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The First Hundred Days or the Last Hundred Days?
Obama's Rendezvous with Destiny -- and Ours
Looking back on Barack Obama's first post-election interview with "60 Minutes," no one should be surprised that he admitted he's reading about Franklin D. Roosevelt's first hundred days in office. In fact, the president-elect -- evidently taking no chances -- is reportedly reading two books: Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope and Jean Edward Smith's FDR. As he told "Sixty Minutes," his administration will emulate FDR's "willingness to try things and experiment... If something doesn't work, [we're] gonna try something else until [we] find something that does." That's one reason Obama, like FDR, has claimed that he wants advisors who will offer him a wide variety of viewpoints.
Not too wide, however. In his first hundred days, Roosevelt made it clear that he -- like Obama -- considered himself a reformer, but distinctly not a radical. He certainly didn't intend to use the economic crisis of 1932 to create a society of full economic equality and social justice. He just wanted to make sure that every American had at least a bare minimum of economic security.
FDR's overriding goal was, in reality, to head off movements for fundamental change. As he wrote privately before he became president, it was "time for the country to become fairly radical," but only "for a generation" -- because "history shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution."
"There will be a gain throughout our country of communistic thought," Roosevelt also warned, "unless we can keep democracy up to its old ideals and its original purposes." Years later, he would boast that his greatest achievement was saving the capitalist system.
Obama ended his "Sixty Minutes" interview on a similar note: "Our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to." Though he talks about the benefits of "spreading the wealth around," like his famous predecessor, he most certainly doesn't want to spread it too fast or too far, nor does his team of economic advisers.
But the president-elect may be reading the wrong history. Perhaps, instead of reading about Roosevelt's first hundred days, he should read Chapter 16 of Smith's FDR, which describes how growing political pressure kept Roosevelt looking over his left shoulder. By 1934, new labor organizations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations, charismatic leaders like Louisiana's Governor Huey Long, and social innovators like California physician Francis Townsend were offering concrete plans to spread the wealth far faster and wider than Roosevelt's New Deal ever would. Continuing economic catastrophe, fused with the mood of hope and change that he himself had stirred up, gave rise to the threat that the president might be unseated if he did not move leftwards.
Consummate politician that he was, Roosevelt did move -- just far enough to ensure his reelection. In the 1936 campaign, he ratcheted up the rhetoric, fiercely attacking the "economic royalists" who controlled the "corporations, banks, and securities." It was the kind of language that would please any 2008 progressive. He decried the injustice of a country where more than half the wealth was controlled by less than 200 big corporations, all tied together by interlocking directorates and banks. This small group, he insisted, had established "a new industrial dictatorship" -- far stronger words than we're used to today -- with "an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor -- other people's lives." To Americans, FDR pledged to master these "economic royalists" who held the public in "economic slavery."
In the most important speech of the campaign, he promised to "increase wages that spell starvation... wipe out sweatshops... provide useful work for the needy unemployed... end monopoly in business... protect the consumer against unnecessary price spreads, against the costs that are added by monopoly and speculation... support collective bargaining... work for the regulation of security issues... for the wiping out of slums." For all these things, FDR exclaimed, "and for a multitude of things like them we have only just begun to fight."
That 1936 campaign is the history both a politically canny president-elect and progressives should be reading right now. It would remind him, and teach us, that a centrist president can be pushed, under the pressure of tough times and rising public hopes, in our direction -- if, that is, we are dedicated, well-organized, and persistent enough. Under pressure, Roosevelt moved an agenda that, in 1932, sounded radical indeed into the respectable center of American politics only four years later.
It was the kind of agenda that many liberal or even centrist Americans came to support by 1936. Today, polling data show that a majority of Americans who call themselves liberal or centrist agree with many of the most prominent progressive stances of this moment, including
* paying higher taxes to receive more government services;
* substantial increases in taxes on corporations and the rich;
* strict controls on the financial investment market;
* significant public expenditures to guarantee universal health care, provide higher education for all who want it, and promote renewable energy technologies;
* dramatic steps to preserve and improve the environment;
* the replacing of free trade policies with fair trade policies;
* vigorously protecting reproductive rights.
The overriding problem for progressives is that so many voters will reject a candidate or a movement promoting this kind of progressive platform, even though they agree individually with most of that candidate's or that movement's policy positions. If that is to change in a way Americans can believe in, and so push President Barack Obama in new directions, we have to be politically smarter.
The Hopes and Fears of Voters
So here's a lesson we can learn from Roosevelt's 1936 campaign. To gain his landslide victory, he certainly won over millions of voters already to his left. But he also kept the votes of many more millions not prepared to imagine that they were moving leftwards. Obama, too, won crucial votes from people significantly more conservative than he is -- not just because the economy collapsed, but because he had a canny sense of how to take advantage of that "opportunity."
The challenge for progressives is to do the same: to use the sense of open-ended possibility sparked by Obama's victory to push the electorate -- and thus the Obama administration -- further than it now is willing to go. But here's the most important thing: all our facts and logical arguments alone won't be enough to do the job.
We have to understand as well what top-notch politicians like Roosevelt and Obama grasp intuitively: When people lose their economic hope, they feel insecure not only about their jobs and their bank accounts, but about everything in their lives. The same uncertainty that may make them suddenly welcome a spirit of political change also can lead to an unbearable sense of being unsettled. In that situation, many people long for "a sense of continuity and stability that is unavailable in economic life," as Obama recently put it.
The president-elect knows, as FDR knew, that a successful politician must respond to voters' fears as well as hopes. Both in the early 1930s and today, the winning presidential candidates sensed that any politician or movement that seemed to symbolize not just change, but overly rapid and unsettling change, would have a tough time getting public approval, no matter what policies were being promoted.
Obama has been nothing short of brilliant at communicating a message of continuity and a promise of stability, even as he was leading chants of "Yes, we can!" He did so more by his style than by substance. He created an image of a dynamic leader who could "change the world" while remaining safe and solid, poised and unflappable, a man never likely to do anything rash or impulsive. That's a rare gift which few of us can hope to emulate.
We can, however, learn from him and from Roosevelt, who used words even more skillfully than Obama to offer a reassuring sense of stability. Roosevelt was successful in shifting the center further left, in part by embedding his innovations in an old narrative, effectively couching every new policy in a blanket of traditional values and reassuring cultural images. In the process, he managed to make his leftward shift sound like a huge step into the past, not into a dark and unknowable future.
Consider just a few examples from his 1936 campaign speeches:
* "This concentration of economic power in all-embracing corporations does not represent private enterprise as we Americans cherish it."
* "Now, as always, for over a century and a half, the Flag, the Constitution, stand against... the over-privileged."
* "[The] war against want and destitution [is] a war for the survival of democracy... to preserve the American ideal of economic as well as political democracy."
Typically quoting Thomas Jefferson, FDR insisted that "widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy," and that "freedom is no half-and-half affair... The average citizen... must have equal opportunity in the marketplace." He evoked the tradition of Americans as God's chosen people, as the pivot of history itself, to legitimate his economic program when he famously proclaimed, "This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."
Having won reelection with a deft combination of progressive economics and patriotic pieties, Roosevelt embellished both in his second inaugural address with the moralizing language that came so naturally to him. Pointing to "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished," he called for "the establishment of a morally better world... a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice... We reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization... We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics... We all go up, or else we all go down, as one people."
Claiming a Heritage
The point of all this history is not simply to praise Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although his domestic policies did a lot of lasting good, he was a centrist and a pragmatist, always ready to sacrifice an ideal to win a political victory. And he would sacrifice plenty, delivering far less than he promised after his stunning victory in 1936, when he swept Republican candidate Alf Landon in 46 of the 48 states. It's certainly possible that Barack Obama will do much the same.
The point, however, is to learn from these shrewd politicians that, in a time of uncertainty when no one knows for sure what political path the nation will follow, every policy option actually lies open, from the far right to the far left. Those of us who tend to take the left fork could bring surprisingly large numbers of people with us -- many of them new to our road -- if we were willing to use a language that offered a genuine promise of cultural continuity and stability underneath the economic and political change we promote.
It's not just socially conservative working-class whites that need to be appealed to, but voters who already see themselves as center-left or even liberal, but not that liberal, not yet ready to opt for a truly progressive candidate.
There are endless ways to do this, but FDR's speeches of 1936 offer especially fruitful examples. Of course, as Obama said, "For us to simply recreate what existed back in the Thirties in the twenty-first century would be missing the boat. We've gotta come up with solutions that are true to our times and true to this moment. And that's gonna be our job."
As progressives, our job is to learn from Obama and FDR the political and rhetorical skills to push back against whatever array of centrist (or right-centrist) compromises the new administration is bound to make. If we do that effectively, we can capitalize on the new mood of possibility amid a landscape of increasing desolation and so push the nation toward lasting structures of economic justice.
It's also our job to move the administration and the public toward peace, demilitarization, and an end to the foreign policy of empire -- which, of course, began with FDR. In the latter years of his presidency, he used the language of patriotism, cultural tradition, and moral values to get a vast majority of Americans to embrace a foreign policy they had never dreamed they would support: entangling alliances to promote an American-led system of global corporate capitalism and the beginnings of a huge permanent national (in)security state to defend that system.
For years now, polls have shown that most Americans are willing to roll back the most harmful of the policies that FDR initiated in the midst of a global war. They would support major reductions in the military budget and in the U.S. military presence abroad. They would favor a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. And yet they might well not favor a candidate who took just those stands. Again, it all depends on how those policy changes are presented.
We proponents of peace and economic justice should not use words we don't believe in. But we are in fact moved by deeply moral commitments, though we don't claim to possess the absolute moral truth (and recognize, in fact, that those who make such claims pose a threat to democracy). Why not say all of that loud and clear, over and over again? It's a language Americans of every stripe tend to respond to.
Since we'll be reiterating what some Americans of stature in every generation have said, why not proudly claim their words as our national heritage?
As for patriotism: A fundamental mistake that radicals and antiwar protesters made in the 1960s was to sew the flag to the seat of their pants rather than carrying it high and proud at the front of every protest march. Radicals then should have presented themselves as the truest patriots (which indeed they were). Instead, they helped get their political views firmly entrenched in the mainstream media -- and the public mind -- as symbols of anti-Americanism and a threat to every kind of cultural stability.
Now the gathering economic storm and a linked mood of open-ended possibility give us a chance to correct that mistake. That's why we should study the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt even more closely than the president-elect does. If Obama prefers to read about the first hundred days in 1933, we should leap ahead of him and begin studying the last days of that first Roosevelt term -- a page out of the past that points to a possible future, where Obama must give progressives the change we hope for. Let FDR's rhetorical style be one guide to our future, as well as the new president's.
- Posted in
35 Comments so far
Show AllObama ended his "Sixty Minutes" interview on a similar note: "Our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to . . .
. . . like a baby gleefully holding a stick of dynamite with the fuse already burning.
So far unmentioned in these pages, but extremely relevant to this article, is the fact that yesterday the Obama campaign, with its 10-million-strong data bank, sent out a mass email calling on its supporters to found an ongoing movement, with a nationwide call for "Change is Coming" house meetings.
Quoting from David Plouffe's email sent to those 10 million:
"At the house meetings, you'll reflect on our campaign, discuss the future of this movement, and identify some ways to get involved in your community.
"Meeting hosts will report back, and your feedback will be instrumental in guiding this movement through some important and unprecedented territory.
"This grassroots organization has always been about more than an election. It's about transforming our country -- and we've only just begun.
"With the enormous challenges we're facing at home and abroad, we have no choice but to continue working together. There's so much more we can do to help Barack bring change to America.
"How we do that is up to you.
"Watch the video and sign up to host or attend a house meeting this weekend."
[MydotBarakobamadotcom slash changeiscoming]
Make no mistake: this is an unprecedented event in American history! This is the first time as far as I know that any successful American presidential campaign has ever attempted to continue as a mass political movement! It is the initiative that some of us were pressing Obama to take! And it is a step beyond anything Roosevelt ever did or considered!
And what will this movement represent? It sounds like a call for a genuine grassroots movement, but will it be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party Centrists? A tool for Obama against the progressives? A trick? I can hear the bloggers and letter-writers saying this already, but before you dismiss it thus, ask yourself two questions:
1. Who are those 10 million people? What did they sign on for? What drives them and what do they believe in? What got them going and whose interests do *they* care about? Will they easily let themselves be anyone's tool or mouthpiece? (And why would Omama, a former community organizer, even think that they would?)
2. What are *we* going to do? *We* meaning PDA, DFA, Netroots, MoveOn.org, Democrats.com, UFPJ, WorkingAmerica and ANSWER. *We* meaning the labor movement, the peace movement, the civil rights and civil liberties movements, tenants rights and immigrant rights and prisoners rights and anti-foreclusure movements and election reform movements and a hundred more. And *we* meaning the readers of Common Dreams. How will *we* use this opening? Will we step into it and build? Will we take this opportunity to transform the nature and politics of the Democratic Party and America? Will we place our stamp on it?
It won't be easy or simple. This new phase of the struggle has just begun. The ruling class still holds unchallenged state power, but their system is failing, its ideology discredited, the people are suffering and angry and the situation is extremely fluid. No one knows how far the people can take Obama with the force of this mass movement he has conjured into being. We can't doubt that the "centrists" and indeed Obama himself will try to bend this movement to their purposes. But make no mistake, this movement will be made up of people who really need the change they voted for and are well started down the path of shedding their illusions. It won't take the place of other movements, but could combine and focus their power. It will have a life of its own, and where it will lead is unknown.
The future is not written. The people will write it.
My suggestion: let's discuss this urgently, check in with our bases and then sign up for these "Change is Coming" meetings!
Peace,
Chris Horton
Worcester, MA
Sioux Rose
CHRIS HORTON, optimist, you raise some valid points. A tidal wave is tough to stop after all.
Chris Horton,
your hope is like a flowering blossoming.
Let a thousand flowers blossom!
Together we will create change!
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can again!
I have faith in the power of unity.
Obama is our voice and we are his.
The People will decide the future.
Nope, Howard Dean did this sort of thing before Obama.
I think you're forgetting how grassroots political organizing is done. It's done by the base communicating to its public servant (not the other way around). This Obama communique looks more in the mold of a MoveOn.com-type funding and public relations exercise.
But good luck. Start by telling Obama to cease his war escalation plans.
-TIA
Our Lounge Act Tonight:
Rush Limbgnaw & the Anal Cysters
(of 'Sordid Losers' fame!)
On the Menu:
--Live-Select Option, Deepfried Revenge-chilled Roadkill...
($teaked Alaskuh, Turkey 'De-Cap' Jerky, My Pet Goat's Head Soup, Waterboarded Chickenhawk ['Marching-to-a-Difference-Dumber'] Drumstyx, Under-the-straight-talk-express Bus-toss-rollover, w/ soylent-green gravy & braised Toady-squeeze).
Open Bar includes: Joe-the-Plumber's Suckcess-pool 'SnakeWash' Hard-decider. . .[designate a driver after two glasses!)
Operation Just Deserts TBA
"Hi, I'm your Waitress Peggy" (Noonan--yes, there iS a possible-sprinkle of Eskimo in it but I remain no fan of Sarah Palin)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ekai/2554437610/in/pool-828437@N25
Glen Ford's article on Counterpunch about Obama is better.
This analysis leaves out a number of important points:
1) While the US had a long history of imperialism leading up to 1936, it was nothing compared to what exists now: more than 700 military facilities in more than 130 nations; a multi-trillion dollar annual military budget and fully militarized economic system that drains the nation of its wealth and creates massive long-term indebtedness; two major wars of occupation; a privatized military; et. al
2) We now have a quasi police state enabled by the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, expanded FISA laws and numerous presidential executive orders and directives that have rendered the Constitution and rule of law almost meaningless;
3) We lack populist leaders of the stature of Huey Long (as flawed as he was). In fact, there are few leaders of any kind to be found.
4) The US Congress abandoned its Constitutional responsibility long ago and "bipartisanship" has erased any notion of a multi-party or two-party representative governmental system.
This aint 1936.
But the most important flaw in this piece is the delusion that somehow a (nonexistent) "liberal" left can push to the left a "centrist, pragmatic" president-elect (who actually has espoused policies that are mainly center-right or even hard right, sometimes echoing the positions of his predecessor who still sits twiddling in the White House)to do things that he doesn't want to do by "outsmarting" the opposition with whom he has crawled into bed and who he represents.
You don't fool the free-marketeers. You out-organize them because their model is absolutely fundamentally flawed and is leading to the destruction of human life on this planet by wasting resources and lives, creating pollution and shifting productive human activity into destructive activity.
Good post, tj. Obama should also be reading the best analysts of the post-1945 world. The main thing anyone should have learned is that it is nonsense to talk about the "free market" and we can't reasonably ignore what our nation has become and the nature of corporate capitalism in its clear, depressing, and culturally stultifying development since the time of FDR.
Unfortunately, Obama would then have to read the best and most thoroughgoing critics of capitalism...something that is apparently still verboten (at least to talk about).
He still looks like a man who wants find ways to avoid the inevitable conclusions (like most citizens, which undoubtedly accounts for much of his popularity.)
Right, tj. We've heard this FDR meme throughout the campaign, but of course socialism was quite a strong force back in that time. It's still true today that socialists turn out for the demos, and sometimes you get Democrats.
Still, this isn't 1936, and these folks who sling this FDR narrative don't sound like community organizers to me. They seem to have no plan to achieve their push.
The Bush administration successfully ignored the antiwar protesters for nearly eight years. I expect the Obama administration, with its war plans, to do much the same.
-TIA
Here is my very little locust plan (VLLP)
Call for national debate about peace, specifically how to end the 'war on terror'.
Bring America back to peace, Mr. Obama.
Anything that progressives hope for is stymied by the paradigm of 'America, a nation at war'.
Bringing troops home from Iraq? Can't, because troops have to stay to fight 'terrorism'. Same with Afghanistan.
tj's no. 2 above, the loss of freedoms and rights? national security trumps everything, because America considers itself at war, at least the military and government do, even if many Americans aren't involved.
And I say call for nationwide debate now, before Xmas season madness and inauguration madness and the 'new president honeymoon' come to distract America. After that, the fighting over the 2010 census and redistricting will start.
Now is the time for our winter's discontent to reach the ears of Obama, who says that he will lead where the public make him lead.
In a few years we will be killing members of al-Qaeda who weren't born yet when 9-11 occurred. Will this war last forever or can the American people stop it, since the politicians won't and the military can't?
Please understand that I am in no way supportive of George Bush's immoral war in Iraq which was started on lies from day one. I support the call for peace and the search for true peace for all on this planet.
But I do have a question.
We have done so much and gone so far in our meddlesome, imperialistic, ill-mannered treatment of other countries, especially those in the Muslim Middle East, do you think we could have peace even if we were really trying to have it? What I am saying is this -- there are people who are not so ready to "forgive and forget" and move on into a peaceful situation in the world. By killing their families and destroying their cities, we have probably insured a new generation of bitter, angry, and vengeful young men who will stop at nothing to get some revenge for what we have done to them. How can we expect peace now that we have crossed this line? Thank you, George Bush and your cronies.
Secondly, the Muslim religion is a religion of war. It is spread by the sword. Even the most cursory reading of their history will show this. When they weren't killing each other in tribal wars, they turned on the countries surrounding them with a ferocity worthy of the devil. It was, and still is to this day, "Convert or die."
How can we make peace with this mindset?
We do not see the Imams calling for an end to this violence. They tell us they are for peace, but we do not see them trying to rein in their people.
I have a feeling that we have seen the last of peace for a long, long time.
Faithful Catholic -- There is something to what you say, but the generalization about history of Islam is in error. The Muslim empires were tolerant to religious minorities...remarkably so.
Good points, Faithful Catholic.
"How can we make peace with this mindset?"
Maybe we can't. But we can try.
From my study of scripture, I have to say you are quite correct, that while Christianity is a religion that teaches peace, the Muslim religion is a religion of war. Indeed, "kill the infidels" is a far cry from "turn the other cheek".
But keep in mind that Christianity has had hundreds of years where it has evolved, and has been interpreted differently, and also that it is now practiced in democratic societies where people can freely discuss different theological views. This never existed in the Muslim world because there are no Muslim democracies (and there never was). Unlike Christianity, Islam is a religion in suspended animation. I have a feeling that as the ME becomes more westernized, and as we manage to turn them on to democracy, the Islamic world will become more open to modernizing their religion. I'm sure there are many Muslims who wish their religion could be more flexible, more like American-style Christianity, but are unable to express this because of the societies they live in.
On the other hand, it's hard to argue that Islam is any worse of a threat than atheism. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were all atheists, not Islamists. So if we could handle them, then we can handle some Muslim extremists. (No disrespect to my atheist or Islamic friends! I am only referring to "extremists" :)
Off topic, I suppose...
CD -- Is there some vapidity threshold beyond which comments are unacceptable?
All the big monotheistic religions could be forgotten, IMO, with benefit to the world, but this ignorant baby talk about Islam is degrading to Muslims.
Maybe Joe Vapid should confront his "Islamic friends" with this bullshit.
The first people to say, "Kill the infidels" were Christians and the word "infidel" is of European origin. The Koran speaks of making war upon pagans in the same way that the Old Testament speaks of war on the Philistines and Canaanites. It means about the same thing. Mohammad also speaks of any harm being done to others who are not at war with Islam as harm being done to himself.
The Muslim empires, as I stated in the previous post, were tolerant of other religions within their bounds - much more tolerant than contemporaneous Christian nations and empires.
In terms of violence, what the Koran does state explicitly is that those who make war on Islam must be dealt with in an "eye-for-an-eye" fashion but that peace is good. If we interpret that to mean they "hate our freedoms" or want, simplistically, to "kill the infidel"; well, I guess we might as well give up any kind of rational thought and plug ourselves permanently into the tube.
Where is this great evolution of Christianity? I seems to me that it's been a distinct devolution from early Christianity.
I wonder, Joe, if you think the murder of a million or so Iraqis and stealing their resources qualifies as a manifestation of Christian charity. Do you think our policies are derived from the principles enunciated by Christ? What do you consider "modernization of religion" and how does it relate to global capitalism? I just want to hear your views more specifically on what "westernization" means to the world because I would like know if there is any substance under the lollipop and pop sickle stuff you generally post.
!?!?!?!
I live in a Muslim democracy. Most Muslims live in democracies (I think. It is about 50%.)
People never seem to tire of these lies.
> Secondly, the Muslim religion is a religion of war. It is spread by the sword. Even the most cursory reading of their history will show this. When they weren't killing each other in tribal wars, they turned on the countries surrounding them with a ferocity worthy of the devil. It was, and still is to this day, "Convert or die."
Nonsense.
Among other things, the Koran states that "there shall be no compulsion in religion." Christianity has done a lot more converting by the sword and has a much richer history of violence than does Islam.
But that was a long time ago. One thing is for sure, the 20th century was a hell of lot more peaceful for the Islamic world than it was for the Christian, what with WWI, WWII, etc.
Finally, I live in a Muslim country and there is a heck of a lot less violence than there is in the US. Americans love violence. Just turn on a TV. I like it a lot better here.
This same discussion has been held, here, not so long ago, with the same guy. He doesn't want to think about history in re Christianity. Mr. FC has two themes: stereotypes about Muslims and antiabortion. And, with the most delicious irony: in his posting comments under the article about ordaining women priests, his placing women lower than men is parallel to fundamentalists of many other religions.
Only a cursory reading of history would show Islam is a religion of war. I suggest you do a lot more in-depth study before leaping to conclusions about any particular religion.
Looks more like the US is unwilling to "forgive and forget" ....
or its imperialistic ways -- or its wars for oil.
Look at the history of this nation--!!!!
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
"I'm not heartened or motivated by the injunction that the American public doesn't respond well to rational argument and observation of reality, but rather needs comforting rhetoric appealing to their sense of "tradition" to get them on the train moving in the right direction."
I'm not heartened by it either, but that seems to be the way it works.
Many wasted hours on Usenet convince me that the average man doesn't have a clue and responds only to emotion.
Hmmm...the denial is strong in this One (said out loud in my best Yoda voice). Poor Ira, still trying to turn lemons into lemonade. What I hear from the very beginning of this article is that a shrewd President will go as far 'left' as necessary in order to maintain the fundamentally unjust structure of our economic system. And this is a good thing? I agree with 'yohocoma,' the answer is an educated populace. With this, we can have a better democracy and more equal society and not have to engage in the 'settling for less' ideas that I always hear from the Professor. The Truth will set us free...not learning to play manipulative political games in order to make small gains.
Yes, I think you've got it. Chernus is advocating deception in order to maintain capitalism and "stability," whatever that may mean. This attitude is very close to the Leo Straus ideals held by Bushites and neoconservatives.
-TIA
I agree with most of Ira Chernus' approach to how Barack Obama should govern from the left by cloaking a progressive policy agenda in traditional American political narrative, like FDR "moved an agenda that, in 1932 sounded radical indeed into the respectable center of American politics four years later...."
I vigorously object, however, to his grandiose claim that "A fundamental mistake that radicals and antiwar protestors made in th 1960's was to sew the flag to the seat of their pants, rather than carrying it high and proud at the front of every protest march...... Instead, they helped get their polical views firmly entrenched in the mainstream media - and the public mind - as symbols of anti-Americanism and a threat to every kind of cultural stability."
This is self-loathing, historical revisionist horseshit.
First, there were plenty of American flags waved at the head of the parade, in the middle, and bringing up the rear. Some flags were displayed upside down. A few even got burned. It is patently false to generalize in this fashion, and impute anti-patriotism as some sort of "mistaken" tactical choice made by the peace movement as a whole. Many individual protestors, and many antiwar groups (like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for instance) took pains to depict peace as patriotic. Many other folks taking part in antiwar demonstrations wore religion rather than flags on their sleeves. That is simply the nature of a mass movement taking place in the streets that celebrates its own diversity.
Second, the entrenchment of this stereotype into the public mind was indeed a product of the mass media's focus - a focus consciously encouraged and exploited by the blatant demagoguery of politicians like Nixon, Agnew, Wallace, Reagan, and others who wanted to play the treason card, divide the Democratic Party base, and cynically pander for the red-white-and-blue hardhat vote. The fact that right wing GOP spinmeisters thought it was expedient to haul out this old canard and wave Bill Ayers' bloody shirt as recently as the 2008 presidential campaign should not be confused with the broad accusation of antiwar anti-patriotism having real historical accuracy. Cogent and conscientious commentators like Ira Chernus should not so casually perpetuate such incendiary myths.
Third, it's a real jump to go from a demand to bring the troops home, to being labeled a threat to all forms of cultural stability. Yes, the hippies and the yippies and the bra burners and the angry black power advocates and the Marxists and the dope smoking, anything-goes long haired nihilists did scare the Bejeezus out of the self-proclaimed greatest generation for awhile. Get over it.
Dwight Eisenhower candidly warned it was the military-industrial complex that was the chief threat to traditional American values. John Kennedy spoke openly in his inaugural address about the goals of total nuclear disarmament, world peace through respect for international law, and the outright elimination of poverty. Today, contemporary American political figures who stand up or speak up for these same simple ideals get derisively branded naive wimps or sinister social redistributionists.
Maybe Barack should revisit the early 60's and late 50's on the way back towards fathoming out the lessons to be learned from his favorite hundred days of FDR.
Bill from Saginaw
One thing I am afraid of is this: when the Revolution comes and the people of this country take it from the ruling elite, those of us who don't support abortion are going to be lumped together with those capitalist elites who are busily stealing from the people and destroying as much of this country as they can.
It won't matter if we have worked against the war in Iraq, supported policies which help the environment, or even voted for certain liberals because they were better than the conservative scum the Republicrats keep tossing at us. No, the only thing that will matter is that we don't see the morality of being allowed to kill innocent unborn children -- and for that I expect to die some day at the hands of the new government.
It will be, in a sense, just an exchange of one terror for another.
Don't believe it? Some of the comments I get on this board show me that some of the people here would love nothing better than to get me in a dark alley with a baseball bat for 5 minutes.
Faithful Catholic: I'm nonviolent. I am surprised that you are single issue, antiabortion. Were you neutral on the subject before you converted to Catholicism? I am curious. (I am a woman and it's my uterus, my choice. I won't argue the issue.)
A "faithful Catholic" is certainly no revolutionary but someone who
needs a Pope to tell them what to do, regardless that Papal appointees
studied church policy and its impact on Catholics and advised the Pope
to end the ban on birth control.
Pope John XXII ALSO told Catholics to use their own personal consciences to
decide for themselves whether to use birth control.
Take a true look at the world we live in; you are not protecting innocent
life -- you are killing women.
This church patriarchy continues it's 2,000 year war on women, with a Vatican
which continues to refuse to acknowledge the full personhood of females as
it acknowledges the full personhood of males.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Since you don't support abortion, is it safe to assume you support education and prevention? That's the only way you'll ever put a dent in the numbers of abortions performed each year, legal or illegal.
I don't want to beat you with a ballbat, but I'd like to know what's so moral about forcing women to bear children they don't want and can't care for. What's moral about forcing this uncertain, increasingly dangerous world on an innocent child?
Ira used to write some insightful stuff. Now he is quite unimaginative and mainstream. It is sad.
Chernus writes:
"The overriding problem for progressives is that so many voters will reject a candidate or a movement promoting this kind of progressive platform, even though they agree individually with most of that candidate's or that movement's policy positions."
This is psychological Jujitsu taken to an extreme. It's plain nuts.
Anyway, Chernus thinks that it is necessary to deceive the the people with the aim of butressing capitalism and preserving "stability." Most people recognize those positions as consistent with the philosophy of Leo Strauss and the neoconservative assholes who did those very things during the Bush administration.
-TIA
Then unemployment rose to 19% in 1938. GNP also fell, despite debasing the unit of count and counting warships that waste tens of thousands of tons of steal and enhance nobody's standards of living as positive GNP contributors as opposed to the waste that they were.
By 1934, new labor organizations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations, charismatic leaders like Louisiana's Governor Huey Long, and social innovators like California physician Francis Townsend were offering concrete plans to spread the wealth far faster and wider than Roosevelt's New Deal ever would. Continuing economic catastrophe, fused with the mood of hope and change that he himself had stirred up, gave rise to the threat that the president might be unseated if he did not move leftwards.
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If Huey Long or Townsend were alive today they'd be virtually censored from media that reaches the masses.
If by chance their message did find its way to the public they'd be viciously SMEARED and DESTROYED by the corporatists and their agents of propaganda on over 1000 radio stations, tv stations and placed prominently in country's major newspapers.
We had several candidates for President who tried to communicate populist ideas to the public: Kucinich, Nader, McKinney, Gravel etc. Each of these candidates was either SILENCED and/or RIDICULED. Even Ron Paul, who was able to raise more money than virtually every other Republican could only get an iota of time on the mass media.
President Obama will not have to deal with a modern day Huey Long. His accomplices in the media will make damn sure of that.
Jeevee
Sadly, we get what we deserve. "Serve the devil and you remain his captive."
Americans are too much in love with riches and complacency and luxury to turn out in dominant numbers to vote for any of the Truth-tellers: e.g. Kucinich, Nader.
Jeevee
p.s. Example: The struggle to celebrate "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas" by stuffing food & stockings, and BUY-ing, rather than giving true car; spending that money toward the relieving of the misery for at least a billion humans without clean drinking water, let alone giving the dispossessed a chance to live in dignity with adequate unpolluted food, air and housing. And an honest determination to stop shattering their lives with warfare...
How many of us are striving to LIVE up to our spiritual convictions??