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Right, I said two weeks ago I'd get around to writing something about the election and I've been chickening out. I've been just not-wanting to, in a deep, miserable sort of way. And I'm not talking about the election very much here. But it is in response to the election and also in response to this here. And it's very personal, but it has a non-personal element, which is coming at the end, I think.
I want to start with the personal part, because I think the problem I want to address lies there. I was born in 1953. That was the year that Joe McCarthy's little reign of terror supposedly ended -- I think it was also the year that the state leadership of the Communist Party in California was arrested in midnight raids. The rumor mill had it that the reason the internment camps like Manzanar and Tule Lake were being kept in shape was to detain communists. That was what I was born into.
But while my folks were frightened, they didn't stop believing in making an effort to make things better: they didn't stop believing in a world beyond capitalism: and they didn't refrain from teaching their children the best they knew. But we learned to be kind and gentle and to say everything very carefully so as not to offend people. And that we should take any insult and give back only reasoned argument and conciliatory gestures. Our lives were at stake, we knew that -- lynch law ruled the south and contended for power everywhere else, and it had not been so very long since the gas ovens. But more important -- we wanted to "win people over" with logic and beauty and kindness. We knew we had something to offer, and we knew it was our responsibility to struggle for civilized discourse -- the other side wasn't going to give it to us willingly.
Came a brief time in the late sixties and early seventies, riding on the successes of the Civil Rights movement and the growing momentum of the antiwar movement, and impatience to breka through to a better world, where the Left was not only not conciliatory but took the offensive. But as soon as the right started to regroup, our most mainstream folks, our liberals and our moderates, went right back to being conciliatory.
Conciliatory doesn't work. Class war is real: culture war is real: and the other side is the one waging the battle, using the heavy guns, taking no prisoners, accepting no negotiations, settling for nothing short of total victory and total annihilation of the opposition. You can't go on being nice to these people, as if they could be made to listen, to cooperate, to negotiate, compromise, or hammer out a consensus. -- Because doing that requires that all sides are at least giving lip service to the process.
Bipartisan doesn't work. Because the right wing will always, as soon as they can, ditch any centrist solution, any compromise, any consensus, and go for the most extreme position that they think they can put over. They don't hesitate to lie, to manipulate, to buy, threaten, and coerce. In historical times they have not stopped at murder, and you can't trust them not to sometime in the future.
The Democratic Party has been looking on at the astonishing successes of the Republican Party in the last couple decades and thinking "Man, we gotta be more like them." And they've been getting it totally wrong. They think "Oh, the American people like this no-taxes, no-services, lie of the lean government thing, that's what we gotta do."
But that's not it. The thing the Republicans have been doing that the Democrats have not is fighting. They've been creating party unity, enforcing it where necessary. They've been working the audience -- they lie and manipulate and cheat and all that, but effectikve use of agitation-propaganda does not have to be infused with lies just because they do it that way. They've been coordinating their actions. They've been an army, where the Democrats have been a squabbling kaffee klatsch.
The Democrats should stop being afraid of being real. They should go to the "core values" of democracy, the things they've always been afraid of but which have carried them to their best moments of victory -- they should stop trying to placate the rich and go for the issues in a good-faith, wholehearted, effective way. They should hold a non-election convention and piuck three issues that are key, and demand unity around those three things, and be prepared to shed whoever can't make a good-faith commitment to those three things.
And in Congres: okay, they don't have enough people to make things happen, but they have enough to stop things from happening. This si how the Republicans regrouped in the first place. They said: "no pasaran," and they sabotaged every attempt to get things done, so that Amwericans would be totally frustrated with them. Okay. Do that. Spike the damned right wing. Tell the truth.
How did Al Sharpton go from looking like an ass to looking like a hero? By hammering at the truth. By being there, year in, year out, and not being conciliatory.
Okay, I said my piece. Now I have to figure out how to put my body where my mouth is.
I want to start with the personal part, because I think the problem I want to address lies there. I was born in 1953. That was the year that Joe McCarthy's little reign of terror supposedly ended -- I think it was also the year that the state leadership of the Communist Party in California was arrested in midnight raids. The rumor mill had it that the reason the internment camps like Manzanar and Tule Lake were being kept in shape was to detain communists. That was what I was born into.
But while my folks were frightened, they didn't stop believing in making an effort to make things better: they didn't stop believing in a world beyond capitalism: and they didn't refrain from teaching their children the best they knew. But we learned to be kind and gentle and to say everything very carefully so as not to offend people. And that we should take any insult and give back only reasoned argument and conciliatory gestures. Our lives were at stake, we knew that -- lynch law ruled the south and contended for power everywhere else, and it had not been so very long since the gas ovens. But more important -- we wanted to "win people over" with logic and beauty and kindness. We knew we had something to offer, and we knew it was our responsibility to struggle for civilized discourse -- the other side wasn't going to give it to us willingly.
Came a brief time in the late sixties and early seventies, riding on the successes of the Civil Rights movement and the growing momentum of the antiwar movement, and impatience to breka through to a better world, where the Left was not only not conciliatory but took the offensive. But as soon as the right started to regroup, our most mainstream folks, our liberals and our moderates, went right back to being conciliatory.
Conciliatory doesn't work. Class war is real: culture war is real: and the other side is the one waging the battle, using the heavy guns, taking no prisoners, accepting no negotiations, settling for nothing short of total victory and total annihilation of the opposition. You can't go on being nice to these people, as if they could be made to listen, to cooperate, to negotiate, compromise, or hammer out a consensus. -- Because doing that requires that all sides are at least giving lip service to the process.
Bipartisan doesn't work. Because the right wing will always, as soon as they can, ditch any centrist solution, any compromise, any consensus, and go for the most extreme position that they think they can put over. They don't hesitate to lie, to manipulate, to buy, threaten, and coerce. In historical times they have not stopped at murder, and you can't trust them not to sometime in the future.
The Democratic Party has been looking on at the astonishing successes of the Republican Party in the last couple decades and thinking "Man, we gotta be more like them." And they've been getting it totally wrong. They think "Oh, the American people like this no-taxes, no-services, lie of the lean government thing, that's what we gotta do."
But that's not it. The thing the Republicans have been doing that the Democrats have not is fighting. They've been creating party unity, enforcing it where necessary. They've been working the audience -- they lie and manipulate and cheat and all that, but effectikve use of agitation-propaganda does not have to be infused with lies just because they do it that way. They've been coordinating their actions. They've been an army, where the Democrats have been a squabbling kaffee klatsch.
The Democrats should stop being afraid of being real. They should go to the "core values" of democracy, the things they've always been afraid of but which have carried them to their best moments of victory -- they should stop trying to placate the rich and go for the issues in a good-faith, wholehearted, effective way. They should hold a non-election convention and piuck three issues that are key, and demand unity around those three things, and be prepared to shed whoever can't make a good-faith commitment to those three things.
And in Congres: okay, they don't have enough people to make things happen, but they have enough to stop things from happening. This si how the Republicans regrouped in the first place. They said: "no pasaran," and they sabotaged every attempt to get things done, so that Amwericans would be totally frustrated with them. Okay. Do that. Spike the damned right wing. Tell the truth.
How did Al Sharpton go from looking like an ass to looking like a hero? By hammering at the truth. By being there, year in, year out, and not being conciliatory.
Okay, I said my piece. Now I have to figure out how to put my body where my mouth is.
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