Happy, excited, to be making this announcement:
On Saturday, May 10, from noon to 2:00 PM Mountain Time (2:00-4:00 PM Eastern), Christopher Rothfuss will appear on Shared Sacrifice, a new progressive internet radio program, for an extended, policy-oriented conversation. Rothfuss, a chemical engineer and former U.S. State Department adviser in the Offices of Science and Technology and Space and Advanced Technology, is running against Republican Senator Mike Enzi (R. WY).
Shared Sacrifice can be heard at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Shared_Sacrifice. The show will be archived, but live callers are encouraged.
The excitement doesn't come because I've decided to join the Democratic Party (haven't). It's because I really enjoy doing interviews with people all over the political spectrum--particularly those, like Chris, committed to ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
"I strongly support the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. We have now been there for 5 years. It has cost us nearly 4,000 American lives and over a trillion dollars. We don't have any tangible objectives or an exit strategy, but we claim to be 'making progress.' Regrettably, I don't know what we are progressing towards. I don't see any realistic accomplishments on the horizon that would be worth trading even a single additional American life. We are now primarily concerned with eliminating Al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization that arrived in Iraq after we did – and only because we were there – and that seeks to destabilize the fledgling Iraqi government because it hurts the United States to do so. It is time for the Iraqis to stand up and take control of their own destiny. I believe our exit will only help the Iraqi people."
Plus I like Chris. He's a great guy with a great family. We don't agree on everything, obviously, but I wish him the absolute best in his just and fair campaign. I look forward to talking to him and hope a lot of people listen.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Rothbard contra Egalitarianism: A Quarter Century Later
Murray Rothbard was an iconoclast and, among his admirers, was considered a genius. A libertarian and disciple of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard occupied a unique location among a more complex wing of the capitalism-socialism/state-anarchy debates: Rothbard was an eloquent pro-market, anti-statist, anti-war libertarian. Some would even call him an anarchist, and if I read his life correctly, he called himself that for some time. Throughout his life he was willing to work with those on the left in practical struggle against the excesses of the military-industrial complex. Those collaborations, however, ultimately proved incompatible, for him, with his love of markets, and utter refusal to consider their flaws.
A quarter century ago, Rothbard published what would become a minor classic of political literature, “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature.” Young novice libertarians still read it with excitement, and old-timers smile broadly and assign it to their neophytes. It’s appealing because it purports to overturn a largely agreed-upon moral value. In that sense, it evokes the excitement of Atlas Shrugged or, more accurately, “The Virtue of Selfishness.” In whatever other ways they were at odds, the Randians and the Austrians agreed on matters of style. I think they were unconsciously preaching to their respective choirs, for whom the sound of an argument mattered more than its substance. Nothing much has changed on this point, and there are only so many ways to reassert the foundational premises of bourgeois apologetics.
Rothbard's curious choice of foils reveals that he is primarily concerned with arguing against Platonists and those who see ethics as akin to aesthetics. He is a foundationalist through and through, but also the most frustrating kind of foundationalist, one who picks and chooses various analytical representations to link to rhetorically compelling metaphysical assumptions.
I'm sure this seemed like a very insightful statement in the 1960s. Now, like so many of Rothbard's points, it's trivially true, somewhat quaint, and also misleading. No self-respecting scholar would utter a sentence like “this theory is true.” A theory is never "true" to begin with and is not self-consciously constructed to be so. Political theories, in particular, can be rendered "false" in a variety of discursive or material ways. Remember, Rothbard will ultimately collapse to his own "theory" of "human nature" in order to explain the impracticality (and thus, for him, the "theoretical falsity") of egalitarianism. We are then free to point out "impracticalities" in his theory, rendering it false. All in all, a banal and dismal way to discuss political theories— and not the way we typically do so historically or practically.
This reliance on an overt metaphysical theory isn't something I'm interpreting Rothbard to say. He says it quite clearly:
He will spend the rest of the essay asserting a few iron laws of the nature of man and the universe (though remaining understandably vague as to their systemic justifications) and mischaracterizing the egalitarian political orientation as being devoted to an extremely absurd praxis of “equality.”
In one particularly important early section of the essay, Rothbard discusses two dystopian, anti-state stories: Hartley’s Facial Justice and Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.” It is in reading this section that two things became clear to me: (1) Rothbard is a great critic of totalitarianism, and (2) Rothbard does not effectively link the critique of totalitarianism to a critique of “socialism,” or even social democracy, or any of the things he feels are horribly coercive, like taxation. In fact, and I know this to be the case, socialists can read Hartley and Vonnegut too. Hartley's distopia is one of privilege for a few and enforced scarcity for everyone else. This more resembles the dictators on the right in, say, Latin America, dictators supported by the United States as bulwarks against the communism Rothbard deplores.
The platonic "beauty" that saves the characters in Facial Justice is itself, being platonic, entrenched in a metaphysical scheme where, ironically for Hartley, and completely missed by Rothbard, transcendent beauty can only exist in contrast to enforced, mundane materiality. In the end, the normative message of individuals having the capacity to form their own identities and judgments is a vision opposed to the totalitarianisms of both corporate capitalism and chauvinistic collectivism. Rothbard would have known this if he'd bothered to read his French contemporaries, or even condescended to a sympathetic reading of Herbert Marcuse.
The same is true, perhaps to an even greater degree, for the Vonnegut work. George and Hazel Harrison were certainly rendered “mediocre” by the Handicapper General, under the rhetorical justification of “equality.” The emptiness of such equality is made obvious in the second half of the opening sentence of “Harrison Bergeron,” “and everyone was finally equal.” This is a grotesque caricature of egalitarianism, and Rothbard isn’t the only one who has misinterpreted Vonnegut in this way.
(For what it’s worth, towards the end of his life, Vonnegut became a contributor to many leftist publications and never professed any great love for capitalism. But then, alas, the far right reads Orwell incorrectly too…)
In a nutshell: Hartley and Vonnegut criticize distopian, totalitarian states where people's facial or physical features are "equalized" by force, through an appeal to an empty notion of “equality” that relieves, rather than empowers, people with the responsibility to help each other and stand in solidarity with each other. Rothbard, in turn, equates the violent, absurdly forced equalization of people's persons with taxation and income redistribution. He does this in order to apply the rhetorical force behind direct physical violence to persons and the metaphorical violence of paying taxes. That's fine, but that means such an unstated step in thinking is thoroughly criticizable itself. (Such a critique is beyond the scope of this essay, but here’s a hint: We are not, entirely, our wealth, and the generation of wealth is never, for the most part, individually achieved.)
At certain points, Rothbard's sophistry is almost embarrassing, because he begins so many arguments with hopeless mischaracterizations of that which he opposes; a kind of ad hominem and equivocation in one sweeping gesture:
and
In other words, “equality” as an analytic concept means A and B are exactly the same. Egalitarians love equality, therefore they want to make everyone exactly the same. This mischaracterization, which eludes the eye of the sympathetic, is the basis of his appropriation of dystopian fiction, his ability to label egalitarians as pathological (see below), and his central rhetorical strategy: evoke an image so terribly unreasonable as to make the reader incredulous that anyone could believe such foolish things.
Later, Rothbard writes:
Although some post-structuralists are egalitarians, most egalitarians are not post-structuralists, nor does Rothbard convincingly argue that egalitarianism collapses into poststructuralism. He simply asserts a different set of “laws” of reality. Moreover, no egalitarian –certainly not Marx or the Marxists—has ever argued that reality can change merely through the exercise of a wish or a whim. This is the one passage where I find myself questioning my intellectual respect for Rothbard. Does he seriously believe these characterizations? Or is he guilty of felonious hyperbole?
In an effort to give credit for the points in the essay where he actually satisfied the criteria of “making an argument,” I began to catalogue Rothbard's metaphysical warrants:
1. the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" or, the tendency (unalterable for Rothbard) for people to become leaders and followers.
2. Jefferson's alleged argument about "natural aristocracy."
3. "the biological nature of man"
I’ll stop there. History, in totality, makes no judgment as to the tendency of divisions of labor to be ultimately determinative of positions of privilege. The very fact that people can think of ways to make workplaces, cities, and nations more “equal” in terms of material access (an equality that is not, in the least, of the stripe that causes gulags or Handicappers General) proves that oligarchy is not an iron law.
What about Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy?” Reading the reference in Jefferson’s original letter to Adams, it’s clear that Jefferson is criticizing a number of things that interfere with the ability of a society to choose its “natural” leaders. Among these are inequalities of wealth. Another interfering factor is the tendency of weaker-minded people to use force in place of ideas. All of these things are caused by the imposition of what, in risky modernist terms, we might call “unnatural hierarchy.” Rothbard’s libertarianism is capable of recognizing such sources of unnaturalness in governments and mobs, but not in the excessive accumulation of wealth.
As for Rothbard’s notions of the “biological nature of man,” I’ll just segue into his very weird discussion of feminism. We've been around the block so many times on this issue that Rothbard's quaintness is cute in places and irritating in others. We already know there are intimate biology-based connections between mother and child (and that those connections can be severed by unnatural "cultural" acts such as war, genocide, and extreme poverty). But we also know that fathers can find similar traits within themselves, and we've come a hell of a long way in our consciousness of how both two-parent and single-parent families function. Yawn, we know that men and women are built differently, but since we've also mastered the use of technology to overcome other "natural" barriers (strange for Rothbard to ignore this since capitalists usually love technology), we also have very nuanced ways of negotiating “biological differences.”
Other parts of Rothbard's gender analysis are borderline despicable and hopelessly out-of-date, such as his citation of "'the psychological consequences of different sexual postures and possibilities,' in particular the 'fundamental distinction between the active and passive sexual roles' as biologically determined in men and women respectively." But I will leave it to others to explain just how messed up such notions are…if others want to, that is. I mean, time is a valuable resource. But my take: One message of “feminism,” broadly speaking, is simply that biology need not be destiny, and that it should not account for varying layers of unwarranted privilege. This is one of the most important equivocations Rothbard makes, and it's the foundational equivocation of all of these seemingly erudite and dry-witted conservative essays against egalitarianism: "THERE ARE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLE. IT'S BAD TO TRY TO MAKE EVERYONE THE SAME! CLASS PRIVILEGES ARE DIFFERENCES! RESPECT ALL DIFFERENCES!" Silliness.
Rothbard's arguments in the essay against "culture" (what we would today call "social environment") as an explanation for social inequality suffer from the same dated dichotomy. Decades of research and reflection have yielded the conclusion that one cannot tell where culture ends and nature begins, or vice versa. We know that people do change when their environment changes, and that beliefs and cultural practices tend to correspond to material and social situations. We also acknowledge the complexity that renders both old-school progressive and old-school social Darwinist claims problematic.
Rothbard’s dismissal of Trotsky’s ideal as fantasy is, again, a quaintly dated dismissal in the face of what we now know about the interaction between environment and consciousness—to say nothing of history itself. Genetics itself interacts with history. Advances in science and technology, including the self-reflective advances of a new generation of scientists seeking to avoid the arrogance of the past, cast nearly all of Rothbard’s oversimplified scientific descriptions into doubt, the categories themselves dated and unstable. If you think I am unfairly dismissing his arguments, try this thought experiment: Imagine him making entirely similar arguments in favor of our unalterable biological drive towards the social, our evolution-driven and neurological tendency towards collaboration; imagine him attributing his “division of labor” to the very necessity that work be coordinated between people. Imagine him subsequently using these aspects of our unalterable, iron nature to dismiss the arguments of those self-serving, thoughtless libertarians. In place of Stalinism, he could throw in starvation. His case would satisfy leftists’ longing for scientific validation (heck, I’d throw in with him), while being utterly unconvincing to those on the right.
In the end, there are two “critical” ways read Rothbard’s classic essay: On the one hand, Rothbard gave his readers--people who already agreed with him and were just looking for a quick, erudite-sounding justification--a delightfully circular argument: 'Rather than appealing to its external effects, we should assert that egalitarianism is categorically evil. It is categorically evil because it goes against human nature. We can discern that it goes against human nature by observing its inevitable external effects.'
On the other hand, Rothbard's ultimately circular essay demonstrates that some of the brighter pro-capitalist minds realize that their world of the powerful constantly grabbing more power is ultimately incompatible with a minimum quality of life for the world's poor, and if we're going to convince people that capitalism is a universal good (rather than being really good for some of us, kinda good for others, not so good for other, awful for others…), we'd better concentrate on abstract morality rather than material consequences. It is a strategy that has reared its head time and again, and will continue to do so as capitalist life grows more unstable for more people. Don't expect any such deployments to be any less clumsy than Rothbard's. And he was a pretty smart guy.
Ultimately, the problem with libertarianism is precisely what Rothbard claims is the problem with socialism: Libertarianism, with zero hint of irony or self-reflection, posits a metaphysical caricature in place of a theory of humanity. I will go a step further, go out on a limb, and say that the socialist picture of human nature is more nuanced, acknowledging that both freedom and determinism are true, taking into account the paradoxical relationship between them. But you don’t need to agree with me about that, and I won’t question your intelligence or your ethics if you disagree. It’s something we can discuss another time, perhaps. And I also don’t mean to imply that egalitarians –socialist and otherwise—aren’t often guilty of the same kinds of caricatures and oversimplifications. Ultimately, questions like those asked by Rothbard are thought-provoking, but nothing in this canonical Rothbard essay stripped me of confidence in the soundness of my beliefs, any of which I’m happy to debate when I have time to do so.
A quarter century ago, Rothbard published what would become a minor classic of political literature, “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature.” Young novice libertarians still read it with excitement, and old-timers smile broadly and assign it to their neophytes. It’s appealing because it purports to overturn a largely agreed-upon moral value. In that sense, it evokes the excitement of Atlas Shrugged or, more accurately, “The Virtue of Selfishness.” In whatever other ways they were at odds, the Randians and the Austrians agreed on matters of style. I think they were unconsciously preaching to their respective choirs, for whom the sound of an argument mattered more than its substance. Nothing much has changed on this point, and there are only so many ways to reassert the foundational premises of bourgeois apologetics.
Rothbard's curious choice of foils reveals that he is primarily concerned with arguing against Platonists and those who see ethics as akin to aesthetics. He is a foundationalist through and through, but also the most frustrating kind of foundationalist, one who picks and chooses various analytical representations to link to rhetorically compelling metaphysical assumptions.
If a theory is correct, then it does work in practice; if it does not work in practice, then it is a bad theory.
I'm sure this seemed like a very insightful statement in the 1960s. Now, like so many of Rothbard's points, it's trivially true, somewhat quaint, and also misleading. No self-respecting scholar would utter a sentence like “this theory is true.” A theory is never "true" to begin with and is not self-consciously constructed to be so. Political theories, in particular, can be rendered "false" in a variety of discursive or material ways. Remember, Rothbard will ultimately collapse to his own "theory" of "human nature" in order to explain the impracticality (and thus, for him, the "theoretical falsity") of egalitarianism. We are then free to point out "impracticalities" in his theory, rendering it false. All in all, a banal and dismal way to discuss political theories— and not the way we typically do so historically or practically.
This reliance on an overt metaphysical theory isn't something I'm interpreting Rothbard to say. He says it quite clearly:
To put it more precisely, if an ethical goal violates the nature of man and/or the universe and, therefore, cannot work in practice, then it is a bad ideal and should be dismissed as a goal. If the goal itself violates the nature of man, then it is also a poor idea to work in the direction of that goal.
He will spend the rest of the essay asserting a few iron laws of the nature of man and the universe (though remaining understandably vague as to their systemic justifications) and mischaracterizing the egalitarian political orientation as being devoted to an extremely absurd praxis of “equality.”
In one particularly important early section of the essay, Rothbard discusses two dystopian, anti-state stories: Hartley’s Facial Justice and Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.” It is in reading this section that two things became clear to me: (1) Rothbard is a great critic of totalitarianism, and (2) Rothbard does not effectively link the critique of totalitarianism to a critique of “socialism,” or even social democracy, or any of the things he feels are horribly coercive, like taxation. In fact, and I know this to be the case, socialists can read Hartley and Vonnegut too. Hartley's distopia is one of privilege for a few and enforced scarcity for everyone else. This more resembles the dictators on the right in, say, Latin America, dictators supported by the United States as bulwarks against the communism Rothbard deplores.
The platonic "beauty" that saves the characters in Facial Justice is itself, being platonic, entrenched in a metaphysical scheme where, ironically for Hartley, and completely missed by Rothbard, transcendent beauty can only exist in contrast to enforced, mundane materiality. In the end, the normative message of individuals having the capacity to form their own identities and judgments is a vision opposed to the totalitarianisms of both corporate capitalism and chauvinistic collectivism. Rothbard would have known this if he'd bothered to read his French contemporaries, or even condescended to a sympathetic reading of Herbert Marcuse.
The same is true, perhaps to an even greater degree, for the Vonnegut work. George and Hazel Harrison were certainly rendered “mediocre” by the Handicapper General, under the rhetorical justification of “equality.” The emptiness of such equality is made obvious in the second half of the opening sentence of “Harrison Bergeron,” “and everyone was finally equal.” This is a grotesque caricature of egalitarianism, and Rothbard isn’t the only one who has misinterpreted Vonnegut in this way.
(For what it’s worth, towards the end of his life, Vonnegut became a contributor to many leftist publications and never professed any great love for capitalism. But then, alas, the far right reads Orwell incorrectly too…)
In a nutshell: Hartley and Vonnegut criticize distopian, totalitarian states where people's facial or physical features are "equalized" by force, through an appeal to an empty notion of “equality” that relieves, rather than empowers, people with the responsibility to help each other and stand in solidarity with each other. Rothbard, in turn, equates the violent, absurdly forced equalization of people's persons with taxation and income redistribution. He does this in order to apply the rhetorical force behind direct physical violence to persons and the metaphorical violence of paying taxes. That's fine, but that means such an unstated step in thinking is thoroughly criticizable itself. (Such a critique is beyond the scope of this essay, but here’s a hint: We are not, entirely, our wealth, and the generation of wealth is never, for the most part, individually achieved.)
At certain points, Rothbard's sophistry is almost embarrassing, because he begins so many arguments with hopeless mischaracterizations of that which he opposes; a kind of ad hominem and equivocation in one sweeping gesture:
What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height. If two sticks are identical in length, then their lengths are “equal,” etc. There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes. This means, of course, that equality of all men—the egalitarian ideal—can only be achieved if all men are precisely uniform, precisely identical with respect to all of their attributes.
and
In short, the portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is, therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil as well.
In other words, “equality” as an analytic concept means A and B are exactly the same. Egalitarians love equality, therefore they want to make everyone exactly the same. This mischaracterization, which eludes the eye of the sympathetic, is the basis of his appropriation of dystopian fiction, his ability to label egalitarians as pathological (see below), and his central rhetorical strategy: evoke an image so terribly unreasonable as to make the reader incredulous that anyone could believe such foolish things.
Later, Rothbard writes:
At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will—in short, that reality can be instantly transformed by the mere wish or whim of human beings.
Although some post-structuralists are egalitarians, most egalitarians are not post-structuralists, nor does Rothbard convincingly argue that egalitarianism collapses into poststructuralism. He simply asserts a different set of “laws” of reality. Moreover, no egalitarian –certainly not Marx or the Marxists—has ever argued that reality can change merely through the exercise of a wish or a whim. This is the one passage where I find myself questioning my intellectual respect for Rothbard. Does he seriously believe these characterizations? Or is he guilty of felonious hyperbole?
In an effort to give credit for the points in the essay where he actually satisfied the criteria of “making an argument,” I began to catalogue Rothbard's metaphysical warrants:
1. the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" or, the tendency (unalterable for Rothbard) for people to become leaders and followers.
2. Jefferson's alleged argument about "natural aristocracy."
3. "the biological nature of man"
I’ll stop there. History, in totality, makes no judgment as to the tendency of divisions of labor to be ultimately determinative of positions of privilege. The very fact that people can think of ways to make workplaces, cities, and nations more “equal” in terms of material access (an equality that is not, in the least, of the stripe that causes gulags or Handicappers General) proves that oligarchy is not an iron law.
What about Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy?” Reading the reference in Jefferson’s original letter to Adams, it’s clear that Jefferson is criticizing a number of things that interfere with the ability of a society to choose its “natural” leaders. Among these are inequalities of wealth. Another interfering factor is the tendency of weaker-minded people to use force in place of ideas. All of these things are caused by the imposition of what, in risky modernist terms, we might call “unnatural hierarchy.” Rothbard’s libertarianism is capable of recognizing such sources of unnaturalness in governments and mobs, but not in the excessive accumulation of wealth.
As for Rothbard’s notions of the “biological nature of man,” I’ll just segue into his very weird discussion of feminism. We've been around the block so many times on this issue that Rothbard's quaintness is cute in places and irritating in others. We already know there are intimate biology-based connections between mother and child (and that those connections can be severed by unnatural "cultural" acts such as war, genocide, and extreme poverty). But we also know that fathers can find similar traits within themselves, and we've come a hell of a long way in our consciousness of how both two-parent and single-parent families function. Yawn, we know that men and women are built differently, but since we've also mastered the use of technology to overcome other "natural" barriers (strange for Rothbard to ignore this since capitalists usually love technology), we also have very nuanced ways of negotiating “biological differences.”
Other parts of Rothbard's gender analysis are borderline despicable and hopelessly out-of-date, such as his citation of "'the psychological consequences of different sexual postures and possibilities,' in particular the 'fundamental distinction between the active and passive sexual roles' as biologically determined in men and women respectively." But I will leave it to others to explain just how messed up such notions are…if others want to, that is. I mean, time is a valuable resource. But my take: One message of “feminism,” broadly speaking, is simply that biology need not be destiny, and that it should not account for varying layers of unwarranted privilege. This is one of the most important equivocations Rothbard makes, and it's the foundational equivocation of all of these seemingly erudite and dry-witted conservative essays against egalitarianism: "THERE ARE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLE. IT'S BAD TO TRY TO MAKE EVERYONE THE SAME! CLASS PRIVILEGES ARE DIFFERENCES! RESPECT ALL DIFFERENCES!" Silliness.
Rothbard's arguments in the essay against "culture" (what we would today call "social environment") as an explanation for social inequality suffer from the same dated dichotomy. Decades of research and reflection have yielded the conclusion that one cannot tell where culture ends and nature begins, or vice versa. We know that people do change when their environment changes, and that beliefs and cultural practices tend to correspond to material and social situations. We also acknowledge the complexity that renders both old-school progressive and old-school social Darwinist claims problematic.
Rothbard’s dismissal of Trotsky’s ideal as fantasy is, again, a quaintly dated dismissal in the face of what we now know about the interaction between environment and consciousness—to say nothing of history itself. Genetics itself interacts with history. Advances in science and technology, including the self-reflective advances of a new generation of scientists seeking to avoid the arrogance of the past, cast nearly all of Rothbard’s oversimplified scientific descriptions into doubt, the categories themselves dated and unstable. If you think I am unfairly dismissing his arguments, try this thought experiment: Imagine him making entirely similar arguments in favor of our unalterable biological drive towards the social, our evolution-driven and neurological tendency towards collaboration; imagine him attributing his “division of labor” to the very necessity that work be coordinated between people. Imagine him subsequently using these aspects of our unalterable, iron nature to dismiss the arguments of those self-serving, thoughtless libertarians. In place of Stalinism, he could throw in starvation. His case would satisfy leftists’ longing for scientific validation (heck, I’d throw in with him), while being utterly unconvincing to those on the right.
In the end, there are two “critical” ways read Rothbard’s classic essay: On the one hand, Rothbard gave his readers--people who already agreed with him and were just looking for a quick, erudite-sounding justification--a delightfully circular argument: 'Rather than appealing to its external effects, we should assert that egalitarianism is categorically evil. It is categorically evil because it goes against human nature. We can discern that it goes against human nature by observing its inevitable external effects.'
On the other hand, Rothbard's ultimately circular essay demonstrates that some of the brighter pro-capitalist minds realize that their world of the powerful constantly grabbing more power is ultimately incompatible with a minimum quality of life for the world's poor, and if we're going to convince people that capitalism is a universal good (rather than being really good for some of us, kinda good for others, not so good for other, awful for others…), we'd better concentrate on abstract morality rather than material consequences. It is a strategy that has reared its head time and again, and will continue to do so as capitalist life grows more unstable for more people. Don't expect any such deployments to be any less clumsy than Rothbard's. And he was a pretty smart guy.
Ultimately, the problem with libertarianism is precisely what Rothbard claims is the problem with socialism: Libertarianism, with zero hint of irony or self-reflection, posits a metaphysical caricature in place of a theory of humanity. I will go a step further, go out on a limb, and say that the socialist picture of human nature is more nuanced, acknowledging that both freedom and determinism are true, taking into account the paradoxical relationship between them. But you don’t need to agree with me about that, and I won’t question your intelligence or your ethics if you disagree. It’s something we can discuss another time, perhaps. And I also don’t mean to imply that egalitarians –socialist and otherwise—aren’t often guilty of the same kinds of caricatures and oversimplifications. Ultimately, questions like those asked by Rothbard are thought-provoking, but nothing in this canonical Rothbard essay stripped me of confidence in the soundness of my beliefs, any of which I’m happy to debate when I have time to do so.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Hillary Clinton and the Smell of Race-Baiting
Here's the editorial I read on today's "Shared Sacrifices" internet radio show. I'm not sure how much more editorializing I will do: I want to do other things in regards to the show: interviews, sketch-writing, production. I don't particularly want to argue with strangers anymore...But at any rate, this piece was intended to start a conversation with Democrats, not people who are obsessed with defending Bill O'Reilly...
The following rant assumes outcomes not entirely in evidence. There’s still a chance, maybe a good one, that Barrack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for President. But that chance is slipping, and in anticipation of all possibilities, something needs to be said.
If Senator Clinton wins the primary, it will be because she effectively exploited racism. This much is virtually beyond debate. From innuendos in the Carolinas to a sit-down chat with Bill O'Reilly, from post-McCarthyism to a reliable dash of Willie Horton, she has not only played the race card, but borrowed a number of hands from experienced card sharks. Doug Thompson of Capital Hill Blue thinks it’s beyond innuendo, that she is using “overt racism.” Thompson, a southerner himself, recognizes the code, just as Clinton’s advisers do. In the same commentary, he points out that “[e]xit polls from [the] Pennsylvania primary show nearly one-fifth of those who went to the polls admit racism determined how they voted -- and that's just those who admitted it.”
A likely scenario is that Clinton is going to keep doing this, through Indiana and North Carolina, driving the point home that she can win the bubbas and Obama can’t, solidifying her lead among the superdelegates and making the delegate and popular vote so close that the Party will be able to effectively wave off any protest concerning Obama’s slight lead. Hillary will be nominated, and hope that everyone forgets the depths to which she sank in the primaries.
Then, all of you, my Democrat friends, will vote for her in the general election, rewarding her willingness to play her dirty game. Most of you would have preferred Obama, and many of you campaigned for him with a vigor and energy I haven’t seen in the Democratic Party in a long time. But if Obama loses the nomination, whatever the reason, you’ll be “stuck” with Clinton, who defeated your candidate by appealing to fear and derision of his race.
Before you protest that she’ll be better than McCain, just answer me one question: How much better must one candidate be than another in order for you to tacitly condone and actively reward race-bating?
I’m not talking about policy differences here. I’m asking whether either your so-called liberal pragmatism, or your Party loyalty, will actually lead you to reward someone for exploiting racism. And if your answer is a sheepish, ashamed “well, yes actually,” then my next question is: What would Hillary Clinton have to do for you not to vote for her?
Sure, there will be those who disagree with Obama on policy matters. They'd vote against him whether he were black, white or Asian, and most of those people are beyond Clinton’s reach, just as those who would vote against either a black or a woman are beyond her reach. But among those Clinton is enthusiastically courting now are the millions of white Americans who are simply and secretly afraid of being led by a President of color; those who have either never confronted their own semi-conscious racism, or have confronted it and decided, for the sake of social acceptability, to keep it below the surface. For the benefit of the closet racists, Obama has been held up to every standard imaginable and examined with microscopes and Geiger counters in the hope of finding something "above board" to stick to the man, so that when white moderates, independents and Democrats reject him, they can say they’re doing it for policy reasons rather than because, well, yeah.
Hillary Clinton has both actively and passively supported this racist double standard. She is perfectly comfortable implying either that Obama is unelectable because he’s black, or that he is the “wrong kind” of black candidate. She "unconsciously" compared herself to Lyndon Johnson in the context of Obama being an MLK (even though Obama never claimed to be an MLK). When asked for her reaction on the outrageous "Obama is a Muslim" charge (a charge she must have known to be completely false), Clinton said "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know." In the debate in Cleveland, Clinton demanded that Obama "repudiate" Louis Farrakhan, a figure Obama had never embraced in the first place. (Don't expect anyone to demand that John McCain distance himself from David Duke, even though the latter has put up "McCain/Duke in 08" web sites and has vigorously endorsed McCain.) [SEE MY EDIT BELOW: I WAS WRONG; DUKE DOESN'T SUPPORT MCCAIN, AND I WAS CONFUSED BY WEB SITES--SORRY] Senator Clinton did not repudiate or clarify Bill Clinton's Jesse Jackson comparison or Bill’s later innuendo that a contest between McCain and Clinton would be the only one featuring “true Americans.”
Then Clinton went on the O'Reilly Factor.
Let's be clear about what kind of choice this was for her. Many moderate and liberal politicians have long avoided O'Reilly, a choice that their colleagues and constituents have seen as reasonable. Bill O’Reilly’s never done her any favors before, but she recognized that a lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats watch and identify with him. Clinton could not have been unaware of O'Reilly's track record on race issues. He said of a black musical group singing at a charity function "I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps." He used the term "wetback" on the air when describing immigrants--twice--and also denied he used it. In an interview with Stuff he said "the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries." In an on-air segment on black athletes he said "Look, you know as well as I do most of these kids come out and they can't speak English." O'Reilly might not be a racist in the David Duke old school mold, but his insensitivities and frequent slurs give legitimacy to those among his audience who are.
Clinton didn't have to go onto the show of a man who routinely expresses racially divisive ideas or displays insensitivities (for that matter, feminists out there, she didn't have to go on the show of a man who sexually harassed a former producer of the show). She chose to out of expediency, just as she has chosen to embrace and deploy enthymematic and just-under-the-radar tactics that play on people's fear of Obama, the cosmopolitan Black with the dangerous sounding name. Nation editor Betsy Reed put it best when she wrote: "It's disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent's patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color -- who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous."
This case is pretty clear, folks, although I suspect you’ll act angrier at me than you will at her: If you vote for Clinton, you are, in a very literal sense, rewarding her race-baiting political tactics. You are saying: The next time a white politician runs against a black politician, the white politician should do the same things Clinton has done. You might deny you are doing these things. You might even be and act offended by her race baiting, but that doesn’t change the quality of your vote, or what it will represent. There's no way to nuance a vote in an election, no way to "vote for Clinton with the additional clarification that I renounce her race-baiting tactics." In fact, the only way to truly renounce her tactics is to not vote for her.
You can appeal to the lesser of two evils all you want. In this instance, you’re going to vote for a candidate who actively and conscientiously deployed racism to win her nomination. How different, really, is that from voting for a racist outright?
The following rant assumes outcomes not entirely in evidence. There’s still a chance, maybe a good one, that Barrack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for President. But that chance is slipping, and in anticipation of all possibilities, something needs to be said.
If Senator Clinton wins the primary, it will be because she effectively exploited racism. This much is virtually beyond debate. From innuendos in the Carolinas to a sit-down chat with Bill O'Reilly, from post-McCarthyism to a reliable dash of Willie Horton, she has not only played the race card, but borrowed a number of hands from experienced card sharks. Doug Thompson of Capital Hill Blue thinks it’s beyond innuendo, that she is using “overt racism.” Thompson, a southerner himself, recognizes the code, just as Clinton’s advisers do. In the same commentary, he points out that “[e]xit polls from [the] Pennsylvania primary show nearly one-fifth of those who went to the polls admit racism determined how they voted -- and that's just those who admitted it.”
A likely scenario is that Clinton is going to keep doing this, through Indiana and North Carolina, driving the point home that she can win the bubbas and Obama can’t, solidifying her lead among the superdelegates and making the delegate and popular vote so close that the Party will be able to effectively wave off any protest concerning Obama’s slight lead. Hillary will be nominated, and hope that everyone forgets the depths to which she sank in the primaries.
Then, all of you, my Democrat friends, will vote for her in the general election, rewarding her willingness to play her dirty game. Most of you would have preferred Obama, and many of you campaigned for him with a vigor and energy I haven’t seen in the Democratic Party in a long time. But if Obama loses the nomination, whatever the reason, you’ll be “stuck” with Clinton, who defeated your candidate by appealing to fear and derision of his race.
Before you protest that she’ll be better than McCain, just answer me one question: How much better must one candidate be than another in order for you to tacitly condone and actively reward race-bating?
I’m not talking about policy differences here. I’m asking whether either your so-called liberal pragmatism, or your Party loyalty, will actually lead you to reward someone for exploiting racism. And if your answer is a sheepish, ashamed “well, yes actually,” then my next question is: What would Hillary Clinton have to do for you not to vote for her?
Sure, there will be those who disagree with Obama on policy matters. They'd vote against him whether he were black, white or Asian, and most of those people are beyond Clinton’s reach, just as those who would vote against either a black or a woman are beyond her reach. But among those Clinton is enthusiastically courting now are the millions of white Americans who are simply and secretly afraid of being led by a President of color; those who have either never confronted their own semi-conscious racism, or have confronted it and decided, for the sake of social acceptability, to keep it below the surface. For the benefit of the closet racists, Obama has been held up to every standard imaginable and examined with microscopes and Geiger counters in the hope of finding something "above board" to stick to the man, so that when white moderates, independents and Democrats reject him, they can say they’re doing it for policy reasons rather than because, well, yeah.
Hillary Clinton has both actively and passively supported this racist double standard. She is perfectly comfortable implying either that Obama is unelectable because he’s black, or that he is the “wrong kind” of black candidate. She "unconsciously" compared herself to Lyndon Johnson in the context of Obama being an MLK (even though Obama never claimed to be an MLK). When asked for her reaction on the outrageous "Obama is a Muslim" charge (a charge she must have known to be completely false), Clinton said "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know." In the debate in Cleveland, Clinton demanded that Obama "repudiate" Louis Farrakhan, a figure Obama had never embraced in the first place. (Don't expect anyone to demand that John McCain distance himself from David Duke, even though the latter has put up "McCain/Duke in 08" web sites and has vigorously endorsed McCain.) [SEE MY EDIT BELOW: I WAS WRONG; DUKE DOESN'T SUPPORT MCCAIN, AND I WAS CONFUSED BY WEB SITES--SORRY] Senator Clinton did not repudiate or clarify Bill Clinton's Jesse Jackson comparison or Bill’s later innuendo that a contest between McCain and Clinton would be the only one featuring “true Americans.”
Then Clinton went on the O'Reilly Factor.
Let's be clear about what kind of choice this was for her. Many moderate and liberal politicians have long avoided O'Reilly, a choice that their colleagues and constituents have seen as reasonable. Bill O’Reilly’s never done her any favors before, but she recognized that a lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats watch and identify with him. Clinton could not have been unaware of O'Reilly's track record on race issues. He said of a black musical group singing at a charity function "I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps." He used the term "wetback" on the air when describing immigrants--twice--and also denied he used it. In an interview with Stuff he said "the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries." In an on-air segment on black athletes he said "Look, you know as well as I do most of these kids come out and they can't speak English." O'Reilly might not be a racist in the David Duke old school mold, but his insensitivities and frequent slurs give legitimacy to those among his audience who are.
Clinton didn't have to go onto the show of a man who routinely expresses racially divisive ideas or displays insensitivities (for that matter, feminists out there, she didn't have to go on the show of a man who sexually harassed a former producer of the show). She chose to out of expediency, just as she has chosen to embrace and deploy enthymematic and just-under-the-radar tactics that play on people's fear of Obama, the cosmopolitan Black with the dangerous sounding name. Nation editor Betsy Reed put it best when she wrote: "It's disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent's patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color -- who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous."
This case is pretty clear, folks, although I suspect you’ll act angrier at me than you will at her: If you vote for Clinton, you are, in a very literal sense, rewarding her race-baiting political tactics. You are saying: The next time a white politician runs against a black politician, the white politician should do the same things Clinton has done. You might deny you are doing these things. You might even be and act offended by her race baiting, but that doesn’t change the quality of your vote, or what it will represent. There's no way to nuance a vote in an election, no way to "vote for Clinton with the additional clarification that I renounce her race-baiting tactics." In fact, the only way to truly renounce her tactics is to not vote for her.
You can appeal to the lesser of two evils all you want. In this instance, you’re going to vote for a candidate who actively and conscientiously deployed racism to win her nomination. How different, really, is that from voting for a racist outright?
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Tomorrow's Radio Show...and go Jazz!
First, tomorrow's radio show, Shared Sacrifice, which comes on at noon mountain time at (and is archived in case you can't listen at that time), has a full agenda: Gary will rant about, among other things, military talking heads. I'll cover the McCain health care "plan" and also have something to say about Clinton, Obama, and the racism game in mainstream politics. We are also expecting a very frightening mystery guest.
If you're listening live, CALL IN!
Second, the Utah Jazz made it to the Western Conference semis, where they will play the Lakers. This is a repeat of the explosive seven game semifinal series twenty years ago, with different, but equally compelling characters.
We can nitpick about this, but I think the similarities are impressive...
If you're listening live, CALL IN!
Second, the Utah Jazz made it to the Western Conference semis, where they will play the Lakers. This is a repeat of the explosive seven game semifinal series twenty years ago, with different, but equally compelling characters.
We can nitpick about this, but I think the similarities are impressive...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
spam poetry edition
Call it "spoetry." Sometimes the absurdity generates its own anti-thematic pattern, in a manner worthy of Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, or John Lennon.
Found this one in my junk box this morning, from a "Katy Bautista:"
hehe, bro...
we got it all
dolores paunchy riggs ruffian
gilbert hanoverian maniac
privilege dignity
irksome grocery investor
antaeus fibonacci
major lore mauricio
patriot throng cowpox
Found this one in my junk box this morning, from a "Katy Bautista:"
hehe, bro...
we got it all
dolores paunchy riggs ruffian
gilbert hanoverian maniac
privilege dignity
irksome grocery investor
antaeus fibonacci
major lore mauricio
patriot throng cowpox
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Shared Sacrifice Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Shared_Sacrifice
Gary Barkley, who "began" his conscious political odyssey last summer giving an insider's view of Iraq to a group of college debaters at the University of Wyoming, has invited me to do a talk radio show with him via blog talk radio--a great forum that I've participated in before. We're serious about making this a worthwhile show, and have booked a truly great inaugural guest: Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, and contributer to the New York Times, New Republic, and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. We're already lining up guests for the weeks to come, and want to spread the word for people to call into the show.
The details are at the link above. The show is 12-2 PM MT this Saturday.
Gary Barkley, who "began" his conscious political odyssey last summer giving an insider's view of Iraq to a group of college debaters at the University of Wyoming, has invited me to do a talk radio show with him via blog talk radio--a great forum that I've participated in before. We're serious about making this a worthwhile show, and have booked a truly great inaugural guest: Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, and contributer to the New York Times, New Republic, and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. We're already lining up guests for the weeks to come, and want to spread the word for people to call into the show.
The details are at the link above. The show is 12-2 PM MT this Saturday.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
racism update again
This time, it's Republicans calling Obama "boy." (label this in the "areyoufrigginserious" category) Anyone who doesn't understand the context of this and why it's extremely offensive ought to do a bit of research...
Yep, that's right. Kentucky congressman Geoff Davis said the following:
Yep, that's right. Kentucky congressman Geoff Davis said the following:
“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Mr. Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”...
Mr. Davis has sent a letter of apology to Mr. Obama, and described his comments as a “poor choice of words,” according to The Associated Press.
Monday, April 14, 2008
...and from the right...
Let's see how long it takes Human Events to remove this disgusting comment on an Obama article:
"Dan--Obama should never be allowed near the White House...except in the kitchen." (Otis, Mayberry, Apr 14, 2008 @ 11:18 AM)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the all-too-common covert racist I speak of in more detail below. This is the person who is way too scared to say these things in any detectable or accountable way, but who feels insulated, made safe, by the presence of intolerant garbage publications like Human Events, where even Ann Coulter finds shelter.
"Dan--Obama should never be allowed near the White House...except in the kitchen." (Otis, Mayberry, Apr 14, 2008 @ 11:18 AM)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the all-too-common covert racist I speak of in more detail below. This is the person who is way too scared to say these things in any detectable or accountable way, but who feels insulated, made safe, by the presence of intolerant garbage publications like Human Events, where even Ann Coulter finds shelter.
Obama done?
Discuss.
I think he is. I think his comments were perfectly reasonable, in fact I agree strongly with them, and I even believe people should have interpreted his remarks charitably (eg, we use religion as a crutch when faced with long-term economic malaise, and it doesn't really solve anything, because it's a particularly reactionary kind of religious belief, spawned from bitterness, whatever).
But now all the people who don't want to admit (even to themselves) that they just aren't comfortable voting for a black person with a non-anglo name will find an overt reason not to do so. And others will be genuinely offended by his remarks, because they have been taught to be. A very few people will be offended by his remarks in good faith, and intelligently. Put the covert racists and scared white middle class together with those few intelligent people, and in a close election, well, it doesn't look good.
I'm admittedly an outside observer, but I "like" Obama well enough, and many people I care deeply about are not only supporting him; they are doing so with vigor and investing a lot of what's left of their faith in the system in this guy.
If it does cost him, then as much as I (or people like me) don't see a problem with what he said, I do have to ask: What the heck was he thinking? Or was his blood sugar low that day and did he let some of his (justified) bitterness about mainstream religion slip out at the wrong time? Not smart. Not smart at all. Then again, not fair, not fair at all, what's happened to him, what's gonna happen, etc.
If he loses because of this, I at least hope it will clarify for us the futility (even in the face of inevitability) of mainstream politics.
I think he is. I think his comments were perfectly reasonable, in fact I agree strongly with them, and I even believe people should have interpreted his remarks charitably (eg, we use religion as a crutch when faced with long-term economic malaise, and it doesn't really solve anything, because it's a particularly reactionary kind of religious belief, spawned from bitterness, whatever).
But now all the people who don't want to admit (even to themselves) that they just aren't comfortable voting for a black person with a non-anglo name will find an overt reason not to do so. And others will be genuinely offended by his remarks, because they have been taught to be. A very few people will be offended by his remarks in good faith, and intelligently. Put the covert racists and scared white middle class together with those few intelligent people, and in a close election, well, it doesn't look good.
I'm admittedly an outside observer, but I "like" Obama well enough, and many people I care deeply about are not only supporting him; they are doing so with vigor and investing a lot of what's left of their faith in the system in this guy.
If it does cost him, then as much as I (or people like me) don't see a problem with what he said, I do have to ask: What the heck was he thinking? Or was his blood sugar low that day and did he let some of his (justified) bitterness about mainstream religion slip out at the wrong time? Not smart. Not smart at all. Then again, not fair, not fair at all, what's happened to him, what's gonna happen, etc.
If he loses because of this, I at least hope it will clarify for us the futility (even in the face of inevitability) of mainstream politics.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
There is no anti-war movement; was there ever?
I have, as one voice among many others, posited the absence of an anti-war movement for some time now. While reliable pro-peace, labor and left groups still oppose the war from their position of consistency, there is no genuine anti-war movement per se. There are, instead, socialists opposed to the war, unitarians opposed to the war, nurses opposed to the war, feminists opposed to the war, and so on.
I mean, sure. There are networks of activists, there are activities, there is communication, there are declarations. But the rank-and-file anti-war demonstrators are smaller in number than ever, and what may even be more important in the current age, the anti-war side has zero influence on the media.
Not coincidentally in the least, the New York Times editorial page Editor Andrew Rosenthal posited an absence of a movement two years ago. The subtitle of his piece, incidentally, was "Where have all the protesters gone," which would have been a clever take on Peter, Paul and Mary, were it not for the fact that this is apparently the chosen title or subtitle of about a hundred other pieces asking similar questions (google it, seriously.)
Liberal newspaper editors are one thing, though, and serious anti-establishment intellectuals and writers like Tariq Ali are another. And the title of his recent piece is not some funny play on our familiarity with a hippie song. Instead, his scathing and pessimistic case for movement nothingness is subtitled "The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself." It's the most grim prognosis of politics I've read in a long time...
...That is, until the only remaining possible resistance and transcendence is complete, total, violent system collapse, which will rain down fire and death on the innocent and culpable alike.
I mean, sure. There are networks of activists, there are activities, there is communication, there are declarations. But the rank-and-file anti-war demonstrators are smaller in number than ever, and what may even be more important in the current age, the anti-war side has zero influence on the media.
Not coincidentally in the least, the New York Times editorial page Editor Andrew Rosenthal posited an absence of a movement two years ago. The subtitle of his piece, incidentally, was "Where have all the protesters gone," which would have been a clever take on Peter, Paul and Mary, were it not for the fact that this is apparently the chosen title or subtitle of about a hundred other pieces asking similar questions (google it, seriously.)
Liberal newspaper editors are one thing, though, and serious anti-establishment intellectuals and writers like Tariq Ali are another. And the title of his recent piece is not some funny play on our familiarity with a hippie song. Instead, his scathing and pessimistic case for movement nothingness is subtitled "The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself." It's the most grim prognosis of politics I've read in a long time...
The fact is that it never was, in the true and proper sense of the word, a movement -- only a day of paroxysm, a spontaneous and desperate attempt of citizens of all political persuasions to stop the war. It was conceived, if you will, as a preventive blow against a war that people instinctively knew was based on a heap of lies. The day when the war really began, antiwar mobilizations began to die. Citizens, demoralized by their own failure, could no longer find the strength to take to the streets in great numbers. ...There is no solidarity with the Iraqis. They are Arabs, largely Muslims, and the wave of Islamophobia that has swept the West has brought with it the dehumanization of those who were murdered....the movements of workers and progressives in general in Western Europe, increasingly in crisis, are indifferent to their destiny -- just as they are indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians....a majority of the North American and European citizens are still in favor of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq: however, their voices are not being heard by the political establishment. There is a growing crisis of political representation in the West. Democracy is becoming hollow. In the US electoral campaign, both the Democratic candidates publicly say they are in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, but privately they reassure the military that they do not seriously intend to withdraw despite being forced to say so because people are discontent. In the end, the fact that there is no draft in the US means that most Americans are not directly affected by the war. Military families opposed to the war constitute the only important pressure group. As a substitute for the draft, the US has recruited mercenaries from all over the world: there are 50,000 Ugandans, thousands of Central Americans, South Africans, and others who are paid the market price to fight in Iraq. Who cares if they die? It's a risk that they assume, in exchange for wages and US citizenship. A grim picture, which should make Westerners think.There's obviously a lot to digest here, but probably the scariest thing for those of us who see political activism as part of our being is the very real possibility that protest doesn't matter in the least: Those of us without massive financial influence already live in a virtually totalitarian society where debate is managed to the point of ineffectiveness, and our leaders' true power-sources are insulated to the point of inaccessibility. This was a possibility posited by Tom Engelhardt last October in a piece entitled, what else, "Where have all the protesters gone?"
However, over the years, unlike in the Vietnam era, the demonstrations shrank, and somehow the anxiety, the anger -- though it remained suspended somewhere in the American ether -- stopped manifesting itself so publicly, even as the war went on and on. Or put another way, perhaps the anger went deeper and turned inward, like a scouring agent. Perhaps it went all theThis is the most damning indictment of all--both of the system, and the way we can approach resisting it. It indicts mass protest, but also indicts the poststructuralist concepts of culture-jamming or other media-engaged theories of subversive theatrics. It indicts politics for all but a wealthy few, who will never have to personally face the consequences of deploying large numbers of soldiers and weapons and bombs from one place to another for the sake of geostrategic and resource gain.
way into what was left of an American belief system, into despair about the unresponsiveness of the government -- with paralyzing effect. As another potentially more disastrous war with Iran edges into sight, the response has been limited largely to what might be called the professional demonstrators. The surge of hope, of visual creativity, of spontaneous interaction, of the urge to turn out, that arose in those prewar demonstrations now seemed so long gone, replaced by a far more powerful sense that nothing anyone could do mattered in the least.
...That is, until the only remaining possible resistance and transcendence is complete, total, violent system collapse, which will rain down fire and death on the innocent and culpable alike.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
HALL
(w. apologies to allen ginsberg)
i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Theory
running naked through academia thinking they were on a battleground
talking critical deconstruction whiteness queer play
wearing their lyotards and hiring their butlers
talking like people who'd never had to struggle for a meal
--even though many of them did--
in which their addiction to poststructural bullshit make them feel even guiltier for being poor
(poorness being an unacceptable category of discussion;
as well as a barrier to buying drinks for their cynical professors)
abandoning all faith in humanity except as text
abandoning all hope for liberation except in the mind of the mind of the mind
fighting only the safest but sexiest sounding fights
then turning away from real battles because of ontological purity
afraid to get their fingernails dirty
afraid to explain and justify their lives to people living in trailers
afraid to face their own complacency
telling themselves their next conference paper would liberate humanity
telling themselves discourse was reality
embarassed that their dead miner railworker soldier grandparents
might rise from the grave and ask them what the hell they were doing with their lives
i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Theory
running naked through academia thinking they were on a battleground
talking critical deconstruction whiteness queer play
wearing their lyotards and hiring their butlers
talking like people who'd never had to struggle for a meal
--even though many of them did--
in which their addiction to poststructural bullshit make them feel even guiltier for being poor
(poorness being an unacceptable category of discussion;
as well as a barrier to buying drinks for their cynical professors)
abandoning all faith in humanity except as text
abandoning all hope for liberation except in the mind of the mind of the mind
fighting only the safest but sexiest sounding fights
then turning away from real battles because of ontological purity
afraid to get their fingernails dirty
afraid to explain and justify their lives to people living in trailers
afraid to face their own complacency
telling themselves their next conference paper would liberate humanity
telling themselves discourse was reality
embarassed that their dead miner railworker soldier grandparents
might rise from the grave and ask them what the hell they were doing with their lives
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Buckley: Epidictic Obit Follow-Up
Two good pieces on William F. Buckley's life and death appear today: Patrick Martin's Marxist-oriented obit, which does an especially good job taking apart the bourgeois media's obsession with and gushing praise over Buckley, and David Michael Green's "tribute" to Buckley's spectacular historical wrongness. Both essays, coincidentally, share a common theme: Buckley not only missed history, but wanted to end history, to stop the clock, to preserve the inequality and privilege of his time, and even to return to a more hierarchical time. Green sums it up nicely:
So who do you think history will judge to have gotten this question right, eh? --Martin Luther King Jr. or Bill Buckley? One could say that Buckley's position was just about the most spectacular example ever recorded of the missing of a historical train. There was Ol' Bill (who actually didn't even have the excuse then of being old), standing on the (whites only) platform, watching the Morality Express go whooshing by.
But then, wasn't missing just such trains precisely the point of conservatism?
Dungeon Master Loses Hit Points
"In the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I," Fry asks the Professor's What If machine what would have happened if he hadn't been frozen. The machine produces a scenario that shows Fry narrowly avoiding being frozen. But because that didn't happen, and chain of events that never happened cause a rift in the time-space continuum. Fry is then abducted by the Vice Presidential Action Rangers, Al Gore, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Hawking and Gary Gygax. They decide that to protect the universe, they must kill Fry. But when that causes another rift, they decide to freeze him after all. Fry breaks the tube before he is frozen, causing the universe to collapse in on itself. Fry's scenario ends with the group playing Dungeons and Dragons for all eternity." (http://animatedtv.about.com/od/futurama/ig/Futurama-Pictures/Futurama---Al-Gore.--Wu.htm)
Here is Russell Fox's recollection of his adolescent Dungeons and Dragons experiences, in memory of the recent death of beloved D&D creator Gary Gygax.
In many ways, the political and ethical imagination instantiated by my participation in academic and public debate was conditioned by my experience with fantasy and science fiction comics, novels and roleplaying games. Moreover, those games were a lifeline to friendships and a social life for me. If there was a more awkward 13-15 year old on the planet besides myself, I never met them.
Gygax also, quite unintentionally, revived a somewhat dormant fantasy and science fiction craze.
Rest in peace, GG.
Here is Russell Fox's recollection of his adolescent Dungeons and Dragons experiences, in memory of the recent death of beloved D&D creator Gary Gygax.
In many ways, the political and ethical imagination instantiated by my participation in academic and public debate was conditioned by my experience with fantasy and science fiction comics, novels and roleplaying games. Moreover, those games were a lifeline to friendships and a social life for me. If there was a more awkward 13-15 year old on the planet besides myself, I never met them.
Gygax also, quite unintentionally, revived a somewhat dormant fantasy and science fiction craze.
Rest in peace, GG.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Buckley: Rich Racist Jerkoff, but So Articulate...
Epidictic rhetoric needn't only be praiseworthy. It's the rhetoric of "praise or blame," and in this case blame is precisely appropriate and cleansing to our collective soul. It is possible to "mourn" the dead by talking about what assholes they were. William F. Buckley made the world a considerably crappier place. We should celebrate his passage by acknowledging that.
Don't let the bowtie and cheeky humor fool you. Buckley was a hater, part of a long line of haters of his political (and class) orientation who delighted in covering the hate in humor. He made Ann Coulter possible. He called people "queers" and "fags" unironically. Guiding the editorial position of the National Review, he composed the following about segregation in 1957:
"The central question that emerges ... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes -- the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."
Much has been said about Buckley's "reformation" because he had a bunch of rich white friends who weren't racist. But in fact he continued to deeply distrust blacks all his life, pathetically lamenting about their voting patterns, opining that it was obvious whites' opinion that OJ Simpson was guilty was based on truth, while it was equally obvious that blacks' opinion of Simpson's innocence was based on race. I am still looking to track down an editorial he wrote on Somalia in the early 1990s, citing its breakdown as evidence that white colonialism was a good idea. Buckley invented and refined, out of necessity, the chuckling "innuendo racism" that characterizes great minds from Coulter to Michael Savage today. He deployed that innuendo boyishly because he could afford to never grow up, and he deployed it in the service of socioeconomic forces that really do kill people of color, every day (and a whole lot of poor white people too).
As one blogger put it, "There’s your 'refined, perspicacious mind' for you." As another put it in a headline: "Another racist asshole dead." One too few, to be sure, but well-put.
Don't let the bowtie and cheeky humor fool you. Buckley was a hater, part of a long line of haters of his political (and class) orientation who delighted in covering the hate in humor. He made Ann Coulter possible. He called people "queers" and "fags" unironically. Guiding the editorial position of the National Review, he composed the following about segregation in 1957:
"The central question that emerges ... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes -- the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."
Much has been said about Buckley's "reformation" because he had a bunch of rich white friends who weren't racist. But in fact he continued to deeply distrust blacks all his life, pathetically lamenting about their voting patterns, opining that it was obvious whites' opinion that OJ Simpson was guilty was based on truth, while it was equally obvious that blacks' opinion of Simpson's innocence was based on race. I am still looking to track down an editorial he wrote on Somalia in the early 1990s, citing its breakdown as evidence that white colonialism was a good idea. Buckley invented and refined, out of necessity, the chuckling "innuendo racism" that characterizes great minds from Coulter to Michael Savage today. He deployed that innuendo boyishly because he could afford to never grow up, and he deployed it in the service of socioeconomic forces that really do kill people of color, every day (and a whole lot of poor white people too).
As one blogger put it, "There’s your 'refined, perspicacious mind' for you." As another put it in a headline: "Another racist asshole dead." One too few, to be sure, but well-put.
Monday, February 11, 2008
more on obama, corporatism, and the long-term struggle
How is reliance on corporate support a liability for progressive politics? Well, David Sirota describes at least one area where it at least distorts what would be better viewed with clarity:
But at the same time, I even think Sirota is kind of minimizing Obama's own orientation in all this; it almost sounds like he's saying "Obama wants to be a real lefty, he really does, but he's gotta be all stealth about it!" How do I know, then, what he really wants? In Obama's defense (sort of) I have heard him say "even though I'm a progressive, I will reach across the aisles," which seems to suggest just that: he's a progressive willing to compromise with centrists and conservatives. That would be much more of a coherent statement, though, if he were not so materially reliant on corporations, and didn't have some very troubling folks advising him on economics (thanks for the citation, Renegade Eye!).
If the response is that reliance on corporate support is the ONLY way for a candidate to be viable, that sounds equal parts defensive and a symptom of the disease. In light of all the conversation around here lately about the long-term implications of reform versus revolutionary politics, and their permutability, what I am beginning to see is the necessity of constantly keeping this conversation alive at every stage of the political process. Keep reminding ourselves, reminding the public, that the reason--the actual cause--of our political ideals being dashed time and again, the reason we have to "settle for less," is the corporate colonization of politics. Those whose political priorities favor fighting against corporatism specifically needn't be in conflict with those whose priorities favor getting the most progressive candidates elected in any given election. But for those two forces to work together, the critique, the conversation, must be kept alive.
Remember, too, that within the current system, the ability to deliver on progressive promises like health care is always contingent on capitalism's continued growth and expansion. To sign onto a progressive health plan is to sign onto the ship sailing smooth waters. When waters get rough, the owners will take away those extras, and if and when the ship goes down, so will progressive politics, so will the educational system, so will academic debate and the ability to reason through these dilemmas, so will the network of current institutions dedicated to fairly distributing those scraps...at the very least, again, a reason to keep talking about the unpleasantries of capital. The economic overwhelms the political, and will until we decide not to let it anymore.
Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration's role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today's boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm "where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards," including Wal-Mart's. Obama hasn't touched any of this for two reasons. First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric. But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders. "If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently," says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver's Center for African American Policy. That's because once Obama parroted Edwards' attacks on greed and inequality, he would "be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race," says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson -- a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters. Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader's race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. "the most dangerous man in America" for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein's 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., "an African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped" and "one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics."
But at the same time, I even think Sirota is kind of minimizing Obama's own orientation in all this; it almost sounds like he's saying "Obama wants to be a real lefty, he really does, but he's gotta be all stealth about it!" How do I know, then, what he really wants? In Obama's defense (sort of) I have heard him say "even though I'm a progressive, I will reach across the aisles," which seems to suggest just that: he's a progressive willing to compromise with centrists and conservatives. That would be much more of a coherent statement, though, if he were not so materially reliant on corporations, and didn't have some very troubling folks advising him on economics (thanks for the citation, Renegade Eye!).
If the response is that reliance on corporate support is the ONLY way for a candidate to be viable, that sounds equal parts defensive and a symptom of the disease. In light of all the conversation around here lately about the long-term implications of reform versus revolutionary politics, and their permutability, what I am beginning to see is the necessity of constantly keeping this conversation alive at every stage of the political process. Keep reminding ourselves, reminding the public, that the reason--the actual cause--of our political ideals being dashed time and again, the reason we have to "settle for less," is the corporate colonization of politics. Those whose political priorities favor fighting against corporatism specifically needn't be in conflict with those whose priorities favor getting the most progressive candidates elected in any given election. But for those two forces to work together, the critique, the conversation, must be kept alive.
Remember, too, that within the current system, the ability to deliver on progressive promises like health care is always contingent on capitalism's continued growth and expansion. To sign onto a progressive health plan is to sign onto the ship sailing smooth waters. When waters get rough, the owners will take away those extras, and if and when the ship goes down, so will progressive politics, so will the educational system, so will academic debate and the ability to reason through these dilemmas, so will the network of current institutions dedicated to fairly distributing those scraps...at the very least, again, a reason to keep talking about the unpleasantries of capital. The economic overwhelms the political, and will until we decide not to let it anymore.
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