Dennis Fox:
“I agree with
Eliot’s emphasis on the nation’s cultural divide and his call for more militant action. I touched on these issues when I reacted two decades ago to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election. I still don’t think the Democrats can become the force for popular resistance Eliot and I apparently agree we need. Instead, as I wrote a couple of years ago in a piece called When in Doubt, Go Left, we should “aim for the society we really want, far different from the tepid goals of most Democrats. If we’re right, our vision should appeal to the vast majority. If it doesn’t, let’s find that out too, and determine together how to go left more effectively.”
Where I think Eliot treads on thin ice is in blasting “the intelligence of the American people.” I share his emotional response, though his final note about the impact of media spin, ignorance, and manipulation is more on target. However, even granting that, I think Eliot gives too little emphasis to his important point about social and cultural value differences. It seems to me value issues related to religion’s role in public life – abortion, gay marriage, public prayer, and more – divide the public much more than liberals and leftists often acknowledge in a serious way. Many of us on the left think religion should be a private concern in a live-and-let-live society. We underestimate the degree to which strongly felt religious belief demands a community focus, though the escalating religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims, and Jews may finally make the rest of us realize that our own liberal distinction between public and private departs from global norms.
Value differences may stem in part from different factual assumptions about human nature and about the consequences of particular policies, but it doesn’t seem to me intelligence is the most important factor. Both cultural conservatives and cultural liberals come in smart and stupid versions. So as I’ve noted before, those of us on the left need to take conservative perspectives seriously rather than simply shrug them off. That doesn’t mean compromising our own principles. It does mean figuring out how to subvert the dominant paradigm, as Eliot says, combining rational persuasion with militant resistance.
I don’t think the Democrats are up to that task. “
I appreciate Dennis’ thoughts, with which I largely agree (returning Dennis’ favor). I should say a little more about two things, though — what I mean by more ‘militancy’ (Dennis’ word, not mine, although it is a neat encapsulation) and what I mean in derogating the intelligence of the electorate.
In the post to which Dennis was responding, I was mostly urging transcending the narrow political aspects of the struggle. It seems a given to me that, for the forseeable future, third party movements aside, most of the elected officials in the US will be Republicans or Democrats and the battles for political power will be waged within the two-party system. While I certainly thought this campaign struggle was one worth fighting, I don’t think it is useful to continue to confine ourselves to that venue. It was clear that, even with an unprecedented populist movement in the form of grassroots funding, activist organizations emerging in parallel to the DNC, excursions to neighboring battleground states, etc. the Republican machine, which focused on getting out the vote of their core constituents, was more effective still. I would love to see an analysis telling me I am wrong and that we just didn’t try hard enough, but I don’t think the answer in 2008 or whenever is more of the same. The electorate does not strike me as like a soaked sponge from which, the harder you press, the more votes you can squeeze out. Alot of commentary will blame the lack of clearly-enough articulated alternatives to aspects of the Republican agenda we were criticizing, the lack of appealing personality to the candidate(s), etc., but they are barking up the wrong tree. The Democrats ran as good a race as they could have in the face of Republican machine politics and their lock on the media. Not only do the Republicans have a stranglehold on electoral support, now and for the forseeable future, but opportunities for fundamental change are largely filtered out by working through a political system which has evolved to constrain us in essentially conservative directions. A two-party system, especially with the current electoral college mechanism, forces a regression toward the mean (Dennnis’ characterization of the Democrats’ goals as “tepid”) and inherently disenfranchises those who lose out. A 51% majority becomes a wholesale “mandate”, and there is nothing the other 49% can do about it. It is time for the left to start reading revolutionary theory again; there is a reason that fundamental change in any society occurs outside the constraints of the political system extant in that society at that time. Here in the US, the important social advances of the twentieth century for equal rights, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. were not won by adherents trying to squeeze out enough votes in one particular election, and their proponents were not broken by single defeats at the ballot box. Rather, they were (and continue to be) essentially consciousness-raising movements and protracted struggles. The votes followed. The political process should be a tool for the popular will, not the other way around.
So I come to the basis for my belief in the importance of cultural activism as a foundation for political change. It is fundamental, especially to one accustomed to thinking psychologically, that assumptions and values shape perceptions of reality, give weight to evaluations of relative significance, and influence all decisions in the social as well as the personal spheres. All the commmentators who, identifying this election as having been won on ‘moral values’ are on the wrong track to suggest, for example, that people voted their ‘family values’ even at the expense of their pocketbooks. It’s all values! The inequities in distribution of wealth, their accentuation under the current administration; the prosecution of a war, a preemptive war, a war without national consensus or international support, a war fought on a deceptive basis, a war executed with no thought toward adequate funding and manpower, a war with no attention toward the stabilization of the war-torn aftermath, a war without sufficient command structure to prevent horrendous and illegal violations of captives, and without sufficient commitment to thee prevention of indiscriminate collateral civilian casualties; the baldfaced mendacity of administration officials; the trampling on fundamental domestic privacies and civil rights — these are all moral issues. And IMHO the most profoundly ‘family value’ I oculd ever live is to fight so that my children and their children inherit a liveable, peaceful and just world. Republicanism is anti-family and, as I quoted in another post, Republicanism isn’t morality.
As narrow and rigid as their delineation of the sphere of values, they should not be allowed to define the terms of the debate and have a lock on the moral plane. Let us not forget that the Republican agenda has essentially reactionary roots in humiliation and defeat, both on the political and personal levels. Politically, it was Johnson’s betrayal of the southern Democrats with the Civil Rights Act that drove them into the Republican fold and created the modern bloc of red states, along with voting rights, school prayer, legalized abortion and the defeat in the mistaken militarist adventurism of Vietnam. On a personal level, Bush’s rigid born-again fervor was the reaction of a cognitively limited man to a need to be ‘saved’ from a directionless, dissolute ne’er-do-well life. Now we are facing a zealous convert (with whom everyone knows, as the old saying goes, that there is no arguing). Reactionary rigidity should not be the defining source of the values of a vibrant and constructive society.
Dennis thinks my final note about the impact of media spin, ignorance and manipulation is more to the point than blaming the public’s lack of intelligence. But I think that falling mercy to manipulation, spin, allowing one’s mind to be thoroughly colonized by a destructive and dominant meme, is a lack of intelligence. In this society, one is given enough opportunities to examine one’s assumptions and values that to accept the unexamined ones with complacency is contemptible. Certainly in a democratic state, anyone is entitled to have any set of values they choose, but that does not mean all are equivalent in terms of logical consistency or moral import. Certainly, as Dennis opines, there is both intelligence and stupidity on both the right and the left, but it is far easier to be stupid, and thus it is more prevalent, in the service of the unchallenged dominant paradigm than if one has to thoughtfully construct for oneself an alternative set which bucks the cultural norms.
Bush has made a deliberate appeal to a deep-seated anti-intellectual trend in the American psyche. Quite simply, those not confident of their intellectual abilities are intimidated by those they perceive as more articulate and informed. During the 2000 campaign, I found it impossible to believe that the voters did not see how limited Bush was, until I realized that they did realize it and not only did they not care, they welcomed it. Nevertheless, my incredulity got the better of me again during the 2004 campaign and especialy during the debates. It is not that the American people are not bright enough to recognize Bush’s limitations; it is that they are not bright enough to care. The extent of most of the voters’ assessment of the relative qualifications of the candidates was how “nice” they are, how good a drinking buddy each of them would make. Let’s face it, people find Bush a nice guy. (They ought to; he has worked incredibly hard at expunging every ounce of East Coast patrician blue blood that might scare them off from his pitiful “jes’-folks” sham-Texan persona.) Badda bing.
A corollary of the deliberation and conscientiousness with which one examines and constructs one’s value system, and another touchstone of intelligence IMHO, is the ability to articulate and defend the basis for one’s values and assumptions, and not all value systems are equivalent in that regard either. The “echo chamber” concept got under my skin several years ago, readers may recall. I worried that I, and most webloggers on the left, only talk to likeminded individuals and that there is no meaningful exchange or refinement of our thinking going on. But weblogging among thoughtful people is burgeoning; among people smart enough to be daunted if it were not meaningful communication and not waste their time on it. So, recently, I am reassured of several things — that within a basic community of belief, real communication around nuanced differences and clarifications is possible; that it is useful in refining stances, tactics and strategies as a change agent; and that there is a substantial contrast between the left and the right with regard to their willingness and ability to dialogue thoughtfully about principles and assumptions. In the weblogging world, there has been no talking to the War Bloggers. In the past several years, they have come to inhabit a different universe. I am sorry, but I continue to feel that the ability and willingness to examine one’s own beliefs and enter into dialogue about them on a confident but open basis is a hallmark of intelligence. And I continue to feel that, in those terms, this election demonstrated that the cowed and manipulated, cognitively colonized electorate is, well, unintelligent and inattentive, contemptibly so, to what has been done to them. A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste.
Asked by some readers to be more specific about the militancy I propose, I have to say I am preoccupied with a comment someone made sometime earlier in Bush’s reign that this ought to be a very good time for bohemians. The models I find most useful for challenging the dominant paradigm come from countercultural precedents throughout history. As Timothy Leary put it in one of his last pieces of writing,
“Counterculture may be found in (sometimes uneasy) alliances with radical, even revolutionary political groups and insurrectionary forces, and the memberships of countercultures and such groups often overlap.
But the focus of counterculture is the power of ideas, images and artistic expression, not the acquisition of personal and poluitical power. Thus minority, alternative, and radical political parties are not themselves countercultures. While many countercultural memes have political implications, the seizure and maintenance of political power requires adherence to structures too inflexible to accommodate the innovation and exploration that are basic to the countercultural raison d’etre…”
Of course, what is most pungent for me is the countercultural movements to which I have been exposed, and to some extent lived, during my lifetime, as exemplified by the Beats, the ’60’s efflorescence, the cyberculture of the ’90’s, and the anticorporate/antiglobalization movement best exemplified by Adbusters and No Logo. Since ‘culture’ is essentially used in two senses — to refer to both a society’s collective beliefs, customs, values and their idiomatic expressions; and to refer to those groups and societies themselves which live those values and beliefs — ‘counterculture’ is in opposition to both of those. It challenges people’s sensibilities and it often offends people. I haven’t felt that the in-your-face confrontational aspects of counterculture have been very evident since the ’60’s. We have to be brazen about our challenges to the moré’s and conventions, to the limited and limiting conceptions, to the mandate to do business as usual, to the intolerance and injustice. We have to revel in provoking xenophobia. I can’t get this out of my head:
“We are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika.
In order to survive we steal,
Cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide and deal.
We are obscene, lawless, hideous,
Dangerous, dirty, violent…and young…”
as Jefferson Airplane sang. And,
“We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves…”
I know the ’60’s counterculture is often tried and convicted on its excesses and its naiveté, but a little more of that would not be harmful in the ’00’s IMHO. And I have to say a word about that word “young.” In many ways, the gains of the ’60’s counterculture have been, partly correctly, framed as struggles for the trappings of youth, and it has been dismissed and diminished as being merely an expression of perennial and perhaps superficial youthful rebellion — music, dress, hair, sexual experimentation, etc. This discounts several important forces shaping the ’60’s counterculture, into a more profound world-changing model. Certainly, opposition to war has a long and venerable social history, but, shaped perhaps by the threat of being drafted, antiwar sentiment during the Vietnam era suffused a more substantial segment of a population than perhaps ever before in any society; and played a substantial part in ending the war. The appeal of nonviolent civil disobedience as a mode of political action was vastly magnified. Sigificant challenges to limited conceptions of family and social structure and indeed to our relationships to our own bodies have had such a profound impact that they now seem mundane. A central role for esoteric xenospirituality did more to loosen the reign of established religion on the hearts and minds of America. The new paradigms for the exploration of consciousness in both meditative and devotional practices on the one hand and, on the other, mind-altering drugs were crucial to the creation of a profound skepticism about received wisdom and conventional truths about the nature of reality and of personhood. Among other things, they arguably form the philosophical underpinnings of the profound relativism of deconstructionism and the post-modernist artistic ethic. I am also convinced that the ’60’s counterculture instigated an ethic of interdependence, honest communication, empathy, and compassionate dedication to helping those in need that it perhaps its most enduring legacy. (I certainly think that my career choice of a helping profession with little regard for earning poitential was an expression of a commitment to countercultural values which have suffused me and which I hope to convey to my children, with no illusions about how much more difficult it will be for them to make the same choices…)
People who are interested in exploring one aspect of the ’60’s counterculture should run out and rent the eye-opening 2002 Siegel and Green documentary on the Weather Underground. As much as it is a portrait of the ultimate extremists of the era, it is a social history of the context of massive upheaval — which you are either too young to recall or no longer appreciate to its full extent — to which an entire generation of passionate and committed people were driven by an American government and society in many ways the precursor to that which we face now, during a similar illegal and immoral war.
Perhaps I say it now because I am older (at least in chronological terms), but: let us get beyond youthful rebellion, at a time when it is clear the struggle is for the survival and flourishing of people of all ages, but build on the venerable countercultural traditions. I argue for the preservation of rage as well as the ethic of mutual aid and compassion. Of course, some reading this post and that below about ‘depression’ will say that my anger is my blindspot, a part of my character pathology; or that it is merely a time-limited reaction to Tuesday’s setback. It is often said that the artist’s creativity comes in two flavors — a youthful, exuberant, energetic version and a more sober, reflective, ‘mature’ form. I know this will be a controversial statement but, while subtle expression can be mind-changing and transformative as well, I fear that when the passion and anger are extracted, while art may be luminal, ‘mature creativity’ is too often in the service of the reaffirmation of traditional values and the maintenance of the status quo, usually performed by those who no longer have the energy or the will to struggle.
So, to transform our society and awaken those in the cultural trance, reasoned sober left-brain argument should be counterbalanced by right-brain exuberant crazy wisdom, irreverence, and both subtle subversion and outrageous provocation.The movement is inclusive, and spread by unprecedented modes of instantaneous communication, with the benefit of unprecedented historical and crosscultural memory and appreciation. If we transform consciousness, the reactionary movement cannot succeed.
We can afford nothing less.
![//graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/12/arts/Chang75.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/12/arts/Chang75.jpg "Iris Chang")
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A number of my friends have written to me, as a psychiatrist, to ask for four-year prescriptions for antidepressants. And, with a little less levity, several people have asked me to write from my perspective as a mental health practitioner on coping with post-election emotional difficulties. I have been reluctant to do so for several reasons. First, it has been difficult to rouse myself from my own torpor. Second, should post-election stress be treated as a mental health problem and pathologized? Certainly, somewhere around 50% of the voting public are grieving at the present moment. One of the characteristics of most psychopathology is that it is suffered in loneliness and isolation from those around you, who have a hard time understanding the distress. But once a condition crosses a certain prevalence threshold, considering something pathological yields to treating it as a feature of the population . Most of us who are in distress about the results of what many of us called the most important election struggle of our lifetimes at least have others around us who share our sentiments and support our suffering.![//mediamatters.org/static/video/red-blue-election.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/mediamatters.org/static/video/red-blue-election.jpg "Certify THIS??")
“The overwhelming majority of U.S. counties are Republican; however, counties carried by Democrats are generally more densely populated. ![//world.std.com/~emg/bushmiddlefinger.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/world.std.com/~emg/bushmiddlefinger.jpg "The Great Uniter")
“The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today ![//www.informedpublic.com/redistrict.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.informedpublic.com/redistrict.jpg "Redistrict This!")
![//adbusters.org/magazine/54/features/images/stopbush.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/adbusters.org/magazine/54/features/images/stopbush.jpg "Stop Bush")
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![//www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/story.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/story.jpg "Is that a wire in your pocket or are you just scared witless about debating in public?")
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