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I assume you’ve seen that Amanda Marcotte has gone to work for John Edwards’ Presidential campaign.
I assume you’ve seen that Amanda Marcotte has gone to work for John Edwards’ Presidential campaign.
But she’s a “working class” middle class Texan (well, an austinite, but that’s the same thing! Like how Bush is a texanite, and everyone knows all texanites are the same sort of texanite, it is after all the smallest state in the union) feminist! What could be wrong with that! She speaks with the voice of the Redstates! She’s an intellectually dishonest racist douchebag! And you don’t get much more Redstate than that!
And yes she’ll now be taking money straight from the democrats, but there’s no shame in that.
Unless you have a freaking SOUL.
She gets what you’re saying, but only when it directly affects her, so there’s a chance she might end up getting the dean campaign (which won’t win a primary if the DLC have a say in teh matter, Obama and Hillary are both better shills and brownnoses, as they’ve both proven on the “little issues” like the two SCOTUS nominations, where htey obediently shut the fuck up and supported their DINO pals) to grow a bit of backbone on choice and reproductive rights, and htat might in turn trickle down to poor women and WoC as a byproduct.
Or not, but it’s not entirely without the realms of possibility for it to happen.
I think jesse disappeared into some democratic party organ before her, as far as I’m aware he was eaten and hasn’t been seen since, so you may not even have to worry about her affecting anything at all, she’ll just be quietly disappeared, the mad gods first bring into their fold those they wish to destroy and all.
QD for Pre-sur-dent.
Hear hear, Sylvia.
This unflinching acknowledgement that conflict is inescapable, and *matters*, combined with the persistent, ferocious desire to try to understand the arguments of your opponents at their best, is what makes you such an addictive read.
I was looking at different scout-type youth movements today, and chanced upon the “Red Falcons” who are basically socialist scouts !
In a list of principles of
I was looking at different scout-type youth movements today, and chanced upon the “Red Falcons” who are basically socialist scouts ! They’re apparently very good, teaching kids how to self-manage, setting up in working-class areas and learning about issues of exploitation etc.
In a list of principles of on of the Belgian branches, along things like “let us be clean and tidy” and “let us be ready to help spontaneously” I also found “let us say bravely what we think” and “let us respect every sincere view, even if we think we must fight it”. I thought that was quite cool. ( oh and also “let us be proud of being workers’ children” !)
Yeah– I read that letter about Stern and SEIU. I agree that Americans are utterly not up for a fight– the only way universal health care is going to happen. Liberals keep pushing the illusion the democrats are going to do something about health care. It’s a frickin con–as though the upper class in this country is just going to hand over the money.
In California, there’s a so-called universal plan in the works. Well, they immediately cut out illegal immigrants, which is probably a few million poor workers axed before this cynical shit even gets a chance to fall on its face. And the fucked up thing is in last springs protests we saw that immigrants are willing to put up a serious fight but there’s no one for them to align with. The left? liberals? Andy Stern’s unions?
Same goes with Iraq. The American ruling class aint gonna pullout the troops and let the oil region of the world possibly descend into a larger war. Unless some makes them leave.
okay that was a rant.
Way back when I was living in The City of Exquisite Sensibilities, I had gone down south of the river to a get together for some out of town activist/speaker. During the break, I discovered one of the folks there was a German women. So we switched into German, and as soon as we did she asked, “What is wrong with these people? Why won’t they disagree with each other?” I gave her two answers. One, “Beats the hell out of me. I think its weird as shit.” And two, moralism, cultural radicalism and identity politics, and all of them actually adding up to no politics at all.
Here at the local branch of the Walmart of Ideas, I had to live through the long-play version. I worked with a group of student-labor activists for two and a half years. From the start, I referred to the social and political opposition as “our enemies.” The slant took them aback. But over those years, we looked at more and more issues and the way they are connected through the interests and activities of the powers that be. Not that the students ever became militants, but by the end it turned out that they were identifying themselves to other campus activists (but not to me! [Should I point out that if The Dewd has fifteen years on the typical reader, I have about as much on him]) as the ‘socialist group.’ We have a serious obligation to propagate a politics built on the clash of interests, the conflict of ideas and the collision of forces. It can be done.
Dewd, I think the argument on the level of ‘Americans’ and ‘we’ aims too widely. The conservative you mention go for blood. Their ruling-class factional rivals don’t. They want to restore the ideological hegemony they enjoyed for forty years after WWII. Hegemony needs the fiction of no essential differences within the ruling class and between the ruling class and the ruled. The attempted refusal of conflict is an historical exception. The moral and cultural basis for gut-level ‘progessive’ politics only makes them vulnerable to the liberals as the principle electoral component of the old consensus faction. The complete and utter absence of a militant left makes it so much the harder to make militant politics credible. (I mean today, the service workers’ union in Germany called for demonstrations against neo-Nazis. Window-dressing. But militant window-dressing.)
Even though it means that old Sisyphus labor rolling the rock up the hill AGAIN, let’s address the fundamental issues. Let’s drop the polemic against the enemies with the same last name (until they say or do something worth calling them out) and let’s articulate the analysis that makes our interests clear and identifies why they are irreconcilable with analyses rooted in other interests. Let’s spell out simply what we want in our lives and the lives and the lives of the people we love and what threatens them.
I must have hit the italics quicktag by accident. I was not trying to be particularly emphatic there.
Hye, it’s all turning into italics. Help!
Fixed?
Ok, fixed?
QD quoted: “…The hardest part is realizing that, uh, my optimism was shattered”
And QD responsed: “Sister, if that was hard, then gosh, try having your fucking being wiped out by your so-called sisters. ”
Yes. This simply has to be said. There is pain in finding your idea(l)s challenged. That pain pales in all ways to the pain of people whose entire existence is constantly questioned. If you can’t recognize that, then I’m going to find it real hard to agree with you on anything else.
will try to get back to this over the weekend.
no, as i say in footnote above, had no idea about amanda and edwards. why is anyone surprised, though.
anyone who types this malarkey, “we want all americans living a middle class lifestyle,” wouldn’t understand the socialist anlaysis she claims to support if it grabbed her by the short and curlies.
and chuckie — oh yes! hyperbole! i was into hyperbole that night! wheeee!
if i am presdinet, then sylvia gets to be atty general! kactus gets whatever she wants, which is probably a roll in the hay with… hot babe of her choice. :p
more later. gotta go fill out some job apps, etc.
Well, I REALLY disagree with that. Sometimes you have to pay the bills, you know? And that’s more important than “ideology” at a certain point. I hate when people get all self-righteous like, “I would NEVER do THAT, no matter WHAT, I am SO much better than THAT.”
No. You do not know what you would or wouldn’t do, if you haven’t been in the situation where you have to decide. So, I say to such people, shut up, kthxbye.
Now, I don’t know what Amanda’s situation is, and it’s arrogant and pointless to speculate. But this “if you have a soul” business about where somebody WORKS? Nah, no thanks, not having it.
Hyperbole? In the mental draft of my imaginary comments on Halley on Marx, ‘hyperbole’enters the discussion as a political/theoretical category. See, it all converges … oops.
Actually, I kept thinking about the ‘ban on disagreement.’ Funny, without being totally arbitrary or symbolic we can date the end of the Establishment’s putative consensus on class cooptation at home and multilateral imperialism abroad to 1980 and Reagan’s election to the Presidency. Shortly thereafter, I ended up in The City of Exquisite Sensibilities, whose name indicates that, far more than a geographic locale, it concentrated the grassroots cultural and political tendencies that squelched straight talk among politic collaborators. Concentrated them to a degree perhaps only exceeded in the Bay Area. Exemplified them.
Hippieism gone New Age. “Love everybody” (or as Frank Zappa had it early on “I will love everybody. I will love the cop as he is kicking the shit out of me.”) now codified into an pretty explicit set of proprieties. “Don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” “Don’t tell people what to do.” And this pervasively. For me gone from Jefferson Airplane (I’d rather have my country die for me) to David Byrne, coyly arrogant about deliberately not expressing meaning. Art students eschewing sense, for the same reason. Not to impose meaning on viewers. And the MWF feminist contribution those Srivasta articles dealt with of not hurting feelings.
This cultural radical refusal of meaning, and its ostensible ethics always floored me. You can’t possible impose meaning on me. If I disagree , I say no. And when I say no, no means no. Which made me suspect this stance projected a sense of personal inability to resist authority onto the rest of us. In fact, the refusal of sense struck me as condescending, like I’m not big enough to look out for myself.
But let’s think queer for a moment. Now that I have finished Halley, but haven’t had time to reread, I recall her as using ‘queer’ two ways. Specifically to use queer (and other) alternatives to ground political analysis of sexual matters. And more generally of applying other theories at large to purportedly “‘gender’ entails ’sex’” matters. I’ll add one, unless I missed Halley doing it, applying queer theory to non-sexual matters. To be explicit using an illegitimate metaphorical transfer to generate an untenable reading that may prove more or less useful as hypotheses for empirical investigation.
But isn’t this coy ‘refusal to impose meaning’ a strategy of sub(missive) seduction? “Ooh, you big powerful meaning imposer, can you impose some of that powerful meaning on me/this?” And in the intellectual pomo feminist wouldn’t that make Foucault’s flirtatious evasion of fixity a primary source of sub-seductive argument?
And from this, and other perspectives, doesn’t the ‘refusal’ deny and foreclose ‘discussion.’ The absence of statement precludes ‘response’ in its substantial sense. It absorbs response into its self as the realization of its solicitous rejection of mastery. (Whoa-ho, a giddy pomoism itself there!And not remotely formulated with precision.) A sub/dom tarbaby of argument. (there, that’s better.)
Enough. Give me an attitude of certitude. To which I can prove my devotion by reflection, research and reply, cuz dammit if you think you’re right, I know you’re wrong. Until I prove to myself that you’re right. I’d certainly hope for the same degree of respect from you.