From the shelves
Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that wheneve we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine."
.........
They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but have found a way - in their own lives, at least - to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.
I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.
- Sen. Barack Obama, 'The Audacity of Hope'
.........
They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but have found a way - in their own lives, at least - to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.
I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.
They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.
- Sen. Barack Obama, 'The Audacity of Hope'
posted by Jmac at 6:00 PM
12 Comments:
Love it! He has said it perfectly!
(Oh god, does this comment sound like spam?)
Well, I agree, actually! Great speech. Simply first-rate.
The ONLY thing I disagreed with is health care, but this isn't due to the speech JMac quoted itself, but rather to statements I have heard Obama give at other times, other places. http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Barack_Obama_Health_Care.htm
You cannot seriously claim that health care is a "right" and consistently avoid the charge of "socialism" (assuming you intend to enact legislation that will reinforce this right you believe in). He is right that there are more than the two options (46 million uninsured or "socialized health care"), but claiming that health care is a "right" does not help us get there.
In any case, though, Obama might be a Dem I could vote for.
The reason you both agree with it is because all it's really saying is, "life is complicated and maybe we shouldn't rush to stupid judgment in all cases," i.e., "don't be a dumbass." Who's going to disagree with that statement except a dumbass?
(It's also quite beautifully written.)
True enough, but that kind of language is lacking from today's political landscape, from both sides.
It's not profound by any means, and because of that it is profound.
And, of course, it just dawned on me that this is from a book, not a "speech" as I said earlier.
The reason you both agree with it is because all it's really saying is, "life is complicated and maybe we shouldn't rush to stupid judgment in all cases," i.e., "don't be a dumbass." Who's going to disagree with that statement except a dumbass?
Well, exactly. But, it's like Rusty and I were talking about the other night - that's actually quite a revelation for a lot of people, apparently. People want things watered down into 5-word soundbites. But, unfortunately, real life doesn't work that way. Real issues are complex, and therefore so are real solutions. Oh and did I mention, in addition to everything being watered down to easy-to-digest (and subsequently regurgitate) soundbites, everything seems to also be turned into a dichotomy. Your only options are one of two EXTREMES!! Yes, that's all there is!!
I suppose it goes without saying that, being the polemical contrarian, I actually do disagree with Obama's position here. I do think hillary is correct that Obama here is saying that we should not rush to stupid judgments. Where I think this errs is in thinking that this means that a "pursuit of ideological purity" is therefore to be avoided or is wrong.
The rejection of the "either/or" is already an ideological claim demanding a certain purity. I certainly do think that people are confused and different beings, who are not easily fit into holes cut into walls. But, again, the idea that the proper response to this is something accommodating or appealing to these differences, rather than something that takes a definitive, determining stand, is itself already an idea captured by the main ideology of today: global capitalism.
That is, the notion is that we should be able to have a political organization or political practice that is malleable, differential, and reflexive. If you need better health care, it has it for you. If you need better security in your homeland, it has it for you. If you need better jobs, it has it for you. If you need better judges to convict criminals, it has it for you. But this is precisely the logic of Walmart, and we fail to see that the interests we, in our differently diverse selves, think are ours alone are collected under the one house, the one tent. What makes Walmart "Evil" in the economic sphere is precisely that, by being so diversified in what it sells to the consumer, it is able to eliminate any sense of a local, culturally specific economy and then it replaces this local, singular economy with one reconstructed in the image of a universal consumer. This is what you get from a party that is seeking to become everything but a defining stand upon issues: it eradicates a localized politics, and then replace that politics with its own universal claims about what people are due, what people want, and what is just for each person.
This is the irony of politics: the real culprit is not naked ideology, but the ideology that walks in all the colors of the rainbow and claims to not be an ideology at all. From a distance, it looks white and pure and trustworthy. But it has its own agenda, its own allegiances, and it believes it can control the powers of happiness and desire contained in the circulation of economy. Against that, what we truly need is purity at its most outrageous: the assertion that there is only two, either you are for this, or you are for that. The temptation to hesitate, the temptation to reconsider the options, is always to be resisted, since these are, themselves, choices already on-side.
Well, I took Obama's comments not as representing some grand ideology-that-isn't, but as providing some basic contours for what the proper ideology must be. The proper political ideology must be able to weigh several values together, rather than commit itself wholly to one particular value or set of values and a priorily deny any validity to all others. This goes back to the small discussion about Grow Green last week: "special interest" groups and lobbyists are johnny-one-notes, by design; but good governance almost always requires harmonizing several of these johnnies together. This is true at the local level, too. It's not like it's okay for a small town to just obsess over some small core of values and ignore all other considerations that are necessary for living the good life. If the mayor of Podunk, KY rules in that kind of a way, then he is screwing up his local jurisdiction just as surely as Bush is capable of screwing up his much larger one.
Of course, to each particular johnny-one-note, good governors will seem weak and compromised and will be blamed for ruining their lovely monophonic song. But the truth is that a skillful minister of music will be able to produce the much richer beauties of polyphonic chorales and homophonic chants (metaphor is stretching at this point), despite the whining of all the would-be soloists who don't want to sing with everybody else.
But none of this precludes these congregations of singers from being local, from having their own local particularities guide the formation of the song. The precise "ideology" that emerges in each town will not be the same (nor should it be), but every one that is good will involve careful weighing of several different values that compete for attention within the particular local community. I don't see anything in Obama's comments, as you apparently did Charles, that necessitates a "globalizing" politics.
Furthermore, Obama is wanting to run for president of an enormous country that will have over 300 million people living in it by 2008. Perhaps the very existence of a country this large, encompassing this many more local jurisdictions (states, municipalities, etc.), is simply a bad thing and should never be allowed to develop. But given that it already has developed, given that we are here, politicians who are trying to serve the people they rule need to take the largeness of the domain into account. Which means you do have to attempt to forge some sort of harmony between all the disparate more local groups. But this still would not need to amount to giving everyone "their way, right away." Clearly that sort of thing is impossible anyway, and in fact BK and Wal-Mart don't pull it off either. But nor does it have to even be the unrealized ideal of a "multi-valued" politics that Obama seemed to describe in his short comments JMac quoted for us.
Where I think this errs is in thinking that this means that a "pursuit of ideological purity" is therefore to be avoided or is wrong.
The way I see it, ideology should never trump real, actual human beings and their real, actual lives with real, actual issues. Trying to change the world to fit your ideology rarely works.
Against that, what we truly need is purity at its most outrageous: the assertion that there is only two, either you are for this, or you are for that.
That seems to be working pretty well for the Republicans, in particular the Bush administration. And yet, plenty of people are getting pissed off. For example, people are sick and tired of being called terrorist sympathizers and told they hate America just because they disagree w/ the war in Iraq. Dissent is what this country was founded on, NOT a blind following of some "pure" ideology.
Xon and I have discussed our differences and disagreements at the office, and I think I may have too easily dismissed Obama. I shall have to read more of what he has to say, but I, perhaps all too quickly, situated him in the midst of certain liberal tendencies I dislike.
Amber, my concern is properly with dissent. You are right that many people are pissed at the state of the Bush administration, but my question is: what is done about it?
Dissent, if it has no dedication and no ground, is all the more incorporated into the political dramatization of whoever rules because, as just words, it shows that they are tolerant of whoever dissents with them. In other words, Bush and his fellow administrators can say this is still a democratic republic with its broadly liberal constitutional government because people in it can dissent from him. "Look, there's websites and letters to the editor! They disagree with me! But the terrorists blow people up if you dissent from them, and that's why we're still free."
But, for it to be an engaged dissent, it needs to be firm, committed, and have the conviction of truth on its side. That is what I mean by a devotion to purity: if Bush has done something to warrant rejection, then by all means fight vehemently for it. But for such a fight, conviction needs to have a subjective drive to it, and that can only come from holding to one's position without compromise. This is an old leftist line: yes, yes, you have freedom, but freedom to do what? Freedom for what?
I do disagree with you that we should focus on the real and the actual. That, to me, is just where this "anti-ideological" stance goes wrong: there is no such thing as reality or actuality unmediated by ideology, and it just is already ideology to think that we can do politics apart from ideology. I do understand your own commitment to real bodies, real persons. But doing away with a strong critique of ideological mechanisms won't get us the politics of actual persons, anymore than decrying fossil fuel consumption without making significant (and minor, since every little change makes a great impact down the line) life changes of one's own will get us to the politics of actual ecologies.
This is my other point: just because Bush and State administrators assert their positions does not mean that the most effective political strategy against them is to work from a position of no political assertions. Rather, I think we should not give up political conviction to those who cannot wield it effectively or wisely. I know people are becoming and are already tired of "partisan politics." But that's not what the problem is, I don't think.
The problem is that we have come to think that politics is the activity of what our elected officials do, when what is politics, properly, is what each one of us in the public sphere. If we work that much harder to reclaim our publicity, then our frustration at the manufactured impotency of the elected officials should dissipate.
And we will fight that much more effectively, and that much more wisely, and that much more lovingly.
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