We have all been entertained by the “tea parties” held in town halls exemplifying the US version of America and American Democracy. So what is wrong with a little astro-turf public relations organizing by people acting against their own self interests?
I suppose the simple answer is that cynicism – whoever the cynics might be, and there have plenty nearer home – is not good for the democratic spirit. Trust is fundamental to social relationships. There are many examples: doctor-patient relationship, lawyer-client confidentiality and so forth. My supposition is that social alienation for human beings is violence, and leads to further violence and social breakdown. Political expedience, however much it may be espoused as pragmatic, carries costs which might be carefully considered.
People displaying guns along the route that the President is taking, or at political meetings strikes me as me as appalling, as if this is not a means of intimidation. Guns are supposed to protect an individuals freedom, not deny liberty to others. In practice the muted line of distinction does not exist.
There are some positives. Town Hall meetings, a good democratic practice, seemed to have morphed from concern with local issues to national issues. They still represent a democratic forum in which people can express their beliefs and opinions, which are narratives about truth, often framed by narrow self interests, especially the monopoly corporate media, framed so assidiously by television and not just by the unending commericial advertisements, embellishments and other partial reinforcements to sustain behavior. When the people are yelling that nobody listens to them, they speak nothing but the reality of their social and political situation, although they do not understand they are outsiders, not insiders, group identification aside.
Sara Robinson, at Alternet asks two questions.
How did we get here? Well that is easy, she says:
This is precisely where 40 years wandering in the right-wing moral, cultural and economic wilderness has left us — and, in fact, where it was always intended to lead us.
A liberal democratic society is a complex system that’s designed to be very resilient and self-correcting in the face of all kinds of extremism. But the health of that system — especially its natural immunity to would-be attackers — ultimately depends on just one factor: It cannot survive without people’s ongoing confidence in a functioning political contract.
When it’s working right, this contract guarantees the upper classes predictable, reliable wealth in return for their investments. It promises the middle class mobility, comfort and security. It ensures the working classes fair reward for fair work, chances to move ahead and protection against very real risk that they’ll be forced into poverty if they can’t work any more.
Generally, as long as everybody gets their piece of this constantly renegotiated deal, everybody stays invested in keeping the system going — and a democratic society will remain upright, healthy and moving mostly forward.
That is, I suspect, probably the case – the class system reified in perpetuity with the system of top dogs and lesser breeds with lesser entitlements. I do not accept that the outcome can be attributed to the behavior of “conservatives”. Whereas is there to go except polarization and division if this story holds? We need to ask more dispassionately: What are the forces, perhaps more specifically economic policies, that are driving social inequality? Marxist theory still has utility, since ideology was identified as the self interest of the few. Why do people, organizationas and institutions seek economic and political power?
So what is to be done? Sara Robinson says it is not going to be easy to fix American Democracy:
Right-wing populism is riding so high among the middle and working classes right now that there’s nothing progressives can say right now that they’re likely to believe. So we need to let our actions do the talking — and there are five solid places we can start that will get their attention.
The five critical elements of the agenda she says are:
1. Universal Health Care because it would demonstrate in a tangible direct was the utility of government for the common good. The problem with this wonderful idea is that the pharaceutical and insurance companies have got the insider political game locked down. That situation changes or health care will continue to be a dead proposal.
2. Re-establish the rule of law, so that there is not a rule for the rich and powerful and laws for the rest. Why is it that the power elite is not interested in the common good, and why would you expect to be? The answer might be as simple as corporations are not democratic by nature, they are inherently hierarchical and focused solely on economic return.
3. There is a problem with education, especially the understanding of politics. She identifies the beginning with the tax revolt that keys into narrative of American history. Thomas Jefferson was probably right about the importance of a well-informed people as essential for a democracy society, but he and his mates never imagined that hoi polloi would ever reach the mark.
4. Social inequality and social economic distress to the point of despair is not conductive to democracy. In a society predicated on preferencing psychopaths thrive, what you expect? Those who can appropriate the closest fit to the predators will be most successful in society framed as a competitive jungle, in which by definition the society serves the purpose of the few.
5. She suggests refocusing on the key institutions of a liberal democratic society, and nominates the media, universities, unions and religious institutions. It could be suggested that all of these institutions are pretty much lost causes, but the suggestion widens the issue. I acknowledge the transformative role of an individual priest (Father Maximillian Kolbe) who gave up his life in the concentration camp, but the acquiescence of the institutional churches to Fascist regimes gives pause. Quakers, after the abandonment of the Holy Experiment are permanent outsiders.
How is truth discovered? How are cultural narratives sustained? Sometimes what is necessary is to re-orientate. The problem is that we are all acculturated and socialized to be part of the dominant paradigm. Should paradigms (ways of being in the world) need change, which can mean that crisis, even catastrophe, can overtake us before we are able to act.
Sara Robinson is not arguing for a new paradigm. She wants a renaissance of the old one:
Progressive democracy is a self-reinforcing system. Wherever you have educated citizens, thriving progressive institutions, a solid public infrastructure, fair courts and a relatively level economic and social playing field, you’ve got prime growing conditions that lead to an expanding economy, increased rights and freedoms, and a strong collective sense of investment and confidence in the system.
Progressivism fosters the conditions that make a nation secure, peaceful, stable and virtually impervious to revolutions of all kinds. In particular, it creates a natural resistance that recognizes fascism as a mortal enemy and never fails to raise effective immune antibodies against it.
Almost every conservative policy going back to Nixon has, in one way or another, undermined our ability to mount this kind of resistance.
The emergence of corporate-backed brownshirts is a clear warning sign of that the system that keeps America progressive and free is now hitting its point of fatal breakdown. And we don’t have much time: If their behavior succeeds and escalates in the coming months, we could be done for in a matter of months. By next August, this one may be remembered as the last moment of calm before the revolution.
Doing nothing is not an option. The only long-term antidote to our current wave of emergent fascism is a big, strong dose of trust-building progressive culture and politics, administered daily until the system’s basic democratic functions come back on line.
If we want to build a fascist-proof America for the long haul, we must stand up now for everything we believe and everything we are.
How did the progressive world fall apart? What has motivated its demolition, or attempted demolition? Was it the intended or unintended consequence of social policy?
The trap that Sara Robinson falls for, I think, is to demonize her perceived opponents. We have to recognize that if we go there we are dehumanizing people, and thereby engaging in violence, the essential plank of the fascist world view. (Those who know more about fascism than I do not hold this view, and I do not have the definition of fascism. This is my supposition – only that.)
As believers in the better outcomes that is made by possible by the social technology that the practice of democracy represents, it is up to us to engage everyone in the faith and patience that they have something to contribute, agree where possible, to oppose where we must, and to aim to be friends even when our disagreement persists.
Turing off the beaten track – over the cliff:
(What about the person who is thought disordered? Well, they might have periods of lucidity. We might note the insane are not within the borders of the paradigm most inhabit, and for that reason they might be insightful. I do not know how often consideration is given the dominant paradigm may be causing insanity. Was there, for example, any method to King Lear’s madness? Now I remember, it is Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance that was the greater and most recent stimulus for this diversion along this path.)
FURTHER THOUGHT:
Town meetings, much like the tea party, comes out of American History, and the experience of the small religious communities where people met, keep silent until they were moved by the spirit. It is a technology. It made be the way I was taught but I tend to think of democracy as a set of institutions and structures and processes and not as a technology that we apply to problems. The technology that allows a fuller picture of view and implications.
These means can be used for other ends, such as when they are wholly agenda driven, although there has to be some problem to which we are putting our collective minds to. They can be disrupted in part by shrills, by disruption, disorder and intimidation (of various forms). We have to be resilient as citizens.
My thought is that the generation of television politicians are no able to command a crowd the way in which an earlier generation of politicians had to learn. Hecklers did not disturb someone like Menzies, or a Curtin or a Keith Holyoake (NZ Prime Minister).
What is to be done in the situation which Barney Frank faced in which the questioner was saying something abjectly stupid, not only in the terms of what was said but in the implication as to how a society, not to mention one as large and diverse as the United States could possibly work?
Here is a thought: if I am not simply saying stupid stuff, but persisting with it, I am not properly participating in the democratic process, because I have reached the stage of not being primarily concerned about the outcome affecting not just me but others. The best I might be able to do is to say, I will go away and think about it some more.