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I forgot to mention the point to that post, which was contra Reed, I don't think the Left is in disarray, at least not around here.
And personally I have a plan, the same old plan from back when. You start by figuring out what are the importmant issues and you figure out concrete solutions in as much detail as you can. Refine the ideas by talking to other people and get their reactions and their plans or answers. Refine some more until it is down to a few quick and simple slogans or frames that work to easily communicate.
Then go around spouting off to anybody you meet. Be prepared to back it up with arguments. I can't remember facts or percentages or any of that, and from experience on the street I don't think most people listen or understand facts at all. Most people live in a psycho-motive world of feelings, enthusiasm, fear, dread, anger, love, joy, hate, etc. That's what you tap. Sure its manipulation, but it is also how politics are worked.
Almost everybody I meet rants on about Bush, and that's an easy opener.
Oh, a funny incident later at work, going back after my extended `doctors' appointment, I ran into Elizabeth, the sales rep that Julio knew. I pulled the joke on her that Julio (not of LBO fame) had seen her on tv at the healthcare protest last week. E told me Julio had actually been to two tours to Iraq and got out. E learned this by asking if Q-designs had been getting many VA orders, and she and J went on from there... So, J is a vet and his attention to the healthcare fiasco comes from his interest in the VA and its treatment of injured vets...
What's the point here. Organize locally, and in fact just make what contribution you can within your daily life, within the so-called isolation of work, school, street, apartment building. I like talking so I do my talking points.
Over the forty-plus years I've lived in Berkeley, I learned the above technique from the old student movement days. It took only a short period between some talking point and some seriously nasty demo to insue back then, and now it's a lot slower. Meanwhile over the years since, the same mouth to mouth system built up the city politics into a pretty damned progressive place with race issues, multicultural issues, land use, environment, planning, unions, schools, teachers, parent groups, and then professions, doctors, nurses, orderlies, some cops, lawyers, courts, even architects, house remodeling contractors, etc, etc. (with lots of loop holes for the landlord class and other scum). The consequence was that Berkeley was knee deep in back up public officials, elected officials, and bureaucrats, on up to Barbara Lee and Barbara Boxer. Down south Santa Monica, mostly a yuppie haven (because they have more money), followed a very similar evolution as Berkeley. Judging from the weekly shows that Barnie Frank talks with Thom Hartmann, Frank must come from a similarly profiled district. Glancing at the mean income of 65K it must be more like Santa Monica than Lee's district where median income is 44k. Also Lee's district looks a lot less gerrymandered.
You also need a feeding system for elected official's staff so that local mini-stars end up inside the elected official machine, and make sure they are people you can call.
Really this is democracy 101, and it does work. What makes the difference is the public back-up, the in-depth support. There was a reason Lee was the only house member to vote against Bush's original war bill in late 2001. She knew virtually the whole district was behind her, period.
So then, that's the plan. Various people on the list keep wondering if we should follow the methods of the Right. Well, dears, the Right learned those methods from us, so of course we should follow them, duh.
Then switching gears here... I decided my job was to educate myself in-depth on the Left side of everything that is, which means getting down to the ontic level of leftism. I used to read Marx while sunning myself at Stinson beach. Before the early 90s I never read Marx. I intuited Marx in some magic way. Problem is I loath economics. It's utterly boring and mostly amounts to a bunch of bullshit, fabricated to justify the bourgeoise order. I don't believe a single word of it. I used to fall asleep just at the point that Marx was making great sense. I am afraid I just want to blow the head off any economist, except the ones I like (obvious exceptions are Perelman, Sawicky, Hurado, et al). Fuck discourse... There is no there there. How about a bullet in the head?
I started to imagine myself as just another soldier in the dark days of the new great war. The errant yuppie hordes were closing in on the warehouse district of Berkelygrad. We were in the rubble in front of the bay. There was no back up. We were manning the machine guns, drinking hot-water tea and smoking cow dung cigerettes. Our cloths were woolen rags tied together with string. The only thing that worked was the machine gun. The horrible truth is we used to slice off the limited belly fat of our dead comrades and fry it to make grease just to keep the damn thing going.
In the morning just after first light or in the evening about three o`clock as the frost set in, dropping to near zero, they would come through the portals of the ruins and rubble before us. We mowed them down like summer wheat. Still they came. We wrapped our barrels with frozen rags to keep the gun barrels from over heating. The rats were huge. They had been feeding on the neoliberal corpses, well and our own. Aleosha and Uri were the best of comrades. True comrades. They never ran, they never hid when the shelling started. I wish I could say the same. But we would re-assemble and be ready for the first wave. The enemy thought they were so sly, dodging and darting around the mounds of dead and rubble. Sometimes we could see them only a few yards away before we turned them into a bloody mess. People explode when you shoot them with big caliber weapons. There's nothing left but a blood spray. I hated it when some poor wounded bastard hobbled off, crawing low where I couldn't finish him off. He would die anyway and rot out there. A few days later the thick perfume of his body would follow the afternoon land breeze moving toward the colder bay front. Hey Uri, the financier is smelling pretty sweet today? Sure Niki, whatever you say. Come on, breath deep. That's the smell of victory...
Later they made me an apparatchek of the re-education camps. I am afraid my bitterness over the long struggle got the better of me. I used to sit behind an ornate desk in my official uniform and interview the prisoners of the war. I used to ask them if they owned any real estate. Many confessed they did. I would ask them if they regretted their losses. Of course they did, but it was trick question. Just the acknowledgement of ownership of anything had already condemned them...
>From the war diaries of Nickolas Alexandrovitch Grimyko, Berkeleygrad,
2020.
CG
ps. .d. asked, ``But what's the way out?'' I have no ideas left. I read and think. The ironies mount. A year and a half ago, Bobby Seal's daughter used to work in the office---before she was fired for failing to move claims through MediCal... We would see each other in the hall and, I would raise the power salute. Seize the Time, baby! We giggled.
After the latest tirade by the Chang Kai shek commandant, I do my work and fake the paperwork. Everybody is happy. Work is a complete fraud. I write up an utter lie, document it with manufacturer quotes and submit it as usual. Meanwhile I fix chairs so there are no complaints. The two worlds paper and reality never touch each other on any point. Of course the claim will never be paid. Who cares? Everything is great. I consider it good training for surviving the fascist capital pig hegemony. Follow orders to the letter and do everything as usual. It's the classic doublt-think you've read about in Orwell, Huxley, Kafka, and elsewhere.
I whispered to Paulette the receptionist, ``see how nice it is, I fix everybody for nothing, and submit irrelative paperwork.'' She told me, I love you.
There are no ethics, there is no moral good. No nothing. In a criminal state all work is a crime. So? Why fight the system? Lie, cheat, steal and prosper!
This new system I have instituted does have strange effects, especially on customers who have been hounding me for weeks to do this or that. Today I had two of them, both MediCal. I fixed their immediate problems and wrote up completely fraudulant claims to submit to account for my hours. But I fixed problems I would ordinarily refuse to fix, because they were not covered. If you follow this inside out logic, for once the customers were stunned, expecting a hassle. They drove out the door, still wondering what happened. They won't be back for awhile. Meanwhile MediCal will deny the claim, which no longer matters because it wasn't necessary in the first place. Everybody is happy. Let's say by some convoluted logic MediCal does authorize the work. Fine. No problem. I do that work too. The payment claim is submitted and isn't paid as usual. That is somebody else's problem. I did my part....
Well there is a bit of a problem. See I did work twice over, but the capitalist pig commandant never collected a dime in either case. Ask me if I care? On the other hand the capitalist pig commandant lost her MediCal provider number, so she bills through another company that we share office space with in San Francisco. Yes well there is that minor fact. Reality? Reality is a dream....
The clouds come-a creepin' and you got me weepin' this moment I can't believe your really gonna leave this town everyone knows, I can't make a move with you your turnin' my whole world, upside-down and I get a feelin' that I've seen the last of you, Rio De Janeiro Blues
The salty air, your wind-blown hair, reflection on a dream thoughts of you with who knows who, flowin' through me like a stream Brazilian serenades, linger on help me lose my soul, in your song and I get a feelin', that I've seen that last of you, Rio De Janeiro Blues, Rio De Janeiro Blue
(Insturmental Bridge)
Months go by, I wonder why, I'm left here on my own could it be my destiny, is to live this life alone these dark and rainy days have turned me cold long and sleepless nights, gettin' on and I get a feelin' that I've seen the last of you, Rio De Janeiro Blues, Rio De Janeiro Blues
Rio.... Rio, De Janeiro Blues Long and sleepless nights, gettin' on Rio......... Rio