[lbo-talk] Barack Obama

snit snat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Sun Nov 7 05:45:10 PST 2004


At 08:50 PM 11/6/2004, joanna bujes wrote:


>snit snat wrote:
>
>>Obama narrative of why democrats are democrats--because it bothers them
>>when strangers on the southside of chicago go hungry--seems like the very
>>moral vision that we could use right now. It isn't foreign to us, is it?
>>Or, am I just a fruithat, speaking Neptuneese?
>
>What remains to be explained is why it is appropriate for justice and
>compassion to occur in a social rather than religious context.

Good point. But... we're not going to worry about people who'll never believe this. Bear with me, I'll try to keep this to the point..

1. We had a little fun with Carrol about counting our ranks. But, Alan Keyes candidacy was a great way to count the ranks the Busheviks can rely on. 27%. They weren't demoralized by Jack Ryan's hypocritical family values. They could be counted on (!) to overcome racism (!) to vote their values/party. They'd even vote for a carpet bagger from NJ--Keyes wasn't from Illinois--and only ran at the last minute, recruited as the sacrificial "count our ranks" lamb. Rove is a fuckin' genius! :)

2. Fuck the 27%. We won't ever appeal to them. If these people were faced with the choice, they'd vote for a black guy who says Mary Cheney is a hedonist, before they'd vote for a former KKK member turned socialist with a program to pull their unemployed, uninsured ass out of the fire. That tells you a lot about the power of their convictions, no? Fuck'm. Rove knows what his numbers are. So do we.

3. We're after the rest. How many? Who knows, but I count at least 45%. (Sorry for the number crunching Dawson.)

This story will appeal to them because there _is_ a deeply ingrained opposition to theocracy. We don't have to make it up. It's already there, told in the stories of mythic figures ppl are already taught to revere. While they believe in the freedom, dignity, and empowerment that can be achieved when they are able to do things for themselves -- taking care of others by donating to charity or volunteering in soup kitchens -- most of them know this is not enough. They also know that we can't just turn our obligations over to faith-based communities. They recognize something deeply disturbing about exploiting the powerlessness of people in need by forcing them to 'believe' in order to eat.

4. The theocrats are also going to be a lot braver about the fact that they don't think of _other_ communities of faith as deserving to breath the same air. To them, we need to be liquidated, encouraged to migrate to Canada, or so severely mollified that we just roll over. That, or they're simply confident that we're all going to be eaten by a plague of locusts. We are the enemy.

Trent Lott. Tom DeLay. Paul Weyrich. Etc. We are the enemy. Not commies. Catholics. Not Wiccans. Presbyterians.

All those religious people who aren't "just Christians"? They're the enemy to these people. I don't think it'll take to long for people to make a decision about which side they're on. 15% secular humanists in this country + 15% of the rest who'll choose a deeply ingrained u.s. tradition (whereas the rest will, as Deb says, seek 'fire insurance.')

5. Did I say something about religious civil war not too long ago, or what? :)

6. u.s.ers are suspicions of institutions in any form. A lot of the people on our side say they're religious, they just don't like institutions (i.e., church). You think they're going to put up with the institutionalization of faith-based social/human services for very long? As much as they want to stay independent, small -- they also love the power of being huge and gathering more ranks. They'll become bureaucratized, bloated, greedy (if they aren't already), exposed as hypocrits, willing to subsume faith to this worldly riches and power.

7. These guys will fuck up. They can't,ultimately, live out their values: Jack Ryan, Andrew Sullivan, Newt Gingrich. I need not go on.

<...>
>So, it's more complicated than touting the virtues of justice and
>compassion. What has really happened is that the social has been
>completely void of content -- in the absence of that, there is only the
>market, the state(army), and the church. Welcome to the new feudalism.

Which is why we may need to do like the anarchists did. Why we need to create alternatives to the church to provide our own human/social services -- if we must. If it comes down to that, we can't let the churches provide the day care, the employment/outplacement services, the counseling, etc. etc.

_IF_ it comes down to that. And, as I said, Marx's writings on the Paris Commune inspire here. He talked not just about revolutionary struggle--taking the risk of getting shot--but about the ability to feed, clothe, shelter, and care for themselves by creating an alternative economic system and supporting institutions of _civil society_.

Sociologists step in to talk about how those _social practices_ are what change consciousness. It's not just talking about how you care about people, but walking the walk. And not everyone who participates inthe social practices of faith based communities will come out of that experience enamored of what they are doing. Some people will see the light and defect to the other side: either because they realize that it's not enough (real structural problems that can't be sundered by soup kitchens) or because they see the naked power plays and become disillusioned.

We win.

I know. I dream.

K


>Joanna
>
>
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