On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:59 AM, shag <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> At 11:38 AM 11/6/2008, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> i think it's the way we fetishize voting and elections in this country,
>> isn't it? that voting is actually doing something, and then nothing else
>> is
>> required? it will be interesting to see if they can hold it together. it
>> would pretty genuinely change american politics if they could, don't you
>> think? a party as an actual organizing machine (deleuze warning?) instead
>> of
>> just an electing machine. and instead of organizing falling to fractious
>> NGOs.
>>
>> j
>>
>
> i'm going by what I see at work, the people of color supporting Obama.
> 20-somethings, professional-managerial, some clerical and sales. Judging by
> their attitudes toward the poor and by their tendency toward social
> conservativism, I'm not at all inclined to see this as a movement I could
> want to see held together. Opposition to the war is only significant among
> half of them. What ties them all together is antipathy to anything smacking
> of "partisanship". Being "political" is considered so Jesse Jackson. Like I
> said: I think it's a social class thing. an organizing machine for people
> who think that gay marriage is wrong? an organizing machine for people who
> think that the problem in black America is the poverty caused by absent
> fathers? an organizing machine for people who cheer whenever Obama says,
> "government can't solve our problems"? an organizing machine for people
> opposed to unilateral bombing who, instead, want an upstanding country that
> creates coalitions of nations to bomb them instead?
>
> this is what you get when you go to the web site, btw. You are redirected
> to a request for money to support the DNC:
> https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/dnc08splashnd
>
> so, thanks. but no thanks.
>
> I would like it to be different. I would like to be proven wrong, that my
> social milieu is not representative.
>
> When Obama was confronted by Uhuru in St. Pete, asking, "What about poor
> black people Obama? What about Africans Obama?" he responded by listing some
> things he'd done: fight again predatory lending, something about racial
> profiling.
>
> You don't have to like me, he said. We don't have to agree. In fact, if you
> don't agree with me, why don't you run for office yourself? he asked. For no
> drama Obama, that was an intemperate outburst in so far as he was using
> logical fallacy to trounce a critic.
>
> The audience cheered about that. One woman turned around and looked at the
> guy and said, "Yeah, why don't you run for office?" with a vengeful little
> smirk that said, "There, take that, punk."
>
> Thanks. But no thanks.
>
> Like Gulick, I'm reminded of 1992 when what proliferated was a mass of wonk
> think tanks, smart people sitting around trying to influence policy with
> position papers and debates.
>
> ho. hum.
>
> It was their hay day, that time. They were flush with the anticipation that
> they could turn around the Reagan revolution. Clinton flushed that for them.
> Now they want to get it back, to try one more time.
>
> The people in this movement who could orchestrate a massive ramping up of
> the organizational effort to sustain that enterprises, grass roots style,
> aren't likely to do this. They want wonk; they don't want messy writhing
> humanity to have to manage. They'll pull them into volunteering and
> interning for their think tanks, sure. But they aren't going to want to
> actually, you know, engage the unwashed because who wants to talk to people
> who have to be engaged at a much more basic level. They are wonks: they want
> a grad seminar not to actually listen to people. Obama speaks constantly of
> how he needs them but he needs them to do his bidding. He assumes a
> republican clientele that needs to be persuaded. Magically, he assumes a
> democratic clientele that doesn't. He's not interested in what they want,
> politically. He is interested in mobilizing people who already agree with
> him, not in working with people who do not, not in perhaps changing his
> positions in response to concerted agitation.
>
> Ask yourself: have you ever once heard him frame things as him being open
> to listening to "the people"? No, he simply assumes his based is already in
> line. When he anticipates disagreement, he doesn't anticipate that he might
> be open to criticism and change his mind due to grassroots agitation. No,
> when he anticipates disagreements, he does so in order to set the stage: *I*
> am going to do things with which you won't agree. *You* are probably not
> going to like it.
>
> Don't like it? Run for office yourself.
>
>
>
>
>
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