Deep Analysis: The Emergence of the "New Republican" Party

I have taken a step back from all this "civil war" stuff
and tried to analyze it in some historical depth. I don't
know if I buy my own conclusions, but its what comes
out of the analysis.

Can't we please have an INTELLIGENT discussion of
what the heck is going on?

I have put on three layers of asbestos underwear and a Nomex
suit. Flame away.

arendt

--------------------------------------

The Emergence of the "New Republican" Party
by arendt

..Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
..None but ourselves can free our minds.
..Have no fear for atomic energy,
..'Cause none of them can stop the time.
..How long shall they kill our prophets,
..While we stand aside and look?
..Some say it's just a part of it:
..We've got to fullfil the book.
..
..Won't you help to sing
..These songs of freedom? -
..'Cause all I ever have:
..Redemption songs;
..Redemption songs;
..
..- Bob Marley

1. The New Republicanism

Just as the 1850s were polarized over the issue
of slaveholder rights, our era has been polarized
over the issue of corporate rights.

The 1990s saw an immense power grab by the
corporations. Intellectual Property (IP) was invoked
to privatize what had been an intellectual "commons".
Corporations won court decisions allowing the
patenting of software algorithms and living organisms.

Once monetized, universities began to patent IP as
a potential revenue source. Government agencies,
like NIH, whose mandate was to make publicly funded science
available for free, filed patents so that IP could be put
in the public domain. Already entangled in grant paperwork,
scientists now had to worry about patent and trade secret
issues. Corporate values were imposed even on academia
by the deliberate defunding of governmental support and its
replacement with the handcuffs of corporate grants. We
have seen these grants used to bury inconvenient scientific
facts and to compel silence on non-scientific issues on the
same campus by the threat to withdraw funding.

With the creation of NAFTA and GATT, corporations
have created a version of the Fugitive Slave Law
for profits. Anything that had a profit attached to
it could not be withheld from its corporate owners -
even wanna-be corporate owners. For example, today
UPS is suing the government of Canada because Canada
refuses to open its Express Mail system to UPS
cream-skimming. Canada argues that Express profits
fund rural free delivery in the vast Canadian interior.
The case is before a government-unfriendly NAFTA
tribunal.

The Fugitive Slave analogy resonates here, in that many
freemen were body-snatched in the 1850s by slave-hunters,
just as many completely taxpayer-organized and -funded
services are being hunted by corporations affronted by the
insolence of governments that actually serve the people without
gouging them.

With the enactment of the Digital Millenium Copyright
Act (DMCA), the right of first sale and reasonable
personal use was denied to anything in an electronic
medium. Libertarians and other digerati were radicalized
by this. Covert resistance began with Napster and continues
with Kazaa. Formal resistance is fierce, e.g., the legal support
of the Electronic Freedom Foundation for the Diebold
Papers release.

As for corporations and politics, I wrote on the corporate
hijacking of the political process one year ago:

.." Today, only money talks; not the voters...There are only two
..sources of big and ideologically acceptable money in America
..today: big business money and hard right ideological money...
..What is emerging is an echo of the old British governmental
..coalitions: Tories and Whigs. In today's America, the Republicans
..have become Tories for Bush, and Democrats have taken on the
..features of Whigs.
..
.."The Democrats became Whigs when the conservative,
..corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council (DLC),
..headed by Bill Clinton took over the party machinery...
..The GOP today feels like a royal court with no criticism of
..the ruler allowed, with rich courtiers bribing and currying royal
..patents and subsidies for themselves and royal offices for
..their offspring."
..
..- "Tories and Whigs" by arendt Dec, 2002.

But, in the intervening year, something most remarkable
has happened. A new source of money, and hence a new
voice has come on stage in America. The money comes
in small quantities from individual middle-class donors,
and it is organized over the Internet. The originators of this
approach have been the "MoveOn" website and the Dean
campaign.

This essay explores the landscape of the New Republicanism
that middle class donations and Internet activism are in
the process of creating. We begin by surveying today's
landscape and its correspondences to the 1850s. I beg the
reader not to construe this correspondence as an anti-Southern
screed. The comparison is not about racism, but about the
real conflict of the Civil War, the one between plantation economy
and small business economy. The reader must remember that
it was only after, and because of, the Civil War that the economy
became dominated by the large corporations.

2. The New "Fire-eaters" in the GOP

In the 1850s, the "fire-eaters" were the most pro-slavery,
hard-line supporters of the plantation economy and the
low tariffs that supported it - to the point of advocating
Southern independence. They were also fierce militarists,
launching unsuccessful colonizing raids into South America.
These raiders were called "fillibusteros".

Today, the neocons are the most pro-corporate, hard-line
supporters of the globalized corporate plantation economy -
to the point of making corporations independent of any
government control. They launch neo-colonialist wars in
the oil-rich countries that will probably fail in the end.

In the 1850s, the fire-eaters were a sub-branch of the
Democratic Party. By 1860, their hard-line had split the
Democratic Party down the middle over the slavery question,
causing it to lose the election.

As of 2002, the GOP party discipline over the few remaining
moderates in the party held; although, increasingly, New England
moderates defected.

3. The morbiund Whigs in the Democratic Party

The Whig Party was a businessman's party. But in the 1850s,
it was, by and large, a party of smaller, independent businessmen.
That is not to say they were not men of means; but they were
not the handful of filthy rich millionaires of the Robber Baron Era.
The Whigs desired peace and economic growth.

It was their inability to end the escalating North-South rivalry,
and, specifically, the horrendous Kansas-Nebraska act and
the guerilla war that it provoked, which split the party in two
and rapidly drove it right out of existence by the election of
1856. A final ghost of the Whigs put in an appearance in the
election of 1860 as the Constitutional Union Party.

In the early 1990s, what had been a labor-liberal Democratic
Party was captured by part of the corporate party. The DLC
of Bill Clinton held on to office by selling out basic Democratic
positions. Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT, ended welfare,
and was hamstrung in all his other initatives by a corporate
media that sniped at him from before the time he took office.
What legislation he passed was stolen from the GOP by what was
known as "triangulation". While Clinton emerged unscathed
and popular from the 1998 impeachment, the entirely partisan
Starr Committee and a newly-tabloidized media gave the Democratic
Party the equivalent of the nearly murderous 1850s "caning" of Sumner
by fire-eater Brooks on the Senate floor. The party had been savaged
beyond any bound of decency, and it henceforth was craven in
defending itself against increasingly high-handed GOP behavior.

In the 2000 elections, the DLC hung the crypto-conservative
Joe Lieberman as a millstone around the neck of Al Gore.
Lieberman, a nobody on the national stage and a religious
Jew, left secular Democrats distinctly queasy and actually
took the GOP line in the Florida Recount. The recount soured
the blacks on even the DLC's bare awareness of the criminality
involved, much less the effectiveness of the DNC leadership.
The DLC further managed to lose control of both houses of
Congress in the 2002 elections, and was not even aware of the
surreptitious onslaught of voting machine fraud.

It is at this low point that something new began to happen.

3. The Rise of a New Republican Party

By 2002, due to rapidly dropping PC prices, the Intenet had achieved
critical mass in the American electorate. It made politics
"local" in a way that had not been seen in 100 years. Anyone
could get in a political discussion by simply going on line.
And those who had not been de-politicized by the incessant
bombardment of corporate advertising did so with increasing
vehemence.

The Democratic Whig oppositional silence was broken first
by Net-organized anti-Iraq War demonstrations of unheard
of scale and global reach prior to a war. These demonstrations
were also "unheard of" by most corporate news consumers,
because corporate news became actively pro-war. At this
point, the Internet reality and the radio-TV reality had become
as polarized as the North-South worldviews of a century and
a half earlier. As in the 1850s, when preachers in the South
made excuses for slave-holding, TV news personalities rationalized
suppression of basic civil and political rights in the name of "fighting
terror".

The Internet worldview highlighted the growing dissatisfaction of
many people at their representation in Congress. Democrats
asked why their representatives had ignored 100 to 1 messages
against the war. Genuinely conservative Republicans asked
why George Bush was running huge deficits, increasing the
size of government, lying about WMDs, and why the media
was protecting him. Anti-Bush and anti-neocon articles bloomed
in unlikely places, like Business Week and U.S. News and
World Report.

We are finally to the place where we can begin to suggest the
outlines of our future by continuing the analogy.

The 1850s Republican Party took up the business torch from
the Whigs. It promoted the radical-for-its-day ideology of
free-trade capitalism. At the time, small entrepreneurial capitalism
was vastly more productive and progressive than the slave-wage
depressed Southern business sector. Capital in the South
went to buy slaves, in the North, to buy machinery. The
Republican ideology went on to victory for the next sixty years.

In 2003, the Internet dissatisfaction found its first political focus
in the candidacy of Howard Dean. The DLC wing running the
moribund Democratic Party apparatus at first ignored a threat
it did not appreciate. Only belatedly did they find themselves
completely out of touch with their constituency. Their reaction
was to attack Dean, their own party member and DLC member.

Using history as an analogy, the end result of such an attack
will be to simply drive the Internet-savvy people out of the
party. The DLC will maintain control of its machinery and go
down in flames in the 2004 election, no matter who they run.

They will go down in flames because they are perceived as
part of the problem. Citizens of all parties have no desire to be
chained up in the corporate plantations sprouting all over the
country - plantations that are bankrupting small businesses,
driving health care out of reach, outsourcing jobs at an
increasing pace, and generally bringing third-world maquilladora
sweatshops right into the USA, complete with imported, and
often illegal, alien workers. The DLC is complicit in all these
arrangements. It was they who enabled NAFTA and GATT.

The New Republican Party's platform will be whatever compromise
can be hammered out among a United Front of labor Democrats,
moderate Republicans, and even Libertarians and anti-immigration,
anti-foriegn-involvement Paleo-conservatives. Dean is already
giving anti-corporate rhetoric a trial balloon, and recently added
anti-fundamentalist rhetorical riffs.

One of the main accusations against Dean has been that he
has "been all over the map". By this analysis, that is a virtue,
not a vice. The Dean Campaign is trying to put together a
United Front and a new party. Being self-funding, it can either
take over the Democratic Party or start its own. How that plays
out depends on the DLC and its true boss, Bill Clinton. The
problem for Bill is that, if the Internet crowd walks, the Dems
lose. the problem for the Internet crowd is that if they walk,
the GOP win.

Al Gore's endorsement is the spark that lit the powder keg.
No matter what you say about Al, you have to admit he is
wicked smart, maybe not a true politician like Clinton, but
way smart. He probably had this entire essay figured out
months ago.

The powder keg does not need to explode, because the Democratic
Party is already wreckage. It contains honorable people
like Robert Byrd, Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and many
others, who want to do right by their traditional constituency.
They know that the future of our Union is at stake. Think of them
as Stephen Douglas Democrats. It contains wafflers,
apologists, and cowards, like Tom Daschle and Joe Biden;
and pro-military patriots like John Edwards and Bob Graham.
Finally it contains crypto-neocons who will be more than happy
to join the neocons - people like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.

This isn't a party, its the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers'
"Night at the Opera". There is no party discipline, only deal-
making that would make a Byzantine emperor dizzy.
Al's endorsement is merely the unveiling of this chaos for all
to see. It isn't a civil war; it is merely a parting of ways, a
re-forming of alliances.

4. What the Heck is Going On?

The Internet People probably have an intuitive understanding
of this re-formation much better than the ostrich-like, inside-the-
beltway DLC. On the Internet, lefties, libertarians, paleo-cons,
labor organizers, and Zoroastrians regularly cross-post anything
that looks interesting or takes their side. Strange, informal alliances
to sabotage the corporate takeover of everything are popping
up in ways too diverse to even keep track of. Spontaneous
campaigns to screw WalMart, stop the FCC giveaway, and
indict Bob Novak attract followers that defy party identification.

When Joe Trippi says he isn't in charge of Dean's Campaign,
he really means that Dean's Campaign isn't in charge of the
New Republicanism growing out there on the Internet. But
Joe and Dean do understand that something is happening
out there, and it is protean. Dean is a gut-instinct politician
who, in what is suicidal for the "scripted" world of TV, is not
afraid to make a mistake. Of course, on the Internet, who
hasn't said something stupid and gotten flamed?

Dean has first chance to ride this new wild bucking bronco
of a political phenomenon. His style is a good fit to it, and
that match probably explains his success to date. All the
Dean-bashing about "all over the map" is irrelevant. The
issue is not what Dean said in the past. The issue is who
best can ride the Internet bronco. So far, its not Harley
John Kerry or Milk-truck-driver Dick Gephardt, its Doctor
Howard from the Wild East of the Vermont hills.

The DLC is scrambling, with the "fresh" and conservative face
of Wesley Clark being the most likely Internet-acceptable face
of that faction. Clark is smart as a whip, devastatingly effective,
and more Internet savvy than most politicians of any party.
But, if it looks like Clark is merely fronting for the DLC, then
he may stop Dean, but it won't save the DLC. Also, if it looks
like Clark's previous conservatism and neocon-shmoozing
plus his current progressive posture spell "opportunist", then
he won't be able to differentiate himself from Dean, and Dean
was there first.

Bottom line, either the DLC lets Dean and his people influence
the DLC's position away from compliance with the corporate takeover
agenda, or the anti-corporate people run their own campaign
on the Internet. Yes, I know this sounds horrendous, but it
tracks the historical analogy. The Republicans cried no tears
for the Whigs.

For over a year, its been ABB and you must vote for the Dems
to beat Bush. As the above analysis of wreckage shows, this
strategy is totally uninspiring and unlikely to energize the
emerging Internet-mediated anti-neocon, anti-fundamentalist
coalition. It took the 1850 Republicans four years to get their
act together. The New Republicans have 11 months from now.
But, the Internet accelerates everything. I think they have a
shot.

on edit: details of "caning"

I can't possibly come up with a reply to do it justice but I also do think we have a shot at saving ourselves.

p.s. The Zorastrians? :-)

who would vote for Dean? :shrug:

one of my rightwing brothers is starting to see the hell we are headed for with the corporations and he has stopped shopping at Wal-mart. (He read that article about Wal-Mart and the pickle company.) He also cancelled his Wal-mart internet service.

Right now he says both parties are rotten but at least the Republicans won't take as much of his money (WRONG!) but he is definitely not the Bush-is-God person he was right after the election.

My mother also voted for Bush and she hates him worse than I do now and my two other rightwing brothers are definitely at the anti-corporation stage because of what has happened in their lives since 2000.

There IS hope.

...11 months....that is not a lot of time, though.

Everybody is beating the Saddam thing to death.

I don't expect anyone to reply to this. In fact, I expect
I'm going to have to repost this in a week or so, after
all the dust settles - if it ever does.

Frankly, I don't think this capture changes my analysis
one wit. Its still about corporate slavery, whether or not
we got Saddam.

But, the talking heads have their Xmas present. I don't
expect to turn on the news for many weeks. In fact,
I think I'll go read some Umberto Ecco, just so I don't
have to think about the hideous century I live in. I can
read about some of the earlier hideous centuries.

Or I'll go out and shovel so more @#$%^ snow. Its
snowing hard again in Boston.

Peace

arendt

It was a welcome break from Dean vs. Clark bandwidth wasting and Saddam nonsense.

Enjoy some Ecco. Wish I had time for some real reading.

:loveya:

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:hi:

This is a very thought provoking statement. After the ideas ferment a bit, I may be back to offer thoughts.

Great informative post. It's about historical context, but as you aptly put it, the Net acceleration factor changes everything.

People are becoming informed and can Google out the corporate propaganda. And it's all due to the Net.

The more computers, the better our chances.

It stands way above anything else ever put here. This includes every article ever written for the site. This post should be stickied to the top for everybody to read, because DU is an important part of what you are describing here.

Utterly briiliant and precisely to the point.

ment in the form of Dean. Bush is too old hat, old fashioned, and his Staff grotesquely out of touch.

Dean is the new wave and it is a huge one.

Come, bring your board, we go surf.

:kick:

or whether I understand it completely, but I believe that the thread needs to be kept alive and discussed.

kick it!
:kick:

-at least the parts that I can understand of a sort of feverish jumble of things causally disjointed.

The present historical argument is (still) about social integration, about the breakdown of the many formal and informal barriers that break the American body politic into groups- by culture (religion), race, gender, sexual preference, physical disability- whose functional utility has become zero.

The historical argument in the present is not about corporations and their privileges except when they overreach into affairs of the state. Reducing the political role and manifold privileges of the corporation is the argument of the next era in politics, a thing which is near but has not yet arrived and whose object cannot yet be won.

As concerns corporations we are where abolitionists were with slavery in 1845- there are victories to show for the efforts made, but so far the warfare has been a mild skirmishing between volunteer militias when compared to the armies that will be mustered when most of society becomes engaged. The corporate cheftains laugh at you, arendt. They know what their money can buy and why their power is not being challenged by the political power structures.

As for the vaguely amusing misevaluations of the various Presidential candidates and a massive misjudgment about the Internet and why people are so politically engaged and passionate these days, I believe we have sparred about such things before to equivocal results.

But if you are such a connoisseur of the Civil War and think it so applicable to the present situation, you ought to have realized by now that a much better fit is Dean as the McClellan figure of 1864 and Internet Revolution people the mobilized Copperheads intent on ending the War in an armistice- really, Southern victory. Clinton would be the Grant, Daschle the Meade, Pelosi the Sheridan figure. Bush is John Hood, Cheney the Brixton Bragg, Bush Sr a fit to Joe Johnston, Jim Baker their Hardee. Bill Rehnquist fits Jefferson Davis in role, Clarence Thomas Stand Watie, William Rosencrans painfully closely Al Gore. Winfield Hancock as Ed Kennedy, Horatio Wright as Hillary Clinton (John Sedgwick as Pat Moynihan), Longstreet as McCain, AP Hill as Trent Lott, Forrest as Gingrich, Wheeler as Rove, and so on. It works pretty nicely when you fit a Presidential term to each year of the war and make all the battles between them domestic issues. I'm sure you can figure out the rest- Gettysburg fits to the Senate vote deciding against removing Clinton's from office, Chickamauga to Gore's Florida debacle, the '02 Senate elections the Wilderness fight, the filibuster uses the battles of the siege of Petersburg, and more recently passage of the Medicare bill the battle of Reams's Station. Of course, for prognostic purposes here the one bit of this fun that matters is the Atlanta campaign and the Sherman figure, the one who defeats the John Hood figure representing GWB, who would be one of the Presidential candidates other than Dean. (He would have to be a candidate who is combatant in and willing to continue the Culture War to victorious conclusion in coordination with Clinton/Daschle/Pelosi, so Dean is very much excluded.) Btw, McClellan was made the Democratic challenger to Lincoln by Clement Vallandigham- who may or may not fit to Joe Trippi.

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If we don't win this election, "the next era in politics" will be a replay of the Spanish Inquisition.

Don't you ever tire of overblown rhetoricisms?

The reason for the Internet revolution

-assuming as true something which the evidence doesn't warrant-

is that people realize that if they don't act now, the "object can NEVER be won". Your counsel of "later" is a counsel of passive suicide.

Spoken like a revolutionary or The Last Mohican.

I cannot believe you so cavalierly dismiss the corporate overeach! You find it just fine that they have overturned the entire intellectual playing field, from patents to free speech? Get real.

I don't dismiss the overreaching. But they have 'overturned' less than you imagine- in this country people have historically been in exceeding hurries to convert ideas into sums in their bank accounts. There was no time in American history until the rise of theoretical physics (involving mostly Jewish emigrees from Europe) that the arts or sciences were seen as endeavors to be kept independent from the marketplace. Much more the opposite. Colonialists and their children founded this state, and corporations are now the primary vehicles of their continuing way of life.

> The corporate cheftains laugh at you, arendt. They know what their money
> can buy and why their power is not being challenged by the political power
> structures.

So, are you apologizing for them, counseling despair, or just arguing for the sake of cussedness? This is beyond cynicism. It is comforting the enemy.

I have no intention of keeping you from running at any windmills you desire. I asserted simply that you had small chances of success- the world is arranged in their favor at the moment- those whom the power would accrue to if you succeeded aren't prepared for dealing with it competently and responsibly. Slaves throw off their masters only once they feel competent to take control of their lives when made autonomous- that is what the CEO class knows, and sees that the selfconfidence and competence for it is not there among the working classes. As for accusing me of complicity, I hope you're merely bitter rather than serious.

You have said nothing positive.

Well, actually I have more or less stated that what is being fought at present is a sub-violent war to change the social order. Rather than there being separate social pyramids for the major racial groups and subjugation of all other social pyramids to the one of whites, they are being fused together. The barriers erected to prevent that are being broken down under the aegis of "equality" or "equal protection" in government and 'social equality' in the private sphere.

It's a set of conflicts that must be won to achieve a unified class structure. Only with a unified class structure can one fight to deprivilege elites. As you know, they play the separate social pyramids against each other, e.g. white blue collar worker against Hispanic or Asian blue collar worker, and as long as they can do that with ease their privileges are safe and responsibilities minimal.

You have just restated my PRE-Civil War analogy into the LATE War (1864) and made a totally FALSE analogy. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

September 1864 is where we are in the best fit of the Culture War to the Civil War.

My analogy is to the 1850s, not the 1860s.

The problem you talk about was given its first run-through between 1865 and 1929, most clearly in the Roaring Nineties. Why confuse things by talking about the utterly immature stages of the industrial management-worker relationship (the 1850s) in the first place?

So,you've shown that you're a Civil War buff. Too bad you are on the wrong side; the side of corporate slavery. Like most WAR buffs, you overlook the fact that wars start when peaceful politics fail.

No, such wars happen when the side that has held most of the power feels the power balance approaching even and the trend tells them that they will lose domination.

Your pile of allusions has no coherence. Its like one of those jump-cut rock videos. It makes an impression, but there is no real analysis behind it, its just a bunch of sound bites.

The intent was to show you that better schemes of careful analogy- ones that yield fairly accurate predictions for present circumstances, and not very convenient to conventional contemporary notion schemes- do exist. I started with empirical amusement- situation X in the present political arena resembles as a dynamic the Civil War power clash for region Y in battle Z with controlling players A, B, and C.

It got a little eerie when I recognized what happens when you presume that Rosencrans prefigures Al Gore and the strategic turning point battles of 1863 are those of the Democratic Party in 1998/99. Using the time expansion ratio of those events (Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga) 1860-61 takes you back to about 1990, which turns out to be about when Gingrichism and the gross Machtpolitik and incivility actually began.

The other part is that you have to fit political geography to the Confederacy. And it turns out that the Confederacy fits to a class power map of the Right. West of the Mississippi is working class voters, the Deep South degrees of middle class voters, the Carolinas two tiers of the business world, and Virginia their ruling class. Since this actually reflects the internal power/prestige map of the Southerners of the day, it works. The battles for the various political offices fit to the class demographic which is key to electing the politicians- Congress (Petersburg VA) the wealthiest (aka donors), the Presidency the middle middle and lower middle class (Tennessee and Georgia), governors the lower middle class (Mississippi, western Tennessee). Campaigns for majorities in 'social issues' are the politically active part of the working class and poor (Transmississippi).

As for the mutual identification of people (generals and politicians), the story is that we still have very much the descendents of the leaders then as the ruling elites of now. They sort out internally within their power structures by competences and personality, as they did then too, two characteristics which are not actually highly independent of each other.

So, the 'theoretical foundation' is that the players, the game, the stakes of the game, and the dynamic/trend to the power balance are similiar or proportional to each other. I personally find the linearities in the time table- one proceeds at a very consistent 3-4x the pace of the other- the most remarkable feature.

And, BTW, you have trashed just about every existing left-of-center Democrat. Whose side are you on? Joe Lieberman's?

In the scheme proposed Joe Hooker is the closest, but not all that well-fitting, precedent for Lieberman.

I don't see what you are saying about trashing 'just about every existing left-of-center Democrat.' For one thing, the things alleged about the Union generals of the Overland/Petersburg/Shenandoah Valley campaigns by independent Union sources match very well to the things people say on DU about the politicians I've matched them to. Cowards, incompetents, wimps, traitors, bunglers, heros, saviors, geniuses- it's all there. Union generals in turn said things about their troops which fit the sort of things Democratic politicians say about Democratic grassroots- little real fight in them, poorly trained, unsure about what the Union cause is for, without psychological discipline or ability to hold under fire, too used to being defeated, superstitious about the powers of their opponents.

The story in 1864 was that the South had as troops and generals mostly veterans and a portion new draftees unwilling to fight, but no one other than slaves left to draft. The North had units and generals of much greater variety of battlefield competence and experience, many more of them, and had to replace losses with newbies who really fought poorly/surrendered very quickly. Union generals had all the structural disadvantages except far better logistics- and having to gamble more and dealing with a competent enemy, they blew more gambles and took seemingly much harder hits than the Confederates did who escaped abject disaster to their cause by sheer luck more often, as it turns out. The Union generals won in the end though, exhausting the will to fight of the South almost completely, making it unnecessary to resort to mass exiles or death sentences or massacres, and that's what matters.

I see, you get to dismiss things without presenting any facts.

Howard Dean's campaign wants to abort the liberal side of the Culture War, just as George McClellan's campaign wanted to abort the anti-slavery side of the Civil War. Both claimed that a compromise that could be lived with could be made in the war at the time, and everyone should go back to improving their individual lives rather than piling up corpses for small improvements to others' lives that were sure to come in time anyway without sacrifice. Clement Vallandigham ran McClellan's campaign as a covert Southern operative de facto. Trippi runs Dean's campaign via Republican conceptions (of power, dignity, usefulness of hysteria and conformity) and wants to not bother with the social progress agenda in favor of economic improvement.

I don't see where these things deviate from facts, even if I'm in no hurry to argue them deductively and dig up some series of particular facts. Inductive argument is as perfectly rigorous as deductive. The real work resume of Joe Trippi would be interesting to use as test of the hypothesis made. I'll be happy to withdraw my assertion if his previous work was as a progressive, and find it strengthened if he worked for Republicans.

Its just "amusing" and a "misjudgement". You must be British, as they seem to be congenitally supercilious.

I keep some rhetorical distance. I used to have as much fun with being a firebrand and promoting muddled theories containing PoMo presumptions. But yes, I plead guilty to having briefly attended a school of vaguely Etonian inclinations in a city off the coast of the North Sea while a teen. Learning all about the coldness of Calvinists- and how to tackle that mindset's weak spots- is a useful bit of education, btw.

I'm more informed about the Calvinists than the War Between the States, so this comment caught my eye.

As interesting as I think the original analysis is, and after having read through the thread once with a still bleary early-morning eye, I don't think the analysis is quite as tight as it wants to be.

I see it more as an attempt to rationalize the importance of Dean into a cosmic scheme than to really examine the correlations and similarities between a southern slavery-based economy and a contemporary corporate-based economy, with the attendant politics thrown in of course.

And I would also toss out that the lack of an organized and visible left is not evidence that it doesn't exist. As I discovered in some research on a pretty much totally unconnected topic, there are more lower-case marxists out there than you'd ever imagine. The U.S. public education system for the past 60 years (at least, but I'm only 55) has excluded any meaningful examination of Marx and his theories, which means there are a whole lot of people out there who would agree with him if they didn't know he was Marx (whom they equate with Stalin most of the time). This is, of course, the direct result of capitalis/corporatist control of politics, right down to teachers' colleges' curriculums and local school boards.

Theorizing is great, but if it doesn't match the real world, go back to the drawing board.

Tansy Gold, who is still not convinced that the center-right is the path to take to the promised land

Again, as with Lexingtonian. I will digest and respond.

I agree about the tightness. I wrote the whole thing in
one sitting between 10PM and midnight on a Saturday.
There was a lot I wanted to re-think, but I didn't want
to get into "analysis paralysis". I wanted to get into
contact with others. Think of the thread as a provocation
to deep thinkers on DU.

I still think we are in a major realignment. If you can
convince me there really are leftists out there, fine.
They can join the internet revolution. I mean after
they decapitate King Charles, the Diggers, Levellers,
etc. will have their day in the sun.

arendt

My field is women's studies, so it's almost axiomatic that I fall back on the old "I'm not a feminist, but. . . ." routine. I think there's just as much "I'm not a liberal, but. . . ." out there.

Support for things like Social Security, public education, etc., indicate there is strong left/liberal faith (for lack of a better term) in the American consciousness. If it weren't, we wouldn't see people like * using the left/liberal rhetoric -- "No child left behind" -- as cover for their nefarious rightwing schemes.

The public outrage over such rightwing thefts as the California energy debacle and the closely related Enron collapse indicates a sensibility that corporations DO have a responsibility and that government SHOULD at some point intervene.

The Dems' monstrous and immoral capitulation on * v. Gore in 2000, followed by their total lack of backbone on subsequent issues even when the Jeffords switch gave them some power has, I think, made many on the left, even those who are very close to the center, a bit more hesitant to speak out. 9/11 gave the RR free rein to use fear as a political weapon, and they have wielded it effectively to cow an already timid opposition. But that is at the level of official apparatus; I think down in the trenches there's a lot more grumbling, but a lot less understanding of the theories behind the grumbling.

And now I'm just rambling :-)

says in "Class" that American blue collar workers are on the whole at heart communists in Marx's sense of the word, but as a group they refuse to accept such labels or consider them.

One or another theorist I have looked at doesn't believe that American politics has one Left-Right axis. It has two axes, according to this scholar whose name eludes me at the moment, one Right-Left and the other Liberal-Intolerant, which are best mapped as orthogonals. I recall very clearly- because it seemed like a very logical and yet revealing observation- that he said the bulk of Americans cluster at Right and Liberal, and few at Intolerant or Left, when asked to selfidentify. It seemed to make more sense of the otherwise messy alliances and messy trends in the body politic than any other scheme I had seen until then.

No, I don't care all that much about the slavery-corporation comparison per se. I'm not sure there is real news there to be discovered. What got me and arendt started is what prognostication is possible from analogy.

As for throwing the label 'center right' at my stance, I admit I don't pass the tests of ideological correctness almost anywhere. I argue for pragmatic steps and acuity and expending effort where success is greatest. On the other hand, I do see an America forming in my lifetime that will have almost nothing left of the ethnic Anglo-Irish society I was raised in as a child, that will feel closer to Brazil than Britain culturally. I will consider it a desirable improvement in the long run and one that I helped bring about. As for its economic arrangements, the present system of pensions and health care is not sustainable and was never really designed to be sustained. But at present there are still too many people invested in the system's inefficiency and privileges.

to digest and respond. But, I will.

I have no objection to your objections to me when stated
in such a clear and erudite manner. It was your earlier tone
of complete dismissal without detail that irked me.

I am not a Civil War fanatiic, but I have plenty of source
material to unpack your references. It will take some time.
But that's why I started this thread. The Saddam shitstorm
will be raging for quite a while, and this is a good crossword
puzzle.

But, I still don't get where you are coming from as a DUer.
All I see is complete passivity in the face of the steamrollering
of our democracy. You seem most irritated by apocalyptic
references. But to me, we are losing more and more of our
rights by the day; and I spend a lot of time trying to convince
my wife to sell the house and flee if Bush is re-selected. This
isn't the America I was born in. I am sorry if you find my genuine
fright tedious. Do you live outside the US or are you independently
wealthy or what? How can you be so unmoved by the immediate
threat?

arendt

> As for accusing me of complicity, I hope you're merely bitter rather than serious.

Neither. I was just clueless what your position was. It took several reads to
put it into a straightforward narrative. Why do I have to do anagrams just to figure
out what your thesis is?

GOOD, YOU STATED A CLEAR P.O.V.: ITS A CULTURE WAR, STARTED IN 1990

You feel that liberals were winning the Culture War until Gingrinch et al starting
bringing in big money, and thereby raising the stakes to the equivalent of open
war.

> wars happen when the side that has held most of the power feels the power
> balance approaching even and the trend tells them that they will lose domination.

> (if)you presume that Rosencrans prefigures Al Gore and the strategic turning
> point battles of 1863 are those of the Democratic Party in 1998/99. Using the
> time expansion ratio of those events (Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and
> Chickamauga) 1860-61 takes you back to about 1990, which turns out to be about
> when Gingrichism and the gross Machtpolitik and incivility actually began.

> ...the time table- one proceeds at a very consistent 3-4x the pace of the other-
> the most remarkable feature.

> As for the mutual identification of people (generals and politicians), the story is
> that we still have very much the descendents of the leaders then as the ruling
> elites of now.

TODAY'S DEMS ARE YANKEES, AND TODAY'S GOP ARE REBELS

Here, you identify the North with today's Democratic Party:

> the things alleged about the Union generals match very well to the things people
> say on DU about the politicians I've matched them to. Cowards, incompetents...

> Union generals in turn said things about their troops which fit the sort of things
> Democratic politicians say about Democratic grassroots- little real fight in them...

Here you identify Dean with the Northern rump of 1860s Democrats, who, while
not rebels, were anti-anti-slavery:

> George McClellan's campaign wanted to abort the anti-slavery side of the Civil
> War.

Here you identify the Confederacy with today's GOP:

> The battles for the various political offices fit to the class demographic which is
> key to electing the politicians- Congress (Petersburg VA) the wealthiest (aka
> donors), the Presidency the middle middle and lower middle class (Tennessee
> and Georgia), governors the lower middle class (Mississippi, western Tennessee).
> Campaigns for majorities in 'social issues' are the politically active part of the
> working class and poor (Transmississippi).

ITS 1864, & HOWARD DEAN IS THE SELF-AGGRANDIZING SCREWUP, McCLELLAN

> September 1864 is where we are in the best fit of the Culture War to the Civil
> War.

> Howard Dean's campaign wants to abort the liberal side of the Culture War, just
> as George McClellan's campaign wanted to abort the anti-slavery side of the Civil
> War. Both claimed that a compromise that could be lived with could be made in
> the war at the time, and everyone should go back to improving their individual
> lives rather than piling up corpses for small improvements to others' lives that
> were sure to come in time anyway without sacrifice. Clement Vallandigham ran
> McClellan's campaign as a covert Southern operative de facto. Trippi runs Dean's
> campaign via Republican conceptions (of power, dignity, usefulness of hysteria
> and conformity) and wants to not bother with the social progress agenda in favor
> of economic improvement.

THEN, YOU CLAIM THAT THE SOUTH IS GOING TO WIN

> you (have) small chances of success- the world is arranged in their favor at the
> moment...
> Slaves throw off their masters only once they feel competent to take control of
> their lives when made autonomous- that is what the CEO class knows, and sees
> that the selfconfidence and competence for it is not there among the working
> classes.

This contempt for all of us at DU who, whatever our viewpoints, are trying
to stop the GOP is what really rankles. But, I guess, from your POV, we are
all stupid not to have recognized the stakes 13 years ago. Well, we did, but
the Internet didn't exist. (At least that's my take on it, but see below.)

BUT, YOU ARGUE FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THE CULTURE WAR

> Rather than there being separate social pyramids for the major racial groups and
> subjugation of all other social pyramids to the one of whites, they are being fused
> together...It's a set of conflicts that must be won to achieve a unified class
> structure. Only with a unified class structure can one fight to deprivilege elites.

You say to stay the Culture War course, and simultaneously say that the CEOs
are going to win. Apparently you are arguing for guerilla warfare or some
kind of underground church, like the Catholics in England in the 17th century.

You are saying we should sit still (or are so feckless we have already sat still)
for the looting of our medical system, our educational system, our retirement
system, and our Bill of Rights. You say that getting rid of multiple social pyramids
is our foremost concern.

And you make fun of my radicalism! LOL! What do you think is going to happen
to any semblance of color-blindness or affirmative action under the reign of
bigoted Southern fundamentalists? Anyone who even tries to raise the subject
will either be lynched or laughed at.

But, at least I know where you are coming from.

> the utterly immature stages of the industrial management-worker relationship
> (the 1850s)

This is not the statement of a culture warrior, but of some version of
marxist thinking. Now all your slams at my sensationalism make sense.
You have tried that, and found it failed. You have adopted the new, cool,
post-PoMo stance.

> I used to have as much fun with being a firebrand and promoting muddled
> theories containing PoMo presumptions

Jeez, no wonder. I get my hat handed to me every time I try to argue
with post-modernists. Its like trying to fight the vampires in "Matrix
Reloaded" - smoke one minute, sword the next. I do analysis, not
deconstruction.

>> "the next era in politics" will be a replay of the Spanish Inquisition.

> Don't you ever tire of overblown rhetoricisms?

Oh, Guantanamo doesn't exist. They don't yank Canadians off airplanes and ship
them off to Syria to be tortured. There are no super-max prisons like Marion
IL, where the protocol is to psychologically break people. I stand corrected. Its
not the Spanish Inquisition; its much more modern. They don't leave any marks.

BUT, WE DO HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT

>> The reason for the Internet revolution

> -assuming as true something which the evidence doesn't warrant-

I have a friend who wrote his Ph.D. English thesis on "Post-structuralism
and hypertext composition". A lot of people think the medium changes the
message, just as Gutenberg's printing press upset the whole medieval
flow of information.

If you think the Internet isn't a revolution, how do you view the entire forum
you post this in? Just a virtual Speakers' Corner, where a lot of loons get up
on soapboxes for your entertainment? Is that it? You just here to bait the bears?

----

The tone and content of your last post are quite fine. But, I have always refused
to be cool and unflappable. I have never been able to see intellectual argument as
mere "sport". Someone once told my wife, the philosophy major: its much more
fun if you just pick a side and start fighting. Neither she nor I found such a
sentiment attractive.

Perhaps that is why Dean appeals, just a matter of personal style. Don't get me
wrong. I'm not married to his campaign, but I sure don't see any better alternatives
on the horizon.

I haven't heard you propose one yet. That would be revealing. My guess would
be Al Sharpton, the "if I don't get to be a politician, I can always be a TV comic"
candidate. He fits your detached, culture warrior view of the current situation.
If he survived the Tawana Brawley fiasco, he will survive Bush. Don't get me
wrong. I like Al's thoughts; but he is a performance artist, not a politician.

arendt

You feel that liberals were winning the Culture War until Gingrich et al starting bringing in big money, and thereby raising the stakes to the equivalent of open war.

Yes and no. By 1990 serious commitment to post-1964 social liberalism was at such a level (40% of the electorate) and growing fast enough (3% per 4 years) that Gingrich saw a) the immediate danger to the old social order, b) the personal political career opportunity presented by it, and c) the need for high militancy, speed, and efficiency if the threat was to be headed off- or, if inevitably to prevail, fully exploited. Gingrich did a lot to destroy any middle ground and consolidate conservatives but only depressed the +3%-per-4 years social liberal trending a little- much of which was recovered in aggressive Democratic registration drives in 2000. Money was an enabling factor, but not crucial. At stake was control of the most powerful country in the world and an attempt to recreate the pre-WW2 social order.

THEN, YOU CLAIM THAT THE SOUTH IS GOING TO WIN

You missed on that particular one. But yes, I wasn't writing a textbook entry for third graders, I thought you capable of identifying the scheme without verbal crutches. Why you put your margin notes on record here I don't know.

I guess I didn't point explicitly to that if things work out as the theorem proposed suggests, there is yet the process/set of events corresponding to Sherman's invasion of the Carolinas to expect in late 2005-2006- a push to annull the obvious privileges built up and exploited by the corporation whoredom and their pimps, the less rabid corporate governance elites. That is presumably not the revolutionary transformation of corporations to organizations imbued with social responsibility you target at, just a substantial (though not comprehensive) return to proper laws, proper enforcement and law abiding behavior, and recovery of some basic worker rights lost as the political situation permits.

What happens when the Culture War is won- with the '06 midterm elections perhaps- I won't venture to guess. A certain kind of exhaustion, a certain level of elation, and a getting back to work on other things surely. But there is only so much that can be changed at once. After the Civil War most former slaves became, of necessity, sharecroppers and the plantation owners went into 'business' full time. The gap in education and experience of poverty and prejudices and everything else mostly determined by birth then could not be greatly changed. Almost all those born slaves and those born Confederates had to die off before the society was able to change race relations from where they were in 1866-1870, the gap in understandings was so great and the bitterness and other things emanating from past griefs (for abuses incurred as for entitlements lost) was such a determining factor.

This contempt for all of us at DU who, whatever our viewpoints, are trying to stop the GOP is what really rankles. But, I guess, from your POV, we are all stupid not to have recognized the stakes 13 years ago. Well, we did, but the Internet didn't exist. (At least that's my take on it, but see below.)

<....>

You say to stay the Culture War course, and simultaneously say that the CEOs are going to win. Apparently you are arguing for guerilla warfare or some kind of underground church, like the Catholics in England in the 17th century.

You are saying we should sit still (or are so feckless we have already sat still) for the looting of our medical system, our educational system, our retirement system, and our Bill of Rights. You say that getting rid of multiple social pyramids is our foremost concern.

And you make fun of my radicalism! LOL! What do you think is going to happen to any semblance of color-blindness or affirmative action under the reign of bigoted Southern fundamentalists? Anyone who even tries to raise the subject will either be lynched or laughed at.

It's simply not a matter of Either/Or for winning the Culture War and regaining power from the corporate world. It's If-Then. You can, as I've said, pick your personal fights as you wish. But you're proposing the equivalent of having Eisenhower in England invade and first liberate Poland in 1944 rather than France.

> I used to have as much fun with being a firebrand and promoting muddled
> theories containing PoMo presumptions

Jeez, no wonder. I get my hat handed to me every time I try to argue with post-modernists. Its like trying to fight the vampires in "Matrix Reloaded" - smoke one minute, sword the next. I do analysis, not deconstruction.

I didn't call you one of those people at all. You just do tacitly or overtly presume that major deconstruction of things like race and religion and culture are accepted fait accomplis in the American public arena. But it isn't so. I used to think much the same thing, that was the parallel I alluded to. I was rather surprised at this at one stage of my life in activist politics and it took me quite a while to get over my disbelief at the sort of things all our high and mighty folk at the time were believers in.

This is not the statement of a culture warrior, but of some version of marxist thinking. Now all your slams at my sensationalism make sense. You have tried that, and found it failed. You have adopted the new, cool, post-PoMo stance.

Nice try, but that's not it. I don't think there is a political ideology I find adequate, but I certainly don't embrace nihilism (which is where PoMo ends up as a politics). I do think that the United States turning 50% non-white around 2055- ending its ideological selfperception as a European society- and throwing off most of its remaining colonial social order and economic arrangements between now and then are the key facts. They just don't fit into any political theories of 19th or 20th century European provenance well, more so into political cycles and motifs and concerns native to this continent.

I stand corrected. It's not the Spanish Inquisition; it's much more modern. They don't leave any marks.

I don't dispute the per se outrageousness. But to our population of ~300 million people it's a trifle to intern 10,000 people as long as they feel it's done to privilege themselves. As our numbers and internal divisiveness grow our lowest common denominators in public life get lower.

BUT, WE DO HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT
A lot of people think the medium changes the message, just as Gutenberg's printing press upset the whole medieval flow of information.

But don’t forget that the first books the people with new access wanted printed, and the only ones commoners actually read in the first few centuries, were translations of the Bible. And what they did with them was to memorize large tracts- they converted them into oral texts. Next came iirc newspapers and political treatises. Don't forget, either, that up to the 18th century it was custom to read out loud to oneself (at a mumbling/whispering level, usually). That's why Shakespearean age writings are hard on the eyes, but wonderful on the ears. Electronic text is sure to become another subset of language, in due time. I suspect it will be accorded lesser status than the word written on paper, though.

If you think the Internet isn't a revolution, how do you view the entire forum you post this in? Just a virtual Speakers' Corner, where a lot of loons get up on soapboxes for your entertainment? Is that it? You just here to bait the bears?

DU is full of rather typical American liberals of the passive activist persuasion. They have very much the virtues and vices of mainstream Americans and the virtues and vices of 20th century liberals.

DUers are, like most politically involved people, prone to behavior that is by formal criteria diagnosed as hysteria- expressing too great a certainty about the world they live in, or too little, and binging between the two. Most speak mostly out of a material powerlessness that makes them feel more disengaged than they actually, out of 'surplus powerlessness' as Michael Lerner labels it, and it’s hard to bear so much of it as is present here if you don’t share the conviction that that is an absolute calamity. The smarmyness and smugness of the materially powerful is also not reason to like DU much, though less of it has been expressed here than on e.g. FR until some people recently began to do so under the banner of Dean.

The real reason to listen and participate in conversation here is the spiritual sensibility, if you will- cheering the needy in that realm, admiring those who know and express well the sensible reasons for hopefulness, trying to help the confused a little, helping brake or derail the runaway trains of thought and stoking the engines of those that are stuck. Giving such, and receiving something of the like in return when needed too. If we want to live with people equal to or better than ourselves and part of the cause we live for, which is a thing (if not *the* thing) that makes life worthwhile, we have to search out and help those that can be found. And there is the occasional tidbit of recognition, the occasional piece of poetry or apt phrase that pins something down like Eliot's moth.

The tone and content of your last post are quite fine.

Gee, thanks.

But, I have always refused to be cool and unflappable. I have never been able to see intellectual argument as mere "sport". Someone once told my wife, the philosophy major: its much more fun if you just pick a side and start fighting. Neither she nor I found such a sentiment attractive.

Passion is expressed desire, but desire uninhibited by considerations of reality. Passionate expression has the potential power of one’s identity- and risks that power- but also the danger of losing touch with reality, with the people whose interests are to be served. One can be passionate via verbal silence and merely standing one’s ground, though, and fighting is often inspired by the opposite of passion, the nihilism of viciousness. In some cultures (e.g. Semitic ones) the act of speaking in meaningful dialogue is the mark of being human, in others it is accorded more powers of delegitimizing the speaker than authentication. Maybe that accounts for your friend's need for verbal sparring.

Perhaps that is why Dean appeals, just a matter of personal style. Don't get me wrong. I'm not married to his campaign, but I sure don't see any better alternatives on the horizon.

Dean is about recovering power. I evidently have my doubts that his team understands what is possible and necessary in the right ways to succeed.

I haven't heard you propose one yet. That would be revealing. My guess would be Al Sharpton, the "if I don't get to be a politician, I can always be a TV comic" candidate. He fits your detached, culture warrior view of the current situation. If he survived the Tawana Brawley fiasco, he will survive Bush. Don't get me wrong. I like Al's thoughts; but he is a performance artist, not a politician.

I like Al too. He knows perfectly well that he’s a sound bite artist, not a thinker or a doer in his home realm of racial politics. I’ve proposed that he’s running for Chairman of the Civil Rights Commission in the next Democratic Administration, a PR job which at the moment demands someone with exactly his desires, intelligence, willingness to be unreasonable (when it helps), abilities to showboat, and mix of repute and disrepute.

Since you obviously haven’t followed the candidate threads on which I’ve given it away, I’m on record backing Kerry for the nomination and predicting that he wins it. A prediction I'm sticking with.

Lexingtonian (1000+ posts) Wed Dec-17-03 05:51 AM
Response to Reply #40
74. Okay....

>> You feel that liberals were winning the Culture War until Gingrich et al starting bringing in big money,
>> and thereby raising the stakes to the equivalent of open war.

> Yes and no. By 1990 serious commitment to post-1964 social liberalism was at such a level (40% of the
> electorate) and growing fast enough (3% per 4 years) that Gingrich saw...the need for high militancy, speed,
> and efficiency if the threat was to be headed off...Gingrich...only depressed the +3%-per-4 years social
> liberal trending a little...

Its all culture war to you, isn't it? Who cares about shredding the Constitution, bankrupting the country,
provoking religious fanaticism world wide?

>> THEN, YOU CLAIM THAT THE SOUTH IS GOING TO WIN

> You missed on that particular one. But yes, I wasn't writing a textbook entry for third graders, I thought you
> capable of identifying the scheme without verbal crutches. Why you put your margin notes on record here I
> don't know.

Because I'm not a native German speaker. I can't stack things up waiting for the string of verbs (or, in
your case, motivations) at the end of the sentence (IYC, post). In case you didn't notice, you led with
reasons that made no sense until you read the reply to "you said nothing positive" at the very end. If you
don't want to be misunderstood, speak in a linear narrative.


> I guess I didn't point explicitly to that if things work out as the theorem proposed suggests, there is yet the
> process/set of events corresponding to Sherman's invasion of the Carolinas to expect in late 2005-2006- a
> push to annull the obvious privileges built up and exploited by the corporation whoredom and their pimps,
> the less rabid corporate governance elites.

> What happens when the Culture War is won- with the '06 midterm elections perhaps- I won't venture to
> guess.

No offense, but I get that "Hitler issuing orders to non-existent divisions from the bunker in May 1945"
feeling about these unsubstantiated victory predictions.

How do you propose that these miracles are going to occur?

> Almost all those born slaves and those born Confederates had to die off before the society was able to
> change race relations from where they were in 1866-1870, the gap in understandings was so great and the
> bitterness and other things emanating from past griefs (for abuses incurred as for entitlements lost) was
> such a determining factor.

Well, I can hardly wait for MYSELF to die to see the results you claim will occur at that time. Certainly,
Mr. Keynes' bon mot applies.

>> You are saying we should sit still (or are so feckless we have already sat still) for the looting of our
>> medical system, our educational system, our retirement system, and our Bill of Rights. You say that
>> getting rid of multiple social pyramids is our foremost concern.

>> And you make fun of my radicalism! LOL!

> It's simply not a matter of Either/Or for winning the Culture War and regaining power from the corporate
> world. It's If-Then. You can, as I've said, pick your personal fights as you wish. But you're proposing the
> equivalent of having Eisenhower in England invade and first liberate Poland in 1944 rather than France.

Why must you be so cryptic? I will, once again, attempt to decode your culture war. I will preface that
decoding by saying that I am likely to be in error.

It seems you think that fighting corporate power is like Eisenhower invading Poland, while fighting
the culture war is like invading France. Once again, you indicate a preference for culture war. But,
in WW2, the Russians were kicking the daylights out of the vast majority of the German Army in
the East (i.e., Poland). While we fight the culture war, who, pray tell, will stomp the corporations for us?

I simply don't get what "personal fight" I have picked. I choose to fight the corporate war first. What
is personal about that? I don't like being robbed and enslaved. Does that make me unenlightened?

You have yet to explain how , rather than assert that, the culture war can be won in the face of total
corporate/fundamentalist domination.

>>> I used to have as much fun with being a firebrand and promoting muddled
>>> theories containing PoMo presumptions

>> Jeez, no wonder. I get my hat handed to me every time I try to argue with post-modernists. Its like
>> trying to fight the vampires in "Matrix Reloaded" - smoke one minute, sword the next. I do analysis, not
>> deconstruction.

> I didn't call you one of those people at all.

Point of order:

Its misunderstandings like this that leave me non-plussed. In my dialect of English, I said that I am NOT
a PoMo and that when I argue with THEM, I lose. In your dialect, the same words seem to mean that
I and they are both PoMos. Is there a dialect problem here? (US vs UK English?)

> You just do tacitly or overtly presume that major deconstruction of things like race and religion and culture
> are accepted fait accomplis in the American public arena. But it isn't so.

More unspoken stuff to unpack. I wish you would just treat me like the three year old you think I am.
It would save a lot of time.

The word "tacitly" means I can't dispute your claim about my thinking. But I can tell you that I'm not even
clear about your claim here. First, what is "major deconstruction of race/religion/culture"? Second, why
do you think I accept it as a fait accompli? I am not a culture warrior at all. I do mainly economic and
technical (i.e., anti-fundamentalist stupidity) stuff.

> I don't think there is a political ideology I find adequate...

Well, you certainly are hard to categorize, much less predict.

> I do think that the United States turning 50% non-white around 2055- ending its ideological selfperception as
> a European society- and throwing off most of its remaining colonial social order and economic arrangements
> between now and then are the key facts.

So, your timetable is 50 YEARS into the future. I will likely be dead long before then, even if the U.S.
stayed peaceful, unpolluted, and well-educated - as it is unlikely to.

>> I stand corrected. It's not the Spanish Inquisition; it's much more modern. They don't leave any marks.

> I don't dispute the per se outrageousness. But to our population of ~300 million people it's a trifle to intern
> 10,000 people as long as they feel it's done to privilege themselves. As our numbers and internal
> divisiveness grow our lowest common denominators in public life get lower.

English translation: The acts themselves are horrible, but the American people no longer care about principles
of government, only about saving their own hides. Thanks for your support for DU.

Its this constant shifting between short-term pessimism and long-term optimism with no explanation
of how the transition is going to happen in between that drives me nuts. Do you have a plan? Or do you
just have faith?

>>> BUT, WE DO HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENT

>> A lot of people think the medium changes the message, just as Gutenberg's printing press upset the
>> whole medieval flow of information.

> But don’t forget that the first books the people with new access wanted printed, and the only ones
> commoners actually read in the first few centuries, were translations of the Bible. And what they did with
> them was to memorize large tracts- they converted them into oral texts.

There were a few small side effects, like the 30 Years War, which led to the Enlightenment, regardless of
what the commoners thought. The ruling classes had seen enough of mass-produced fanaticism. They wanted
mass-produced decorum. Of course, they got the French Revolution. But, hey, people make mistakes.

> Electronic text is sure to become another subset of language, in due time. I suspect it will be accorded
> lesser status than the word written on paper, though.

You're welcome to your opinion. Myself, I'm talking to the people making paper that re-programs itself.
What is "electronic" text when it comes on paper just like real text?

>> If you think the Internet isn't a revolution, how do you view the entire forum you post this in? Just a
>> virtual Speakers' Corner, where a lot of loons get up on soapboxes for your entertainment? Is that it? You
>> just here to bait the bears?

> DUers are, like most politically involved people, prone to behavior that is by formal criteria diagnosed as
> hysteria- expressing too great a certainty about the world they live in, or too little, and binging between the
> two.

Oh, you're hear to speak to the hysterics. Well, excuse me while I shriek my thanks.

> Most speak mostly out of a material powerlessness that makes them feel more disengaged than they
> actually, out of 'surplus powerlessness' as Michael Lerner labels it, and it’s hard to bear so much of it as is
> present here if you don’t share the conviction that that is an absolute calamity.

Sorry, your grammar lost me:

Its hard to bear it(surplus powerlessness) if you don't think that that(surplus powerlessness) is a calamity.
(negation 1) (negation 2) (negative 3)

I beg you to be more direct.

My translation: (triple negative = negative ... re-structure the grammar to that effect)
Its easy to bear surplus powerlessness if you don't think that that is a calamity.

So, you think the attitude of DU is a calamity, and you can't bear it. Corrections gratefully accepted by this
three year old.

> The smarmyness and smugness of the materially powerful is also not reason to like DU much, though less
> of it has been expressed here than on e.g. FR until some people recently began to do so under the banner of
> Dean.

I have no idea what you are referring to, as I don't do culture war. To me, its just Tories, Whigs, and
Republicans. Politics is full of smarmyness and smugness. The powerful have no monopoly on that.

> The real reason to listen and participate in conversation here is the spiritual sensibility, if you will- cheering
> the needy in that realm, admiring those who know and express well the sensible reasons for hopefulness,
> trying to help the confused a little, helping brake or derail the runaway trains of thought and stoking the
> engines of those that are stuck. Giving such, and receiving something of the like in return when needed too.

Well, I guess this is what Calvinist spiritual sensibility thinks is "cheering the needy"; but, to me, you sound like your whole visitation to DU is a hairshirt you periodically don to confirm your own membership in the
Elect.

I will take "hysteria" over this kind of condescension any day.

>> The tone and content of your last post are quite fine.

> Gee, thanks.

It is above my low station to question such Christian charity :-).

>> Perhaps that is why Dean appeals, just a matter of personal style. Don't get me wrong. I'm not married
>> to his campaign, but I sure don't see any better alternatives on the horizon.

> Dean is about recovering power. I evidently have my doubts that his team understands what is possible and
> necessary in the right ways to succeed.

At least you credit us "hysterics" with trying to recover power. I certainly can't predict how it will turn
out. How can you?

>> I haven't heard you propose (a candidate) yet.

> Since you obviously haven’t followed the candidate threads on which I’ve given it away, I’m on record
> backing Kerry for the nomination and predicting that he wins it. A prediction I'm sticking with.

Huh? I really don't get this. I personally visited Kerry's office twice and talked to his political staffers.
They exuded the same imperturbable self-assurance as you, and were quite testy if you suggested
that their campaign plan was way too SLOW. He had a lead, a year, and where is he? Nowhere, plus
he just said Saddam's capture made us safer. He is a CONVENTIONAL Democratic politician.

I guess you can use Teresa Heinz to think Kerry is a culture warrior. Myself, I think his VVAW activities
(including tossing someone else's medals) were just a tad too calculating, and that he blew the Kerry
Commission's chance to nail Bush Sr's butt. Since then, he has been way too low profile on the
creeping corporate coup d'etat. You can't get elected on a ten year old resume.

But, hey, that's what primaries are for. I declared that I could support Kerry if he were the nominee.
I won't be energized, but I will do it. You seem way too judgmental about Dean to do the same, but
maybe you will surprise me.

arendt

> The real work resume of Joe Trippi would be interesting to use as
> test of the hypothesis made. I'll be happy to withdraw my assertion
> if his previous work was as a progressive, and find it strengthened
> if he worked for Republicans.

I finally got a list of who Trippi worked for:

1979 - Ted Kennedy vs Carter
1984 - Walter Mondale
1988 - Gary Hart (until Donna)
1988 - Gephardt

All quite impeccably progressive, even Gephardt was
a strong blue-collar Dem in 88.

I await your comments.

arendt

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/2003-12-08-trippi-profile_x.htm

arendt

Heady stuff for a 47-year-old, rumpled computer geek who has been on the losing end of a handful of Democratic campaigns, among them the unsuccessful White House bids of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and Dick Gephardt, a current Dean rival.

Thanks for your PM about this. But 1992-2002 is a pretty long stretch that is left unaccounted for here, isn't it? Especially when it covers the strongest period of the Republicans?

I'd be more convinced if the campaigns he likes listed were the ones of the '90s and the ones of the '80s were left unmentioned.

I'll go back halfway. But with the possible exception of Gary Hart, the candidates mentioned ran relatively moderate campaigns as best as I recall. I'm trying but still not seeing Trippi as committed liberal.

...after taking a serious beating several times in a row.

I mostly agree with Arendt, that the corporation - vs.- people struggle is an integral part of the current conflict.

Yes the present struggle is about integration but also about corporate power. In this way it combines the major themes of the Civil War era as well as some of the details. - war profiteering, in fact the superlative profitability of war as an enterprise; racism; regionalism; federalism; etc.

History always repeats itself except when it doesn't.

The analysis is really pretty darn good. Themes that reliably repeat themselves throughout American history are private power, racism, jingoism, and resurgent populism. A very good book on the pre-Civil War era is "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson. This details, among other things, the death of the Whig party and birth of the Republican Party. As well as recognizable groups like the "know-nothings" (anti-foreign), political machines, and so forth.

The corporate power grab parallels that of the late 19th Century, in which the plutocrats used every means at their disposal - the courts, elected officials, and suitcases full of cash bribes, to gain favored treatment. This era saw corporations established as "legal persons".

After rough and ready treatment by the Roosevelts, and fifty years of relative stability, corporations are again going for a baldfaced power grab.

If you want analogies, one could almost see Dean as the William Jennings Bryan. Not that Bryan ever got elected but his movement really got the Progressive ball rolling, clearing the way for TR, Wilson and later FDR and the New Deal. These reforms remain the foundation of our (mostly) successful society and are under assault by the corrupt Right.

Win or lose, the Dean movement and MoveOn, and the anti-authoritarian Internet community is the new populism. And it is gaining in power.

Another recurring theme is the flux in character of the political parties. Absolutely amazing that the party of Lincoln could also be the party of Bush. Actually all it took for the Republican Party to be pretty well corrupted was victory - electoral and military. By the end of Grant's presidency they were rotten through and through. Lincoln and TR were the Republican high points, and I can't really think of too many others. How many great Republican Presidents? Two.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of Kennedy and FDR. Maybe it can be made into somethign better, but if not, change may be in the wind.

this is a great addition to arendt's original. It complements her themes very well.

> A very good book on the pre-Civil War era is "Battle Cry of
> Freedom" by James McPherson.

Its my "go to" source on the CW.

> This details, among other things, the death of the Whig party and
> birth of the Republican Party. As well as recognizable groups
> like the "know-nothings" (anti-foreign), political machines, and
> so forth.

> The corporate power grab parallels that of the late 19th Century,

Yes, we are having a Harry Truman moment:

"There is nothing new but the history you don't know."

It is pretty easy to find historical antecedents to just about
anything. I was struck, however, by the ability to lay the 1850s
on top of the present without too much sledgehammering.

> the anti-authoritarian Internet community is the new populism

Yes. But is there any history of populism in a police state?
Any history of the internet working in a serious police state?
Just want to run out and get my copy of PGP, although I hear
its been cracked.

arendt

my Clark support in a way none of the other threads have approached. I keep going back and forth between Clark and Dean. Based mainly on the fact that I know a lot of people in my native Pennsylvania, I keep thinking Clark has the better chance to beat Bush in the swing states, so decided to volunteer for him.

But what you say about Dean and the ways I have been so impressed about what he has accomplished and the way he frames issues for himself instead of letting the media frame them makes me gravitate back toward thinking of volunteering for Dean.

Somebody help me!

Well, I'd like to, but all I can offer you are basically part of what I see in Dean and what he and his campaign are doing: there's absolutely a revolution going on there. Many, many people can't see that because they aren't looking at the right data, which is within the campaign. IOW, if you (or anyone) aren't partaking of the campaign itself, directly, you're likely to miss it. Not all that many pundits have even caught on to what's afoot, so you for darned sure can't read about, except here and there.

I'd encourage you to read the blog at LEAST once daily, including some of the Comments posted by supporters: http://www.blogforamerica.com/

Clark has been described as "The new face on the Old Establishment," and I think that's an apt description. I won't try to talk against him other than that.

If returning our govt to The People again for the first time in decades appeals to you, you'd do yourself a huge favor by looking long and deep at the Dean campaign. Trippi famously says that he doesn't run this campaign, and there's more than a little truth in that. Nor is "People-Powered Howard" just a cute political slogan. NOR is Dean joking when he says he wants tio take back the party on the way to taking back our country and the Whit House (and working real hard on the Senate and House which, it's been my observation, he's already made a start on).

Hope that helps. Really, tho, you have to get it for yourself, from primary sources.

about judging from primary sources and trying to see it from the inside. I've been to some Clark meet-ups and saw him in person, now I think I'll go to a couple of Dean meet-ups. Not that it matters to anyone what lil ole me does, but maybe that's a good suggestion for a lot of people to consider.

When you state that folks must see from within the Dean campaign you seem to be asking us to vote for the supporters of Dean rather than the candidate himself. I have no quarrel with the enthusiasm of the Deanistas, though I wondered ,from the first, whether they were attracted by the novelty of the campaign or the candidate .

I do not get swept up in trends and fads, I prefer to analyize the political history of the candidate h/herself, the content of their speeches, and then decide.

I appreciate your thoughtful analysis. It is interesting to me that in the modern scenario you discuss, the left wing is basically not on the map. Thus, the split between the insurgent Dean camp and the DLC is as you say, but it is fundamentally a shift in power and not so much in political ideology.

Neocons, too, have been appreciating the changes in technology. Thus, paperless Diebold. What will these tidal shifts matter when the neocons have the power to continue through fraud, and no competing set of ideas gets exposure?

This is why I am strenuously against the ever-rightward drifting centrism and why I think that the power struggle that you describe so well may merely be a technologically advanced whistling in the dark.

Cheers.

(I wanted to answer your thoughtful post in spite of this thread
going nowhere.)

Without living through it, I never would have been convinced
that an entire educated society could be distracted, diseducated,
and turned into mindless consumer zombies in the space of
twenty short years.

Never underestimate the lower-class macho ethos so well described
by Wilhelm Reich. The RW put those people in play as early as
Nixon and the hardhats. Then they got them into fundie churches.
Then they got them to switch to the GOP for Saint Ronnie the Senile,
in spite of Carter being the most truly religious guy to hold that
office this century.

All the time they were converting these people, they were robbing
them blind. And they got the suckers to blame the people trying
to stop the robbery.

So, truth to tell, the political center of gravity of this country is
scarily far to the right. And as long as the media remains in
corporate hands, it will remain so. In fact, it is the media, in all
its forms that has moved the goalposts so far to the right. Sadly,
I have experienced in my own lifetime how easy it is to fool
most of the people most of the time. And once they have been
fooled, their unwillingness to admit they were had makes it
easier to fool them each time, until black is white and up is
down.

So, in my analysis, there really is no effective left in this country.
Nader pulled 3%. The Kucinich people are maybe 5% of the
Dems. And the whole bunch of them are like herding cats.
So, if the Dems are "the stateroom scene", the left is two guys
in black berets sitting in a cafe smoking, dreaming grand
dreams, and then fighting with each other.

The left is nowhere near strong enough to stop the GOP. The
only force strong enough is the truly conservative right and
its spillover in the far right and right-center of the Democratic Party.
But that spillover has been associated with the DLC, and the
DLC has been associated with Clinton, and Clinton has been
associated with NAFTA and GATT.

The Democratic Party is poison to the right because of Clinton,
and poison to the left because of the DLC. It is doomed to
reform into new entities.

My New Repulbican Party will be much closer to Rockefeller
Republican than to George Meany Democrat. It has to be,
because that's the mental center of gravity in America today.

Now, once this party gets into power, they get start to unwind
the RW powergrab. But, any leftie who wants to go down with
the Kucinich or Nader ship in the name of "ideological purity"
is welcome to do so.

Its not that I don't value Kucinich; its just that runnniing him would
be a Hail Mary pass when you don't need to. Just run the ball
up the middle with Dean. There is time, and the middle is
strong enough.

I really wish events had not pre-empted this thread :-(.

arendt

I don't know so much about the Civil War references, but I do feel that there has been a bending of the Government to the corporate will for years that has led to an equivocation of the parties' core positions. It has been sped up by the corporations taking control of the media that provides the information that most people have immediate access to, although the internet has proven to be a considerable fly in the ointment. I hope that you are right, that a new populist order will come out of the wreckage that has become the Democratic Party.

Also, I loved this analogy:
"....the left is two guys in black berets sitting in a cafe smoking, dreaming grand dreams, and then fighting with each other."

I just about pee'd my pants. If this doesn't sum up about 50-60% of what I see going on around here in DU I don't know what does.

We will now return to our normal program of candidate bashing and hand-wringing about Saddam.

What next?

Thank you, by the way, for your response and PM.

We certainly share a perspective up to a point. I suspect that we'd agree that former Senators Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) and Edward Brooke (R- MA) would be unacceptably liberal by today's standards.

What I find a little unhelpful in your reply, though, is the dismissive image of the left, which is of course the image that stuck with a respondent. I'd like to persuade you that having lefty preferences has little to do with beatnik fashion statements.

When we surrender the last trace of discourse of the left in the name of realpolitik, we participate in moving the entire discourse to the right, which is exactly the problem that we say needs addressing. That is even less helpful than a pose of ideological purity for its own sake; Don Quixote beats Benedict Arnold hands down.

If we do tactically surrender discussion of core values, then the glorious future moment when progressive rhetoric becomes permissible will never come.

If I have misread you, then I'd be eager for a clarification.

> What I find a little unhelpful in your reply, though, is the dismissive image of the
> left, which is of course the image that stuck with a respondent. I'd like to persuade
> you that having lefty preferences has little to do with beatnik fashion statements.

Oh, I agree with you. Its just that today's 20-somethings have lived in a propaganda
bubble all their lives, where that stereotype is all that is allowed through the filter.
Thomas Frank of "The Baffler" has written brilliantly on this. His essay "Commodify
Your Dissent" discusses the futility of expressing your discontent through a purchase.
His satirical stock prospectus for "Consolidated Deviance" is just a corporate-speak
version of the same thing. My favorite phrase of his is "the relentless, mechanical
yammering of a civilization (run completely off the rails, or somesuch)". I think the
total circulation of The Baffler is in the hundreds.

There was also a great bit of satire back in Oct 91, in which the French were going
to send a brigade of black-clad existentialist philosophers to Afghanistan to bore
the Taliban into losing their faith, while driving them mad with the smell of coffee
and the beautiful babes hanging on their arms.

I agree with you, we have to lose that stereotype. But, the Weather Underground
stereotpe won't work either.

> When we surrender the last trace of discourse of the left in the name of realpolitik,
> we participate in moving the entire discourse to the right, which is exactly the
> problem that we say needs addressing. That is even less helpful than a pose of
> ideological purity for its own sake; Don Quixote beats Benedict Arnold hands down.

I understand your point, but DQ simply models ineffectiveness. It is not the
correct stereotype to replace the black-clad philosoph.

Suppose I told you (as a true leftist, who knows that Dean is center-right)
that the Dean Campaign were really a conspiracy, like the Masons. On the
surface, it looks completely innocent and middle class. But, in secret cabals,
they are plotting the overthrow of the ruling church.

The right loves to laugh at anything the Dems say as a "conspiracy theory".
What if we started an actual conspiracy? Then, they either have to withdraw
their rhetoric or we get a free ride.

> If we do tactically surrender discussion of core values, then the glorious future
> moment when progressive rhetoric becomes permissible will never come.
> If I have misread you, then I'd be eager for a clarification. 

You have misread me. I just think we have to not be completely crushed in
the next election. And, as far as I'm concerned, the DLC vs the GOP is the
same as completely crushed. So, I'm ABB and AB-DLC. The only candidate
who has the *potential* not to splinter the party is Clark. I am watching him.

arendt

You're right, everyone WILL be talking about Saddam, but some of realize that story is just beginning and has a LONG way to go, and NOTHING we comment about it will be worth a diddley next week anyway
BUT
Your insightful analysis of the New Republicans makes sense, and clarifies the picture a lot for me. Anti-corporatism is a fact ALL people can agree on, even the Neo-cons have trouble justifying buying at Wal-Mart when their local general merchandise stores go out of business. In Omak, Washington, Safeway was the big store by the highway that caused a lot of smaller grocery stores to close their doors, but NOW Wal-Mart has put up a monster superstore across the highway, and it'll likely be Safeway that goes next. The right-wingers DON'T like that, it's TOO much.
That CAN be capitalized on in the next election, notwithstanding Lexingtonian's poo-pooing to the contrary.
:hi:
Bruce

There is some brilliance in this essay. I have a few quibbles with it too.

I think your comparing of NAFTA and GATT to fugitive slave laws is brilliant.

“The DLC further managed to lose control of both houses of Congress in the 2002 elections...” is sloppy writing. The House was lost in 1994, the Senate in 2000, and only partially recovered due to Jeffords renouncing the Republican party.

In general, I think your analysis is largely more correct than flawed; however, your “bottom line” is again flawed. The DLC is clearly not going to willingly cede power to Dean’s people. And it is equally clear that Dean will fall in line with the party if he does not carry the nomination. He has plainly said he would not go third-party.

As much as I agree that the internet speeds things up, I do not think it will provide an effective means of building a third party, essentially from scratch in 11 months. I also agree that ABB is not highly inspirational, but absent a better tactic, it will have to suffice as at least a holding action to prevent the total capitulation to corporate rule.

> The House was lost in 1994, the Senate in 2000, and only partially
> recovered due to Jeffords renouncing the Republican party.

This is true. My point was that, the DLC was in charge, and it was
another blowout fiasco - Max Cleland losing for being "unpatriotic".
And, they made nothing of SIX races changing beyond the polling
error in the last two days all in states WITH e-voting, plus the
failure and subsequent CANCELLATION of VNS exit polling
after 40 years.

My point is that the DLC managed to do even WORSE than expectations.

> The DLC is clearly not going to willingly cede power to Dean’s people.

Yeah, but if they see no alternative, they will do it grudgingly.

> And it is equally clear that Dean will fall in line with the party if he does not
> carry the nomination. He has plainly said he would not go third-party.

I had forgotten that statement. By my analysis, if the DLC candidate
gives the Dean movement no tangible gain, even with Dean inside
the DLC tent, this Internet-driven phenomenon will bolt. Of course,
if the DLC's candidate is Clark, and he is not just "the new face on
the old DLC", then maybe he can start his own Internet phenomemon.

> ABB is not highly inspirational, but absent a better tactic, it will have to
> suffice as at least a holding action

That won't motivate many newbies. ABB really means: get these
corporate crooks off our backs and out of our wallets. There are
pissed off AARPers, small businessmen ruined by WalMart, techies
whose jobs were sent to India. The candidate has to be FOR honest
government first, with Bush as the poster boy of what is wrong.
Only Clark is untarnished enough to pull off such a campaign on
behalf of the DLC.

So, in my opinion, its Clark or Dean at this point. Every other DLCer
is damaged goods.

Thanks again for your thoughtful feedback. I tend to thiink things
through out loudd, and feedback really helps.

arendt

:D

ok, I agree the DLC did worse than expectations. I personally think their high-water mark was getting Clinton elected in 1992, and that by being the controlling force, they have been hemorrahging Democratic-held offices, and supporters ever since.

" By my analysis, if the DLC candidate gives the Dean movement no tangible gain, even with Dean inside the DLC tent, this Internet-driven phenomenon will bolt. "

This seems to be the $64,000.00 question. There is a fair amount of ABB pressure to keep these people, even if Dean doesn't carry the nomination. If they do bolt, the Dem party will certainly continue to implode. Perhaps 2004 will be the year of its death knell and something could arise from its ashes.

How you defined ABB I think is wrong; those (in my mind) are a lot of Dean's people, who are not the ABB people. And they are the group who will eventually build whatever gets built on the ashes of the Democratic party (or gut it and rebuild from within.) They are who (the DLC? hmmm ) is trying to capture with the ABB mantra.

The other question, and I certainly hope 2004 will settle it, is will the Dem party survive, or will it finally die? To survive, I think it is absolutely essential to remove the DLC from any vestiges of power and influence. If not, they will continue to drive the party into the ground.

arendt
:yourock:

> How you defined ABB I think is wrong; those (in my mind) are a lot
> of Dean's people, who are not the ABB people. And they are the
> group who will eventually build whatever gets built on the ashes of
> the Democratic party (or gut it and rebuild from within.) They are
> who (the DLC? hmmm ) is trying to capture with the ABB mantra.

You said:

1. A lot of Dean's people are not (your) ABB.
2. They are who the DLC? is trying to capture with ABB.

But, both of those imply that neither category is truly ABB.

So, what is your definition of ABB?

arendt

I think my definition of ABB is Dems who are locked into the idea of the Democratic party. On this board there are a lot of people who on the one hand have a lot of criticism of some/many of the Democrats currently in office; Lieberman as an example, but on the other hand are adamant that they will support and vote for him if he gets nominated. ABB - Anyone But Bush - because any one would be better.

The people you listed, and noted that the highest priorty for them is HONESTY (paraphrasing from your 1st reply to me) are not exactly what I would put into the above definition. These are the people you are calling "The New Republicans" - those who want good governance, but are no longer certain that they can get that from the Democratic party. These people would be willing to go 3rd party, or rebuild on the ashes of the Democratic party, but have some reluctance to continue to invest in the party as it is now. So they are not ABB.

That would be me, for one. I don't have much faith in the party; I am reluctantly leaning ABB, only because I don't see a 3rd party emerging with the strength to topple the Bush* misadministration in 2004. So, back to my original post, ABB as a holding action at best.
But the people who originally pushed the idea of ABB are, in my opinion, not really ready to let go of the idea of the Democratic party.

It really gives ABB the edge of desperation,
which it deserves.

arendt

DU.

I thought I was lost for a while and accidentally stumbled into free republic, until I read your post.

Historical perspectives are incredibly important to maintaining some semblance of sanity and inklings of where we might be going and I appreciate the time and effort and creativity (not to mention the excellent instinctual insights) that it took to post this piece.

When the next suicide bomber blows up or whatever attacks the Iraqi guerilla fighters have planned next take place, I suppose the DUers new-found pro-war posters will slink away, hopefully.

to have undergone massive change by the time the R convention rolls around in early September. Whoever goes up against them in the election will find that the masks are off -- or better or for worse.

Thanks, Arendt -- you always write the most insightful essays.

With a tip of the Hawk Wing, SH

and a cup of coffee.

:donut:

you so totally rock! This is a great summation of our current political environment and what got us here.

Still digesting - but well worth a kick. :kick:

As one poster stated, better than the wall to wall Saddam crap.

:kick:

At

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1212-11.htm

Published on Thursday, December 11, 2003 by TomPaine.com
A Populist Tide
by Steven Rosenfeld

<snip>

"The values of the American Creed are liberty, equality, individualism, constitutionalism, and democracy. Despite seeming inconsistencies among these values (e.g., liberty versus equality), they have managed to co-exist for more than 200 years as essential guideposts in the collective American political mind. The many who subscribe to this creed are more fully "American" in their political thinking and sense of national identity than are the few who do not." DeLeon observes that when this gap between these democratic ideals becomes out of synch with the institutions and practices of its elected leaders, historic political change movements arise. DeLeon thinks the 2004 electoral season may be such a time. After decades of voter complacency turning into diminishing public regard and cynicism for governing institution, he says populist figures like Gonzales, Schwarzenneger and Dean emerge and are embraced.

<snip>

Those on the East Coast in entrenched political circles or in the Washington-based press corps have been quick to dismiss the Dean insurgency and will spend no time looking at Matt Gonzalez's 47 percent showing. They also spent little time mulling over Davis' ouster, because after all, they are not interested in people that are not in power.

But there is something going on in the country's political psyche that is being tapped by these various and seemingly diverse political insurgencies. They are all prompting new and fervent participation in politics—and it is participation driven by a perception that these campaigns will restore governance that's in line with core and defining principles. This is a wave that will continue to rise and crash into the Bush re-election campaign. You can bet Al Gore knows this—and it's part of why he endorsed Dean. After all, he's from Tennessee, the state that gave 19th-century America Andrew Jackson.

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com.

Copyright 2003 TomPaine.com

<end snips>

Interesting that, in this article, they do NOT see the Civil War as one
of their populist outbreaks.

arendt

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1040921/posts

Internet people of all stripes are not too happy with this Supreme Court deciison.

n/t

...

Ther are about 110 posts, about 20% critical of the Supreme Court ruling, most of the rest informational or anecdotal and not positive or negative.

Here's my favorite post:

***
So i...pull over to the side of the road
And i heard "Son do you know why i'm stoppin you for?"
Cause i'm young and i'm black and my hats real low
Do i look like a mind reader sir, i don't know
Am i under arrest or should i guess some mo?
"Well you was doin fifty five in a fifty four"
"License and registration and step out of the car"
"Are you carryin a weapon on you i know alot of you are"
I ain't steppin out of sh** all of my papers legit
"Do you mind if i look round the car a little bit?"
Well my glove compartment is locked so is the trunk and the back
And i know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack, are you some type of lawyer or something?"
"Or somebody important or somethin?"
Nah i ain't pass the bar but i know a little bit
Enough that you won't illegally search my sh**
"Well we'll see how smart you are when the K-9's come"


Who said there wasnt any wisdom in rap lyrics? People, please, DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION TO LET THE POLICE SEARCH YOUR CAR, even if you have nothing to hide at all. You dont know what others might have left there. Even if the Police believe they have probable cause and search anyway, you have strong grounds to fight any evidence in court if you explicitly deny consent.
***

When Freepers are quoting rappers I think we have a nexus!

I'm just a humble country lawyer, but this essay is an example of why I hang out here. All you readers, please forward this article to everyone you know, especially the less informed, and bribe them to read it if you must. Geez I didn't know I was a New Republican, but I Guess that's what I am!!!!!!! I think I'm gonna go write a song about this now. Out. Thank you Thank you.

A song would be great! I'm looking forward to hearing it. :-)

OK, I'll confess my ignorance.

What exactly are you referring to by "nexus"? I know
the definition of the word, but didn't use it in my essay.
So, you are making a contribution here, but I don't
fully appreciate it.

I mean, clearly 20% of the freepers are awake enough
to feel the cold chains of the man snapping shut on them;
but a nexus?

It would be great if 20% of the freepers woke up. Hell,
if 10% of them got pissed, there board would look like
DUs GD, only there would probably be blood in the
real world, too.

Thanks for sticking with this thread.

arendt

From dictionary.com
A means of connection; a link or tie: “this nexus between New York's... real-estate investors and its... politicians” (Wall Street Journal).

I just mean that with regard to this case there is a definite nexus with a lot of the Freeps and most Duers. (I would guess that it's most Freeps because some of the informational/anecdotal posters are also critical of the ruling.) This hits home for me because I found a nexus with my rightwing brother over the WalMart issues.

You really have some insight into what is happening and I appreciate your taking the time to post so thoughtfully. :-)

I mean, what is your first hand experience? Can they
financially afford to avoid/boycott the place? Do
they really get that its two bad jobs for every three
good jobs now in town?

arendt

Arrest does not equal guilt.The hell you say. Have you any idea what amount of cash it takes to prove you are not guilty? Never mind the anguish and inconvenience of having to bail out of jail, missing work for court, etc. Why do you think so many people accept plea bargains even if innocent, it's cheaper and punishment is less than if convicted. IMHO there is an agenda in this country to convict as many people of felonies as possible to keep them from gun ownership and to also keep a data base on them. OK, call me paranoid if you will, but somebody else give me a better explanation as to whats going on.
51 posted on 12/15/2003 2:46:55 PM PST by eastforker


I too believe there is an effort to throw as many people as possible behind bars, or tar and feather them with felony convictions. It starts subtle then picks up steam, which is what is happening now. Eastfork seems to interpret it as some kind of anti-gun move by the government - I see it a naked power grab to pacify the populace, gun owners or not....

It makes me think of that farce in that SC high school...the jack booted thugs have arrived, and most of them are card carrying members of the Repug party.

And what happens in the high schools where I live isn't much better than what happend in SC. I cannot believe how many high school kids are getting arrested now. It is so sad.

Though I am farther left than Dean it is important to realize political change is slow. The path toward the left must first pass through the center, and the first task is to break the strangle hold of the DNC and DLC and their common marriage to corporate masters.

Though it is important for the left to keep their dialog and be the reminder of past core values of the democratic party, to expect the radical shift of political momentum is unrealistic.

As a realist I realize the DK dream at this time is not much more than a statement, but I think the political realities will sort that out before the choice ever gets to my state, and Dean will be what I am left with plus one other thing. Your essay and the thought provoking optimism that could be attached to my second choice, Dean.

The statement in one of you last replies of a hidden agenda seems almost to much to hope for in the present, but oh what sweet irony it would be. The man the DNC and DLC fear most because he is a rogue wild card who doesn't dance the dance, to move left of their grasp toward what they feign to believe in and represent. It sure beats the defeatist and depressing ideology of ABB, leaving a glimmer of optimistic hope in our wake. Thank you for that, great essay.

DK is the dream, second choice is Dean.

> The statement in one of you last replies of a hidden agenda seems
> almost to much to hope for in the present, but oh what sweet irony
> it would be.

It would be fun to play with GOP heads for a change. I'm thinking
of a self-denying funkspiel.

arendt

You put forth what for me is one of the more compelling arguments TO vote for Dean. I do see the dynamics much as you have described them to be. But as you said, the timing of the internet is unpredictable and that is for them AND US. I suppose that concerns me.

I think that Clark is more of the one who will win it, and keep in mind that he wasn't pushed by the DLC to run. He ran because enough people organized to convince the General to run for President. I think that he will be the modern Lincoln, with Dean being more like Seward. Seward was in the 1850s in the same position Dean is now, the one who came out of nowhere, but was too radical to win, so the party went with Lincoln. I think that would be a more apt comparison, although I will give Dean this much: he pioneered internet campaigning. I hope though that your historical analogy doesn't go all the way to its parallel conclusion, although I fear it may.

Does history repeat itself?

...not everything can be projected into the past in hope of divining
the future, if so I'd own Microsoft by now.

Thanks for a great thread, time for more research...

Whirly-

I have this theory.

Do upsurges of populism in the US correspond to introduction
of new communication/transportation technologies?

1830s Jackson - no technical innovation
1850s Republicans - telegraph becomes widespread
1890s Populists - railaroads connect everything, mass circ newspapers
1920s Progressives - radio
1960s Radicals - TV

and

2000s New Republicans - internet.

What do you think? The Jacskon counter-example is frustrating
to me.

arendt

Will have to read this again in the morning because my brain is pure mush now but that was a great post and your points at the end are spot on about Dean, the internet phenomenon and the fight with the DLC. I think it's still an inner fight because Dean hasn't totally broken off with the DLC- he spoke at there Annual Convention a few months ago but, unlike Lieberman, Kerry and Graham, he only hooked in via Video Feed and I think all he did was send them a greeting. I have that info handy if you need it. Clark was pretty much the guest of honor at that meeting.

For a while I really thought that the Dean/Clark combo was a set-up from the beginning but I am beginning to see that the fundamental differences between the two and the animosity towards Dean are too great for that to ever happen. Dean is still too far to the Right for me but he's not unvotable. The DLC scrapes the bottom of the barrel for me and I want nothing to do with them. Will be watching future developments with great interest. Thanks for an awesome post!

I liked reading all the thoughtful comments

It's stuff like this that make me love this place.......

:kick:

I'll see where I can go with this, having perused the entire thread -- and getting lost for a bit in the exchange between you and Lexingtonian.

First, I think you're accurate in pointing out that the entire phenomenon surrounding Dean is NOT about Dean. It's about people being sick of "politics as usual". There have been numerous signs of this throughout the country, with a return to a muddled form of populism whose whole idea of a political party seems to be built around "the party we'll throw when we throw the bums out!"

This is what essentially led to the Gropenfuhrer's victory in CA -- he was simply the biggest name of the ticket, able to capitalize on the backlash against the consummate "establishment politician", Gray Davis.

It is also important to note Haley Barbour's victory as MS governor. While Barbour is hardly a paragon of populism, his victory was probably more closely related to a backlash against the sitting governor. And we also should pull the example of the shift in power of the NJ State Senate, from Republican to strongly Democratic.

This has been brewing for quite some time. Party membership among registered voters has been declining steadily over the past 30 years, as both parties have failed miserably to deliver for the masses. It probably showed its first signs of boiling over in 1992, with Ross Perot's quixotic Presidential campaign. The pot boiled over even more in 1994, with the "Gingrich Revolution" -- which was the result of a Right Wing capitalization on voter disgust through blatant propaganda. While the boiling subsided by the time of the 2000 election -- due to a late-1990's economy that had finally begun to trickle gains down to the majority of workers, if ever so slightly -- it is clear that the heat has been turned up under the pot again.

The problem with the current state of the "revolution" is that its very weaknesses lie in the same realm as its strengths -- it's dependence on the internet as an organizing tool. While this tool has allowed for mass communication in an instant, something unheard of before its implementation, it is still a medium that is overwhelmingly white and middle to upper-middle class. I'm a big believer in the basic tenents of Marxism as a socio-economic commentary, and even with the internet we're still a good way from realizing some of the keys needed to vastly reform the whole system.

The systemic shift will not occur until this organizing medium spreads among the poor and disenfranchised -- and enough of the middle class realizes that they have much more in common with the "underclass" than they do with the upper class. After all, the average family is only three missed paychecks away from homelessness. Until we reach that point, the middle and upper-middle classes will still be overly vulnerable to the wedges that drive them apart.

The question then becomes, what will the coming election do toward the realization of longer-term goals? You rightly acknowledge that a Dean victory would be a center-right victory, and that our choice really only lies between reactionary right and center-right. That one is a no-brainer -- even if it is like the difference between kissing your brother or your sister. But there is also the danger that a center-right victory will once again turn down the heat under the pot on the stove, and simply draw out the continued unraveling. We cannot fool ourselves in any way that center-right is at all aligned with us in reining in the corporate excesses that you cite as the "new slavery". OTOH, another reactionary right victory would undoubtedly turn up the heat even further -- but the danger there is that it would cook us all alive in the process!

In any event, the coming years will not be easy. We are facing massive environmental catastrophe within the next 25 years (or even less) unless drastic steps are taken. There may not be time left to stop this corporatization of everything in our daily lives before the environment lashes back at us repeatedly and violently. IMHO, the only hope for long-term survival lies with those who recognize the need to seriously cut back on consumption, and are taking steps to do so -- but these groups are commonly dismissed as extreme fringe elements in the current last gasp of consumerism.

I wish I had a conclusion with which to wrap all of this up, but if I were to give one, I would only be grasping at straws. I'll just say that the future is NOT a bright one, no matter which way things go, and we'd all better buckle up for the ride.

:kick:

<<<<IMHO, the only hope for long-term survival lies with those who recognize the need to seriously cut back on consumption, and are taking steps to do so -- but these groups are commonly dismissed as extreme fringe elements in the current last gasp of consumerism.>>>

My post is somewhat tangetial, but given your above statement, you might be interested in my analysis of the neocon movement re the Iraq war and waning US power (ie. Peak Oil and currency issues, etc.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=114&topic_id=3821

IMO, some under-reported macro issues are effecting the politics in this country...and 2004 is quite critical as to what happens to the American Experiment...and I don't think the Culture War is the issue..(excerpt from an earlier essay I wrote)

"Quite frankly, in order to save the American Experiment and stop our slide towards an isolated and authoritarian state, we must elect an enlightened administration in 2004. It would appear that four difficult challenges await the next U.S. administration, including; 1) negotiating global monetary reform, 2) broadly re-organizing U.S. fiscal policies, 3) developing a National Energy Strategy, and 4) attempting to repair our damaged foreign relationships with the UN, EU, Russia, and the Middle East. Sadly, the next U.S. President will have to undertake these challenges from a weakened position both economically and diplomatically. I do not envy the arduous journey that awaits the 44th President of the United States."

It's very interesting stuff, and really crystallizes many connections I've kicked around in my head for quite some time now.

But hey, thanks for posting it again so that maybe more people will get to read it! :bounce:

Quite frankly, in order to save the American Experiment and stop our slide towards an isolated and authoritarian state, we must elect an enlightened administration in 2004. It would appear that four difficult challenges await the next U.S. administration, including; 1) negotiating global monetary reform, 2) broadly re-organizing U.S. fiscal policies, 3) developing a National Energy Strategy, and 4) attempting to repair our damaged foreign relationships with the UN, EU, Russia, and the Middle East.

Murrikans don't want to hear about such unpleasant realities. They want to be told that everything will be OK, and that they can go about their lives of consumerism.

Sadly, I think that the only candidate on the Democratic side who approaches what you're proposing here is Dennis Kucinich. But we all know what kind of chance he's showing right now. Not only that, but even if he WERE elected, he would still be facing a hostile Congress that would hamstring him at every term.

In short, I'm not optimistic that any of this will be even ADDRESSED until we are in a full-blown crisis mode. Even then, I'm not certain. :scared: