I’ve had my boots on the ground, listened to the arguments, made my choices, and examined my biases. Given: there is a clear, vast, accelerating disparity of wealth and of burden in the U. S. This is a statistical fact. Given: moneyed interests exert unparalleled control over the conversation in Congress. Given: OWS has accurately identified these two points.
The question is: will they succeed in changing this paradigm?
Flip the coin: I think it can be said with a fair degree of accuracy that the Tea Party has succeeded on the following fronts: they have become the propulsive force driving the conversation within the Republican Party; legislators favorable to them control the House and stall the Senate; and in addition to this legislative blockade, they are the kingmakers in the race for the Republican nomination. The only reasonable person other than (arguably) Mr. Romney is Mr. Huntsman, who is branded an evolution loving-climate change believing-former Obama employee-Mormon-tax-pledge rejecting irrelevancy—and his poll numbers indicate just that. All the rest have bowed to the TP, most in obsequious fashion.
The TP has (depending on nuance) either invaded and occupied the GOP, or they have been co-opted and absorbed by it. In either case, they have a legislative agenda, a slew of candidates, real political power, and, thanks to Dick Army and his funders, plenty of money. They also have at their disposal the organizational power of the party, of the evangelical wing (which is considerable, and another Big Picture topic), PACS, and anonymous sympathetic corporations behind super-PACS.
OWS has struck at the heart of what, broadly, most Americans believe: that Big Money and Big Politics run the show, and that most are left in the dust with no influence, no power, no voice, and no alternative. Americans in general feel captive to forces that they believe are beyond their control. OWS exemplifies this. This meets all the requirements of a popular/populist movement. They have accurately tapped into the zeitgeist.
Here’s the rub. This is essentially a utopian movement, susceptible to all the foibles of utopian movements past: big ideas, big idealism, noble motives, dedicated adherents, out with the old, wholesale, in with the new and innovative. They will become victims of their own aspirations, however admirable those might be. (The TP shares this aspect in a different iteration, the subject of another essay.)
The road to political change is twofold: incremental change through politics, or outright popular revolution that forces the issue. The former is the rule, the latter the exception. I used “paradigm” advisedly earlier. What OWS is proposing is a sea change in the way business is done. No nipping around the edges, no legislative fix, no candidate, no standard bearer, no (big) funding, no party, no co-option/invasion. It has exempted itself from the political narrative by proposing ideas that are just Too Big, no matter how resonant they are. It is creatively attractive anarchy (and I mean that in a good way) that is pragmatically untenable.
More revolutions are crushed than are successful. Those few successes are often co-opted and redirected. Ask me, I was a Trotskyite long ago. Utopia, and Justice, and Fairness, these are ideals to strive towards. These are part of our common aspirational humanity, and striving is in our nature. Without pragmatic methodology, OWS is an inert expression of cumulative and common angst. We do, as humans, dare to dream. But we also have to act in a waking world.
The question is: will they succeed in changing this paradigm?
Flip the coin: I think it can be said with a fair degree of accuracy that the Tea Party has succeeded on the following fronts: they have become the propulsive force driving the conversation within the Republican Party; legislators favorable to them control the House and stall the Senate; and in addition to this legislative blockade, they are the kingmakers in the race for the Republican nomination. The only reasonable person other than (arguably) Mr. Romney is Mr. Huntsman, who is branded an evolution loving-climate change believing-former Obama employee-Mormon-tax-pledge rejecting irrelevancy—and his poll numbers indicate just that. All the rest have bowed to the TP, most in obsequious fashion.
The TP has (depending on nuance) either invaded and occupied the GOP, or they have been co-opted and absorbed by it. In either case, they have a legislative agenda, a slew of candidates, real political power, and, thanks to Dick Army and his funders, plenty of money. They also have at their disposal the organizational power of the party, of the evangelical wing (which is considerable, and another Big Picture topic), PACS, and anonymous sympathetic corporations behind super-PACS.
OWS has struck at the heart of what, broadly, most Americans believe: that Big Money and Big Politics run the show, and that most are left in the dust with no influence, no power, no voice, and no alternative. Americans in general feel captive to forces that they believe are beyond their control. OWS exemplifies this. This meets all the requirements of a popular/populist movement. They have accurately tapped into the zeitgeist.
Here’s the rub. This is essentially a utopian movement, susceptible to all the foibles of utopian movements past: big ideas, big idealism, noble motives, dedicated adherents, out with the old, wholesale, in with the new and innovative. They will become victims of their own aspirations, however admirable those might be. (The TP shares this aspect in a different iteration, the subject of another essay.)
The road to political change is twofold: incremental change through politics, or outright popular revolution that forces the issue. The former is the rule, the latter the exception. I used “paradigm” advisedly earlier. What OWS is proposing is a sea change in the way business is done. No nipping around the edges, no legislative fix, no candidate, no standard bearer, no (big) funding, no party, no co-option/invasion. It has exempted itself from the political narrative by proposing ideas that are just Too Big, no matter how resonant they are. It is creatively attractive anarchy (and I mean that in a good way) that is pragmatically untenable.
More revolutions are crushed than are successful. Those few successes are often co-opted and redirected. Ask me, I was a Trotskyite long ago. Utopia, and Justice, and Fairness, these are ideals to strive towards. These are part of our common aspirational humanity, and striving is in our nature. Without pragmatic methodology, OWS is an inert expression of cumulative and common angst. We do, as humans, dare to dream. But we also have to act in a waking world.
Terry Glavin talks about the same, but does not mince his words about how he feels about the Occupists:
ReplyDelete"It remains to be seen what lesson will be taken from all of this by the bright young activists who got suckered into a thing that somehow claimed to be both leaderless and at the same time the revolutionary vanguard of the oppressed peoples of the Earth. For now, back into the political wilderness the young activists have been shunted, in the manner meant by the 19th-century British sage-poet Matthew Arnold, "Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born ..."
We will see whether the legions of activists seduced by the likes of Princeton University professor Cornel West ("It's a democratic process, it's a non-violent process, but it is a revolution") will be allowed to remember Occupism's anti-democratic belligerence, its violence, its provocations, the weird call-and-response rituals, the shouted incantations and the dead junkies, or whether all that will be expunged from the popular culture's collective memory.
Maybe New York Times columnist Paul Krugman will continue to insist that the phenomenon actually raised the level of debate about capitalism's current crisis (and when you look at the American Idol calibre of talentless candidates for the Republican party leadership, maybe he's got a point).
Maybe Oliver Stone will make a movie, and Michael Moore will make a documentary, and 1960sera celebrities Angela Davis and the still-ambulatory members of Crosby, Stills and Nash will continue to urge the vanguard deeper into its delusions. At the moment, celebrity endorsement is just about all the Occupists have left. But don't discount that."
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/canada-in-afghanistan/Occupist+dead+enders+self+immolated+bored/5722839/story.html#ixzz1dzVMUHoM
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Occupist+dead+enders+self+immolated+bored/5722839/story.html
@Bob's, also a long and prolific report about the different trends in the Occupist movement:
ReplyDeletehttp://brockley.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-notes-on-occupy.html
Oooh, wheeee! People are choosing up sides, retreating to ideological bunkers, and stepping on the vitriol pedal. Fine, but this tells me something. Whenever a social movement hits a soft spot, rancor explodes. The ante has been upped, which indicates OWS has drawn serious attention--which intimates that we should probably offer analysis, not ideological diatribe. Glavin invokes ideological bunkerdom when he throws out loaded language like "vanguard," antidemocratic" "the oppressed of the world," etc., even invoking 60s counterculture icon Angela Davis, for gosh sakes. One can see the virtual spittle on the glowing page.
ReplyDeleteAll that is by-the-by. I'm not interested in ideologically strictured pigeonholes, but a more historically attentive consideration. Is OWS (gasp) socialist, or anarchist? Well, National Health Care is socialism, as is Social Security in this country. Drawing these issues in blacks and whites contributes nothing, obscures much, and misses the point entirely. It's inexact, emotional, and makes, really, no argument at all, only an appeal to revulsion, disgust, dismissal.
Whatever we come to think of OWS, it is no cabal invented by suspect minds at Princeton. It is born out of something real, something echoed by the vast majority of my population. As I said before, OWS has accurately tapped into the zeitgeist. As Americans, most of us sense a rigged system, a downward spiral, a continuing acceleration of disparity fueled by a system that depends entirely on vast sums of money, with the advantage and rewards flowing to them that has it. Ask any American on my street this question, and he will reply that, of course, everybody knows this. Strangely enough, empirical data actually backs them up.
There have been many populist movements, some successful, some not. What constitutes success and how is it achieved?
I will give Glavin credit for one cogent thought, however--the Arnold quote: "Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born ..." This is the curse of idealists of both left and right, a non-cognitive goal, "that which should be."
And yet, we hold unattained ideals, do we not? We live by them, do we not?