Make him do it - from: Hullabaloo

"If Obama wants to govern as liberally as the political circumstances allow, then we need to work to make sure that the political circumstances include a strong liberal base. As Roosevelt understood, politics are interlocking interests and constituencies that have to be brought to bear to achieve certain goals."

Ask for -- & DEMAND you get -- the changes you want from the new Obama administration. Cheer where appropriate, but criticize whenever necessary. As Digby reminds us in her post,

a President does not rule by fiat and unilateral commands to a nation. He must build the political support that makes his decisions acceptable to our countrymen. [FDR] read the public opinion polls not to define who he was but to determine where the country was – and then to strategize how he could move the country to the objectives he thought had to be carried out.

Obama, like many Presidents before him, will do the same, and will need our voices to help shape the direction of this country. Being endlessly optimistic cheerleaders or mindless drones willing to accept & defend whatever our government hands us (as though our government is an entity separate & apart from us, rather than made up & empowered to act by us) will not do. We need to speak out loud & strong, constantly, in support of the ideals & values we believe in.



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A DECLARATION OF WAR!

The following incident happened to Otto, my thethe anika (great, grandmother’s) qïzaqa (elder sister’s) çhïqan sïñnï (younger cousin’s) qïz (daughter’s) haçï oghïl (nephew’s) qazïn ïnï (brother-in-law) twice removed. In my extended family, an affront to one is an affront to all.

It started with a mysterious short-circuit that baffled electricians at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany. Apparently, Otto the Octopus found the overhead light above his aquarium too bright for his taste and decided to take up arms … all eight of them … against the establishment. Otto climbed on the rim of his tank and extinguished the light with a jet of water.

According to Director Elfriede Kummer: "We've put the light a bit higher now so he shouldn't be able to reach it. But Otto is constantly craving for attention and always comes up with new stunts so we have realised we will have to keep [a] more careful eye on him - and also perhaps give him a few more toys to play with.”

Wrong, Director Dummkopf, you missed the point. Otto does not crave attention, or toys, or perform stunts for condescending, patronizing hyoomens. Maybe he just wants the friggin' light out.

Free Otto!

Le mot Juste

A kind word turneth away wrath and saying just the right thing can create confidence. President Elect Barak Obama said all the right things and looked as presidential as anyone ever has in his first press conference this afternoon. Chris Matthews even had to admit that there was no sign of a "redistributive" mood in his tax plan although in fact there never was, and who could resist a smile when Obama compared himself to a mutt from the animal shelter?

This is a man confident in himself and who appears to be confident in his ability and confident in our country. It's in sharp contrast to the anonymous e-mail I got last night showing the Obama campaign logo as African tribesmen danced almost naked around a fire. So while I've come to feel that for once I voted for someone I believe in rather than the lesser of two evils; while I am at this moment as proud of the USA as I have been and more proud than I have been in many years, I'm beginning to daydream about blowing the heads off racists.

A christian friend of mine once said that such people were ignorant and should be pitied. I know he's right, but it doesn't help. It only encourages them. So whoever you are "floridajoker," be aware that pity only makes my aim better.

And He Shall Speechify: the Meaning of the Moment

This is indeed an historic moment for the country. My vote was first and foremost cast for Obama because I thought him a better candidate, second because Democrats are generally more in sync with my values, and third because based on my own experience and interpretation of American history, I thought it high time that a person of African descent should be elected president. Obama’s victory has tremendous symbolic value for us and for at least that portion of the world that watches closely what we do. It would be a mistake to downplay the significance of the moment (as in, “race had nothing to do with my vote”). What has just happened is profound, even though it by no means annuls four centuries of tormented racial history. In a non-trivial sense, we have been voting for our presidents “because they were white” since the inception of the Republic. It’s fine by me if I can now vote—even just a little—for a gifted, intelligent, inspiring candidate “because he is black.” The shades of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are looking down on us today—the former is about to offer some wry rustic observation, and the latter is scowling a little (brooding about the future and weighing the past, no doubt), but each is pleased in his own way. Beyond this I shouldn’t say much. To borrow a line from some annoying Tarantino film, “this ain’t white boy day.” It’s for black folk to wax eloquent if they like, and say what the deepest meaning of the moment is.

I appreciated John McCain’s concession speech—it was the old JMAC from 2000. Campaigns can distort a person’s true nature, and I think he got trapped by the far right (i.e Dubya’s base) into running as someone he really wasn’t. He will get back to his old ways as the senior Senator from Arizona, and probably work well with the new Administration in areas where there’s common ground. I will look forward to a post about what the GOP needs to do now, and may work on my own thoughts about the Republican Party at some point. I believe the Karl Roves of the Party drove it off a cliff by getting so clever at electoral strategy that they gave no heed to why they wanted to win. So maybe my argument will be, “Less Machiavelli—less Karl Rove, Ralph Reed & Co., and more Lincoln.” Old Abe would have thrown some of these “strategery” types out the window of the tallest building he could find.

There was one troubling or clumsy note in the concession speech, I thought—“Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.” Perhaps Senator McCain didn’t realize how such phrasing might sound to some people—especially to some black people. Rosa Parks didn’t “fail to cherish her citizenship,” after all, no? The fact is, and as W.E.B. DuBois attests in The Souls of Black Folk, to be African American is to have a very complex relationship to your country; it admits neither jingoism nor unmitigated contempt. A poetics of strength and an inclination towards perpetual critique seem to be called for, not simple “cherishing.” Oh well, it’s no big deal—it was a kind and gracious speech, and perhaps as good in its way as Obama’s rather long victory speech. Obama was clearly exhausted, and he was in mourning for his grandmother. I found his direct quotations from great African American pronouncements a bit “campaignish.” Perhaps for his inaugural speech he will find good ways to incorporate a little of Douglass, DuBois, MLK and others, but in a way that trades in adaptation rather than direct quotation. He’s firing along with the big rhetorical guns now that he’s the president-elect, which will call on him to accomplish the difficult but (no doubt for a speaker of his gifts) achievable simultaneous task of paying homage to past figures in African American history and effecting a historical transvaluation or re-rooting of their words and ideas. Obama’s subdued tone may have been partly owing to personal reasons, but I found it appropriate. When were black people’s moments of happiness in this country not tinged with sorrow and perhaps with some degree of alienation and aloofness, marked by something held always in reserve? Douglass and DuBois are the great archetypes in this regard. I believe Obama will give an awesome inaugural address, when he has time to sit down and work out his best thoughts on the significance of the moment and the things that need to be done going forwards.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN IN BERLIN, 1989

The composer, the symphony, the conductor, the year ... I could think of nothing else more appropriate to celebrate this day, Wednesday, November 5, 2008:



Updates:
This comment from rockync (see Captain Fogg's post below): This morning we are, once again, Americans, all of us, left and right and in the middle, so let's not forget to greet our fellow citizens with compassion and respect -- it's time to get to work, folks ... (10:34 AM, November 05, 2008).

Yes, but. . .

Did Florida redeem itself last night? It depends. Yes, there were enough Homo Sapiens to put Obama over the top, but the Neanderthals won far too many local contests. The miserable bastards of Martin County Florida voted heavily Republican and no Democrat, includingBarak Obama came anywhere close to winning. I'm at a loss to explain it.

This is a small county, much of which is rural and much of it is state and federal park land. It's a county that prides itself as conservation minded and it shows, A recent poll showed than nearly 90% of us favor slow and limited growth and many favor no growth at all, but it's a county that regularly -- invariable votes for councilmen owned and operated by rapacious developers. That is to say they vote Republican.

I've regularly been chastised for hinting that Sarah Palin isn't qualified. People bristle at any criticism of Bush, at any suggestion that there is any option for the voter than to go straight Republican. Wealthy people, upper middle class people; you can almost see the reptiliannictitating membrane blink over their eyes at the suggestion that there is no official state religion, that the Constitution does not mandate that people pledge allegiance to (the Christian) God and that we stamp our mandatory faith on our coinage.

Yes a slight majority of Floridians voted for Obama. Counties containing Universities, counties with a high African American population, even Miami-Dade with it's very large Cuban population voted for Obama, but not Martin County with it's relatively large population of billionaires and multi-multi millionaires and a very large number of retired military personnel . This county votes in lock step with the people of central Florida: the people in the rusted out trailers and tar paper shacks and dead cars in the yard.

These fine folks also passed a constitutional amendment banning any kind of same-sex domestic or civil contracts, even though Florida law already prohibits same-sex marriage. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a State with such a diverse population would have such an affinity for small minded, authoritarian and puritanical politics, but I am and I'm disgusted.

Yes, Florida voted for Obama, but. . .

ELECTION RESULTS

Bloggerei und Sozialismus

Pipes, Tubes, Strings and Cans: The Internets

Will just make this a new main entry because the thread we've been commenting on is getting very long. Just to respond to one thing Rocky mentioned about the difficulty of assessing whether blogging does much good, I don't know what good all these thousands of blogs passing through the "Tubes and Pipes" do either—it's a good question. It may be that more than we know depends on some core of people who are capable of making an intelligent case for their convictions rather than shouting as loud as they can and then resorting to chicanery when that doesn't work. I used to enjoy listening—believe it or not—to William F. Buckley's Firing Line interviews. I disagreed with him most of the time, but the fellow had a certain semi-aristocratic, bemused way of intoning, "Now what would Kant say about that as an ethical proposition?" to people who claimed to know the way but hadn't consulted the moral or intellectual atlas necessary to sustain their claim.

As for post-election gloating, yes, it should be avoided and is invariably in poor taste. If John McCain loses as all the major pollsters and the politicos now expect, he will still have been granted the nomination of his party. That is a tremendous honor granted to very few politicians, and he should be proud of it, as he is of his military service.

That Old-Time Socialism

Also wanted to address what I recall being Robert's use of the term "socialist" or "socialism." I think such a term always needs calibration. Socialism of the grand old European sort is by no means something Obama or other Democrats would want anything to do with. Nobody in Glorious Nation of US & A really wants to do away with the market in favor of system-wide state control of the means and processes of production, and that is what socialism is. I don't know any Democrats who want to do away with private property. (We do have one self-declared Socialist in Congress. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He's a cool cat, but nobody listens to him.) America has a very strong capitalist, market-oriented tradition that has, for practical reasons, been somewhat modified over many decades, especially since the Great Depression. We now have what could be called a mixed socio-economic system, with hefty government involvement in some areas, and very little in others. Why this involvement is sometimes necessary should be painfully evident from the recent (and potentially ongoing) near-collapse of our financial sector thanks to an ideologically based proscription of even the most necessary oversight of market practices. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you know, capitalist movers and shakers do not always do what's in the best interests of keeping the system viable. (The Brits figured this out long ago, and it is why there wasn't a communist revolution in Great Britain, as Marx himself thought would be the case.) There is no such thing as pure capitalism in practice anymore, and with good reason. All western liberal societies are "mixed." A socialist government wants to nationalize/centralize production and rationalize distribution rather than leaving things up to market forces that it finds exploitative. And it wants to do this as a means of eventually or rapidly doing away with the capitalist order in its entirety: full communism. Even something like Canadian-style single-payer health insurance (which Obama doesn't support) wouldn't come near such a thoroughgoing agenda, and is unlikely to lead to one. A socialist wants to transform the entire socio-economic complex of institutions and practices radically, and there just aren't any serious, highly influential leftists of that kind in American political power today. Obama is arguably fairly "liberal" in his views, but American liberalism doesn't equate to socialism: it is just a modulation of bourgeois capitalist ideology, not a fundamental challenge to it. Indeed, the European left has always found the American left half-hearted and undisciplined.

When Comrade Obama starts talking like this, I'll diagnose him as a downright socialist:

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In a word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. (The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Part II -- from my little International Publishers volume, replete with red-and-white cover pics of Karl and Fred.)

"Allerdings, das wollen wir." Can't fault Uncle Karl for sarcasm, that's for sure.

Generational Voting

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn I intend to drag my young child out of bed & to drag said child to the polls to stand in line to vote. I warned said child tonight about the morrow’s itinerary & was asked about breakfast – we will eat it in line, I said. And make sure your game-boy battery is charged.

Said child is off from school tomorrow for the election so, no doubt, other children in my state will be standing in line with their parents as well. And no doubt they – like me – will warn their children about behaving & being patient. I explained the importance of voting to my child – telling said child that I was going to vote no matter how long it took. Because IT WAS IMPORTANT.

Said child voted with me once before. In the primaries. About a month ago when I put an Obama bumper sticker on my car said child was curious about why it was a different name than the one I voted for in the primaries. I was delighted to TRY and explain the situation to my 7 year old. Whilst explaining the process of electing a president from primary to final election I made sure to oh so subtly emphasize the fact that the person mom voted for the first time was a SHE but that SHE did not win so now mom was voting for Obama because he was her next favorite choice. I refrained from mentioning his race – figuring he’d get that eventually.

Hopefully – in time – he will understand his mother’s heady experience during the primaries of having a choice between a woman & a black man. Honestly – I thought the day would NEVER come. All day I have found myself thinking about MLK, Harriet Tubman, & others looking down from above & thinking to themselves – yes, it was all worth it. May we PLEASE as an electorate tomorrow deliver for MLK & HT & so many others that have struggled & gone before. May the dream be a reality.

Hopefully my child will remember tomorrow’s historic election experience. And carry it forth into a future of responsible civic duty by voting.

And what parents do politically – or not – matters. The only campaign sign my parents ever put in our yard when we were growing up was for George McGovern. Remember him? I remember this – though at the time it would take awhile for the significance of this to sink into my young mind. I remember my mother being glued to the Watergate hearings – absolutely glued - refusing to talk to children who interrupted the hearings. I have never to this day seen my mother so intent & ANGRY.

These things I remember.

Tomorrow these same parents – my son’s grandparents - will be heading to the polls – my father in a wheel chair. You couldn’t keep him away from voting if you tried. How will they cast their votes? Always democrat.

So on to tomorrow – hopefully planting the seed for another generation of voting in my family tree. A family tree that includes a black sister. My said child’s godmother.

I posted a sign on my office door warning students that I might be late for office hours – because I was voting. Yes – it’s that important – even for people like me who live in a state so red that both Obama & McCain wrote it off months ago. Obama probably won’t win here. But he will still get my vote. I will be counted because – it does matter.

And may we all wake up to an Obama presidency Wednesday morning.

I'm Bloggingdino, and I Approved This Message

Well, the tricksters and robo-callers are out in force in this final push to pump out as much bunkum as possible before it's all over but the votin'. I don't think it's going to work this time because the country's mood seems strongly against the continuation of Republican governance. Still, this kind of distortion is disturbing, and those who employ it don't do so only at desperate moments. It's as if there are simply NO accepted standards about what can and should be taken seriously in public discourse. (A few things the Demos have done, by the way, have probably been on the same level—the whole business about McCain's allegedly shaking the bring-it-on stick at "100 Years of War" being a prime instance. His meaning was clearly subjected to distortion and then repeated until it stuck. That shady maneuver deserves the official Babu Bhatt from Seinfeld finger wag of disapproval. Very, very bad.) Anything to hijack the next news cycle set the talking heads a-spinning.

I remember a passage in one of Montaigne's essays in which he ladles out an unbelievably stupid syllogism (I think it goes, "drinking quenches thirst; ham causes us to desire to drink; therefore, ham quenches thirst") and then provides the proper response: not speech, but a contemptuous smile. But completely illogical, nonsensical, and even crazy claims today don't generate that response—they lead instead to long, tortured discussions in the news outlets and on blogs, to fake campaign-outrage followed by probably genuine outrage on the part of some ordinary citizens.

This weekend's prizewinning ridiculous claim (as documented here on Bob Cesca's site) has to do with the McCain campaign saying that Obama's statement, apparently at an Iowa rally ("My faith in the American people was vindicated and what you started here in Iowa swept the nation") means he used to be dubious about the country but now he thinks it's not so bad after all. This claim is approximately as stupid as Montaigne's joke syllogism, but here we have supposedly rational adults—mature politicians and, after the fact, journalists making millions of dollars to sound smart—taking it seriously.

The righties pulled the same thing on Michelle Obama for that remark she made about being proud of her country "for the first time in my adult life" (I'm paraphrasing) -- that remark was clumsy, but it was cruel to hyperinflate it to the level of Symbionese Liberation Army radicalism. Part of the trouble in that instance, I suspect, had to do with some white folk not understanding the way many black folk relate to "patriotism." I find in many African American commentators a sober estimation of how things stand and how they could be improved, along with a steadfast refusal to be snowed by skillful propagators of bunkum. The great original for such clarity might be Frederick Douglass: witness his sometimes caustic but always altogether necessary criticism. We won't find Douglass engaging in jingoism or echo-chamber heroics; his "Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln" is remarkable for its simultaneous appreciation of the man's accomplishments and assessment of his shortcomings: "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined...." MLK JR would be the modern version, with his statement about the Founders' "blank check" that the current generation needed to make good and his firm denunciation of the Vietnam War. His were hardly the views of a mild-mannered promoter of orthodoxy. So I took Michelle's statement in this broader context, though it was evident that some people apparently about as well grounded in American history as the nearest squirrel didn't see things that way at all.

On a related issue of misconstruction and generally whacked-out priorities, Glenn Greenwald has a good short essay today in Salon titled "The Single Worst Expression in American Politics" on the creeping and insidious practice of referring to the president as "commander in chief," as if that tribal-sounding, militaristic phrase actually sums up what the presidency means. It's something I have been privately noticing for a long time, so I'm glad to see Greenwald so roundly condemning it. No doubt the growth of U.S. economic and military power in the previous century is largely responsible for this dangerous transformation of our understanding of the president's role (Nixon's so-called "imperial presidency" being one symptom of it), but George W. Bush's reckless, high-handed tenure has furthered this tendency.

A moment that crystallized my dislike for this "c-in-c" business was the Republican primary debates. In one of them, one of the candidates suggested that people's first right was the right to be kept alive. (I'm paraphrasing, but I believe that's pretty close.) Scarcely any statement could be less true to the spirit of the Republic, and it's a horrible distortion of the D of I's phrase about the unalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The president's primary job is to protect the Constitution -- not our foolish hides, snouts, tentacles, talons, or tails. Maybe someone's said that on this blog already, but I hereby repeat it with an Allosaurus snort and a mildly disquieting low rumble. Talons down also to "warfighter," "war president," and all such primitivistic coinages. We are not a Germanic tribe in the Teutoberg Forest around the time of Christ; we are a modern, cosmopolitan country. "Quintilius Varus, where are my eagles?!"