Dr. Charles W. Mills on the Political Dynamics of Race and Class in the United States in the 21st Century and the Fight Against Trump's Attorney General Nominee Jeff Sessions

https://www.thenation.com/…/what-is-the-left-without-ident…/

A BLAST FROM THE VERY RECENT PAST...

Race and Ethnicity
The Left
That’s Debatable

What Is the Left Without Identity Politics?

Four writers consider the question dividing the Democratic Party
by Walter Benn Michaels, Charles W. Mills, Linda Hirshman and Carla Murphy

Whose Identity Politics?
by Charles W. Mills
December 16, 2016
The Nation

Dr. CHARLES MILLS
(b. January 3, 1951)

The causes of Donald Trump’s stunning electoral victory will be debated for years: FBI director James Comey’s October 28 letter about Clinton’s e-mails, her “basket of deplorables” comment, the Democratic campaign’s neglect of the Rust Belt states, and so on. But the pernicious and enduring role of identity politics was crucial.

I refer, of course, to the white racial identity politics that has shaped the United States from its birth.

Needless to say, this is neither the standard narrative nor the usual framing. For the orthodox white left, now claiming a cheerless we-told-you-so vindication, identity politics is their politics—particularistic, pandering to special interests, balkanizing; ours, of course, are supposedly very different—universalist, general-interest, unifying. Not “recognition,” but redistribution; not “identity” but material inequality; not “race,” but class. The proletariat, Karl Marx informs us, is the universal class, subject to no racial or gendered categorizations, whose emancipation is going to free everybody. In a somewhat diluted non-revolutionary form (social-democratic redistributivist capitalism), this vision still informs white mainstream left-liberal thought today.

But if it was wrong even in Marx’s time and Marx’s world, it is even more mistaken in the United States of the 21st century. American capitalism (white supremacist from the start) created heterogeneous structures of subordination that had different effects on white workers than on black and brown workers. White working-class identity politics—even as a junior shareholder in the overarching system of white supremacy—would pay off for its subscribers in multiple ways: not just in terms of greater political input and civic/social recognition than their non-white counterparts, but also in the form of material access to better jobs, better (segregated) neighborhoods, a better education for their children, and far greater wealth (through racially discriminatory mortgages and state transfer payments, the racialized implementation of the GI Bill, and so forth). The so-called identity politics of people of color has always been reactive, recognizing whiteness as an illicit set of entitlements to these political and economic advantages.

White working-class identity politics is a junior shareholder in the overarching system of white supremacy.

Doesn’t the white working class have legitimate grievances? Of course it does. But these must be separated from illegitimate grievances about diminished white privilege, both identitarian and economic. After all, the non-white poor and working class are hurting worse, and (for the most part) they didn’t vote for Trump. Achieving a genuine universalism responsive to the interests of both the white and the non-white disadvantaged will require an admission of whites’ differential historic positioning in the political economy, and how the prism of race has always refracted their perception of their group interests. As plutocracy and the New Gilded Age of inequality consolidate themselves, the white left needs to ask itself whose identity politics brought us to this point in the first place.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Charles W. Mills is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. He is the author of numerous books on race and political theory, including The Racial Contract (1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (1998), and the forthcoming Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism (2017).

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/stop-jeff-sessions

Dear MoveOn member,

Senator Jeff Sessions' spokesperson lashed out at MoveOn today after nearly 200,000 MoveOn members signed a petition supporting the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP and national NAACP leaders in their peaceful sit-in at Sen. Sessions' office in Mobile to protest against his nomination for attorney general.1

Sen. Sessions' bizarre attack against MoveOn and the NAACP is only the latest in his history of attacks—over his career, he's attacked voting rights and immigrants, women, LTBTQ Americans, and so much more.

Take a minute to watch this video MoveOn just released featuring civil rights, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and other advocacy leaders talking about the danger Sen. Sessions poses as Trump's attorney general pick.

Stop Jeff Sessions

Americans from all walks of life are speaking out against Sen. Sessions, and it is for the same reasons the Senate rejected his nomination to the federal judiciary decades ago: his track record of racism, his avid opposition to civil rights and human rights, and his false claims about his own history of civil rights work to try to deflect criticism.2

As attorney general, Sen. Sessions would be a threat to us all. Please take a moment to watch this video and share it with your friends and family so they know what's at stake.
Thanks for all you do.

—Jamiah, Justin, Maria, Alex, and the rest of the team
P.S. If you haven't yet signed the petition from the Alabama State Conference president of the NAACP, calling on Congress to reject Sessions' nomination, you can add your name here.

Sources:

1. "NAACP protest of Sessions 'a fundraising gimmick,'" Washington Examiner, January 5, 2017 http://act.moveon.org/go/7418?t=7&akid=175826.9442574.xLH_z6

2. "Jeff Sessions says he handled these civil rights cases. He barely touched them." The Washington Post, January 3, 2017 https://act.moveon.org/go/7419…

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?


 

NAACP arrested in sit-in of Trump AG Jeff Sessions’ office amid rising opposition:

Six members of the NAACP were arrested during a sit-in at the Mobile, Alabama, office of Senator Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General. The organization’s president, Cornell Brooks, who wrote a statement in November objecting to Sessions’ opposition to the Voting Rights Act, was among those arrested. Meanwhile, 1,100 law school professors sent a letter urging Congress to reject the nomination. To discuss this, ‘News With Ed’ is joined by Larry Cohen, chair of the Democracy Initiative and a critic of Sessions.

Over 155 civil and human rights organizations led by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and joined by leaders from the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National LGBTQ Task Force, The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and Transformative Justice Coalition—raise their collective voices against the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general. These organizations advocate for the rights of immigrants, LGBTQi, women and people of color—they are deeply entrenched in the battle for voting rights and criminal justice reform. Sessions' voting record demonstrates a clear disregard for the civil and human rights of all Americans. Share this video, call your senators today to voice your opposition, and sign this petition: MoveOn.org/StopSessions #NoSessions

The Struggle Continues: The Theoretical and Practical Dimensions of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Our Political Economy and the State

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all


All,

In the past I have often found myself at distinct theoretical, strategic, and tactical odds with Gitlin and his myopic, reductive, and self serving notions of what really constitutes radical democracy within the multiracial/multinational context and character of mass struggle in this country but this time I think his insights into the essential and very important 'Occupy Wall Street' movement are not only correct but right on target. Let the truly new, decisive, and necessary fight to really change the direction of this country begin...

Kofi

"Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win"


OPINION

The Left Declares Its Independence
By TODD GITLIN
October 8, 2011
New York Times


"...OCCUPY Wall Street, then, emanates from a culture — strictly speaking, a counterculture — that is diametrically opposed to Tea Party discipline.

So where do these romantics go from here? The Zuccotti Park core doesn’t seem to have a plan, or even to take kindly to the idea of consolidating a list of demands. And yet, by taking the initiative, they have aroused, as with the Oct. 5 march, less romantic and more conventionally organized allies who do not disdain political demands. Such is the cunning of political history. Having set out to be expressive, the anarchists have found themselves playing, willy-nilly, a most strategic role.

Such movements hope to remain forever under construction, fluid, unfixed. They slip laughingly through the nets of journalism, which prefers hard-and-fast answers to the question “What do you people want?”

But the interesting, difficult, even decisive moment in the career of such a movement comes when allies arrive, especially allies not so enamored of horizontal democracy and more taken by the idea of getting results. These forces showed up on Oct. 5. De facto, there is an alliance in the cards.

It makes sense. Here, finally, is what labor and the activist left have been waiting for. For two years, Barack Obama got the benefit of the doubt from fervent supporters — I’d bet that many of those in Lower Manhattan during these weeks went door-to-door for him in 2008 — and that support explains why no one occupied Wall Street in 2009. Now, as Jeremy Varon, a historian at the New School, said of Zuccotti Park: “This is the Obama generation declaring their independence from his administration.”

By allying itself with the protest, the left at large is telling the president that a campaign slogan that essentially says “We’re better than Eric Cantor” won’t cut it in 2012. “We are the 99 percent” would be more like it. If President Obama takes this direction, the movement’s energy may be able to power a motor of significant reform.

That raises the question, though, of whether the inchoate quality of the Occupy Wall Street movement can continue. Probably not, since an evolving alliance demands concrete goals, strategies and compromises. But perhaps something of the initial free spirit can flourish. There is plenty of public sentiment to nourish it. It doesn’t take public opinion polls to detect American anger at the plutocracy and the impunity with which it lords it over the country.

The culture of anarchy is right about this: The corporate rich — those ostensible “job creators” who somehow haven’t gotten around to creating jobs — rule the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well, having artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves. A refusal to compromise with this system, defined by its hierarchies of power and money, would be the current moment of anarchy’s great, lasting contribution.

Until now, fury at the plutocracy and the political class had found no channel to run in but the antigovernment fantasies of the Tea Party. Now it has dug a new channel. Anger does not move countries, but it moves movements — and movements, in turn, can move countries. To do that, movements need leverage. Even Archimedes needed a lever and a place to stand to move the world. When Zuccotti Park meets an aroused liberalism, the odd couple may not live happily ever after. But they can make a serious run at American dreams of “liberty and justice for all.”

Alexander Cockburn On The Disturbing Dynamics of the National Presidential Race in 2012

President Obama

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/83581,news-comment,news-politics,making-a-case-for-barack-obama-just-gets-harder?print=print

"If the truth hurts/then you'll be in pain. And if the truth drives you crazy/then you'll just be insane..."

--Sister Souljah, 1992

All,

Another typically excellent and brutally honest article by the legendary investigative and political journalist Alexander Cockburn. Though the words are stinging and painful--even seemingly harsh at times--no one who is HONEST about what the President has and has not done while in office since 2008 could possibly disagree or find flaws with the fundamental TRUTH of what Cockburn says here. I've been personally saying it--and thinking it--for nearly two years now and nearly everyone I know who believed in and vigorously campaigned and voted for Obama--as I also did!--now feel the exact same way as Cockburn does in this article. Like I said before I and most of my deeply disillusioned friends will still vote for him again in 2012 only because we have NO OTHER CHOICE since clearly voting for ANY Republican--or simply sitting out the election-- would be an insane act of national political suicide. Needless to say this is an utterly pathetic position for us to be left in and it's more than understandable at this point why so many people who thought and expected Obama to have some real principles and actually stand for something (and to fight for it while in office) are enraged and bitter about the colossal MESS that we are presently in because this man has FAILED to be a leader for the desperately needed national progressive reform that he "promised" he would be during his campaign in 2008...Thus the paramount question remains: When will the masses of the American people, and most especially the Left as an effective mass organizing force, rise to fill this yawning national political and ideological vacuum?

Kofi


Making a case for Barack Obama just gets harder
by Alexander Cockburn:
AUGUST 25, 2011
The First Post

Loyalists will vote for Obama again – but only to stop some insane Republican from getting in


The White House that shook in Tuesday's earthquake has been home to its present incumbent for 32 months. Obama wasn't around to watch the furniture shake. He's up on Martha's Vineyard for the third year in a row with Michelle and their two daughters, bunkered in a $25,000-a-week holiday rental on a lush 28-acre estate in the little town of Chilmark.

He's keeping a low profile. Words like "stand-offish" roll petulantly off the tongues of the island's liberal elites. They were spoiled by Bill Clinton who spent six presidential vacations on the Vineyard. No renter he. Bill free-loaded on rich pals and party donors, mostly synonymous.

No one could ever accuse Bill of being stand-offish, though he once confided to Vernon Jordan that he preferred Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Martha's Vineyard as a vacation spot since it was impossible to get "pussy" in the stuffy Massachusetts resort.

Obama's stand-offishness includes, I am informed by one knowledgeable Martha's Vineyard local, failure to show at an exclusive fundraiser, also at a party of his friend Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard prof whose July 2009 spat with the Cambridge police once prompted the normally hyper-prudent Obama to say the cops had acted "stupidly" – probably the most vivid off-the-cuff judgment of his entire presidency.

The presidential excuse for the Gates no-show was apparently that he and Michelle didn't "want to leave the kids alone." Alone? One of the houses on the Chilmark estate is occupied by the Secret Service; another by close aides. You'd think at least two could have been press-ganged into child-minding duties.

Like many presidents trying to have a holiday, Obama has drawn fire for lounging about on the Vineyard for 10 days while ordinary Americans battle hard times, and Hurricane Irene threatens the Atlantic seaboard.

So, as with other presidents, his press man claims 50 per cent of Obama's time is spent doing the nation's business, much of it hunkered down with his counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan. Presumably they are reviewing intelligence reports that al-Qaeda is planning something really big to mark the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Trade Towers on 9/11/2011.

As president, Obama is not doing well. It's not just a matter of the 53 per cent disapproval rating reported yesterday by Gallup. After two-and-a-half years, people are beginning to come to settled opinions about their president and many of these aren't flattering.

In 2008 liberals and most leftists were deeply in love with Obama and genuinely believed the promissory notes about a better America he strewed along the campaign trail and has since welshed on at a rate of well over 90 per cent.

The face-off over the debt ceiling at the start of this month was the final straw. Take a man I have known for many decades, William Broyles, former Marine, lifelong Texan Democrat, speech writer in the Carter White House, former Newsweek editor, co-creator of China Beach, Apollo 13 and Cast Away.

Ten days ago, Bill wrote a furious Newsweek column headlined 'The Oval Office Appeaser'. Bill is normally a courteous man, not one who likes to hurl mouldy cabbages from the balcony. I've never known him write more angrily.

"After each betrayal, after each terribly bad bargain, Obama comes out waving a piece of paper, a one-sided agreement to appease the Republicans—peace in our time…

"A despair grips America today, a cold fear that our best days are behind us, that we are adrift and powerless. Yes, the Republicans are to blame. But so is a president who treats core American values as bargaining chips, who won't fight for anything, who refuses to lead. It turns out hope does matter… Americans aren't inspired by well-meaning weakness. We like strong leaders, particularly in desperate times."

Obama is a very curious fellow. I don't think any writer thus far has got the measure of the man. Take the Obama White House. From the news-leak point of view he presides over the tightest ship in living memory. Leaks, corridor gossip, my-side-of-the-story confidences of policy-makers battling for the president's ear, depth charges planted by such powerful cabinet members as Hillary Clinton? None of the above. This is the White House of a man in total control, contrasting markedly with Clinton's fitful supervision of the shambolic White House of his two terms.

But Obama, where it counts, is not in control. Republicans, regarded as certifiably insane by a lot more Americans than disapprove of Barack Obama, face him down and he leaps to do their bidding, even as they kick him in the teeth for not doing more. He tugs his forelock to Wall Street, the defence industry, the oil companies, Monsanto, the agriculture industry, Israel. An appeaser, as Broyles charged. And when the dust of battle rises, he cuts and runs.

Last week the Democrats got a nasty shock when the New York Times ran a story reporting on the battle for Anthony Weiner's Brooklyn district. Weiner resigned from Congress on June 16, done in by Twittering photos of his penis to women, none of them his wife or even a constituent. The Republican challenger is apparently making a strong showing in this traditionally Democratic district. The Times quoted life-long Democrats expressing their discontent in virulent terms.

There are plenty of Obama loyalists out there. I know leftists who still forlornly try to make a case for the man and will stay true to the end. But if they vote for him next year it won't be for any positive reason, such as sent them delightedly to the polls in 2008 in search of hope. They'll gesture to Rick Perry or some other Republican challenger and fall back on the "lesser of two evils" argument.

But will this work with the sort of blue-collar union people and independents who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 because they thought Carter was a wimp who couldn't handle the economy?

Bill Clinton survived incompetence and scandal because enough Americans felt like somewhat disillusioned brides after two or three years of facing the Real Thing across the breakfast table. "Dump him? For who? Anyway, he's promised me he'll try to do better." He's a flake and a liar, but he's our flake and our liar.

No one feels like that about Obama. He's not a man who elicits mass affection. People whose vote he courts are genuinely confused. Does he believe in anything beyond raising a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign? Now he's on the trail again, assuring people without jobs that he'll put them back to work. It's a very tough sell.

Meanwhile Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the Republican race only a week ago, is surging against his opponents. Yesterday's Gallup poll has him in a commanding lead over the 'moderate' Republican Mitt Romney, with 29 per cent saying they are most likely to support Perry. Former front-runner Mitt Romney (17 per cent), Ron Paul (13 per cent), and Michele Bachmann (10 per cent) are next, with four other candidates at four per cent or less.

The conservative Perry's done this by staking out fierce positions, just as Reagan did against Carter. It doesn't matter that the opinions grate on the sensibilities of the liberal commentariat. He's not after their approval. Perry's a tough campaigner, not like Bob Dole, whom Clinton had the luck to face in 1996.

These days, apropos Obama, some lines from a Hollywood classic, Touch of Evil, float into my mind:

Welles: Come on, read my future for me.

Dietrich: You haven't got any.

Welles: Hmm? What do you mean?

Dietrich: Your future's all used up.

Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman on the Failing Economy, the Capitulation of President Obama, and the Complicity and Impotence of the American Left

Barack Obama. The President, writes Greenwald, "In many crucial areas, has done more to subvert and weaken the left's political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party's leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe." (Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/GettyImages)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/21-6

Barack Obama is Gutting the Core Principles of the Democratic Party

The president's attacks on America's social safety net are destroying the soul of the Democratic party's platform

by Glenn Greenwald
July 21, 2011
The Guardian/UK

In 2005, American liberals achieved one of their most significant political victories of the last decade. It occurred with the resounding rejection of George W Bush's campaign to privatise social security.

Bush's scheme would have gutted the crux of that entitlement programme by converting it from what it has been since the 1940s – a universal guarantor of minimally decent living conditions for America's elderly – into a Wall Street casino and bonanza.

Progressive activists and bloggers relentlessly attacked both the plan and underlying premises (the myth that social security faces a "crisis"), spawning nationwide opposition. Only a few months after he unveiled his scheme to great fanfare, Bush was forced to sheepishly withdraw it, a defeat he described as his biggest failure.

That victory established an important political fact. While there are very few unifying principles for the Democratic party, one (arguably the primary one) is a steadfast defence of basic entitlement programs for the poor and elderly – social security, Medicare and Medicaid – from the wealthy, corporatised factions that have long targeted them for cuts.

But in 2009, clear signs emerged that President Obama was eager to achieve what his right-predecessor could not: cut social security. Before he was even inaugurated, Obama echoed the right's manipulative rhetorical tactic: that (along with Medicare) the programme was in crisis and producing "red ink as far as the eye can see." President-elect Obama thus vowed that these crown jewels of his party since the New Deal would be, as Politico reported, a "central part" of his efforts to reduce the deficit.

The next month, his top economic adviser, the Wall Street-friendly Larry Summers, also vowed specific benefit cuts to Time magazine. He then stacked his "deficit commission" with long-time advocates of social security cuts.

Many progressives, ebullient over the election of a Democratic president, chose to ignore these preliminary signs, unwilling to believe that their own party's leader was as devoted as he claimed to attacking the social safety net. But some were more realistic. The popular liberal blogger and economist Duncan "Atrios" Black, who was one of the leaders of the campaign against Bush's privatisation scheme, vowed in response to these early reports:

The left ... will create an epic 360-degree shitstorm if Obama and the Dems decide that cutting social security benefits is a good idea.

Fast forward to 2011: it is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.

This week, even as GOP leaders offered schemes to raise the debt ceiling with no cuts, the White House expressed support for the Senate's so-called "gang of six" plan that includes substantial cuts in those programmes.

The same Democratic president who supported the transfer of $700bn to bail out Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America's bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America's most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.

Where is the "epic shitstorm" from the left which Black predicted? With a few exceptions – the liberal blog FiredogLake has assembled 50,000 Obama supporters vowing to withhold re-election support if he follows through, and a few other groups have begun organising as well – it's nowhere to be found.

Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama's legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left's political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party's leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe. This dynamic has repeatedly emerged in numerous contexts. Obama has continued Bush/Cheney terrorism policies – once viciously denounced by Democrats – of indefinite detention, renditions, secret prisons by proxy, and sweeping secrecy doctrines. He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorising the war. And now he is devoting all of his presidential power to cutting the entitlement programmes that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The silence from progressive partisans is defeaning – and depressing, though sadly predictable.

The nature of American politics is that once a policy is removed from the partisan wars – once it is adopted by the leadership of both parties – it is removed from mainstream debate and fortified as bipartisan consensus. That is why false claims in the run-up to the Iraq war, endorsed by both parties, received so little mainstream journalistic scrutiny. And it's why the former Bush lawyer and right-wing ideologue Jack Goldsmith – back in May 2009 – celebrated in The New Republic the fact that Obama was doing more to strengthen Bush/Cheney terrorism policies than his former bosses could have ever achieved: by embracing the very terrorism approach he once denounced, Obama was converting it from rightwing radicalism into the official dogma of both parties, and forcing his supporters to defend what were, until 2009, the symbols of rightwing evil.

Identically, Obama is now on the verge of injecting what until recently was the politically toxic and unattainable dream of Wall Street and the American right – attacks on the nation's social safety net – into the heart and soul of the Democratic party's platform. Those progressives who are guided more by party loyalty than actual belief will seamlessly transform from virulent opponents of such cuts into their primary defenders. And thus will Obama succeed – yet again – in gutting not only core Democratic policies, but also the identity and power of the American Left.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His next book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/opinion/22krugman.html


The Lesser Depression
July 21, 2011
By Paul Krugman
New York Times

These are interesting times — and I mean that in the worst way. Right now we’re looking at not one but two looming crises, either of which could produce a global disaster. In the United States, right-wing fanatics in Congress may block a necessary rise in the debt ceiling, potentially wreaking havoc in world financial markets. Meanwhile, if the plan just agreed to by European heads of state fails to calm markets, we could see falling dominoes all across southern Europe — which would also wreak havoc in world financial markets.

We can only hope that the politicians huddled in Washington and Brussels succeed in averting these threats. But here’s the thing: Even if we manage to avoid immediate catastrophe, the deals being struck on both sides of the Atlantic are almost guaranteed to make the broader economic slump worse.

In fact, policy makers seem determined to perpetuate what I’ve taken to calling the Lesser Depression, the prolonged era of high unemployment that began with the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and continues to this day, more than two years after the recession supposedly ended.

Let’s talk for a moment about why our economies are (still) so depressed.

The great housing bubble of the last decade, which was both an American and a European phenomenon, was accompanied by a huge rise in household debt. When the bubble burst, home construction plunged, and so did consumer spending as debt-burdened families cut back.

Everything might still have been O.K. if other major economic players had stepped up their spending, filling the gap left by the housing plunge and the consumer pullback. But nobody did. In particular, cash-rich corporations see no reason to invest that cash in the face of weak consumer demand.

Nor did governments do much to help. Some governments — those of weaker nations in Europe, and state and local governments here — were actually forced to slash spending in the face of falling revenues. And the modest efforts of stronger governments — including, yes, the Obama stimulus plan — were, at best, barely enough to offset this forced austerity.

So we have depressed economies. What are policy makers proposing to do about it? Less than nothing.

The disappearance of unemployment from elite policy discourse and its replacement by deficit panic has been truly remarkable. It’s not a response to public opinion. In a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 53 percent of the public named the economy and jobs as the most important problem we face, while only 7 percent named the deficit. Nor is it a response to market pressure. Interest rates on U.S. debt remain near historic lows.

Yet the conversations in Washington and Brussels are all about spending cuts (and maybe tax increases, I mean revisions). That’s obviously true about the various proposals being floated to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis here. But it’s equally true in Europe.

On Thursday, the “heads of state or government of the euro area and the E.U. institutions” — that mouthful tells you, all by itself, how messy European governance has become — issued their big statement. It wasn’t reassuring.

For one thing, it’s hard to believe that the Rube Goldberg financial engineering the statement proposes can really resolve the Greek crisis, let alone the wider European crisis.

But, even if it does, then what? The statement calls for sharp deficit reductions “in all countries except those under a programme” to take place “by 2013 at the latest.” Since those countries “under a programme” are being forced into drastic fiscal austerity, this amounts to a plan to have all of Europe slash spending at the same time. And there is nothing in the European data suggesting that the private sector will be ready to take up the slack in less than two years.

For those who know their 1930s history, this is all too familiar. If either of the current debt negotiations fails, we could be about to replay 1931, the global banking collapse that made the Great Depression great. But, if the negotiations succeed, we will be set to replay the great mistake of 1937: the premature turn to fiscal contraction that derailed economic recovery and ensured that the Depression would last until World War II finally provided the boost the economy needed.

Did I mention that the European Central Bank — although not, thankfully, the Federal Reserve — seems determined to make things even worse by raising interest rates?

There’s an old quotation, attributed to various people, that always comes to mind when I look at public policy: “You do not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” Now that lack of wisdom is on full display, as policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic bungle the response to economic trauma, ignoring all the lessons of history. And the Lesser Depression goes on.

Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford Weighs in On Cornel West's Critique of President Obama and Its Political Implications for the United States

Dr. Cornel West

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/how-cornel-west-did-obamites-favor


Black Agenda Report

News, analysis and commentary from the black left

How Cornel West Did the Obamites a Favor
by Glen Ford
May 25, 2011
Black Agenda Report

Unable to defend the indefensible, Black Obama supporters have been “rendered all but mute on issues of policy.” They got their chance to reenter the political conversation when Princeton professor and media celebrity Cornel West, a former Obama supporter who is now a harsh critic, speculated on the racial workings of the president’s brain. That was a mistake. “There is no need to inject racial psychoanalysis into the (public) conversation when straightforward political analysis is more than sufficient to the task.”

How Cornel West Did the Obamites a Favor
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“Cornel West’s foray into Obamanalysis gave them the opportunity to explode in reams of outraged words that had little or nothing to do with policy.”

It is a shame that Princeton professor Cornel West did not stick to a disciplined critique of the corporatist policies that have made Barack Obama richly deserving of the label, a “Black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” Instead, West slipped into psycho-babble, musing on the president’s supposed “fear of free Black men” and associated personality deformities. The particularities of Obama’s racial background may, or may not, have contributed to his malignant neglect of the African American condition, but we will not forge a movement to defeat Obama and his Wall Street masters by putting the president on the couch.

There is no need to inject racial psychoanalysis into the (public) conversation when straightforward political analysis is more than sufficient to the task. In two and a half years, the Obama administration has expanded George Bush’s wars and national security infrastructure and budget, added a new theater of combat in North Africa, and proclaimed a presidential prerogative to assassinate and invade at will. He has out-Bushed Bush.

Obama engineered by far the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind, funneling at least $12 trillion to Wall Street. At the height of his popularity, still riding the crests of post-election euphoria, and under no real pressure from a demoralized Republican Party, Obama eagerly placed Social Security and other entitlements “on the table” for chopping. He endorsed the corporate/Republican line that deficits were the nation’s biggest problem, effectively sentencing the unemployed to damnation and inviting the austerity reign of terror that has descended. And these are just the highlights of Obama’s tenure.

“The rationale for continued Black and progressive support of the Obama administration has been reduced to one factor: a primal fear of the Tea Party boogeyman.”

The resulting catastrophe in Black America had rendered Black Obamites all but mute on issues of policy; they could not defend the indefensible. In an MSNBC debate with West, Al Sharpton, the administration’s Black pit bull, was reduced to inane sputtering. The rationale for continued Black and progressive support of the Obama administration has been reduced to one factor: a primal fear of the Tea Party boogeyman. Yet, the sheer economic and political devastation wrought under Obama’s brief tenure has made it plausible to make the case – as we do at Black Agenda Report – that the First Black President is not the lesser of two evils, but the more effective evil, having facilitated more of the right-wing agenda at home and abroad than George Bush ever attempted or envisioned. What does it matter that Obama is not a white Republican, if he can tear down the social safety net, privatize education and wage aggressive war more effectively than the GOP?

Of course, Obama is empowered to act as Wall Street’s Trojan Horse by the acquiescence of the Left’s core constituencies – chiefly, Black America, without whose consent and active participation progressive politics is reduced to the fringes. For reasons that have everything to do with race, Black people have clung to Obama even as he has consistently pushed them away. But the agonzing facts of a community in historical free-fall can no longer be denied. The “Black Wall” that the African American mis-leadership class attempts to erect around Obama is cracking, if not crumbling, especially among left activists and intellectuals. Cornel West is a celebrity example.

“The First Black President is not the lesser of two evils, but the more effective evil, having facilitated more of the right-wing agenda at home and abroad than George Bush ever attempted or envisioned.”

Unable to mount a coherent defense of Obama’s policy decisions, especially after his further, dramatic lurch to the right following last year’s midterm elections, Obama’s unrepentant Black politicos seethed in relative silence. It had become impossible to speak in policy terms without indicting the presidential icon. Cornel West’s foray into Obamanalysis gave them the opportunity to explode in reams of outraged words that had little or nothing to do with policy. Prof. Melissa Harris-Perry managed to write almost 1,500 words for The Nation on West’s “personal attack” on Obama, offering only 130 words about her own position on Obama’s tenure at the end of the piece. TheRoot.com, a Black Obamite corporate hangout, gleefully reported that West had “’stepped in it’ with his controversial comments about President Obama,” with “Google News listing more than 100 stories.”

This is the kind of “controversy” in which Obamites revel, precisely because it allows them to avoid confrontation with Obama’s indefensible policies. If they can resurrect another version of the phony, diversionary arguments of 2007 and 2008 about whether Obama is “Black enough” to deserve African American support, then they can hope to coast through the 2012 campaign without having to justify support for the “Black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.”

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.


Cornel West speaking on "Left of Black, Episode 35"--Duke University--May 23, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcTf7QrRGhE&feature=player_embedded#at=35

http://youtu.be/qcTf7QrRGhE

Communications Theorist George Lakoff On the Importance of Language in Politics

http://www.truth-out.org/untellable-truths65905

All,

A brilliant, highly practical and extremely informative analysis of the actual relationship between language, communication, and power in this society and culture. Knowledge trumps idle speculation, ill-informed "opinion", and braindead ignorance every time--even in politics...

Kofi

P.S. The American left desperately needs to study, learn, and creatively apply the profound lessons being taught in this essay by Mr. Lakoff. Without this kind of truly critical and dialectical perspective it will be impossible to properly educate, organize, and mobilize the MASSES (yes folks--MASSES) toward the social realization of either progressive or revolutionary political ideas and values. Without an intelligible, useful, and HONEST critique of both the national Right (including the Republican and Tea parties) AND the President, his administration, and the Democratic Party generally we cannot possibly ACT in any intelligent and effective way to really CHANGE the country in real terms--and not merely TALK about it. Until such time as we openly acknowledge and work to correct our own flaws, inadequacies, and weaknesses we too will continue to flounder as ineptly and nearly as dishonestly and disingenuously as Obama, Congress, the corporate state, and the media have...


Untellable Truths
Monday 13 December 2010
by: George Lakoff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Democrats of all stripes have been so focused on details of policy that they have surrendered public political discourse to conservatives, and with it the key to the nation's future.

Materialist Perspectives

The differences between Democratic progressives and the president over the tax deal the president has made with Republicans is being argued from a materialist perspective. That perspective is real. It matters who gets how much money and how our money is spent.

But what is being ignored is that the answer to material policy questions depends on how Americans understand the issues, that is, on how the issues are realized in the brains of our citizens. Such understanding is what determines political support or lack of it in all its forms, from voting to donations to political pressure to what is said in the media.

What policies are proposed and adopted depend on how Americans understand policy and politics. That understanding depends on communication. And it is in that the Democrats - both the president and his progressive critics - have surrendered. The Democrats have left effective communication to the conservatives, who have taken advantage of their superior communications all too well.

From the progressive viewpoint, the president keeps surrendering in advance - giving in to conservatives before he has to and, hence, betraying Democratic principles. From the president's perspective, he is not surrendering at all; instead, he is a pragmatic incrementalist - getting the best deal he can for the poor and middle class one step at a time.

Progressives differ on the reasons for the president's behavior. Either he has no backbone to stand up for what he believes in, or his actions define his beliefs and he is more conservative than those who voted for him thought.

The progressives' economic policy arguments are sound: continuing reduced tax payments for the wealthy will not work as a serious economic stimulus and will greatly increase the deficit and make the economic picture worse. From a progressive moral perspective, it isn't fair; it increases an economic disparity that is already much too large.

The president's pragmatic incrementalist arguments seem reasonable from his perspective: He got more immediate money for the poor and middle class than he gave to the rich, and the poor and middle class need as much as possible now (pragmatism), and further incremental steps can be taken later (incrementalism).

Those are the materialist arguments among Democrats. I want to shift the frame to the major causal factor that is being ignored on both sides: the role of communication in shaping what Americans understand.

Helping the Other Side

As someone who studies how brains work and how language affects politics, I see things somewhat differently. From my perspective, there is a form of surrender in advance on both sides - a major communications surrender.

Let's start with an example, the slogan, "No tax cuts for millionaires." First, "no." As I have repeatedly pointed out, negating a frame activates the frame in the brains of listeners, as when Christine O'Donnell said, "I am not a witch," or Nixon said, "I am not a crook." Putting "no" first activates the idea "Tax cuts for millionaires."

Next, "millionaires." Think of the TV show "So You Want to Be a Millionaire" or the movies "Slumdog Millionaire" and "How to Marry a Millionaire." To most Americans, being a millionaire is a good thing to aspire to.

Then, there is "tax." To progressives, taxes are forms of revenue allowing the government to do what is necessary for Americans as a whole - unemployment insurance, Social Security, health care, education, food safety, environmental improvements, infrastructure building and maintenance, and so on.

But the conservative message machine, over the past 30 years, has come to own the word "tax." They have changed its meaning to most Americans. They have been able to make "tax" mean "money the government takes out of the pockets of people who have earned it in order to give it to people who haven't earned it and don't deserve it." Thus, "tax relief" assumes that taxation is an affliction to be cured and a "tax cut" is a good thing in general. Hence, conservatives make the argument, "No one should have their taxes raised."

The conservative slogan activates the conservative view of taxes. But the progressive slogan, "No tax cuts for millionaires," also activates the conservative view of taxes! The progressives are helping the conservatives.

The conservatives have a superior message machine: Dozens of think tanks with communications facilities, framing experts, training institutes, a national roster of speakers, booking agents to books their speakers in the media and civic groups and owned medias like Fox News and a great deal of talk radio. Their audience will hear, over and over, "No one should have their taxes raised."

There is no comparable progressive message machine. But even if one were to be built, the Democrats might still be using messages that are either ineffective or that help the conservatives. Why?

Language, The Brain and Politics

When democratic political leaders go to college, they tend to study things like political science, economics, law and public policy. These fields tend to use a scientifically false theory of human reason - enlightenment reason. It posits that reason is conscious, that it can fit the world directly, that it is logical (in the sense of mathematical logic), that emotion gets in the way of reason, that reason is there to serve self-interest and that language is neutral and applies directly to the world.

The brain and cognitive sciences have shown that every part of this is false. Reason is physical; it does not fit the world directly, but only through the brain and body; it uses frames and conceptual metaphors (which are neural circuits grounded in the body); it requires emotion; it serves empathic connections and moral values as well as self-interest, and language fits frames in the brain, not the external world in any direct way.

Conservatives who are savvy about marketing their ideas are closer to the way people really think than Democrats are, because people who teach marketing tend to be up on how the brain and language work. And over the past three decades, they have not just built an effective message machine, but they repeated messages that have changed the brains of a great many Americans.

Democrats can do effective messaging while being sincere and factual. But this takes insight into the nature of unconscious reason and the role of language.

It's Complicated

I am often asked, "Is there a slogan I can use tomorrow that will turn things around?" Certainly there are better things that can be said tomorrow. But things don't turn around so quickly. There is a lot do and to bear in mind over the long haul. Here is a brief list:

Communication is a long-term effort. Political leaders rarely say anything that isn't already in public discourse. That means that people who are not in office have to start effective communication efforts, including new ways of thinking and talking.

All politics is moral. Policies are proposed because they are assumed to be right, not wrong. The moral values behind a policy always should be made clear.

Conservatives and progressives have two different conceptions of morality.

Democrats need to unite behind a simple set of moral principles and to create an effective language to express them. President Obama in his campaign expressed those principles simply, as the basis of American democracy. (1) Empathy - Americans care about each other. (2) Responsibility, both personal and social. We have to act on that care. (3) The ethic of excellence. We have to make ourselves better, so we can make our families, our communities, our country and the world better. Government has special missions: to protect and empower our citizens to have at least the necessities. I don't know any Democrats who don't believe in these principles. They need to be said out loud and repeated over and over.

Leaders need a movement to get out in front of. Not a coalition, a movement. We have the simple principles. Those of us outside of government have to organize that unified movement and not be limited by specific issue areas. The movement is about progressivism, not just about environmentalism, or social justice, or labor, or education, or health, or peace. The general principles govern them all.

Many people are "biconceptual," this is, they have both conservative and progressive moral systems and apply them in different issue areas. These are sometimes called "independents," "swing voters," moderates," "the center" etc. They are the crucial segment of the electorate to address. Each moral system is represented by a circuit in their brains. The more one circuit is activated and strengthened, the more the other is weakened. Conservatives have moved them to the right by repeating conservative moral messages 24/7. The Democrats need to activate and strengthen the progressive moral circuitry in their brains. That means using only progressive language and progressive arguments and not moving to the right or using the right's language. This is the opposite of "moving to the center." There is no ideology of the center, just combinations of progressive and conservative views.

Don't use conservative language, since it will activate their moral system in the brains of listeners. Don't try to negate their arguments. That will only make their arguments more prominent. Use your own language and your own arguments. Truth squads and wonk rooms are insufficient.

Remember that, in the conservative moral system, the highest moral principle is to preserve, defend and extend the conservative moral system itself. For example, from their perspective, individual responsibility is moral; social responsibility is not.

Learn the difference between framing and spin/propaganda. Framing is normal; we think in frames. If you want to formulate a policy that is understandable, the policy must be framed so it came be readily communicated. Framing precedes effective policy. When you use framing to express what you really believe and what the truth is, you are just being an effective communicator. Framing can also be misused for the sake of propaganda. I strongly recommend against it.

Educate the press and the pollsters to all of these matters.
Find a part to play in getting an effective communications system going!
For a detailed background, take a look at my book, "The Political Mind."

Untellable Truths

The conservative message machine has so dominated political discourse that they have changed the meaning of words and made some truths untellable by political leaders in present discourse. It takes a major communication effort to change that.

Here are just a few examples of presently untellable truths:

There is a principle of conservation of government: If conservatives succeed in cutting government by the people for the public good, our lives will still be governed, but now by corporations. We will have government by corporations for corporate profit. It will not be a kind government. It will be a cruel government, a government of foreclosures, outsourcing, union busting, outrageous payments for every little thing and pension eliminations.

The moral missions of government include the protection and empowerment of citizens. Protection includes health care, Social Security, safe food, consumer protection, environmental protection, job protection etc. Empowerment is what makes a decent life possible - roads and infrastructure, communication and energy systems, education etc. No business can function without them. This has not been discussed adequately. Government serving those moral missions is what makes freedom, fairness and prosperity possible. Conservatives do not believe in those moral missions of government and when in power, they subvert the ability of government to carry out those moral missions.

The moral missions of government impose a distinction between necessities and services. Government has a moral mission to provide necessities: Adequate food, water, housing, transportation, education, infrastructure (roads and bridges, sewers, public buildings), medical care, care for elders, the disabled, environmental protection, food safety, clean air and so on. Necessities should never be subordinated to private profit. The public should never be put at the mercy of private profit. Public funds for necessities should never be diverted to private profit.

Services are very different; they start where necessities end. Private service industries exist to provide services - car rentals, parking lots, hair salons, gardening, painting, plumbing, fast food, auto repair, clothes cleaning, and so on. It is time to stop speaking of government "services" and speak instead of government providing necessities. Similarly, "spending" does not suggest providing necessities. "Spending" suggests services that could just as well be eliminated or provided by private industry. Economists should drop the term "spending" when discussing necessities.

The market is supposed to be "efficient" at distributing goods and services and, sometimes, with appropriate competition, it is. But the market is most often inefficient at proving necessities, because every dollar that goes to profit is a dollar that does not go to necessities. Health care is a perfect example.

Public servant pensions have been earned. Public servants have taken lower salaries in return for better benefits later in life. They have earned those pensions through years of hard work at low salaries. Pensions were ways for both corporations and governments to pay lower salaries. Responsible institutions, public and private, took the money saved by committing to pensions and invested it so that the money would be there later. Those corporation and governments that took the money and ran are now going broke. Those institutions (both companies and governments) are now blaming the unions, which negotiated deferred earnings in the form of pensions or benefits for the lack of money to pay pensions. But the institutions themselves (e.g., General Motors) are to blame for not putting those deferred salary payments aside and investing them safely.

Education is a public good, not a private good. It benefits all of us to live in a country with educated people. It benefits corporations to have educated employees. It benefits democracy to have educated citizens. But conservatives are only considering education as a means to make money and, hence, as a private good. This leads them to eliminate the public funding of education, which is a major disaster for all of us, not just those who will either be denied an education or who will be forced into unconscionable debt.

Huge discrepancies in wealth are a danger to democracy and a cause for major public alarm. The enormous accumulation of wealth at the top of American society means unfair access to scarce resources, a restriction on access to necessities for many and a grossly unfair distribution of power - power over the media and political power.

Tax "cuts," "breaks" and "loopholes" sound good (wouldn't you like one?) even for super-wealthy individuals and corporations. What they really mean is that money is being transferred from poorer people to richer people: The poor and middle class are giving money to the rich! Why? Money that would otherwise go to their necessities: food, education, health, housing, safety, and so on is instead going into the pockets of super-wealthy people who don't need it.

Markets in a democracy have a fundamentally moral as well as economic function. Working people who produce goods and services are necessary for businesses, and should be paid in line with profits and productivity. Salary scales in private industry are a matter of public, not just private, concern. Middle-class salaries have not gone up in 30 years, while the income of the top 1 percent has zoomed upward astronomically. This is a moral issue.

Carbon-based fuels - oil, coal, natural gas - are deadly. They bring death to people and animals and destruction to nature. We are not paying for their true cost because they are being subsidized: tens of billions of dollars for naval protection of tankers; hundreds of billions for oil leases; hundreds of billions in destruction of nature, as in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska coast. Death comes from the poisoning of air and water through pollution and natural gas fracking. And global warming pollution destroys nature itself - the ice cap, the creation of violent storms, floods, deserts, the blowing up of hilltops. The salesmen of death - the oil and coal companies - are profiting hugely from our payouts to them via subsidies and high prices. And with the money, ordinary citizens are giving to them in subsidies; they are corrupting the political process, influencing political leaders not to deal with global warming - our greatest threat. We are dependent on them for energy, to a large extent because they have politically blocked the development of alternatives for decades.

What is called "school failure" is actually a failure of citizens to pay for and do what is needed for excellent schools: early childhood education, better training and pay for teachers, a culture of learning in place of a culture of entertainment, a poverty-free economy.

Taxpayers pay for business perks. Because business can deduct the costs of doing business, taxpayers wind up paying a significant percentage of business write-offs - extravagant offices, business cars and jets, first-class and business-class flights, meetings at expensive lodges and spas, and so on. Businesses regularly rip off taxpayers through tax deductions.

The economic crisis and the ecological crisis are the same crisis. It has been caused by short-term greed. Thomas Friedman has described it well. The causes of both are the same: Underestimation of risk, privatization of profit, socialization of loss. But those truths lie outside of public discourse.

Low-paid immigrant workers make the lifestyles of the middle and upper classes possible. Those workers deserve gratitude - as well as health care, education for their kids and decent housing.

Notice that it takes a paragraph to tell each of these truths. Each paragraph creates a frame required for the truth to be told. Words are defined in terms of such conceptual frames. Without the frames in common understanding, there are presently no simple commonplace words to express the frames. Such words have to be invented, and will only come into common use when these presently untellable truths become commonplace truths. Try to imagine how public understanding would have to be enhanced for expressions like the following to come into normal public discourse:

greed crisis in place of economic crisis
blessed immigrants in place of illegal immigrants
government for profit in place of privatization
public theft in place of tax breaks
failing citizens in place of failing schools
corporate cruelty in place of profit maximization
deadly coal in place of clean coal
Presidents can have a discourse-changing power if they know how to use it and care to use it. But they cannot do it alone.

If there is a teachable communication moment for President Obama, this is it. Bring back "empathy" - "the most important thing my mother taught me." Speak of "empathy" for "people who are hurting." Say again how empathy is basis of democracy ("caring for your fellow citizens"), how we have a responsibility to act on that empathy: social as well as personal responsibility. Bring the central role of empathy in democracy to the media. And make it clear that personal responsibility alone is anti-patriotic, the opposite of what America is fundamentally about. That is the first step in telling our most important untellable truths. And it is a necessary step in loosening the conservative grip on public discourse.

For videos of the president speaking about empathy, Google: Obama Empathy YouTube and Obama Empathy Speeches.

Following the MidTerm Elections in November We Must Continue to Fight and Defeat the Right No Matter What Inroads the Republicans Make in Congress

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/us/politics/25agenda.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema4

All,

If, as this article clearly suggests he "should", all this President winds up doing in wake of the upcoming midterm elections is politically kissing the asses of such criminally rightwing reprobates, reactionaries, and demagogues as the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate over the next two years then everything Obama currently allegedly stands for will be completely destroyed (and surely not worth fighting for). In that case the very idea of national liberal/progressive "reform" will not only be nothing but a big sick, ugly joke but only we, the People will be the victims of such a massive capitulation. Either the President, the Democratic Party, and the general left in this country will now stand up to and thoroughly fight the congressional and independent right with all it has to offer or everything we "said" we stood for and would continue to fight for in electing this President in the first place will be completely lost and rendered worthless...for real...

Kofi


October 24, 2010

Obama’s Playbook After Nov. 2
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times

WASHINGTON — It took President Obama 18 months to invite the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to the White House for a one-on-one chat. Their Aug. 4 session in the Oval Office — 30 minutes of private time, interrupted only when the president’s daughter Malia called from summer camp to wish her father a happy 49th birthday — was remarkable, not for what was said, but for what it took to make it happen.

Not long before the meeting, Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate leader, lamented to his onetime Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, that Mr. Obama would never get an important nuclear arms treaty with Russia ratified until he consulted top Republicans. Mr. Lott, who recounted the exchange in an interview, was counting on Mr. Daschle, a close Obama ally, to convey the message; lo and behold, Mr. McConnell soon had an audience with the president.

The White House says the meeting was about stalled judicial nominations, not arms control. But the fact that a former Senate leader found it necessary to work back channels to put Mr. Obama and Mr. McConnell in touch suggests the difficult road the president will face if Republicans win control of one or both houses of Congress on Election Day.

Before Mr. Obama and Republicans can secure each other’s cooperation, people in both parties say, they must first figure out a way to secure mutual trust.

After two years of operating at loggerheads with Republicans, Mr. Obama and his aides are planning a post-election agenda for a very different political climate. They see potential for bipartisan cooperation on reducing the deficit, passing stalled free-trade pacts and revamping the education bill known as No Child Left Behind — work that Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama’s education secretary, says could go a long way toward repairing “the current state of anger and animosity.”

“I’m a big believer in less of singing ‘Kumbaya’ together and going on retreats than in rolling up our sleeves and doing work together,” Mr. Duncan said in an interview. “That’s how you build respect, that’s how you build trust, that’s how you build relationships. I think it’s a way to move beyond some hurt feelings on both sides. Do it through the work.”

Mr. Obama came to office vowing to reach across the aisle and change the tone in Washington, a goal he quickly abandoned when Republicans stood in lockstep against his stimulus bill. Today, with each side blaming the other for their sorry state of relations, neither has “clean hands,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia.

Yet even Democrats say that, as president, Mr. Obama has a special obligation to try to put an end to the vitriol — and that the future of his presidency may depend on it.

“Probably the biggest single promissory note he handed out during his campaign was the promise of trying to overcome Red America and Blue America into one America,” said Bill Galston, who worked as a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “I think the perception is that he didn’t work as hard as he could have to redeem that note, and I can’t believe that he wants to go down in history as the president who promised to overcome polarization and ended up intensifying it.”

Mr. Obama said during his State of the Union address that he wanted to hold “monthly meetings with both Republican and Democratic leadership.” He has not entirely lived up to that promise; there have been five such sessions, including his televised health care summit, in the nine months since. Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s communications director, said the president had “repeatedly extended his hand” to Republicans, who “made a political decision” to oppose him at every turn.

“That was their choice,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “Hopefully, they will make a different one after the election.”

Publicly, senior advisers to Mr. Obama insist they are focused on keeping Democrats in the majority, and they will not detail their post-election strategy — either for legislation or mending fences. But privately, allies of the White House say Mr. Obama’s new chief of staff, Pete Rouse, who had good relations with Republicans when he worked on Capitol Hill, is thinking about how Mr. Obama might reach out.

Much will depend on what happens Nov. 2, and some things will be beyond Mr. Obama’s control. If Tea Party candidates — who have spent the entire election season demonizing Mr. Obama — win big, Republican leaders who might be inclined to work with the president might have a difficult time persuading their members to do so. If Republicans take the House and Democrats keep the Senate, it could be difficult for Mr. Obama to bring the chambers together.

One question is what public posture Mr. Obama will take. If Democrats get trounced, will he emerge, sounding contrite, and take responsibility for their losses? Or will he insist the results were not a reflection on him? Will he follow the path of Mr. Clinton, who pursued a so-called triangulation strategy of moving to the center after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994?

“If he did turn to the center, as Bill Clinton did, I think there would be a lot of hope, but right now nobody knows what he is going to do,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah. Mr. Hatch says the strategy was likely to have saved the Clinton presidency. “Bill Clinton wouldn’t have been elected the second time had he not awakened and started to work with both sides.”

Unlike Mr. Clinton, Mr. Obama is not much of a schmoozer, and some Republicans say he might benefit from becoming more of one. Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, said Mr. Obama has telephoned him just once, after he had lung surgery. “He needs to build friendships and he needs to build trust,” Mr. Johanns said.

Although Mr. Obama has hosted cocktail hours and parties at the White House for members of Congress, he is not the type to spend his free time socializing with lawmakers. While personal relationships cannot erase philosophical differences, they can help, which is one reason Mr. Lott, the former Republican leader, pushed privately for Mr. McConnell and Mr. Obama to meet.

“You know, Clinton, we used to talk to each other all the time, through back channels, middle of the day, middle of the night,” Mr. Lott said. “He’d call at 11 o’clock, 2 o’clock at night; I’d go up to the family quarters and have coffee with him at 9:15 in the morning. They’ve got to open up communications — and not for press purposes. They’ve got to talk quietly, privately. That’s Step 1 in Washington.”

Van Jones Urges Us To Stand Up for Our Principles and ORGANIZE For Social and Economic Democracy

Van Jones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZgoZffDHB4

All,

Great and inspiring speech ("Hope & Heartbreak') by activist and scholar Van Jones @ Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, Nevada July 23, 2010.

Kofi

An Interview With Paul Street On Obama, Democracy and the "Drum Major Instinct":

http://www.truth-out.org/obama-democracy-and-drum-major-instinct-interview-with-author-paul-street63646

All,

Excellent and highly informative interview with historian, political journalist, scholar, and activist Paul Street author of one of the best and most important books about President Obama and our general political culture ever written ("Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" (Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2008)...

Kofi


Obama, Democracy and the "Drum Major Instinct": Interview With Author Paul Street
Tuesday 28 September 2010
by: Mickey Z.
t r u t h o u t | Interview



President Barack Obama. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Barack Obama, Adam P Schweigert/WFIU)

You might know independent policy researcher, historian, journalist, activist, political commentator and speaker Paul Street because you've read one (or more) of his five books:

"Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History" (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
"Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era" (New York: Routledge, 2005)
"Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11" (Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2004)
"Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" (Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2008)
"The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power" (Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2010

Perhaps you've read his work in any of the following: The New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Z Magazine, Black Commentator, ZNet, AlterNet and Monthly Review.

If you live in Iowa City, Iowa, you might know Paul personally.

There's also an excellent chance you're not at all familiar with Paul Street or his work ... and that's kinda the point of his work. You see, contrary to all the free press talk and the delusions of equal access and all, only a tiny spectrum of opinion is widely heard in this country. If Street has any say in the matter, that will change.

Street recently took time out from a book tour and from writing a book (with Anthony Dimaggio) on the right-wing Tea Party phenomenon to talk with me.


Mickey Z.: So much of the American experience is based on myths like the two-party system, "land of opportunity," and more. How do you offer a more nuanced view of US history in your work?

Paul Street: I agree on the power of those great American myths and would add some other and related ones: the notion that the United States is a benevolent force for democracy and good in the world; the idea that that the profits system is a form of freedom and democracy; the myth that we can achieve significant democratic change simply by voting in quadrennial corporate-crafted and candidate-centered elections; the notion that we live in a "post-racial" era wherein racism has been mostly defeated; the myth of an independent and objective media. What I try to do to explode these and other key national legends is fairly similar to what you and other American dissidents like Bill Blum and Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn do. I try to rescue from what E.P. Thompson called "the enormous condescension of posterity" (and from what George Orwell termed "the memory hole") some of the many inconvenient facts that do not fit the official narrative imposed by the dominant fables. And I try to fit the doctrinally inappropriate alternative facts into a compelling, accurate counter-narrative that links past to present and vice versa. I used to do a lot of this in the field of history, dealing with the fixed, in-place and "dead" (though ever-contested, re-discovered and revised) past itself.

MZ: What led to a shift in focus?

PS: Starting in the late 1990s, my focus shifted to the moving object of the historical present. And for better or worse, my last two books have tried to do this demystification work in relation to the Obama phenomenon (July 2004 to ?) and presidency (January 2009 to ?). These books deconstruct the supposedly left and progressive Obama from the actual Left by showing in detailed ways that he is beholden to Wall Street and the corporate elite; that he is an "American exceptionalist" man of military empire - a re-brander and agent of an immoral Superpower; that he continues key aspects of the post-9/11 Bush police and terror state; that he repackages sexism and homophobia and the war on immigrants.

MZ: So, it's much deeper than just the Obama hype, right?

PS: At the end of the day, these counter-narratives are not really about "Obama" per se. I'd likely have written something very similar to my "Obama books" if the winner of 2008 presidential extravaganza was someone else. It's systemic and it's nothing new. Every four years, many Americans invest their hopes in an electoral process that does not deserve their trust. These voters hope that a savior can be installed in the White House - someone who will raise wages, roll back war and militarism, provide universal and adequate health care, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, produce high-paying jobs, fix the environmental crisis, reduce inequality, guarantee economic security and generally make daily life more livable. But the dreams are regularly drowned in the icy waters of historical and political "reality."

MZ: Such "icy waters" doesn't just appear on their own, right?

PS: In the actuality of American politics and policy, the officially "electable" candidates are vetted in advance by what Laurence Shoup calls "the hidden primary of the ruling class." By prior Establishment selection, all of the "viable" presidential contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways. They run safely within the narrow ideological and policy parameters set by those who rule behind the scenes to make sure that the rich and privileged continue to be the leading beneficiaries of the American system. In its presidential as in its other elections, U.S. "democracy" is "at best" a "guided one; at its worst it is a corrupt farce, amounting to manipulation, with the larger population projects of propaganda in a controlled and trivialized electoral process. It is an illusion," Shoup claims - correctly in my opinion - "that real change can ever come from electing a different ruling class-sponsored candidate." This is especially true in the corporate-neoliberal era, perhaps, when the Democratic Party has moved ever farther away from its declared mission of representing workers, the poor and minorities - the disadvantaged - in their continuing struggles with plutocracy, inequality, empire, racism, and indifference.

MZ: Please elaborate.

PS: The deeper and darker truth is that American democracy has always been significantly constrained and compromised by the privileged and the propertied and power elite. Sixty years ago, the historian Richard Hofstader, in his widely read book "The American Political Tradition," scrutinized the United States' most significant national leaders, from Jefferson, Hamilton and Jackson to Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Herbert Hoover and the two Roosevelts - liberals and Democrats as well as conservatives and Republicans. Hofstader found that "the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise ... They have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man ... That culture has been intensely nationalistic." We might add that American political culture has also long observed narrow parameters of permissible debate and action surrounding skin color and sex-type - barriers that have generally prevented leading politicians and officeholders from seriously attacking underlying structures and patterns of racial and gender disparity. Through the century in which Hofstader wrote and into the present one, Howard Zinn has noted, "we have seen exactly the same limited vision Hofstader talked about - a capitalist encouragement of enormous fortunes alongside desperate poverty, a nationalistic acceptance of war and preparation for war. Government power swung from Republicans to Democrats and back again, but neither party showed itself capable of going beyond that vision." Contrary to the hopes and dreams of many nominally "progressive" U.S. voters and activists and others in 2007 and early 2008, my last two books show among other things simply that Obama is not some sort of special, magical exception to the cold truths that Shoup, Zinn, Chomsky, Blum, Edward S. Herman and other left demystifers tell about the American politics past and present.

MZ: How does your new book, "The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power," aim toward such demystification?

PS: My recent book's main moral and political criticism is not directed primarily at Obama himself. My ultimate critical targets are the corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. elections system and political culture. That system and culture make it next to impossible for Obama or anyone else to become president without steering to the business-friendly, racially neutral and imperial center and without distancing themselves from elementary truths about U.S. history, society and policy. I do not shrink from making critical judgments about the moral cost inherent in Obama's decision to join rather than to fight "the establishment" - to seek to climb rather than undermine the American System. But I am more concerned with the historical system and forces that compromise Barack Obama - along with countless other Democratic politicians and policymakers past, present and future - than with the individual compromised. The most critical focus here is not on the candidate-in-question's personal characteristics or moral constitution but rather on the restrictive institutional and societal framework within which his candidacy and celebrity have emerged. Following the counsel of Martin Luther King, Jr., I do not condemn Obama for acting on what King called "the Drum Major Instinct" - the desire to "be important," "the best," and recognized for personal achievement. I criticize rather the captivity of that natural human instinct by the interrelated and mutually reinforcing logics of empire and inequality.