Us Vs. Them
I’ve been watching the liberal revolt against health car reform with suddenly renewed interest, since, wonder of wonders, the usual rollover didn’t occur. It’s like the dog that didn’t bark. What a difference an astonishingly demoralizing year makes. Back when Obama utterly capitulated on FISA, way before the election, liberals were still so alarmed by Palin and her fans, and so blinded by the desire for a real electoral drubbing of the sort that might belatedly delegitimize Bush, that we reluctantly looked the other way. In retrospect, that was pretty dumb. Suddenly, “closing” Gitmo morphed into moving it home, something so flagrantly unprincipled and deceitful that even the administration is barely bothering to defend it, unfortunately not only out of embarrassment. Just like with FISA, torture, and everything else, any argument that might have gained the day by simply calling these abominations by their proper names was promptly cast aside in favor of the purported “political realities” that have irrevocably made the once-hated euphemism and spin inherited, and supposedly repudiated, from the Bush Administration the now-permanent lengua franca in Washington. Ain’t victory sweet?
Once the neat trick of selling shit, successfully, as Shinola had been so easily accomplished, can you blame the former hope and change crowd for just getting on board? I mean, once you’ve tossed a quarter of the Bill of Rights under the bus for money alone with barely a peep, why not just go ahead and make every other generously contributing industry into permanent vassals of the State? And, who better to redistribute wealth and power, admittedly the other way, than a former community organizer? And for that matter, who better to arise in feigned “opposition,” bringing along their brainwashed supporters, than the new welfare queens of the American oligarchy? Seems like a good plan, as long as you can still exploit the old right vs. left animosity with peripheral nonsense like abortion, guns, and gays, while the cash drawers are not so surreptitiously emptied just the same, by people who, by experience, know better. The Freepers and Palin can wail about death panels, the “nutroots” can wail about theocracy, while establishment Washington just continues to do what hookers always have done for their corporate johns, just on television and out of the weather at, say, the Mayflower or 30 Rock instead of behind a dumpster in an alley.
Enter Jane Hamsher. She had the guts to point out that the teabaggers had a point, insofar as they were against corporate Washington again enriching, entrenching, and empowering the same vampires that had tasted blood under Bush, wanted more, and got so far have got it , basically against the interests of everyone who wasn’t one of them. And unlike anyone on the hapless left, she was able to receive a respectful hearing of her views on FOX, and a day or so later, even able to harness the lefts bete noir, Grover Norquist, to her side, as well, for the undeniably worthy cause of getting the despicable and compromised Rahm Emanuel out of government. What American wouldn’t want that? Turns out, a lot of them, but not the usual suspects.
The fury and desire for retribution of the “left,” as it were, for her apostasy did take me a bit by surprise, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit. Surely real lefties would deplore Obama’s shameful capitulations in so many areas, from the bankers to the Military Industrial Complex, but such principled opposition would fail to appear. We fulfilled our roles as elitists, too, when we set aside reservations, and often violent opposition, to giveaways to the rich to which we’d grown so accustomed, and were left with a flaccid defense of something like Bush, only more tasteful. Appearances evidently matter. Surely not much else does, which is probably the worst and most lasting element of the Bush “legacy” that Obama has clearly embraced.
You go, Jane, along with everyone else who can see what is happening; be they Fox News watchers of Grover Norquist conservatives. Groupthink got us into this mess; it’s unlikely to get us out.
Hamsher has really taken a beating at the hands of some DailyKos diarists (and almost certainly elsewhere). I really don’t know why, CH, except to attribute it to a lack of clarity of thought due to, as you put it, Groupthink. One way to view it is that Grover is one of “them” and Obama one of “us.”
But that sounds rather adolescent. And that, perhaps, is the problem here.
Adolescence reigns, while the money goes down the toilet as usual. Good for Jane to be the first one to loudly say, not just WTF, but, more controversially, “these guys have a point.” The PC the righties always denounce us for is our own worst enemy this time.
Imho, many in the crew at Kos are not really progressives or liberals, but more likely libertarians. I quit going there a long time ago. Too much misogyny for me. (A sure sign of lack of liberal values.)
However, a cult of personality works, e.g., Ron Paul, Ayn Rand (different branches, I suppose)…
Reading over there just now, a lot of the anti-Jane argument sounded righty-ish… Norquist is bad, Jane is therefore bad, and their every utterance must be discounted for all time. Not very liberal, to my mind.
Gee, I was trying to touch on this sort of thing with Dickhead Tom just the other day.
It went nowhere, and, as before, I just realized Tom can’t boogie.
Oh well …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ou-6A3MKow
I would like to say I had the great pleasure of visiting the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland last week-end, while attending the wedding of one of my nieces, and her beau.
Rock on, and Merry Christmas …
You came to Cleveland and didn’t call me?!!
I’m crushed. Next time call me!
Be glad to. How would I do that?
I saw more of downtown this time, including the Rock Bottom, where the wedding was held, the thoroughly fabulous West Side Market, as well as the aforementioned Rock Hall.
There’s a little bit of anticorporate sentiment in the Tea Party movement, but not much. They defend corporate bonuses. They defend corporatism in general. They’re only “anticorporate” when some of the corporate bailout money helps members of the UAW.
More typical is stuff like this:
http://northernvirginiateaparty.blogspot.com/2009/11/obamas-unfair-criticism-of-insurance.html
From what one sees here in NJ, the NJ Tea Partiers really don’t spend time talking about any economic issues other than cutting taxes and cutting state aid to urban school districts. The NJ branch of the “movement” is really all about brown people. Throw em out, keep em out, and when that’s not possible, at least make bilingual ANYTHING illegal.
Some of the high functioning Tea Partiers are able to listen to Rush Limbaugh and understand him, and he does talk about specific economic issues sometimes, for instance explaining to his listeners that abolishing the insurance antitrust exemption and making the companies compete with each other would be evil, because monopolies and cartels are good for you.
What do the Tea Partiers and Jane Hamsher have in common?
Only being angry.
That’s true up to a point…. They don’t like the bank bailouts, though, so much so that they have to backdate Obama’s presidency to include them. As for GM et al.; you’re absolutely right. Still, if liberals fail to take a stand on this and other populist issues, what will they take to the voters next year? Joementum?
Maybe it would be more helpful to judge Jane’s tactic in terms of sheer utility rather than commonality.
Right now, there does not seem to be any other immediately expedient way to shock and awe and flank Rahm, the President, the Congress, and the corporate/media over-lords other than this
marriageone-night-stand of convenience.True, and I respect the arguments of both Thom Hartmann and Bernie Sanders on this subject. But my worry is that under the Rahm order, more and more clobbering of liberals is in the offing, and less and less necessary policy changes will come from that approach.
I’ll take “Chicago Politics,” in the unlikely event that they’re used to good ends.
From here on in, it gets messier. There are folks like Paul Krugman, who, as I said in the comments section of his latest NYT piece, seems to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome, and then there are folks like Jane, who are mad as hell, and will do just about anything to throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the corporate state.
President Obama has misunderestimated the divisions in the Democratic Party, just as LBJ did before him. He’s also picked his side. Defense of the status quo seems within reach to him, while root-and-branch reform of the corrupt system which raised him to power seems unnecessarily disruptive — a bridge too far, if you like.
Personally, I believe that the status quo is doomed. Its own corruptions and inefficiencies are enough to guarantee its collapse, it doesn’t really need any help from us. Which is a good thing, I suppose, as we are now officially divided, and will be forced to reexamine our own shibboleths about what is and isn’t possible. Our days as consumers are drawing to a close, our days as citizens are yet to come
We’ve re-entered history. Good luck to us.
The problems on the left and right are opposites. The right is too united and the left too divided. Yes, I recognize at the moment that there is a split on the right between the conservatives and radicals. However, they will unite behind their Repug standard bearers when the time comes to vote just as they do in the congress. Power and control to quell fears always unites them.
The left is far less predictable. It will be up to the left to form the core group to begin our days as true citizens. We will know that this most vital effort has started when sufficient numbers on the left unite behind changing systems such as reapportionment that creates competitive districts, public funded elections, elimination of the filibuster 60 vote rule, elimination of the CIA and formation of a fact gathering only organization.
One way to lessen the corporate grip on everything is to gain sufficient agreement that the days of the consumer are drawing to a close. You may be right that they are drawing to a close, but few Americans recognize that yet and it will take time even though we are in the midst of a severe recession.
Some leader has to emerge who will help us find the common causes that will reduce the diffusion of effort and bring in those most frustrated with the Flat Earthers on the right. The people have the power to do anything, if they just realize it and exercise their power. Easy to say. Not easy to make happen.
Another aspect is the world community. I see because of global warming and our wars, the possibility of that happening before sufficient Americans wake up. The citizens in the more enlightened world will probably lead the way.
Referencing your last graph, rmp, I am reading a lot of stuff not produced by American news organizations.
It’s just part of my taste, having as much to do with boredom with the domestic mainstream story lines as with an interest in a lot of lively writing that has no connection to whether it plays in Peoria or whatever.
I do think many people outside the country, surely in Europe, are paying little or no attention to our noisy righties.
Quite simply, the decent respect to some of the intellectual underpinnings of this country’s political class is no longer there.
Whether progressives here can get their act together or not, people on the right seem only to be talking to themselves, and the “exceptional” rhetoric is not going very far.
Many in the world are not listening to America as they once did, and no amount of bleating and breast-beating is going to change it.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that pointing this out is somehow subversive.
Pick up bucket of cold water; throw in face.
Actually, rmp, the divisions on the right are showing through the wallpaper of the Bush years. NY 23 is one example, Charlie Crist v. Marc Rubio is another. As GG pointed out a few days ago, both parties’ corporate wings are attempting to swat away dissent, not always successfully. My feeling is that the right caving to its base hurts it, while the Dems ignoring their base hurts them. How much longer can the Dems serve up the same sh*t sandwich as the Repugs? We’re about to find out.
And, for the want of a dent …
Not sure how all of Jane’s efforts are going to shake out. Maybe they’ll go somewhere. Maybe not. Maybe some Libertarians are as deeply suspicious and resistive to some Liberals as the evidence seems to suggest in the reverse. For all of some folk’s defense of “pragmatism” and “realism” over ideology, it would seem some of those same folk have a stronger grip on their ideology than they might admit.
I admit I find some of Ron Paul’s followers pretty icky. But, I am being forced to admit that I find some of Obama’s followers equally so.
That was certainly my thought reading some of the earlier anti-Jane diatribes at DKos. Icky, and ultimately self-defeating. Forcing people to buy inferior products is politically tone-deaf, and plays into the hands of the ‘baggers.
cf (For the want of a dent):
To paraphrase the philosopher Frank Herbert, the power to destroy a thing is the ultimate power over it. Of the players in congress, two elements are acknowledged to have this power: The GOP and the Bluedogs. They have the big, powerful, well-used monkey-wrench, to use Bill’s term. The progressives in congress have never killed anything, to my knowlege. Until they actually blow up a bill of consequence, they’ll be viewed for what they are–powerless, and easily ignored.
The liberal failure on hcr simply reinforces this, and with every fresh defeat, it gets harder to climb out of that hole.
That’s basically what Jane Hamsher, and others, were saying from the beginning of the hcr debate. That’s why, even though ending up with real health care reform was always a huge goal in and of itself, the battle was always larger than that for the reason that you said.