The DSA, Harpers, and a Shame

I subscribe to Harper's Magazine. I’ve read it for years. The most recent issue, however, contained a letter that I found particularly fascinating, and disturbing. It was titled “Left Behind” and was from Maurice Isserman, who identified himself as a professor of history, at Hamilton College.

Professor Isserman was responding to a piece in Harper’s on the failure of the American left to make a real impression on the last election. In particular, Isserman was interested in the failure of the Democratic Socialists of America organization to be anything more than a sideshow in the battle against Trump. He has an excellent perspective on the problem given that he was a founder of the DSA, though he has since left it because of a variety of issues and concerns.

In his letter, though, he notes that the DSA does not support Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom are arguably the most legitimate and certainly the most energetic leaders of the American Left at the moment. In fact, he says in the letter, certain members of the DSA have branded Sanders and AOC as “traitors” for their support of Biden and then Harris. In other words, for not being pure enough in their radicalism. How dare they compromise with reality?

I was startled and disappointed to learn that the DSA had said any such thing. I’m not a member of the organization, but I knew about it in my younger days and vaguely approved of it. Not that I’m a socialist, particularly, but I’m always at least a little bit supportive of any organization that offers an alternative to the fundamentalist Ayn Randism that’s usually foisted on American culture.

But to find that they had fallen so far, so fast, was disappointing. You expect, say, the Green Party of Jill Stein to engage in such antics, but not the DSA. Yet, there they are, being so damn pure and holy and self-righteous that they can’t bother to support the Democrats in general and AOC/Sanders in particular. 

And one does have to wonder how much that kind of attitude on the Left, whether at the DSA or anywhere else, crippled the Biden and then Harris campaigns, and whether it didn’t assist Trump back into the White House. Or, if it didn’t significantly impact the benighted election of 2024, how much it is holding back the Democrats, and Progressives, everywhere.

Simply put, it seems that (once again) the reformers need themselves to be reformed. Until they have learned the art of the possible, the worth of compromise, and the importance of limited victory today so that greater victories may be won tomorrow, they will be useless.

Or, worse, they will give aid and comfort to the enemy. And thus must be considered, in their indirect way, among our enemies themselves. Little Trumps, in other words, or MAGAs in mufti, lacking only the red hats, and the ridiculous yellow flags with snakes. 

A transgression, but in a good cause

[Note: I will shortly be posting the following to cacaus99percent.com, a liberal web-based publication.]
1.

I am about to violate the letter, if not the spirit of the law...that is, the law of this website. But, I hope you’ll forgive me, for I do have a good reason.

It has to do with our unity as a movement, and the salvation of our country, in an age of incipient tyranny.

Let me explain.


2.

The rule that I’m about to break is in “The Dreaded Site Meta #1,” by joe shikspack. The rule in question is “Don’t Throw Spitballs,” and joe shikspack elaborates this with, “A lot of folks have come here from another site where there was much unpleasantness,” and he asks that users not waste valuable bandwidth by, well, hating on the unnamed Other Site.

I agree with the rule. It is an excellent idea. And, most of time, I will do my level best to obey it. But, I need to mention that Other Site, not to vent, but to express a concern about the larger political system.

First, background. Yes, like almost everyone else here, I was on the Other Site, posting essays. And, yes, I ended up taking heat about a couple of them.

Though, I ought to mention that this was, in a way, my fault. I had discovered the Other Site and been delighted to find a place where I could post my inarticulate left of center mumblings. But, I committed the one unforgivable sin of the freelance writer. I did not thoroughly investigate the publication before I submitted. If I had, I would have realized that the Other Site had a very particular slant, and a very particular point of view.

There is nothing wrong with that, by the way. Every publication does have a preferred slant, even if they think they don’t. It was just that I hadn’t realized that the Other Site’s particular slant was that Hillary Clinton should have won (I agree) and that Bernie Sanders, or more particularly, Bernie Sanders’ supporters were a problem (I don’t agree).

But, stupidly, I had not bothered to figured that out. I had assumed there was room on the Other Site for some mild criticism of the DNC and perhaps of Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy, if not for Hillary Clinton herself.

As I say, I’d been stupid.

3.

You all have your own stories, I’m sure, of bad times on the Other Site. And I suspect most of yours are far more gripping than mine. So, I’ll be short. I had two incidents of interest. The first was when I made some fairly off-handed remarks about an article I’d seen in which Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying that people didn’t want the Democratic party to change, or to have a new strategy—this only a few weeks after the election of Donald Trump, and coming just before a series of additional humiliating defeats in special elections for vacated Congressional seats.

I posted the piece, and I had a few complimentary remarks, but I also had several that were absolutely furious. One individual accused me of being, frankly, not able to read, and that I had completely misinterpreted the article. I went back and looked at it, afraid that I’d made an error. But, no, it said exactly what I’d said it said.

The second incident occurred a little later. Here, I did a mostly comic piece about how the Trump administration was beyond parody. How can you mock a clown? But, again, in one throw-away line...just one line...I made some reference to the idea that if Bernie been allowed to run, he would have won.

Most of the comments I received on that posting were positive, maybe not completely so, but positive in varying degrees. However, to my amazement, I got a comment that was really quite bitter. It took that one line about Bernie Sanders and made it a personal affront. How dare I, this reader asked, say such a thing? How dare I imply that Hillary wasn’t the better candidate? Then she concluded, “Enjoy your flag.”

I was startled. How could anyone be so emotional about one line? Also, I didn’t know what a flag was. I’d never heard of them. I looked them up. I discovered that if enough “trusted users” give you a flag, your comment can get erased, and your own posting privileges endangered. In other words, this individual was so furious with me, furious over one line, that she was willing to pull out the ultimate weapon of the Other Site... and use it.

It was kind of startling.


4.
But...none of the above is really important.

I’m not, repeat not, particularly concerned about the negative comments I received on the Other Site. Even the “flag” doesn’t bother me over much. Simply put, if you’re going to post to the web, or try to publish anything, you’re going to get negative comments. We don’t have to like it (and I don’t), but it is true.

But the issue...the real issue...is the fury that seemed to transfix the individuals who so violently disagreed with my postings. The man who accused me of illiteracy, the woman who flagged me, there was an awful lot of anger there. Which, I’m afraid, is indicative of a much larger phenomenon. I see it in a lot of places. Not just on the Other Site. That is, many Hillary Clinton supporters are justifiably furious that their candidate was so grievously cheated...but, sometimes, that fury is released not on the Republicans who put Trump on office, but on the Bernie supporters whose candidate represented an alternative to Hillary.

Which is not to throw stones. I see a very similar behavior in some Bernie supporters (not to mention third party people). I see a similar fury, and I see that fury sometimes vented on people and organizations who are really quite innocent. I suppose, now and then, I’ve done it myself. Mea Culpa, and all that.

Just human nature at work? Yes, I suppose. But, it worries me. We are in, let’s face it, the fight of our lives. We have in the White House an unstable, would-be despot who is fully capable of plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust. We have around him, either near or far (even if they’ve recently returned to Breitbart), people who can only be called overt Fascists. We have behind him, supporting him with money and propaganda, vastly powerful Oligarchs who dream of reducing the Federal government to a shell, and of reducing us, its citizens, more or less openly to the status of serfs.

That, I submit, is a genuinely existential crisis. Unless we fight back, and fight back hard, we are going down. America as a nation is over. American democracy is finished.

So, I wonder, if maybe, there needs to be some kind of greater attempt at unity. I wonder if, somehow, we need to put aside...at least temporarily...our internal divisions. I wonder if we don’t need to say, “Yes, my side was cheated, and I’m angry at your side, but we will, for the moment, work together. Because the consequences of disunity are too horrible to consider.”

5.
Is that possible, I wonder? Can we somehow come together?

I hope so. I’m certainly going to make an effort. I’m going to continue to post to this site, but also to the Other Site. I’m sure many of you do the same.

So, maybe it is possible. I hope so.

Yet, I also worry. I keep thinking of that “flag.” That flag so quickly and freely given.

Because, you see, it reminds me of another flag I saw once. It, too, was defiant and proud, and it sent a message.

The problem? It flew over the National Cemetery of Santa Fe, just an hour’s drive from where I live.

And that flag, for all its beauty and defiance, will be seen by few of the living...

And absolutely none of the dead.

~mjt

Note To The 1%: The Alternative

Note to the rich and powerful, here are your options...

Choose carefully.

On The Morning Of The Coronation

I woke up this morning to find that Hillary Clinton had won not only the primary in California but also in several other states, including the one in which I live, New Mexico. As a good Bernie supporter, this disappointed me. But I can live with it, so long as there is not a Trump presidency in November.

What does disappoint me, however, and genuinely concerns me, is the media coverage so far. I don’t just mean the failure of the major news networks to notice the Sanders campaign for, like, ever. We’ve known all along that was happening—the vast crowds at Bernie rallies that somehow didn’t get televised, the primary victories that somehow were reported as defeats, and on and on and on.

What I do mean is that reading and watching the news this morning I was struck by the extraordinary uniformity of tone in the reportage. Commentator after commentator, news outlet after outlet, proclaimed that Clinton’s victory was total, and more, and that we should all be terribly proud of her, for it was “historic”—the first time a female candidate had gotten this close to the White House.

And if there was any notice at all paid to the Sanders campaign, it was to chide the man himself, and his supporters, for not doing the graceful thing and bowing out now. In fact, in several pieces I saw on the web, Sanders was portrayed as a rather mean old man, too stubborn to know that it was all over. And his followers? Infantile, entitled, and maybe even potentially violent. Oh, and via the marvelously effective but vaguely defined term, “Bernie Bros,” doubtlessly sexist as well.

Now, I’m going to skip over the issue of whether or not these interpretations of events are correct. I think they’re not. I think, in fact, that they’re so wrong as to be laughable. I want to focus instead on the reporting itself. It is stunning, genuinely stunning, to note just how universal these attitudes are in the media. Except on the odd fringe outlet, like the marvelous “Young Turks” Web-news service, you simply don’t see an alternative to this particular narrative.

It is so consistent, indeed, that it seems…let’s be blunt… a bit scripted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not saying that everyone in the national media is in on a secret plot to throttle the Sanders campaign and install Hillary in the White House. But, still this whole thing just feels creepy. There is something odd about so many people in positions of authority being on the same page at the same time, and reading in exactly the same tone of voice.

At the very least you have to suspect there is some groupthink going on here—that the pundits are talking way too much to one another, and not nearly enough to us unwashed masses outside the Beltway, Manhattan, and L.A.

And at the very most…well, there are only six major communications corporations in the country right now. Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, Viacom, and General Electric (NBC) own pretty much everything. I believe the term is “oligopoly,” which sounds distressingly close to “oligarchy.”

Either way, groupthink or worse, I’m worried. A democracy does not work without the free flow of information…and without a news media that actually reports something like news.

Though, there is a small bright spot in all this. To wit, this has been an instructive day for me. And maybe for us all.

Specifically, if this primary has proved one thing, it is that our electoral system is in deep trouble, and has strayed far from the basic principles of democracy.

And an excellent first step to fixing that would be to break up the media oligopoly that controls the news…and with that oligopoly, the insularity of media people it has bred.

Because the alternative would be rather horrible, with the great Fourth Estate transformed into…nothing. Merely the outlet of whatever shared conception (real or illusion) which the Great Powers have decreed to be, in spite of all evidence…

The Truth.

Fun in politics...not such a good idea

Just a little video meditation on why having fun in politics may not be such a good idea...