constructive consciousness begins to surface

these are the kind of emails/thoughts/ideas we need to be spreading. the first one i truly agree with. maybe the work is begining. -7r



MICHAEL VENTURA LETTERS AT 3AM -- DANCING IN THE DARK

Joe Hill was a labor organizer executed on trumped charges in Utah in
1915. The night before his murder he telegrammed his comrades: "Don't
waste your time in mourning. Organize."

I once shook the hand of a man who shook his hand. In the spirit of
passing that handshake on, here are some thoughts the day after the
election:

It's after a defeat that you find out what you're made of. Cry if you
must, cry it all out, but don't let them sap your vitality. In 1964
arch-conservative Barry Goldwater was crushed at the polls. Everybody
thought conservatism was forever politically dead in America. But
conservatives re-grouped, re-thought, and organized patiently from the
ground up; when fundamentalist religion became a force in the mid-70s
they were ready to take advantage of it. In 1980, they elected Reagan.

Dig: It took them 16 years. American progressives seriously started
mass-scale organizing only about a year ago. *In just one year we came
within reach of victory.* That's remarkable. Now is no time to
quit.

Iraq is a mess and it'll get worse. Our military is way over-extended.
To keep present troop levels, Bush will renege on his promise and
institute a draft -- probably next spring, so that he can recover by the
mid-term elections. Rural poor are already fighting this war; a draft
won't change their vote (though continued failure in Iraq might). But
the conservatives of the middle class will be hit hard by a draft; that
will change the present equation considerably. Progressives must stay
organized and ready to help them. Reach out to save their kids -- and
ours.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker said recently that he sees a
75% chance of "financial catastrophe" within five years. That's his
polite Establishment way of saying that an economic shit-storm is on the
horizon and could hit anytime. Any mix of oil hikes, credit trouble,
unemployment, interest hikes, etc., could set it off. Also: the European
Union, China, and Southern Asia, have been hanging back, hoping we
Americans would clean our own house and vote Bush out. We failed. They
can't afford to hang back any longer. The U.S., thrown into heavy debt
by Bush, now depends on these powers to buy our bonds. Their collective
hand is on our financial spigot and they'll start turning it slowly
toward "off." They'll do it carefully, but they'll do it, because it's
the only check they have on Bush America. They needn't cut their
investment much to make us hurt. Combine the two -- our internal
weaknesses and dependence on foreign financing -- and we're in big
trouble. Bitching about that won't be enough, as this election proved.
Progressives must offer an analysis and alternatives, and present them
in a way that badly educated people can understand.

Since the mid-60s, progressives lost white working-stiffs because we
talked down to them. We dissed their work, their desires, their beliefs,
their religions. We made them Other, matching their bigotries with a new
one all our own. On Election Day 2004 we paid full price for that. No
working man or woman is my enemy. Their struggle, their endurance, is to
be respected. They may be foolish and desperate enough to follow people
who lie to them, but they've got too much self-respect to follow people
who look down on them. They're terrified. They're unequipped for the
complexities and paradoxes of the 21st Century and they know it, and
they resent like hell all those who accept leaving them behind as the
price of entering the 21st Century. Progressives have got to accept what
this election made painfully clear: Either we all proceed or none of us
do. It's the greatest challenge and the biggest lesson of this election:
We've got to learn how to talk to these people. They are our
fellow-sharers in America. They may not know or want that, but we must;
and we must act and speak accordingly. Whitman must be our guide: "I
will not have a single person slighted or left away."

Don't demonize people who disagree with you. That's how Bush and Cheney
behave. Behavior is more important than belief. What does belief matter,
if your behavior apes your enemy's? Behavior shapes reality. Belief
merely justifies reality. Demonization creates demons. Your enemies are
as human as you are. If you treat them that way, the outcome may
surprise you.

Never underestimate the power of the Irrational. At every critical
juncture of history, the Irrational has been a potent, often decisive
force. At times whole peoples go insane -- Europe in World War One,
Germany throughout Hitler's reign, America during the Red Scare. This is
one of those times. Realize that you're in the midst of it. Things may
get so irrational that nothing will work. In that case, what's our job?
To dedicate our lives to preserving and passing on what we love, so that
if things ever get sane again there'll be something left. Which may be a
way of saying: like Joe Hill, lose beautifully. That beauty may be
something the future can build on.

This election was about *identity.* The concrete issues -- Iraq, the
economy -- ultimately didn't matter. Bush didn't lose the debates, after
all. He incessantly told his base that their wish to return to the
national identify of the 1950s was personified in him. He reassured them
that America was a force unto itself, an entity that could create its
own reality, and that that reality was anything he said it was. He told
them, through coded language that they well understood, that the 21st
Century would be the same as the 20th, and that being an American was
identity enough. He was saying to the terrified and the
left-behind: "You don't have to grow, you don't have to change, you
don't have to be anything other than what you are -- leave the rest to
me. I will fill your emptiness, validate your God, still your terror."

Kerry's logic couldn't pierce that. His command of the facts threatened
everyone intimidated by the very facts that seemed to win him the
debates. They didn't want to hear it. Reasoned judgment versus
passionate belief? Passion wins over reason every time. Democrats
played reason, Republicans played passion. End of story. A progressive
strategy? Never surrender reason but remember: we're passionate too.
Passionate about genuine liberty and genuine justice for all. Compromise
that -- play to a now non-existent middle ground -- and all is lost.

Let's say this loud: THE ISSUE OF GAY MARRIAGE DID NOT DOOM THIS
ELECTION. *You may measure the unhappiness of heterosexual marriage by
the ferocity of the opposition to gay marriage.* Listen to the
country-music that rural red counties listen to: the hits are about the
failure of males and females to get together. In trailer-park or
penthouse, half the marriages end in divorce and many that don't are
shameful compromises. Marriage, in America, is in a state of unbridled
panic. That panic, not gay rights, helped doom this election -- the
panic of people trying to hold on to something that really isn't there
anymore. Progressives must stand passionately with all who seek their
fair share of the Bill of Rights.

My friend Deborah said today: "Bush manipulated through fear, and the
people who voted for him are filled with fear. We're buying into it
somehow. He generated it, we voted against it, but now we're creating
it. That's something that leaves us vulnerable. We're not any
different from the other people." She's right. Bush's re-election has
driven many into a despairing fear. Which is just where he wants you to
be. That fear you feel inside -- * that's Bush himself,* inside you. Act
out of fear and the fear will increase. Courage doesn't mean not
being afraid; courage means doing what's necessary in spite of your
fear, even because of it.

Remember: we've only been organizing on a mass scale for about a year
and we almost won. If more of the poor, the endangered, and the young
had voted, we would have won. We must keep those we organized and reach
out to those we failed to organize. The poor and the endangered don't
have many computers, they're not on the Net. Politics is still local.
Organizing from the ground up means from the ground up, face to face,
speaking words that people can understand, showing them how they can
have a chance to change things and helping them take that chance. It's
only a chance but it's not a delusion. Election Day is not set in stone.
Our world is in ferocious flux. In that flux, in the very thing that
frightens us most, is our chance.

Just one more thing: Nothing is less appealing or more boring than
solemnity. The old-time lefties who gave us Social Security, the civil
rights movement, the 35-hour week, and the original (now shredded)
social safety net -- they partied, sang, danced, fetted, all the damn
time. They were famous for it. These are dark days and they're going to
get darker, but the dark side of the day has always been my favorite
time for dancing.

----- End forwarded message -----
we should also remember, nixon resigned on threat of impeachment after being elected a second term in a landslide victory...ying/yang people

 

no one else agrees with this?

no comments?...but the southern fuck idiot thread i posted was more worthy of comments?

i'm confused.

 

i skimmed this when you posted it, and haven't had the chance to really digest it. i think change has to come through a shift in consciousness and culture, and we need to begin with ourselves.

i'll post more comments later, after other people have posted their comments.

 

pardon the ignorance... what's a mid-term election?

I definatly agree. Perhaps more importantly though, is the necessity to educate these "badly educated people". There is time, and history has shown that this is what brings change - the exchange of ideas, from thinkers past and present.

The problem here is that people often see their beliefs as logical. When it seems as though the facts will turn people, they are so easy (and necessary) to lean on. But it is true - the passion must re-emerge. People need to take to the streets and talk to people about their views, celebrate their views, and most of all love their views.

I'll repeat myself: People need to take to the streets and talk to people about their views, celebrate their views, and most of all love their views.

 

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Rhetoric meant to rally the troops. Ok in it’s way but what does it really say?

Take the paragraph about not talking down to people, it then calls them –

Foolish

Terrified

Unequipped

It says "We've got to learn how to talk to these people" Actually I’m not sure the author knows what ‘people’ he’s talking about?

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It talks of irrationality and insanity

At times whole peoples go insane -- Europe in World War One, Germany throughout Hitler's reign, America during the Red Scare. This is one of those times.

What is he saying that there was no historical reasons and background to these events that it is just down to a sudden burst of completely irrational and unrelated ‘madness’?

If he is he’s an idiot.

It also seems to lessen these events historical importance and human tragedy.

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I think the left should get organising but if this is being put forward as a step in the right direction….



**

 

Election two years after (and before) presidential elections. They elect members of the House of Reps and Govenors and other offices.

 

you forgot "badly educated". :&

ok this bothered me too. maybe i'm a little over-sensitive, but it always bothers me to hear "progressives" talking about "the poor". quite frankly i don't even like the word "poor". it's the very implication of "poorness" that bothers me, it brings to mind things like poor manners, poor behavior, poor education *cough cough*, poor grammar and other things done poorly. i've said before that there needs to be a better word. "lower class" doesn't cut it for the same reasons: it implies lowness, inferiority. my friend dave once suggested a preference for the term "working class", but what of the people who are unable to work, the elderly, the very young, the ill and disabled, the full-time mothers? i don't like the term "low-income" either. really, it's difficult to find a better word because classifying and defining people based on their possessions is unrealistic.

and anyway, it's goddamn rude to talk about us like we're not in the fuckin' room.

i think that's what bothers me the most, the kind of thinking that turns those with less into "others". and certainly this concern is addressed, but i'd have to agree that it's not addressed very effectively. this is why people on the left are so often seen as snobs. ok, i can only speak from my experience in rochester, but the so-called "progressive" community here is terribly divided and cliquey. that kind of exclusion isn't going to solve any problems, and it sure as hell isn't going to win any elections, either.

 

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Kitty

Well in Britain there used to be the ‘Working Class’ (remember John Lennon’s Working class hero) but I think that came to an end when the working class were turned into the unemployed class (or at least those who were the heart of it the big Unions). That was when we had the ‘labour’ movement. But it must be remembered that ‘working class’ was seen by those in the middle and upper as a derogatory term.

We now have the ‘socially excluded’ and the ‘low waged’, which are not very satisfying.


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http://www.lyricsdepot.com/john-lennon/working-class-hero.html

 

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To me what the progressives in the US need to do is debunk the many myths that to many Americans think are reality, that could be put under the heading of ‘America Dreamings’. There is the idea of universal equality of opportunity, the idea of American Manifest Destiny, exceptionalism, the dream of god’s ‘city on the hill’ and many more, including the religious myths of the born again evangelists.

America likes to refashion itself and when reality gets in the way it dumps that and prints the myth. The thing is that the ruling elite of the US has manipulated this desire for comforting dreams of personal and national potency for it’s own ends.

The real point is that secular education usually keeps these myths from overwhelming reality, my question to America’s progressives would be why they think the myths are winning?

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The American Dreams (while the real world goes to hell)

Part one: Work and the workplace

There is this very prevalent idea that anyone in the US can reach any goal and gain the highest success and can have riches and happiness if they if they work hard.

This has breed contempt for people that ‘moan’ about working conditions and pay. The viewpoint being that if people in low paid jobs just stopped moaning and worked hard they wouldn’t be in those low paid jobs. And if people support the moaners then they are just supporting other people’s laziness.

What this belief also fosters is the idea that low working conditions and pay cannot and even should not be anything to do with ‘government’. Since by hard work anyone can rise to better conditions it is an individuals ‘decision’ to change their conditions not the role of the State to improve them. Also since everyone can rise out of such low paid jobs - so the argument goes - they are ‘just’ a stepping stone so to improve the pay and conditions of such jobs would make it harder for people to make that first step up. Now there is such a small amount of truth in this that people can point to antidotal evidence but for a larger majority of people that is just not the reality.

For many religious people success is seen as the blessing of god and also to many religious people hard work is proof of moral worth. In other words not only does hard work make people good, it stands to reason that a good person would work hard, and since people that work hard succeed it leads to the inevitable conclusion that successful people are morally good people, blessed by god.

So the poor are morally inferior and most possibly lazy, the unworthy

The more wealthy are morally superior and hard working so they are the worthy so why should such good people pay taxes so the unworthy can remain lazy?

The thing is no-one seems to be able to prove that the US system is any better at stimulating social mobility than any other western country and some argue that it is in fact worse than others (Hutton, The world we’re in).

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