentic leftie who is "genuinely" interested in practical political strategies. Again, to me, that is saying he wants to continue the ineffective sheepdogging strategies I have been trashing.
Still, some of his writing is sympathetic to my recent dual essay about the origins of the Deep State:
------------
Militarism
Before the Korean War the US regularly maintained only a small army and officer corp. In time of war armies were raised by mass conscription and the citizen-solders were sent home when the fighting stopped. There was no military-industrial complex. Auto and airplane factories were converted to wartime use and converted back. There were war profiteers, yes, but never a powerful and permanent war industry directly linked to government. American has a violent past, true, but we were not militarists.
Secret Police Forces
Alcohol prohibition gave us the FBI, the first national secret police force in the US. But, it was after WWII that the secret police grew and became independent actors in both domestic and international affairs. Starting with the 1948 Italian elections, the CIA quickly developed a global network based on intervention in elections, the overthrow of governments, and assassination. Secrecy, deception and covert activities beyond the rule of law was standard operating procedure from the beginning.
Now we have 17 secret police forces and they have become a “policy making arm of government.” They are real players in the domestic politics of the US, intervening in our own elections, and suppressing free speech and dissent by spying routinely on millions of Americans.
The imperial presidency, militarism and secret police forces have hollowed out the US Constitution and left our democracy in tatters. Tyranny is the price of empire. The struggle against war and empire is essential to the struggle for democracy. We cannot have one without the other. Real resistance to Trump will be made by those willing to confront the history which made Trump possible.
Which one is the real Richard Moser? The one who echoes my awareness of how the US government was long since hijacked by the military/intelligence complex? Or the one who spouts centrist bullshit about inside/outside sheepdogs? Again, I don't know.
And the fact that a supposed political sophisticate like me can't even tell which side the players are on tells me how absolutely useless politics has become for letting people pick their representatives. With arguments this ambiguous, who can tell what anyone stands for anymore?
SUMMARY
In the end, I wind up feeling there are no strongly committed leftists remaining within the boundaries of conventional politics. Sure there are genuine leftists, like Chris Hedges. But they have long since been shoved outside of conventional politics and outside of the corporate media bubble. One has to be pretty far to the left to even know who Chris Hedges is.
Genuine progressives recognize the stranglehold that the duopoly has on formal US politics. This essay was motivated by writings of some (dubiously genuine) leftists who have articulated an "inside/outside" strategy for dealing with the powerlessness of the left. However, to me, all this inside/outside rhetoric boils down to promoting half-hearted, sheepdog reformers inside the DP, like Bernie or AOC.
As many formerly credible leftists sink into the quicksand of Russiagate or the incrementalist careerism of inside/outside strategies, I find myself reading obscure and extremely ideological people whom I have never heard of - e.g., Louis Proyect. I doubt I would agree with Mr. Proyect on most issues, but he is one of the few voices calling out the deeply compromised narrative of crippled/self-limiting progressives like Seth Ackerman.
IMHO, progressives have already lost the 2018 elections. Yeah, they might elect a few token progressives like AOC; but many more CIA Democrats will get elected than progressives because the sheepdogs like Bernie did not call out the CIA Dems. I tend to agree with Paul Street that today's edition of Bernie simply does not cut it. It has no hope of rescuing America from the corporatist duopoly, from the Russiagate neo-McCarthyism, from the bipartisan militarism that has infected American relations with the rest of the world, from the ever tightening stranglehold of the billionaire, techno-libertarian monopolists and their internet extraterritoriality and corporate surveillance platforms. I watch as "centrist" operatives deflect the fundamental question of how to maintain what little is left of our democracy into an "inside baseball" discussion of how to organize politically - a discussion that ignores the increasing power of the surveillance state.
I would really be happy for someone to point out a genuine progressive organization that has a snowball's chance in hell of derailing the bipartisan juggernaut to corporatism. I just don't see such an animal.
Comments
Our centrist Dim candidate
has almost zero chance of beating the Republicon seat holder in my congressional district in Nov. None. I was dumbfounded when she won the Dim primary here. Stunned. As stunned as I was that dRump won (although I could barely contain my glee that night). tv guy Dylan Ratigan was running for christsakes! Dylan Effin' Ratigan! 'We' actually had a real legitimate candidate! And the other guy in the race was to Ratigan's left - another legitimate candidate! Of the five candidates running the most conservative of the bunch won. Big. More than the other four candidates (including Ratigan) combined. Worse, less than 17% turned out to vote. So much for the "excitement factor," so much for that blue wave. And, it wasn't that candidates didn't bust their ass. They busted their ass! So 'we' lose again to a corporate KochBros Republicon. Sickening. I practically hurl typing this.
So... so I have no idea, the wind cleanly knocked out of my sails. But these hit pieces on Bernie are bull$h!t. Bernie didn't cause this, and gets Zero credit for trying to cure it. His stump speech the same as his 2016 stump speech. MFA and free college! Still leading that charge. But instead gets "credited" for R-gate. As if he his self hacked Hillary's sumpthin' or other. Whatevs...
And... there are only two parties. Both corporate owned and operated by the Swamp. The Greens are as useless as...
Got two choices: Vote or Revolt. Thems your two choices. Some would say "not voting" is a choice. Like that cures anything. Vote or Revolt. Thems your two legitimate choices. Greens and other 3rd parties are bull$h!t. You got two choices. Vote or Revolt. I'm old, so I don't give a fuck either way. I'm in my "don't give a fuck" mode. Not going to be here long enough to care. But I sure would hate to be a millennial, sure would hate to be 30-something looking at 30 years before I can collect S.S. (If the Repubs don't 'Privatize' it). (wouldn't That be sumpthin'). (not). So two choices, and one is going to be very red and messy - and likely leave the hoi polloi no better off than they are right now: totally screwed.
I would rather go thru the motions of pretending voting matters. Most know it does not, so don't. The problem with revolution is most everyone knows how bloody it would be. And they would be right. And want no part. Can't blame them. I often wonder, lately, "how did ol' George and Sam Adams start a revolution??" One of the few advantages they had then (vs. today) is they had a real Press, real newspapers. Locally owned and operated. And many supportive of the revolution. Today we have none. Or damn few. Most just chomping at the bit for all hell to break loose becuz... ratings, sales. Still... I don't know how they physically did it. "Would you, Mr. shop keeper, give your life for the cause??" How do you even ask that? Maybe they asked that thru those pamphlets. Dunno. But if we're going to do one it will have to be like they did it. Stealth mode. Which means off the grid, neighbor to neighbor. Not easy. Regardless, tough times ahead. Third world tough times I'm afraid. The zombie apocalypse is upon us. And here I was, clicker in hand, waiting for Oprah. Dr. Phil. Wheel. {sigh} I haven't drank unbottled water in forever.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
"Old George" didn't start the Revolution
He jumped aboard the bandwagon once it got rolling.
Probably, the catalyst was Samuel Adams getting hold of John Hancock's ear and pocketbook. That allowed infiltration and organization of the hooligan element in Boston, and the location of other potential firebrands in the other 12 colonies. Much of the work was done sub rosa, by "Committees of Correspondence" (which one might call the samizdat of that era).
Of course, if the British government hadn't been both stupid and greedy, and hadn't made exactly the wrong moves at exactly the wrong time, the situation would not have exploded.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Re: The British
Are you familiar with Kevin Philips' "The Cousins Wars". He says that the English Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, and the American Civil War were all part of the same fight between royalist aristos and protestant middle class.
As for the American Revolution, he cites massive support in Britain for the rebel colonists. That support translated into all kinds of looking the other way and screwing up (some British fleet took 30 days to sail from NYC to Philadelphia).
So, while what you say about Sam Adams, etc. is true, the revolution got a lot of help from sympathizers in the UK.
Tranlating that to today, attempts to wrestle our country back from the MIC and the billionaire class are going to need help from well-placed, committed insiders - and Warren Buffet is certainly no Oliver Cromwell. Right now, it looks like the fight is between nationalist militarists and globalist neoliberals, with a lot of overlap due to the shared neocon agenda.
I love historical analogies, even though I know they always break down if you push them hard enough. Thanks for your comment along that line.
Its all about media and message
The internet has just about completed its mission. Its "don't pay for anything" attitude towards journalism has killed journalism and replaced it with hordes of un-vetted bloggers. Now, they turn loose the "fake news" excuse for censorship on the massively centralized platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google News) and politics becomes a survelled joke.
Stealth mode becomes next to impossible, as they track every keystroke. If you try to organize person to person, you will probably be videod by the increasing network of surveillance cameras (or even by your "smart TV") or tracked by the GPS in your cell phone.
And then there is the massive de-politicization of the citizenry - people who are so immersed in the toxic corporate culture, so heavily propagandized that they don't even know there are other options.
Orwell was right. He who controls the present controls the past.
The world increasingly looks like Terry Southern's "Brazil", with the byzantine internet taking the role of "Central Services". TPTB are sucking the blood out of the people as fast as they can. Eventually, in not more than 20 years, the whole system will just seize up from lack of resources (if climate change and environmental destruction don't get us first). TPTB won't care. They will have fled to New Zealand, to Patagonia, to all those private islands. And 99% of the people will not have had the slightest clue that it was all planned out and forty years in the execution.
I don't think the revolution has to be
bloody. Boycotts. Striking. Can be powerful. We've seen it on limited basis with teachers. The problem is getting the numbers to participate. The numbers aren't there yet.
O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.
Ugh. Doesn't Look Good, Does It?
If it is Organization vs Organization, humans will lose.
We can't compete with corporate on the organization front. We don't have the resources and we don't have the organization. They are complete Pros in that respect.
Seems to me that the answer is not to line up against them in the status quo game and throw our organization at them; more people with less organization vs centralized corporate power. It's the battle as it's always drawn up by the corporate media. Wonder why that is?
I think it's because we can't win org vs org.
Maybe it would be a better move to not be an "organization" or not try to organize for battle and feed the game. Maybe it would be better to de-organize people and de-corporatize; a massive decentralization.
This concept here, recently linked in a Caitlin Johnstone piece spoke to me and, I think, fits this discussion as well:
[video:https://youtu.be/Xz9IJMMWP4M]
(check out 4min if you're pressed for time)
I really like the idea of dissolution and the bottom up erasure of the pyramid, and I think it's already well on it's way. It may be just the kind of animal we are seeking for change.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Thanks for the pointer to CJ
In my thirties, I went through a period of trying to do what she is suggesting. It proved impossible to hold that mode of thinking in the face of my highly technical job that gave me access to the original ARPA internet in the 1980s. The machine was still shiny and new. It let me connect to like-minded, highly educated (but naive) techies to have high minded philosophical discussions. alt.fan.noam.chomsky was certainly eye-opening and fun; but it was hard to be centered, the way CJ is talking about, while playing with the infant internet. I guess that makes me part of the problem.
I take CJ's essay to be an example of that Einstein quote, something like "mankind is in a race between intelligence and catastrophe". The problem is that TPTB have opted out of that race. They've stolen everything worth stealing and exited the car, leaving Thelma and Louise to drive civilization over the cliff.
I wish I could find some organization to belong to that gave me the slightest bit of hope for our collective future.
I Hope You Gave the Video a Look. I Found That I Agreed with
the Johnstone piece but, like you, I found it a little hollow on the practical front.
The video, on the other hand, is far more interesting. Watching the pyramid get soaked up with blue juice and then topple over is a powerful visual. The narration that goes along with it is solid as well, but that visual...
The hippies "be the change" and Johnstone's piece both focuses on "You" meaning "Me". Change yourself and be the change. Everyone knows how easy it is to "be the change" in this world. This individualized approach. It is wholly dealing with individual cubes of the pyramid.
Strategically, I don't think we, or even the Hippies or Johnstone, are really looking at that visual and trying to apply it. We are not pouring soup and letting it diffuse out and up. We are creating missile objects and smashing them against the walls. Trying to grind the walls down or blow them up. Changing minds one cube at a time.
That is not happening when the soup is poured into the pyramid bowl. It is not about the cubes or the pyramid at all, but instead it is about the soup and the diffusion up the pyramid. The soup, and it's diffusion affects people.
We have to cultivate and weaponize that soup. We have to create soup receptors in people, particularly people lower on the pyramid, and fill those receptors with soup.
Corporate Sponsored MediaPolitics are not at all interested in the lower part of the pyramid nor the soup in which we wallow. They're only concerned with the top cubes on the pyramid. Everyone and everything is too focused up there. To those of us down below, their soup is sour and leaves a bad taste in the mouth, as plastic coated lies and trickle down are wont to do.
What is described in the video, the dissolution of the pyramid, has already begun. Drumpfenfear is a makeshift structural center left pillar. Neoliberal cabal is the longstanding pillar holding up the far-Right.
More soup combined with a dash of strategy could bring the top of the pyramid down. Soup delivered to the pillars or with the pillars in mind could do it faster.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Yeah, I've pretty much given up on the system
solving any long term solutions. I'll use it as long as I can, but I have to remember that it may not last forever.
Instead my political and social activity will be channeled into the local community as much as I can. Hence why I'm plotting to give away copies of my work to High schools if they want it, and for sheer unbridled greed to show up the instant a corporate tool asks me to write something for them.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
What are local high schools like today?
My family's grandkids are still in grade school, Catholic school at that. I have no idea what goes on in high school these days, what with universal access to cellphones and the internet, and all that that entails. Is anyone able to break through the tech hypnosis and reach teenagers? Or are they all under-socialized, over-protected future consumers?
What kind of material do you write for them?
Mostly zombie consumers... but there's some free thought
in some of the arts programs. My daughter is in theater and is CONSTANTLY complaining that they keep having to do the same crappy musicals because nobody will license a piece to a high school for a reasonable fee.
The Logos series is a play that I'm writing, and intend to give away to high schools as free as possible. It's some of the best work I've ever done, (IMHO and thanks to the Muses) and I really want to give as many kids as possible the chance to do the work in theater. Hence EVERY major character (42) has a monologue, and an easy part to practice solo if needed. Half of the roles are women's roles, so a major headache of High School Casting is absolved. In addition, there's a chorus to get the music programs interested (Nearly EVERY high school at least has a choir) and a general feel of group project that I hope will come across in the final product.
The fact it's anti-war and references the Greek Classics is just icing on the cake.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
That is very creative. I am genuinely impressed.
The greed, it burns. Yeah, lets make the kids pay full freight. So exploitative, so counter-productive, almost Swiftian in its devouring of its young.
Now I understand why you have been posting the Logos series. Open source entertainment! That is a revolutionary concept in an era of "life of author + 25 years" copyrights. Elvis's estate is still suing velvet rug sellers 40 years after Elvis died. Disney is still making a fortune off century-old Mickey Mouse paraphenalia.
And, your use of classic Greek material is wonderfully subversive. The Greeks were amazingly modern. Lysistrata organizing a sex strike to stop a war! If the fundies can demand people respect the bible, because "tradition", we can demand people respect Greek drama.
I wish you success (and even success selling out
).
Rgr. My SO did point out that I might want...
To hang onto the copyright just to keep it out of corporate slime hands. (But make the license free to any public educational institution, including colleges) Essentially, if I release it FULLY open source, anybody can just yank lines out of context and claim it as their original work, complete with profitability.
So, I want to talk to a copyright lawyer on this so I can do what I REALLY want to do which is to make it free for anybody to enjoy, but nearly impossible to make a profit off.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Maybe you want "copyleft"...
its the license that the open software people use.
Or, rather, that some of them use. There is a split between free software and open source. Open source has more potential to be monetized. Tech lawyer talk. MEGO.
I'll have to check it out.
I've pretty much accepted that I will never see a dime from this piece, and I'm totally cool with that. What I want to make sure is that no corporate slime does either.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Pointers to lawyer-speak on licensing
Note: BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution = the first non-Bell Labs version of UNIX, written by folks like Bill Joy, who founded Sun Microsystems.
Yeah, Copyleft sounds perfect for the purposes.
that I'm trying to achieve.
I honestly wouldn't care if people wrote their own Logos to add to the production, especially if those people prefer a different mythology. Hell, if the Christians and Catholics wanna get in on this, they're free to write a Logos of Jesus, God, And the Holy Fucking Ghost, for all I care.
But you ain't selling it.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Some folks had me pegged as a writer in high school.
That said, I doubt I could do much with prose or verse. It didn't help that my mom and older sister were always telling me I can't make money off of that. In other words, we can do whatever we like, so long as it remains in the confines of that which the bourgeoisie have marketed as 'profitable'.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Writing these days within the system
is no longer a matter of quality, but rather notoriety.
I am lucky that I am at a unique point for many writers at this point in my life. I have complete freedom to pursue the project I want. And I decided to bring in all of the great loves of my life. History, Mythology, Military, Poetry, Philosophy, and even a little Judo.
I'm really not writing this for anybody but me, but because of that, all I really want is a nice hardbound copy some day. If I get that, I think the job will have been done. I've only seen my words in hardbound print once before, and I do not want my only words left to be a snippet of an angry Email written to Michael Moore.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
It may be sad, but its true that writing won't pay the rent
Successful writers are often the offspring of either the filthy rich or of the well-connected. Success depends on exposure, and money and connections are the fastest way to that. The quest for exposure leads to the "notoriety" seeking that has turned performers of all stripes (singers, writers, comedians) to do demeaning and/or dangerous things just to get some airtime. Everyone is reading from the same playbook, but the rich have options you don't.
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it." - George Carlin
People tell me I'm good at explaning things, that I write well. But, I would never try to make a living from it - see above for why. Writing has to be its own reward in our nasty country. We don't support community anything, like they
dodid in the UK with all the community theatres and orchestras.I'm sorry to be so negative about the prospects for writing; but the publishing business is being murdered by the internet. I haven't followed all the developments like WordPress. They tout success stories of unknowns who strike it rich, like the guy who wrote "The Martian". But I suspect it is all just another game of King of the Hill. When the dust settles and there are one or two monopoly freeware publishing platforms, they will introduce fees. Fees for authors, fees for readers. It will have been a game of musical chairs that transfered control of what people read into the opaque, elite, monopoly-dominated internet.
If Bernie ain't enough
or someone much like Bernie, then the system can't be fixed from within.
A 3rd party would not be enough either.
What you are suggesting is that only a revolution would be enough. Which may indeed be true, but the American people aren't there yet.
I'm not there yet either, but...
I will be when (not if) they come for Social Security and Medicare. And, I full well expect the corpo-Dems to be all in favor of "reforms" to "preserve" the system by privatizing it. My forced retirement - old techies once fired are never re-hired - means that I depend on those programs. Without them, I would soon have to sell the house, which is all we've got.
SS/M are the last big middle class resources to loot. Since the 1% is not patriotic, since they are globalists, they rationalize destroying our middle class. I don't even think they care that something like 15% of our economy is healthcare, mostly for older folks. Once they've got our money, they will move on to the next victim country. These people are nothing but extractors, looters. They don't create, they devour.
The boomer generation is the last one to have experienced government as something positive. By and large, they played by the rules; and the rules said that you got SocSec and Medicare in your old age. ON EDIT: Not to mention, the self-employed among the boomers have been paying 15% of their gross income to SS since 1984. TPTB are stealing a huge amount of money which they told the boomers they had to pay to save the system. Crooks and Liars! :END EDIT When they take that away, look for some really angry old people with literally nothing left to lose. That's when the SHTF.
except we're too friggin'
old to fight. {sigh}
I've been pumping MMT ("modern monetary theory") lately as a last resort (to save S.S. and Medicare becuz "They" - TPTB - have a bullseye on those two programs) -- mostly to deaf ears and to looks like they've just seen someone from Mars. And you're right, of course. Those two programs are the only two left with any $$ still left in the coffers. Or so people believe anyway. But it's Not just about the money. The Oligarchy - TPTB - want to fuck the poor and middle class as they're stealing them blind. They want the two-fer! The money is not nearly satisfying enough as a good ol' boot to the face in the mud serves as the cherry on top. Greedsters that they are, they want that cherry on top! So... taking those programs away from "the poor" (and everyone else) is more about the cherry on top, the boot to the face in the mud, as it is the money. Becuz, in the end, the Oligarchy wants The Government gone. Gone. Replaced by them. Our new kings. That's been their goal for 70 years or more, and it is now within their reach, just sitting there on a platter. You know they're just biting at the bit to grab it! I LOVE the clip with Paul Ryan and then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, where Ryan is practically begging Greenspan to answer, "you're exactly right, Paul," to Paul's question, "isn't it true that 'Private Accounts' would be all kinds of positive things for S.S. and help save it?!" Whereupon Ryan's smug mug nearly turns from glee with excitement in anticipation of Greenspan's answer to gloom & doom and if looks could kill, as Greenspan answers, "well, The Government can create as much money as it needs to to pay whomever, so there's no real security issue... " The look on Ryan's smug mug is priceless...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdOsybbBVEU]
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Oh, yes, there is mucho vindictiveness out there.
That's been clear to the observant ever since Leona Helmsley (jumped up Cigarette Girl) deplored the "little people". They hate the fact that they can't treat us like shit; and they've been demolishing the government that has been in their way ever since FDR. Its really amazing that these thieves are incensed at us, when it is they who are doing the crime. But that's how it always is with gangsters.
I agree with you that there is very little left inside government or politics that is not owned by these people, very little chance that they do not come for SS/M. Everyone wants to: corpo-Dems, Trump, GOPers. They all want their piece of my money.
And they try to con me into believing that Bernie is going to make a difference here.
bing! Take that, Paul!
Notice, too, where Green-
span says, "there's nothing - Nothing - to prevent the federal gov't from CREATING as much money as it Wants to (pay) somebody... the Question is, how do you set up a System that Assures that Real Assets are created (or in place) which those (S.S.) benefits employ to purchase." (need for the program to operate). Ryan totally shot down!
And in that short sentence or two Greenspan describes MMT ("modern monetary theory"), or how the Fed. Gov't gets the money needed to operate Programs it creates.
MMT:
Congress can - Can - create as much money as it wants,
For Whatever it wants,
Whenever it wants.
Period.
The only "brakes" on that statement - the only "Qualifier" - is what Greenspan said:
"the Question is, how do you set up a System that Assures that Real Assets are created (or in place)." Paul Ryan's smug mug collapses. He can't believe he just heard the Chairman of the Fed say "wrong, Paul, the Gov't can create as much money as it wants... "
Period.
The only qualifier is "Real Assets." What we can actually physically see, touch, taste, smell (and acquire). So, gold, minerals, corn, trees.... IF there are enough Real Assets that can physically be obtained to do what Congress has passed, "the money" is no object. Print it!! MMT.
We're a tad short on S.S. money this month?? Print some!!
Not quite as simple as that but pretty damn close. Not that S.S. would ever run out of money - Ever - becuz there's a Law on the books saying S.S. checks will Always be paid. Without fail. Period. Thank you, FDR! Alas, when I try to explain this concept - that our Tax $$ Do Not pay for items and programs created by Congress (Fed. Gov't) - I am met with blank stares. Our Tax $$ in fact are shredded and sold for souveniers. Congress (Fed. Gov't) does not use our taxes to pay for anything. Not bombs, not S.S., nothing. So when some smug ass Paul Ryan punk asks, "well, how are you dirty hippie bastids gonna pay for it??" Our answer is, "the same way we just spent $712 Billion on your Military (industrial complex) 'Budget' " Becuz that's Exactly how we pay for it.
MMT... Yes we CAN have Medicare For All !!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FYS3z45Zqc]
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
There was an editorial in the LA Times
That essentially called for the overthrow of the (Trump) government. (https://caucus99percent.com/content/was-2016-election-legitimate-its-now...)
The only thing is that it would be a fascist coup, like it or not, intend it or not.
On to Biden since 1973
Correct. The problem w revolution is that...
the right has been preparing for it for fifty years. It has many deep-pockets, John Bircher sponsors. The left, which is barely breathing, has no plans, no organizations that might be useful in a revolution. So, when the SHTF, it will be the right wing that leads it.
It looks like the rightwing (FBI, corpo-Dem neocons, MIC) includes the leadership of the party formerly known as Democratic (PFKAD) as the patsies. Everyone (Dems, GOPers) wants to get rid of Trump because he is ruining their game, not because he is destroying the government. Hell, the PFKAD has been deliberately privatizing the government for 25 years.
I agree with you. The attempt to get rid of Trump by the means currently in play is a coup. There are so many ways to honestly and legally stop Trump that the tactics being used spell out C-O-U-P to me.
They’re trying to set Trump up, like they did Salvador Allende.
All kinds of CIA-backed astroturfing paved the way for General Pinochet’s coup on 9/11, 1973.
exactly.
and 3rd parties are b.s.
Revolution is the only real option, but the Lower 60% can't get enough of dRump, so... that's going nowhere.
"Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like the song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for president?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?"
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
My own opinion
Things are headed for a Greater "Great Depression," which will be exacerbated by climate change. There will be food shortages, riots, and we will go one way - toward some form of Socialism, or, more likely, toward Fascism.
People think Trump's a fascist. He's just a rich asshole who was lucky that Hillary Clinton and her media peeps promoted as the GOP nominee because they thought he was beatable. He makes a lot of noise, but he's not even a low rent Mussolini. Nothing he's accomplished falls that far outside what the duopoly wants with the exception of imposing tariffs.
But we are setting the table for true fascism, and both major parties will share responsibility when it comes.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Timescales are critical, and different than before
Sorry for the stream of consciousness that follows. I don't think it will be so easy to explain the multi-dimensional clusterfuck that will follow such a depression.
The financial world is massively interconnected, completely over-extended, and built on a foundation of virtual sand (stock buybacks). The minute anything serious happens (real war in ME that shuts down oil supplies, break in the FANG-levitated stock market, massive environmental catastrophe) the economy won't simply melt down, it will vaporize; and do so overnight. The "depression" won't take years to develop.
And the depression will be centered in those countries most afflicted by neoliberalism: US, UK, the other Five Eyes, Israel. Those places that have either maintained some social spending (Germany, Scandinavia, Japan) or never got to first world levels of wealth will be hit less hard than the neoliberal shitholes. I'm with Dmitri Orlov. The US will do a lot worse than Russia did in the 1990s, because the US has no awareness of how to cope with financial and social adversity, because the average cellphone-addicted zombie barely knows how to boil water in a microwave.
By the time Joe Sixpack wakes up, the US will have declared bankruptcy and SS/Medicare will be worth less than Confederate War Bonds. The dollar will be toilet paper. Meanwhile, the 1% will have fled to NZ, S. America, Switzerland, and various other bolt holes to wait out the carnage you mention.
With events happening at internet speed, I couldn't possibly predict what kind of weird events, coalitions, fads, and cults will sprout. I can only predict that they will either be generated by or heavily manipulated by the corporate media and the FANG.
----
The question for me is: do the super-rich even care about countries anymore? Will they try to save the industrial base? Or will they just retreat to their hideouts with all their loot, hire a bunch of mercenary bodyguards, and wait for the proles to kill each other fighting over table scraps?
So much of German TV + radio is U.S. entertainment franchising
And in U.S. entertainment, secret police and military, whether neighborhood units or globe-spanning “special forces,” are presented as heroic, romantic, and “diverse.”
“Square“ and “Aryan” looking — that was their old, bad secret police. These are our new, cool, good secret police. Progressive secret police! The boss is a person of color, and look! Women! LGBTs!