Is progressive change in America possible? A practical plan of action

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How is progressive change to be effected within the American political system?

First: are citizens asking the correct questions?

• Does anyone really believe that any topflight, professional, national politician, with what national campaigns cost these days, is ever going to confront or bring down a major source of funding like Wall Street?

• Does the deregulation of the financial sector that has brought about the present meltdown have anything to do with that sector's campaign contributions to both political parties?

• Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

• Does anyone really believe that any professional American politician of national stature is ever going to apply enough pressure on Israel to insure compliance of UN-242? ...And speaking of Israel and American politicians: where is the little bird brave enough to push that cuckoo's egg out of America's nest?

Is there any solution to any of this?

Good news, bad news.

The good news? Yes there is.

The bad news?

It will take a long time... about twenty years, at least, if we start right now.

I believe the possible solution lies in local politics and in the US House of Representatives: politicians that are near to the actual people who vote for them and whose every move can be watched closely by local progressive activists interconnected nationally through countless Internet forums. Politicians whose campaigns would get cheaper as their local reputations grew.

Congresspersons in this movement should be politicians whose greatest ambition is to rise by seniority (that means getting reelected from their district many times)  to enable them to sit on and eventually chair the powerful key House committees. Here is power that could be truly controlled by the voters if they kept their elected representatives under a powerful magnifying glass. This movement could be independent of both the Republicans and the Democrats and a President or Senator of either party that defied these powerful Congresspersons would do so at his or her peril. In this way a practical progressive agenda could be pushed forward without submitting itself to the national corporate media circus.

To my mind a nationwide, grassroots movement, based on the House of Representatives, like the one that I have described, is probably the only way real, progressive change can ever occur within our present system. DS

Religion and politics

 "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and the people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French...and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you, if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Okay, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out -- the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other...They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come..."   Pat Robertson (enormously successful American, ultra-right, religious wacko)

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.  Matthew 25:35-46

David Seaton's News Links

I received this comment on my previous post in another venue where I cross-post:

This post strikes me as a jeremiad like Pat Robertson's. While it is more sophisticated than his, it is very much in the same vein. You describe the start of, and predict the continuation of, the ruin of the U.S., its sins and its possible redemption. Just like Robertson on Haiti.

It's an interesting theme, but before going on I  think I should clarify my position.

Full disclosure: I personally consider myself a "deist" in a bhakti yoga, Sufi, or African-American gospel vein, I personally experience that there is something "out" or "in" there that under certain conditions electrifies my spirit and stirs my emotions in the most joyous way: is it "Grace" or a weak mind? Who knows?  I ask for little more. Like a famous 19th century Indian guru said, "when I am confronted with an orchard full of ripe mangoes, I don't stop to count the trees and calculate the value of the harvest, I get busy and... eat mangoes".

Getting back to Robertson.

One thing is to attribute what insurance companies call, an "act of God" to the devil and rather another to suggest that if the USA, having made some hugely significant errors, may have to pick up the check for those errors

I think Pat Robertson is a totally despicable, slimy individual. The more despicable because he manipulates to his behalf and the people who sponsor him, the deepest psychological mechanisms of our species in order for his listeners to support policies which are harmful to them.

Pat Robertson, like a pedophile priest, is a person who causes people to hold religion in contempt. If Robertson were in fact a Christian, as he so loudly proclaims, he would tremble in fear of this saying:

"It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to lose faith." Luke 17:2

So much for Robertson, lets get on with religion.

Part of the problem a lot of people have with all of this is one of language.

Most of the language used to describe religious thought comes wrapped in an obscure, if evocative, way of speaking originating before the scientific revolution. For example, it sounds strange to modern ears when King Solomon says, "The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom" but when translated into modern, post-scientific revolution  language it can seem more relevant.  I'm sure any pale and sweating financial analyst with any sense that survived  the days when Lehman Brothers went down, would agree with the statement. "humility in the face of unknowable unknowns is a good risk strategy"... The two statements are basically the same.

When a devout Muslim says, "see you tomorrow" and then adds, "inshallah" or when a traditional Spaniard, says, "hasta mañana"  and  adds, "si Díos quiere", they are both simply recognizing the mystery that tomorrow holds for us all. I'm sure that most of those 200,000 Haitians buried under the rubble were full of plans for what they were going to do next week.   As my grandmother would have said, "there but for the grace of God go I".                          

The place in the human spirit or psyche where religion is born or "invented", if you will, is the most delicate and fertile in our makeup. Not only is religion born there, so is art, poetry and music and of course our dreams. Probably the best Sherpa for this mountain would be Carl Gustav Jung. But Marx will also serve to cast some light. Karl Mark's famous "opium" remark has been much misquoted in this regard, in fact what he said is full of compassion, humanity and understanding. This is the full quote:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

I think that first we cure the disease and then we can think about tapering off the opium. And perhaps the "opium" could even be used to actually cure the disease.

At the point, where the disease of oppression has been cured, there is no conflict left at all, no question of religion being alienation.  At that point we enter the territory of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal whose famous "wager" postulates, quoting Wikipedia, 'that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.' Pascal said:

Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful.

How does all this fit into what I am trying to say about American politics?

To begin with, in the vast majority, the working people of America are religious, probably for the reasons that Marx enumerates. To attack that deep spiritual need is to make enemies of them and cause them to fall directly into the hands of those who are oppressing them. That is what Robertson and his ilk are about.

I think that it is probable that the parents and the grandparents of those who today listen to Pat Robertson, who brood about the Apocalypse and Rapture and make up the base of Sarah Palin, voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt... and their great-grandparents voted for Williams Jennings Bryant... Changing those votes is really what Robertson and his ilk are about... The Reagan revolution would have been impossible without it. Probably the dumbest thing that America's progressives have ever done has been to abandon the field of transcendence to the wing-nuts.

Harnessing spiritual, transcendental meaning and energy in the cause of liberating humanity from its oppressors is certainly the most intelligent and probably the most effective course... That is what "Liberation Theology" is about... it might be encapsulated in Bryant's famous phrase: "thou shalt not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold". Change "globalization" for "gold" and you have a whole political program that would move masses. DS

The writing on the wall

In the United States, there is a powerful compulsion to shoehorn warmaking into the ranks of admirable activities conducted by good people with fine minds. General Petraeus fulfills an important need, especially for the responsible-liberal quadrant of the commentariat and the incoming Obama administration which, I imagine, will be staffed by Ivy League intellectuals and not be chock-a-block with blood and thunder military types.

For the United States to put up with occupations and COIN/pacification operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that may go on for more than a decade, the public needs to believe that the occupation is some kind of combination of FDR’s New Deal and the superhero Justice League, using American know-how and values to continually improve the economic and security well-being of the peoples in our care.

However, in real life, occupation and counter-insurgency are a nasty, degrading, and bloody business. Commanders in a hostile land far from home, intent on protecting their own forces, aren’t always using a surgical scalpel to extract the tumor of insurgency. Sometimes the meat axe is swung indiscriminately, slaughtering patient and bystanders alike. China Matters

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AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much for being with us. Last question, though: do you think the movements that elected Obama can, without the Obama machine, remarkable online and on-the-ground organizing, what, ten million email list—we were getting texts and emails every couple of hours—can reconstitute itself without that? Because now that will be the state. How do people show their—express their positions if they differ from the state?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Has the movement been absorbed into the state? Look, there’s a remarkable difference between the youth movement of the ’60s, which mainly organized outside the system, and the youth movement which has brought Obama to power, because this movement has organized within the system to reform the system. Obama keeps on saying that this movement must not go away, that change hasn’t come, that this is the beginning of change. Now, will the candidate be able to tame the movement, or will the movement be able to stamp itself to some extent in the coming days? Democracy Now

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Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real mandate. Paul Krugman - NYT

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Mr Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel, a long-time aide to Bill Clinton, to be his White House chief of staff is a savvy choice that will tick a lot of people off. Mr Emanuel will be not only a force multiplier for a Democratic majority that has grown by 19 seats, but also – and more importantly – a brake on that majority. Christopher Caldwell - Financial Times

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Now we will place all the kids that rang the doorbells on one side of the scale and the corporate donors and their media on the other and we will see who is "found wanting".

I would predict that Barack Obama's administration is going to be for liberals and progressives what structured debt products have been for shareholders: an access of "animal spirits" they will wistfully regret. DS