The question, as always, is: how can this resentment be tapped to advance a *real* leftist agenda and not simply manipulated to serve the self-interest of political degenerates like Clinton? (CR)
Carl, I mean this in all seriousness: you're a PR professional. How would you spin it? (DH)
I think the premise of the question is wrong. The last thing this country needs is more spinning -- it's dizzy enough already. Somehow, we have to create psychic space so that simple truths and honest values can prevail. This society has to be put on an irony-free diet
Somehow, we have to create psychic space so that simple truths and honest values can prevail. (CR)
That's not enough. There has to be some passionate/fantastic core - some It, to use the Zizekian/Lacanian terminology - to bind them together and to make it all seem worthwhile. (DH)
Plus, the hard work of consciousness-raising takes a long time. How do you hold people's interest when they suffer from Political Attention Deficit Syndrome and respond only to soundbites and bumper stickers? (CR)
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I don't have any magic prescriptions either, just some additions.
I think there is no need to center consciousness-raising around specifically intellectual or media approaches. There are more concrete things to do than merely read and think. Political, economic and intellectual awareness can arise through activity. So my suggestion amounts to reviving something like the 'do-it-yourself' craze that developed in working class neighborhoods a long time ago. Fixing up the house, working on cars, putting together community gardens, organizing BBQ's and fishing trips. These are much more concrete and all of them have political dimensions. Besides a lot of the skills and knowledge that was once common place seems to have disappeared.
There is something about achieving confidence and competence that brings about a great deal of social, economic, and political awareness. It doesn't happen directly, but indirectly through the social and economic interactions, the trade and exchange of skills, parts, and knowledge. Backyard mechanics, home gardeners, fix-it types, all end up seeking each other out and creating sub-communities around these apparently trivial interests. And sometimes there is something quite radicalizing about these communities. For example around here by the early Seventies, when VW's were basically banned because they no longer followed either the smog or safety codes, there was a network of amateur VW mechanics and backyard junk car collections--also the political climate here lent this network a sort of illicit underground feeling.
Now days it's computers. I have hopes for alternative operating systems running old thrown away 486's, and there are already several different quasi-undergrounds developed over unix-variants.
(side bar. I managed to build two more computers out of junk and now have a home FreeBSD network up and running for $200.00. The network operating system which is a unix-variant for PC's, is a free download, see: http://www.freebsd.org).
The unix-family variants already come with network, web, mail, news, and application servers--uucp, ip/tcp, udp, nfs, dns, inetd, pppd, ftp, nnpt, inn, telnet, apache, majordomo, X, and so on--plus all the GNU applications and utilities. This means you can be your own internet service provider, e-mail server, news feed, web site, and home network, blah, blah, blah.
Now, I wouldn't claim this was political, but it has embedded in it a whole series of issues that lead to a much greater level of political awareness with just a little prodding.
In any event, the process of learning this sort of system and then building it from junk, is a lot more like being a mechanic from the cyber underground, than it is being a system administrator--despite the fact you learn the same material. So for aesthetic appeal, it offers the illicit aura of tech noire.
On the other hand, I have to admit that nobody wants to hear about it. Just try to pick up morning conversations at work with show stoppers like, "shit, I got the inetd address assignments running last night and all the boxes recognized each other!" or "auto mounting nfs's in fstab worked!"
Still, there are two possible places here that could spawn something beyond just a hobby. One is a shop at Oakland Polytechnic High School that re-habs old computers (for HS class credits) and takes them out to Oakland families without computers. The other place is a Native American community center, called The Intertribal Friendship House. Both organizations are trying to do similar things with different target communities, i.e. outreach and involvement. The trick is to figure out how to turn computer use into a community tool, rather than just another avenue for consumer exploitation. Since many of the hispanic, black, asian and indian communities here are already highly politicized hopefully something like computers running completely self-sustaining, self-sufficient systems and applications have a chance to contribute something of value. And even if they don't at least Microsuck hasn't made any money out of it, and a few people could end up with concrete skills.
But the larger point is that I think organizing around activities and projects which involve exchanges of skills and knowledge should be added to the list of ways to raise political awareness and re-claim the public arena.
Chuck Grimes