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The Age of Ennui
Watching the British electorate in action (inaction?) during this campaign cycle I'm reminded of... well, the American electorate.
This is nothing new. There's been enormous parallels between the two countries for decades now, even if the timing of that link has gotten a bit skewed of late.
Trading back and forth between two centrist parties in the first post-war decades, in both countries the center-left party, exhausted in spirit if not ideas, had its head handed to it at the end of the 1970s by the center-right party. Only now that starboard party was under the leadership of the radical right - in Britain Margaret Thatcher, and in the US her ideological soul-mate, Ronald Reagan. They governed for a decade and bloody well wore out their welcome (notwithstanding the regressive hagiography of Reagan since he left office, their attempt to turn him into latter day deity).
Then, in the election
which followed (1988 in the US and 1992 in the UK), the watered-down
version of the far-right candidate (John Major and Bush the Elder) somehow,
surprisingly, managed to thrash out the weakest imaginable endorsement
and hold the keys to government for another term. After that came
the other party with an even weaker version of the same politics.
Just as Thatcher and Reagan were like peas in a pod, and just as Major
and HW were nothingburger clones, so too the backward and oleaginous
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were twin sons of different mothers.
Now it looks like Britain may be getting its barely-endorsed ‘compassionate
conservative' to match our George W. Bush, in the form of the polished-up-to-seem-less-
Looking at the two polities, only three things seem terribly clear:
First, in these confused political times, people don't really know what they want.
Second, except that they definitely want everything.
And, third, no single item on the menu of political parties looks terribly appetizing.
Oh, and one other thing: there's that small matter of gross incompetence at voting stations (taking the most benign interpretation).
Nor are these tendencies, in their broadest sense, hugely different from other Western democracies. It's the Age of Ennui, really. Nothing seems to be working, and no solutions seem to be on the horizon. To be honest, the moment feels considerably volatile - well beyond the scale of the hardly insubstantial problems facing these societies and the planet as a whole.
People are simultaneously looking for societal change, and yet desperately holding on to the status quo. People are simultaneously hungry for different party choices, and yet continuing to vote for the existing bums in office. People are simultaneously hungry for something very different in politics, and yet clinging on to the same old same-old.
In the UK, it looked
for a while like they just might get a bit of some real shake-up, both
small and large. The biggest development of this election cycle
was the introduction of US-style televised debates, and the biggest
product of that, at least initially, was that the leader of the half-party
Liberal Democrats, who was allowed to share the stage with the Big Two,
knocked them both sideways with his "they're-endlessly-petty-and-
Were the Liberal Democrats to come to power as junior partners in a coalition government, owing to the failure of either Labour or the Tories to win an outright majority of seats in Parliament, that alone would only represent minor change. Politically, there is little about the party that is remarkably different from the two majors. And that's before they get into government, when the drill is to promise the world. Imagine what it would be like afterwards, when instead it's all about figuring out ways to not deliver on your promises.
The big potential change entailed in these dynamics, however, would revolve around what the Lib-Dems, acting as king-makers, might extract from either other party in exchange for forming a coalition that would allow one of them to govern. Presumably, that price would be a change in - or at least a referendum on the question of - the country's electoral system. Like the US, Britain uses a district system to choose members of the national legislature. And like the US (though not as severely), this results in a huge obstacle for third parties to ever gain traction, and makes it almost impossible for them to ever govern. (The reason is basically mathematical. Unless we're talking about regional ethnic parties, as in Scotland or Wales (but not in the US), third parties could theoretically win a whopping 25 or 30 percent of the vote nationally, but continue to come in second place in every district, and thus have minimal or even zero parliamentary representation).
The big change in the UK could entail the use of a proportional representation system to replace - or partially replace using a hybrid system - the district model. That could have very significant longer term repercussions with respect to the distribution of parties in the British Parliament, and the possibility for smaller ones to not only flourish, but perhaps even govern at some point.
None of that will happen in the US, however. First, because there is no significant third party to hold some other major party hostage in exchange for a restructuring of the national electoral system. But more importantly, because it would be far less relevant even if there were, since the executive branch of American government does not require any form of legislative majority to be elected. Such a system might work in determining the leadership of one or both houses of Congress, but the president - unlike the British prime minister - is elected entirely separately. If the US kept its Electoral College system, the only way third parties would matter is if no candidate hit the magic number and the parties then got into some serious horse-trading for electoral votes. And if we moved to a system of electing presidents directly, on the basis of winning a plurality of the popular vote, or even a majority run-off system, third parties would have little or no effect.
I'd love to see a lot more choice in America for voters, as an abstract principle, but before we get ourselves all worked up about what we're missing, it's worth reminding ourselves of what else we might also be missing, were we to move in this direction. Three not so happy other consequences come to mind.
First, it's worth asking who these third parties would be. They could be anybody, and they might be everybody (that is, there would surely be a number of them). But the sad truth in the US is that the serious alternative political energy in this country is generally either on the nutty-scary extreme right, or the libertarian right. In addition to the fact that a certain party led by a certain fellow named Hitler once rose to power via precisely these means in a certain country which then had similar regressive political tendencies, I think we can say with some assurance that a multiparty system in America is only going to tug the country's politics even further to the right. Much as it pains me to say it, if we did engineer a multiparty system, many progressives could wind up - after, say, Social Security and Medicare were chucked overboard in the name of small government - pining for the good old days of the two-party monopoly.
The Nazi analogy also reminds of a second liability of multiparty systems, which is that they tend to be less stable. In moderate doses, that's usually not a hugely bad thing. But in more severe cases, especially during times of duress (like, well, now), it can be catastrophic. Another reason that the Nazis came to power is because voters got sick of a Weimar Republic where governments hardly lasted five minutes at a pop. That's bad enough ordinarily, but when the economic wheels are coming off the wagon, as they were then, the situation is enormously ripe for someone to come along promising to make the trains run on time. Sound like a familiar scenario? Again, for every bit as abysmal as Bush and Cheney were, we need to think carefully about what we wish for. History is quite emphatic in reminding us that it can get a lot, lot worse than that.
The third problem with reform of the party structure is that it is - like term limits and sundry constitutional amendment proposals - at some level just another attempt to avoid a serious reckoning with the hard work of seriously governing and being governed. Like I said, I'd like to see American voters have more choice in elections, especially because what they now have is just about zero. But I suspect for most people this electoral system reform project represents a quintessentially American quick-fix panacea to make the big ugly problem of not being able to have everything all at once just go away. And, therefore, people will only be disappointed to find that the problem doesn't go away. It might even get worse. And, worst of all, the notion of multiparty democracy could even get discredited by association, just as it in the Weimar case, or post-Soviet Russia.
The hard but profoundly simple truth is that Americans can't have giant tax cuts, substantial entitlement programs and a ridiculously bloated military all it once. It's called math, and it's just about as simple as a little basic addition and subtraction. (The alternative choice, by the way, goes by the name of voodoo economics.) But recognizing that and making the (seemingly) difficult choices involved is less appealing than searching for a magic bullet that can be achieved by showing up for a vote in a referendum. Then we can all go home, pop open a beer, watch the ball game and allow the government to take care of business for us.
Sorry, but that's a world that never was and never will be. And, indeed, never should be either. The real problem with American society is that we're supremely greedy, stupid and lazy when it comes to our politics and government. Most of us invest next to nothing in thinking about issues and voting intelligently, let alone other more robust forms of political participation. Heck, nearly half of us can't be bothered to show up and vote every four years.
There's no mystery here. People that disengaged are going to get precisely what they deserve when it comes to their government. It's like if you were raising your kids by popping your head into their lives once or twice a decade to check in, and then you're startled to find out that they've grown up to be disastrous little delinquents. What a surprise, eh?
The weirdest thing about our times is that the solution to so many of our problems are really astonishingly manifest, and would often involve little real sacrifice. America had actually found its way to many of those solutions during its mild experiment with progressive politics in the middle of the twentieth century, learning from the meltdown of regressive Hooverism which preceded it, and would have found more had it taken the right lessons from the subsequent Vietnam disaster. Unfortunately, we've essentially unlearned the former and never did get the latter.
But its really not that hard to get out from under the Atlas-sized burden we've piled on our own shoulders, if we wanted to. To wit, if we simply dramatically scaled down military spending and dramatically increased investment on alternative energy research and development, we could make a huge dent in our indebtedness, environmental, unemployment and foreign policy problems in one fell swoop, and with little cost in terms of dreaded change for most Americans. Few of us would have to give up the big flat-screen TVs or the reclining chair. We could still engorge our way into obesity and diabetes if we wanted to, and occasionally invade some little country full of brown people whenever our insecurities flared up to especially high levels. And yet we could still radically improve our lot in the meantime, with just these easy steps.
For the meanwhile, though, voters in the UK have given us a paradigmatic sampling of our political times. They don't know where to turn. They vaguely remember that letting the right have the keys to government is a prescription for disaster, but the so-called left has not only lost its nerve and purpose, it's lost its leftiness too. Hence an electorate all over the map in this week's election, and a hung parliament. Look for more of the same in America this November and again in 2010.
The great irony is that solutions are so close by. It's as if one crawled across the desert for ten days, only to die of thirst a hundred yards from an oasis.
Well, maybe that metaphor gives us too much credit.
Maybe it's more like dying of thirst sitting on your couch, because you got too lazy even to traipse over to the fridge to grab a Coors.
63 Comments so far
Show AllThank you, David Michael Green, for reminding us that Americans are too immature for democracy, and that real multiparty elections lead to Naziism and World War Two.
Right, I'm going to vote for the Greens in the next election to save us from Fascism.
I don't understand why you bothered to write this response. Lots of name calling on the basis that Green's analysis is poor and he should "be fired" and when it comes time to actually make the case against what he says, you can't be bothered. I can only conclude that you can't be bothered because you can't make the case.
Look, I disagree with Green on several things here and see him largely as a party hack with good intentions. That said, there's a decent discussion in here for the taking and your own hyperbolic post detracts from that possibility, much in the same vein of your accusation against Green.
To begin, Green's analysis of likely outcomes *right now* if we were to have a multiparty system that actually functioned is probably correct. The wacky right is far more politically organized, considerably more numerous, and much better funded than anything approaching the Left. They would, almost certainly, be the "kingmakers" in a proportional, parliamentary system and one can argue pretty confidently that they already are just that even in the duopoly.
I have no problem with his analysis on that end, as far as it goes. In short, he's making the more academic, less emotive doom and gloom electoral argument that Chris Hedges generally makes: that the system is probably hopelessly rigged and he's obviously not sure how to unrig it without addressing issues he's probably uncomfortable addressing (rebellion, political violence, balkanization, etc.)
My problem with Green (and other middle of the road political scientists) is that they short sell the amount of social engineering that goes into making Americans the worthless slobs he sees. In other words, would we be the same people if we could somehow find a way to break the cogs of thought control that constitute our media diets or religious consumption. I don't think we're intrinsically greedy, or intrinsically lazy, or any of these things. In yet other words, Green still focuses on electoral solutions--however faint--to problems that I don't think can be solved or dealt with through our electoral system at this time.
But that's not tantamount to idiocy or worthlessness, because he quite rightly blames much of our malaise on our own collective behavior.
There is no "line" crossed here--this is a pretty pedestrian piece. He doesn't do any additional damage to political activism than isn't already accomplished by the activist community themselves (with their relentless refusal to consider any action or thought not directly derived from the retarded sixties).
I'm going to rephrase the way I should have stated that sentence. That was my fault, so give me the opportunity to reslot a few words and their order. Try this on:
Our retarded, slavish devotion to the goals and tactics of the sixties. That's what I wanted to say and what I should have said, so you're right to call me out on that.
Now, I'm certain you'll object to even this rephrasing, since I'm moving the subject of the retardation from then to now, where it belongs (quite a bit belonged in the 60s, too, but that's not the point of my statement).
As in other forms of confrontation, parties in that confrontation adjust to the tactics and methods employed by their adversaries. One of the curses of the 60s--and I freely admit this is arguable (most interesting things are)--is the assumption that a) it was entirely non-violent on the part of the activist community (it was not) and b) that it was largely effective. A third assumption is that the 60s provided the *best* recipe for achieving social change, and I think that assumption is the most erroneous of all. In my view, the 60s largely failed.
The Right went back to the drawing board and figured out that what looked ferocious to them (and for many, it did, for just as many, it was laughable even then) was pretty much a paper tiger in terms of an authentic challenge to power. Most of the tactics--particular the action of demonstration--have long since become punchlines in national jokes. Where has the Left been when reevaluating its stategies and tactics? It's language?
The empire starts a war. We march. They crash the economy. We march. They torment migrant workers. We march. They cancel the Constitution in broad daylight. We march some more. They make fun of the marches. We march some more. Nothing changes, we get tired of marches. And here we are. Between the mid 60s--actually we should really start out at the beginning of the post-War push for civil rights and social change (the late 40s)--and now it would take an exceptionally gifted person to argue that progress is humming along. On some fronts, we're clearly better off (gender, for one). On others, we're probably worse off (race and class). And even the one area we're better off in is largely split along class and race lines, since people like me think the women's movement was largely a middle class phenomenon.
All this said, I don't mind provoking you and I don't mind you provoking me. I do wish that you'd drop the knee jerk bullshit about other peoples analytical abilities when you generally avoid demonstrating yours whenever you say those things.
I'll assume, btw, that the rest of my defense of Green was good enough to pass your crtical eye.
This all reminds of a saying that was current in the sixties, but is even more to the point today:There's no such thing as a leftist group that's too small to split into factions.In the sixties, at least, there was hope and momentum.Now there is neither, so have at it, powerless people.
I have to agree, adding if this is a word surrenderist. The world is going to pot if we don't stop everything now! No out of box thinking, with 8bln folk on this world if we stop cranking it literally stops. Leaving a s$#load of people dead.
I'm ashamed to see this is all the left can come up with, and call themselvs thinkers! Bosh!
Right-wingers at least know how to put on a show! look at all the folk we blowup shoot and burn for America's entertainment! as long as theres bread on the shelf and Good Enterainment on TV why change. Except we must!
So until somebody comes along who really wants to lead us into the future the rest is just so much talk.
Sioux Rose
Well, seems like when the A-team subversives are busy (off for the holiday?), the right sends in its B-team. The composite postings in their little group-fest all hold one thing in common: they smear thinkers and reinforce the false observation that there is no viability on the left. The false characterization of the 60s is also quite interesting. Today's screen names are mostly new ones, but it's the same old posters disguising their views (those directed at attacking persons in this forum) behind new monikers. What cowardice! The way you change your names like underwear, and then group together to pounce on a poster is a tactic typical of our military in its insistance on using its extreme weapons on unarmed populations. Proud of yourselves, are you? Did you earn your paycheck for the day? Big brother would be so proud.
"Well, seems like when the A-team subversives are busy (off for the holiday?), the right sends in its B-team." (Sioux Rose)
There is no basis for determining Team A and Team B aside from personal assumptions. Who is the right that sends in those teams? How do you know that there are only two teams that the right sends in? Links or other forms of proof or is it just your personal assumption?
"The composite postings in their little group-fest all hold one thing in common: they smear thinkers and reinforce the false observation that there is no viability on the left." (Sioux Rose)
Unless you are the moderator of this forum and unless you actually have concrete evidence for you to prove that they are a group, you are only making up assumptions based on your common disagreements with them.
"Today's screen names are mostly new ones, but it's the same old posters disguising their views (those directed at attacking persons in this forum) behind new monikers." (Sioux Rose)
Unless you are the moderator of this forum, you cannot possibly know for sure who is new and who is the same poster from before? Nobody attacked Visiting Professor personally.
"What cowardice! The way you change your names like underwear, and then group together to pounce on a poster is a tactic typical of our military in its insistance on using its extreme weapons on unarmed populations." (Sioux Rose)
The military only follows orders on who to attack, armed or unarmed. I served in the Navy before I retired so I know how the military works. Sign up and join the military before lying about it.
Why is it that the left splits?
I know "Tea Partiers" who have huge differences of political belief from the party line but would never think of publicly dissenting let alone leaving.
Maybe being united by a negative, which define the Utopian Tea Party policies, is stronger than being united by the positive policies of the left.
Every response I can think of would rightfully get me banned. I leave you to your little pond, big fish.
Final Score:
Visiting Prof. 0, drone 3.
drone: Thanks for your posts. I enjoyed them and found them insightful. The last sentence really, truly did turn my co-workers' heads as I laughed out loud.
I thought that Visiting Professor actually wrote far better. But then again, the US electorate has cornfed lame brains like you who will never bother to read let alone accept intelligent discussions such as Visiting Professor's. Having read the full discussion, I thought VP was actually being overly nice to drone in his attempt to straighten out some misunderstandings. Just what authority do you have to dictate some stupid game score anyway? Please grow up. Better yet, go get some real education outside of the US please !
Overly nice? Are you a serious person? That was one of the most unjustifiably patronizing and smarmy interactions I've ever had on here in any of my incarnations over the years.
Your hero wrote nothing until his final post and that product wound up being a misread of my own post when it wasn't a wholesale rewriting of my original response. In short, we largely wound up agreeing, which is no surprise since I disagreed with Green's thesis and said so. But I did it in my first post, not my third. I didn't get into it ith the Prof because of a specific case he made, I got into it because I thought his original post was an undeserved hysterical attack.
As for calling people lame brains, you may want to reevaluate your ability to judge talent. You may have picked up a bad habit or two from your friend.
For the record, I did not flag the Prof. I have nothing but contempt for those who use editorial superpowers to banish speech. I can see how a guy like VP can make enemies, but flagging comments is not the right way to make a point.
For Drifter, thanks for the support. Glad you had a chuckle at work! No better place for it.
For everyone else, I'm sorry the conversation got a little too personal. It should've been much better.
Well, if you hadn't put up that stupid judgmental scoreboard of yours, I wouldn't have felt pushed into calling you a lame brain. As for Visiting Professor, I read his posts on this thread carefully as well as yours and I thought that you jumped the gun. In the future, please try to be a little patient before rushing to judgment and then making a spectacle of yourself.
I am with the prof on this--er, I mean the visiting professor.
Professor, Nice to see that you can be politer. When DMG speaks about almost getting to the Oasis, the metaphor is of the Movement dying and the same for the Couch potato not making it to the refrigerator.
The point is that Dead is Dead: And that's what the Progressive movement appears to be
Yet Behold: That which is dead may be Reborn; and that makes all the difference.
"Were you my student, I would assign you to go..."
OMG. Do you really NOT know just how pompous you sound?
Sioux Rose
VISITING PROFESSOR: There are a few posters on this site who play tag team while attacking the designated target du jour. I thought DRONE did make one excellent point (apart from his attack on you) in the way of relating the social engineering at work in creating a placid population pool.
When someone has credentials and relates them, a few accuse said individual of being pompous, or otherwise attack them on the basis of their accomplishments! These same persons then generally falsely deduce that such attitudes or beliefs are the cause for dissolution in the Left.
There's so much anger and frustration being felt by most of us in part due to the many conditions that we see deteriorating around us. We are left feeling powerless apart from hoping to be effective role models. I know my frustration level is very high these days... and I watched Bill Maher at my boyfriend's house and was really glad to hear him say something to the effect of relating that just this week there was the oil spill, the stock market mini-crash, and then terrorist plot foiled. He concluded "WE are doing a good job of destroying ourselves without any help from the terrorists." And lately he's related that both parties are sold out and the US has become an empire.
Myth: There are a few posters on this site who play tag team while attacking the designated target du jour.
Fact: It cannot be determined who is playing tag team on the forum. Anyone who claims that there is a tag team going on against Visiting Professor is only lying unless the claim can be proven true by the alleger.
Myth: When someone has credentials and relates them, a few accuse said individual of being pompous, or otherwise attack them on the basis of their accomplishments!
Fact: Nobody on the forum has any known credentials unless their identity is verified. Who is "Visiting Professor"? Does he have a web site to show his credentials or accomplishments?
Professor:
Me thinks the Professor does to often have his third leg in his Mouth again.
Could you stop the Running on about Logic; when you 'Great Learned one of perfect grammar', can not take the time to Spin a Logical counter argument.
I know you remember the point of dialectic is to advance and improve Human Knowledge.
You must be a English Teacher strung out on correcting 'Run on sentences. You likely spent your time looking for the best place to put that comma rather pay attention to the meaning intended by the writer!
So open your ears now Mr. Pro Comma: What MDG is saying is that it will be difficult for Amerikan and English Progressives to build a 'Third Party' that will have a chance to advance the causes of-
Stopping the Wars, Wasting Amerikan and English Treasure on the MIC.
And stopping the onslaught of Environmental destruction by Greedy and selfish Capitalists.
And my last question to you is- Do I get a D or a F for misspelled Amerika?
"...if we simply dramatically scaled down military spending and dramatically increased investment on alternative energy research and development, we could make a huge dent in our indebtedness, environmental, unemployment and foreign policy problems in one fell swoop, and with LITTLE COST IN TERMS OF DREADED CHANGE for most Americans." (CAPS used for emphasis)
dmg goes on to state that we could go on to attack the odd, defenseless little brown-skinned country (an apparent hyperbolic animation of our "obese ways" vis-a-vis US foreign policy)...but is this not the reason why we find it "hard to get out from under the Atlas-sized burden we've piled on our own shoulders" in the first place?
IOW, we (USans) can have our cake (continue along the same diabetes-laden path) and eat it too (all-out alt energy "Race to the Moon" policy)!
I think not. Although I agree that solutions would often require "little real sacrifice," I'm arguing that it is just this manufactured, SOMA-induced, societal "ennui" that is preventing us from enacting sensible planet-saving policies. It's the same paradigm that's making us unwilling to give up our Lazy-Boy recliners. Change THAT meme, and the obvious real solutions will see the light of day.
Grammar 101:
The second paragraph of Professor Green's article reads as follows:
"There's been enormous parallels between the two countries for decades now, even if the timing of that link has gotten a bit skewed of late."
The word 'parallels' is in the plural, Mr. Green, and, as such, requires the plural of the verb that it commands, as follows:
"There have been enormous parallels..."
Et cetera...
Ya gata luv a gramarian. Or, too.
Somebody hasn't been to Europe to understand what conservatives in Europe are like compared to conservatives in America. Yes, the Tory Party in the UK stinks but compared to the Democratic Party in America, it is sadly better. Having been to Europe, I know that even most conservatives will have good reasons to vote for Tories unlike the cornfed electorate in America that votes 99% Republican/Democrat based on lame sound bites, phony polling, and all this "winnable" crap. If you want to know why a lot of Europe is creeping up a little conservative, let me educate you a little. First off, the leaders who were supposed to be left leaning in nature goofed off at some point and allowed Big Business to tickle them into slowly selling out. European voters, far more sensitive to such trickles, were outraged unlike the cornfed American electorate that never learns its lessons. The European conservative pols running for office are no doubt smart enough to cash in on the growing disaffection but they do so in a reasonable tone. They will promise sovereignty, freedom, localizing currency and moving away from the Euro, and some economic libertarian ideas but they will usually not go outside the boundaries of regulated capitalism. I cannot speak for every European nation but from what I experienced, socialism and regulated capitalism they love. What they fear is disaster capitalism taking over be it from very weak leaders who are supposedly left or obnoxious conservative leaders ready to let the disaster capitalist dogs in. The British will not lose their socialism all the way and they will properly adjust and get back stronger left-leaning leaders who are not lame brains like Tony Blair. If DMG is reading this, allow me to offer one suggestion. Please pay attention to America especially the failures of the Obama administration as the Bush/Cheney administration is becoming less relevant thanks to this administration. Since you say solutions are close by, stop trashing third parties as nobodies and give them a chance instead of acting like another lame brain apologist for the Democratic Party.
Visiting Professor, I am surprised to hear that. Even though I have been to Europe for two months, I still feel that there is more to EU politics than what I have learned and experienced. I am sure my relatives living there will write to me more on the details of EU politics from time to time now that I had a chance to see them for the first time in my life. Still, I feel like wanting to go back for another longer visit but at the same time, I feel like saving the country I grew up in all my life. Plus, I feel more interested in being one of those continuing to fight for small and local so that I can stop being jealous or Europe being ahead of us. Of course, I will have to let you know that not everything is rosy in Europe either but for now, it is a lot better there than here. I think Professor DMG ought to be made to stay in Europe for at least a year and then allowed to write again. You should take his place for what it is worth, possibly permanently. :)
P.S.: Pleased to meet you. :)
About 80% of the people I talk with about politics are uninformed and uninterested in politics. In vague terms they want the corporations curbed, but don't believe it can be done. They dislike and distrust politicians, but are afraid to take the step of refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils.
I believe things will have to get much worse before people are willing to rock the boat. That may come.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
As John Lennon sang: "You say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world."
Change is difficult. Change is challenging.
Change, especially political/social change, is frequently bloody and fatal.
No one has the intestinal fortitude anymore to face what actual change would entail. No one wants to give up their toys and pleasures. No one wants the personal responsibility.
We have a society of risk averse cowards ruled by psychopaths.
And things will only get worse, much worse, before they get anywhere close to fractionally tolerable.
"People are simultaneously looking for societal change, and yet desperately holding on to the status quo."
In the case of the USA, people DID vote for the longed-for changes they were offered by Obama, they did so in all good faith - they believed they were getting away from the status quo - and look what happened! They were duped.
Is there any wonder that people on the other side of the Atlantic thought twice about voting in greater numbers for the Lib/Dems, who offered the kind of change Obama had promised us ? They must have watched events here with interest and become wary of liberals bearing gifts.
I don't know in a way the fronting of Obama was brilliant! for the Republicians! and as long as Rush and Beck can get away with calling Obomber a Left-Winger the more run to the Repubrat side.
A true left candidate hes no more chance than a Libertarian Candidate. All the hot-air we've been fed about Healthcare Reform then were given a Fiat to allow Insurance Co's carde Blanche to treat us in anyway they want. I'm afraid the Energy Bill will take that same vent. taxing us for any and all energy use including breathing. then the Big Oil / Coal giants will be allowed to do anythin charge anything forever, possibily taking your home if they belive theres oil under it.
No Thanks! this is not left nothing!
Ameranglo;An interesting view and in some media the Lib/Dems and Obama were being seen as alike.Tony
Silly me, I listened to Obama and checked his voting record and saw that there wasn't any change to be had.
The media influenced the so-called liberals into thinking he was their hope.
Wish I'd done the same - I will not be so naive next time!
I do think Professor DMG is wrong when he writes that people cling to the status quo though. Naive as they might have been in 2008, they voted for change.
Trouble is, we'll never (or not in my lifetime) have the chance to vote for a candidate who would deliver what he preaches. The corporations would never allow it to happen. I realise how the game is played now.
Faux Green empirePie
Bored by the tediousness of a bought cynic?
Get yourself to the entitlement clinic;
where your labor is all Hoovered by the status quo,
where the solute is an endangered state,
and hate is baited with your fate.
Drone, you said: There is no "line" crossed here--this is a pretty pedestrian piece. He doesn't do any additional damage to political activism than isn't already accomplished by the activist community themselves (with their relentless refusal to consider any action or thought not directly derived from the retarded sixties).
Wow, buddy, i thought your piece intelligent until the last
paragraph. Blame it on the 60's. The 60's, you idiot was when
America started to wake up to the ultimate bullshit lie that the material world is all that is important. The lie, coined by Vince Lombardi and hijacked by neocons is that winning is everything, blah, blah, blah.
Seriously, have you ever thought of a career change. Maybe join the propaganda teams, a.k.a., the dnc/rnc. But then again, there is the old saying that "if you remember the 60's, you probably weren't there. Where were you drone in the 60's? Get over your victimhood and then maybe you'll rediscover your real power.
Let me get this straight: you were with me until the last paragraph, and I get demoted from smart to stupid so quickly? You must have very volatile standards..:)
You should have put this response in the proper thread. My response to the "dumbass" accusation is there.
The rest of the insult fest can lie where it is.
Sioux Rose
RANDOLFSKI: Believe it or not I have this debate with a professional colleague (astrologer) who blames EVERYTHING on the generation born l939-l956 (the one that has Pluto in Leo). She is convinced this group is only out for personal advantage, thinks they all turned from 60's free love into Wall ST investing. I think it's ridiculous to paint with such a broad stroke (an entire generation embodied under one rubric or belief system) in the first place; but secondly, I find her characterization blind and not that different from something Bill O'Reilly would tout.
Buzz Meyers was a very popular astrologer. We are able to see much, but no one gets to "see" it all. Thus he did not see his own death coming, and indeed came to an abrupt "stop" in the middle of a lecture. (Exit doing your thing!) He spoke of a new kind of air pollution associated with Neptune's transit of the sign of Aquarius (l998-2012). He is now deceased, but I'd alter his prediction to indicate instead the pollution of the public's air waves through massive deceptions. It runs parallel with the biogenetic adulteration of agriculture. In both cases it is next to impossible to separate the genuine from its manufactured faux equivalent. We are operating in a web of deception, like bats, echo-navigating in virtual darkness. (This same analogy also works for the fiscal faux derivative product, its essence the ABSENCE of viable product, yet traded as thus throughout global financial networks to the tune of many trillions. How to separate THAT deception from the things that hold real worth?)
How then to benefit from that "Truth that would set them free," when most are now incapable of realizing IT in the first place?
Sitting with the talking heads the other day, Bill Maher noted that both parties favored war in the Middle East and offshore drilling, and he wanted to know where his party was located, who were his representatives in the halls of power? If the left can't get organized to field a candidate then I guess we'll just continue to sit outside the political process. Ennui indeed. Every likely candidate in 2010 and future elections to whom I could give my support believes and speaks things that are mind numbing abominations to me. No sane persons need apply for these jobs. I am neither apathetic nor opposed the the idea of free elections. but without a dog in the fight I'm not going to waste gasoline driving to the polls. If our choices have boiled down to stupid, vicious, corrupt or clinically paranoid, guess I'll stay home.
Prof Green may be correct that more parties would only empower the right. But the right looks like they're headed that way anyhow. You'd have to be insane to be optimistic about getting a progressive hand on the tiller of this ship of fools. I'll settle for a place on the ballot. Ralph Nader, a dotty, ineffective crank who would probably make a disastrous president, has had my vote for the last three elections by virtue of speaking up for what I believe. I hope he continues to run purely so that I can walk out the the voting booth feeling clean with myself. And when the results are posted it's good to know I'm among the 1% of the American electorate who still have the balls to vote for what we want. Lacking any other movement among ourselves, it looks like that's the best we can hope for.
In a real democratic republic, multiple parties aid in getting more people represented. Germany has a system in which if reds, blues and greens get 33% of the votes, then they each get 33% of the representatives.
But the sad reality in the u.s. is that the whole system is a corrupt ruse.
Considering the fact that perpetual war + global warming + economic meltdown = doomsday, why is it that progressives cling to our progress challenged electoral system and related fixtures of the status quo? Isn't it obvious by now that nothing less than a turnabout can avert the unthinkable. What's more, given that time's running out, said turnabout must take place within at most a couple decades, which is tantamount, figuratively speaking, to an increase in the rate of societal change from its present-day snail-pace to almost the speed of light. How will this happen? Once again, given the time restraints, there's only one possible way, mass popular uprisings in pursuit of a better world. Otherwise? Otherwise whose child or grandchild will it be that'll end up having to answer the call, "Will the last one out please turn off the lights?" Could be yours, could be mine.
For a political science professor, DMG is quite myopic, but perhaps no more than his counterparts in other academic fields here in the "Good ol USA".
DMG doesn't want to, but he has to connect the dots between his field of political science and the most fundamental of social sciences: Human nature. Then he will see that the solution for public policy is the same as the solution for economics and everything else: Mass self-determination.
This means DMG should be promoting mass self-determination, which results in societies built from the ground up, with public policies and markets and everything else serving the true needs of the people.
Actually thats a real problem. We practice Mass Self-Determination everyday, when we get in our big SUV's to shop at Wal-Mart, go hame to cookie cutter homes and sit down to watch Dancing with the stars.
Meanwhile the Leadership Case goes off doing whatever pleases them totally disconnected from any true feedback telling them if decisions are right or wrong. As in the case of the TARP Congress was buried in Mail, Phone calls, E-mails saying NO then turned around and handed the banksters $700+ billion dollars. Why should they care it's not their money? it's not like a crowd with torches and pitchforks are gonna be kicking down their doors demanding Justice.
As long as we have this total disconnect were screwed.
"Why should they care it's not their money?"
Unfortunately, some of the 700 big ones does end up in their pockets.
That's why they do it.
What is an Ad hominem?
"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."
--William Shakespeare, Measure for measure.
“It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting."
--H.L. Mencken
Ennui isn't it. It's not boredom or tediousness. It's pull your head inside your shell and take no risks internalized fear of losing a capitalist economic model that provides special goodies that will go away if we all get serious about the environment, economic fairness and social justice.
Vote your conscience. It seems Mr. Green is a progressive liberal capitalist. There's no going back to past good times. There's no reform for this corrupt system.
Sioux Rose
I got halfway through and had to respond. (I'll finish the article after).
David Michael Green makes a number of astoundingly stupid or naive presumptions.
#1 That the political choices offered actually represent what the public wants (in either nation). It's abundantly clear that no one without millions in their own pockets, or otherwise millions "generously donated" by special interests is going to get enough press time or media time to be seen as a viable candidate, no less "winner" in a national election.
2. Who controls the press/media controls public opinion. There have been lots of studies done (with lots of money invested), research projects designed to determine how to use words (framing), or images (subliminal advertising) to mold public opinion. The fact that something like 70% of US citizens were LED TO BELIEVE (via media's use of generals and other "expert" witnesses) that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is proof positive of the levels of disinformation purposely clouding the minds of American (and likely British) citizens.
I am tired of educated leaders blaming the public when the MACHINERY OF STATE has been utterly corrupted. Between the lies passing for truths and the lack of meaningful engagement, those voices that DO have the best solutions are by turns: marginalized, humiliated, sued for being whistleblowers, or otherwise destroyed when not silenced.
We are not talking about fair politics or economics, or the remotest premise of a level playing field in operation.
I believe there is grounds for a lawsuit, not unlike the concept that prompted the colonists to rebel against the British crown. It comes down to this: power has been illegitimately gotten. Sure, all the appearances of elections are still in place, but the behind-the-scenes chicanery renders these frauds. Our Supreme Court, that is, at least several members have been selected by those fraudulently elected... it began with the bloodless coup that placed Bush-the-lesser into office. Obama's entire platform has been negated by his actual actions. When a candidate lies more than once about a position, that candidate should be impeached... especially when THAT candidate grants immunity to the lawless acts of his predecessor.
Power is not legitimate!
Those who hold high office have betrayed The Constitution, The rule of Law, Habeas Corpus, and any semblance of a separation between big business interests and those of the citizenry. Between illegal wars of aggression, the fraud of bailing banks that are yet to be regulated, to the awful energy policies. All of these are of profound injury to citizens. It's not that there aren't voices that see what's going on and wish to do other. They are not given any media clout or air time! The public is left with two dismal choices, or otherwise told it's throwing their vote away to vote for "the 3rd party" longshot.
By using terror campaigns against alleged enemies outside (the numbers of this group must be growing given the brutality and senselessness of US foreign policy, its military campaign, as well as its premier weapon of mass financial destruction: the derivative, ployed as "investment") the REAL culprits to the massive breakdown of our society enjoy impunity as their deeds continue on course. When an outside (Muslim) enemy is not sufficient, they can drum up anger at the local brown skinned "illegal aliens."
A true and intelligent leader would recognize that it is PAST time to push an agenda of conservation while investing massively in alternative energies. The OIL addiction is fueling the death of more than a million (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and onward) while murdering aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Like the drunk driver who continues to get behind the wheel under the influence, even after he's killed several in vehicular accidents, those running our nation's policies are acting as that moral equivalent. They are guilty of treason. Law is being trampled, established principles are being treated like used toilet paper, and the ideals behind this nation's founding intention (apologies to the Indigenous, women, and Blacks held in slavery) have been dismissed. It's all about money for a few with the muscle of Mars rules/military to back these falacious claims.
When populations are not told the truth, tried and true disinformation devices are used instead to manufacture opinions, atop many poorly educated, and lots more struggling to meet the rising tide of expenses against the shrinking returns on their labors (and likely investments)... then blaming THAT group for the choice of politicans "on the menu" is ridiculous. We might also add that quite a few are under a religion-based thrall that carries marked delusions of its own. Awakened citizens must feel like those inside the asylum for whom the usual drugs didn't work. It is very painful to wake up and realize why and how it is that so many remain under THE influence. Almost makes one want to go back to sleep and pray for End Times.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Good post. It's sad and annoying to see people like Green go into old status quo Duopoly apologist mode in the months leading up to an election.
To SIOUX ROSE
Sublime post as usual SIOUX ROSE where ever & what ever you are stick around it is time to evolve & in the words of Judy Garland NO THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FORM US.
There will be no new order. The beast is shaking its tentacles its only dead nerves we see Japan South/Latin America, Africa, Americans its own people, wants out billions of people want OUT out of the construct.
Time to leave the books & dismantle the construct intuitively.
The criminal element is no longer invisible.
IT was a visual bliss to see judges allowing corporation to buy their own president, the final curtain at last. Time for people to go on stage, we may just have a different story. I know there is fox and cnn, they are fading away in the horizons just like a bad dream. We are the media.It won't be painless but there is nothing else I would rather do.
Take Care
In Soulidarity.
"I know there is fox and cnn, they are fading away in the horizons just like a bad dream."
You must be joking but if you really think that is about to happen, you have no idea about the American electorate. The Faux Noise crowd thanks to Barry's caving in to the GOP keeps getting stronger and the remaining Obamabots and Democrat Party apologists are trying to keep CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc... in their column. Besides, America is not Europe where people would actually use their minds to compare what is being reported to reality and see who is lying and who isn't. Here in the US, the few of us who are like the Europeans are persecuted so don't think that we are out of this bad dream. We are entering the next Greater Depression no matter what we are doing to deny ourselves of that truth. The only question is how we will be able to pull out of it and no amount of war spending behind our backs will do the trick either.
"We are the media.It won't be painless but there is nothing else I would rather do. "
The American electorate may be too cornfed to step away from the media but that doesn't make us the media.
Sioux Rose
LIBERTUS: Thank you for such flattering words... I needed it after a few battle zones on these threads. Whoa!