[lbo-talk] Is the right out organizing the left on healthcare?

[Alan Rudy]

As far as I can tell, the dominant left liberal stance on health care is
built on Obama's campaign theme of Hope.  Beyond web organizing and a few
local meetings/house parties MoveOn tries to organize, there is nothing but
hope: "I sure *hope *liberal Dems and the Admin can get something better
that what is passed... darn those obstructionist Blue Dogs and Repugs!"
Carrol's poo-pooing of morality aside, the Right has developed fear-based
ways of producing unthinking wide-ranging and mutually-reinforcing kinds of
moral outrage... something that gets people off their duff and into the
streets/meetings.  Liberals developed feel-good hope during the campaign -
feel-good hope which got people into institutionally-legitimated forms of
coordinated individual action like canvassing and sitting at campaign
booths... 99% of energized folks then, having done their duty, returned to
normal, quiescent political inactivity.  The Left... well, here in
mid-Michigan, the Left is utterly and completely invisible... though I saw a
few almost invisible booths on the block that was the political ghetto at
the Ann Arbor Art Fair last month... it was TOTALLY unclear what most of
them actually stood for. (At least, for all I thought their positions made
no sense, the groups hanging out on the plaza in front of the Left Forum
made it clear what they were seeking to generate.)
What constantly pisses me off about Carrol's poo-pooing of moral foundations
for leftism - and I think the comment that he's emphasizing the failure of
ethical philosophy, a la Marx, not the importance of normative stances is
right on - is that the Left has no constituency possessing an immediate,
adreniline-based normative reaction to the innately-understood injustices of
romantic and economic conservative politics... and no immediate drive to
advance that normative agenda.  There's a resignation and intellectualism on
the Left that, it seems to me,  needs something akin to moral outrage -
moral outrage institutionalized into increasingly-sophisticated and
intellectually-formulated collective action.  At the moment, we have the
intellectual formulations but nothing like the kind and extent of normative
outrage necessary - and even less connecting one to the other... and I think
it is clear that the groundswell's not going to come from the intellectual
side, so we wait, poking and prodding and teaching and bitching.
The Right organized itself thirty five years ago to combine
hyper-rationalized economic strategies with hyper-prerational cultural
politics to built a coalition of class and cultural warfare... and
brilliantly blamed the economic and cultural war on their opponents.  In the
face of that liberals sought to defend their peicemeal and fractured
"victories" and the left fractured and imploded on the rocks of failed
internal democracy - in a milieu that desperately needed democratization -
and ideological and identity purity - in an ever more hybrid world.  Here's
to a variety of hybrid democracy within emergent movements... much like
those advanced by Barbara Epstein, Donna Haraway and Angela Davis in HistCon
at UCSC over the last twenty years (I had no idea this list we so east
coast-y... ).
-A

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:25 AM, Left-Wing Wacko <leftwingwacko at gmail.com>wrote:


> Is the right out organizing the left on healthcare reform?  I am
> afraid so.  There has been a little noise lately about how this "tea
> bagger" movement is putting on demonstrations to shout down any kind
> of health care reform discussion at "townhall meetings', even the
> corporate insurance sponsored kind most of us here don't want.  The
> links at the end of this message are from the soft-left liberal blog
> Crooks and Liars.  Within those blog posts are embedded videos of
> these tea-baggers in action, shouting down members of Congress.
>
> In one of the videos Rachel Maddow dismisses these protests as simply
> being orchestrated by right-wing think tanks and lobbying firms; aided
> and abetted by talk radio and Fox News.  But it really doesn't matter,
> they are mobilizing people against health care reform.  Some may say
> that that is just fine if they derail the Democrat's corporate welfare
> healthcare plan.  Maybe it is to a certain extent.  However, as far as
> the right-wing tea-bag protesters are concerned the details are
> inconsequential, they already think they are protesting against
> "socialized medicine" or the single-payer plan.
>
> Carrol Cox opined on some thread here on this list that single-payer
> won't be won until people are in the street demanding it.  He's
> probably right.  But shouldn't we also be at these "townhall meetings"
> exposing the bullshit of the dominant Democratic plan and demanding a
> single-payer plan be put back on the table? Are we really going to let
> these right-wing idiots who don't even know what the hell they are
> fighting against out organize us?  It's pretty damn sad.
>
> I would like to here lbo-sters opinion on this.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sheldon
>
>
> http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/when-liberals-protest-its-facism-when-c
>
>
> http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/right-wing-attacks-august-town-halls-sa
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8UjY3YDlwA&eurl=http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/right-wing-attacks-august-town-halls-sa&feature=player_embedded
>
> --
> http://left-wingwacko.blogspot.com/
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