I made a point about marginalization in regard to my experience as a temporary worker and in marginalized jobs how we might experience the process of marginalization. The context I wrote about is the present era of austerity, neo-liberalism that is decaying, rotting as the 1998 economy teeters toward a stock market bubble collapse. As conditions worsen, decadence is an ideology which the capitalist system utilizes concerning marginalized people. For instance decadence is most obviously aimed at homosexuals. Marginalization is the process whereby groups are economically picked out and lose out with respect to economic, and political power. Then they are morally blamed for their powerlessness. It is the kind of ideology which is more potent in times of crisis than other times. It is also all pervasive as an understanding when it isn’t challenged, but is very hard for a marginalized person to challenge. I brought up a not so virulent form, a quotation from Max Sawicky on LBO:
Max Sawicky: "That's why I'm here. I get daily reassurance that there are other people crazier than me."
Doyle My point to Max was; disability is marginalized in this society (a subject of bigotry and predjudice). Hence attacks at social security (of which Max has been using a lot of energy to defend and analyze here on LBO) are directly aimed at vulnerable marginalized disabled folks. And in order to make the attacks on social security easier there has to be a natural seeming ideology which justifies the marginalization of disabled people. Decadence is the ready and potent theory which justifies marginalization of groups of people.
Doyle I pointed out his sentence as a very clear example of when you refer to the left they are "crazy", and Max absorbs the internalized oppression of this perjorative aimed at the left. How did he use the term crazy? The persons’ he was referring to were crazier than Max, because they were more marginalized than Max. And Max is crazy because he is a left marginal. He’s crazy like the rest of the left. And Max is baffled I can’t get it that to Max the term is not really about disabled people, it isn’t about crazy people. It is a term which is empty of disability meaning to Max. Yet isn’t the sentence a perfect example of the ideological theory of decadence. You take a marginalized group, mentally disabled persons, and you use that as a stand-in for the marginalization of the left. But the potent part of the insult is that being crazy is deserving of being marginalized isn’t it. That is blatant decadence ideology. Right out in the open.
Doyle So how ironic that Max who is putting enormous energy on LBO into teaching us his methods of defending social security and his ironic internalization of the ideology of decadence which attacks disabled people. I asked Max if I could debate him.
Max replies: "No, because I don't think it's worth debating"
Doyle Why not?
Max "One never wants to offend people (without provocation, at least), but I think you have to lighten up. It should be obvious that I was not referring to a medical condition. This has come up before. I think hyper- sensitivity of this type is not general among the so-called 'target,' groups, but is unique to activists and professional lobbyists. Now they could be ahead of the curve, but I don't think so."
Doyle Always the common theme here is that marginalization is the key ideological element which alerts us to understand this way of thinking in Max . It is obvious he was using the medical condition in the word "crazy", because excitement or other symptom-like terms wouldn’t have nearly as clearly conveyed "marginalization". Max was referring to the marginalization of someone on LBO, and he uses the very up-front term crazy which is by dictionary definition either directly referring to disabled persons, or their symptoms. So he uses the marginalization of faceless disabled folks to threaten the marginalization of someone on LBO. He uses a group that every one knows are marginalized. He uses the image that the left is marginalized in order to make his "jest" stick.
Doyle Max also refers to hypersensitivity to an issue as not really something on the mind of marginalized persons. Only occurring to their marginalized advocates or as Max says acivists and professional lobbyists. So always the same theme must crop up, marginalization is the potent threat in the present system. Who gets marginalized is very important, or else the message about marginalization wouldn’t be used so ubiquitously.
Doyle Max has to tortuously find a way to remove the meaning from his phrase or jest. Max says:
"My brother has been diagnosed chronic Schizo for the past 30 years. My aunt died of Alzheimers. I don't make jokes about either of these things (incl. w/respect to R Reagan). But "crazy" to me is an innocent term. Note I even said "crazier", including myself. If I told my brother he was crazy, he wouldn't get upset. I told him that before he got sick. He knows he's got something much worse than "crazy."
Doyle Max has a lot of trouble trying to find a way to lose the meaning here. It doesn’t mean crazy except his brother who is crazy is worse than crazy. Max’s family members who have some disability is just a fact. Not something morally wrong. He obviously loves them, and desires to defend them. It is only as a faceless theory of decadence that it useful.
Doyle What I raise here is a potent emotional issue. Frances Bolton has already written directly to me on LBO I annoy her for bringing this up out of the blue in regard to Max and his "meaningless" jest. I’m not after the moral issue here. I am after raising the conscousness of the real meaning of a certain ideological form called decadence commonly, which will be potent and important in a time of economic crisis. It is a fearful thing because the system can arbitrarily marginalize anyone at any time. It stirs up deep feelings. It is hard to look at the meaning of things, because it strikes close to home. It requires not looking morally at things, but instead with perspective of the real content of thoughts. Max was respectful in replying to me. He doesn’t want to think about this, but I brought up something hard to confront. I’m trying to get past fear, and persuade that decadence targets marginalizaed groups, and the kind of socialist democracy and equality we want will conquer that. And the ideology is what we need to understand and resist. It is going to be a big part of the work place where the ideology of marginalization is the first line of defense against the left. Where we seek to build amongst the working class which is by and large in various ways "marginalized" by the system. Regards, Doyle