I have been somewhat puzzled, and a little distressed, by the flood of comments triggered by my response to the debate. In this post I am going to say a series of things that are not very profound and indeed perfectly obvious but which it is important to keep in mind as we go forward.
The central problem in making major social change is not to
locate the leader with the certifiably pure heart behind whom we can march to a
glorious future. Joe Biden is not such a leader. Neither is Bernie Sanders or
Elizabeth Warren or AOC or Big Bill Hayward or Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas or
Ralph Nader or Jill Stein, or Karl Marx for that matter. The central problem is
assembling a coalition of millions or even tens of millions of men and women
who will do thousands of different things in an effort to make the world
somewhat better.
Now, I freely confess that at this time and in this place I
have no confidence in a program of extralegal violent revolution. I am not
ruling it out on principle, but I have noticed that the people to whom I am
opposed have many more guns, so violence is probably not a good strategy. Nor
is secession, although I admit I am often tempted. Living as I do in North
Carolina I think a lot about emigration but at the moment I’m not allowed as an
American to get into Paris, France and besides, Paris is currently experiencing
an uptick in Covid infections. That leaves organized political action with an
aim to electing legislators who will fight in Congress for the sorts of
legislation I believe in.
The trouble with legislation is that it always involves
compromising with people one would rather eviscerate. A key to any serious plan
for progressive changes in the United States is assembling a coalition in the
Senate willing to vote for progressive legislation and that means making nice
to Joe Manchin. It also means giving a big bear hug to Amy Klobuchar and a
whole bunch of other centrist Democrats who happen to sit in the Senate (and
also, by the way, in the House of Representatives.) Now if that is just too
icky for you to contemplate, then the honest thing to do is to admit that you
simply are not interested in passing legislation. Then you can settle back on
the sidelines and snipe at everybody who does not meet your standard of
perfection. I freely admit that that is a tempting and sometimes
psychologically rewarding activity, but unfortunately it doesn’t make anybody’s
life better.
Did anybody who reads this blog ever imagine that Joe Biden
would somehow morph into a champion of revolutionary change? So why does it
matter whether Biden or Trump is elected? Well, if it is Biden then we can put
our shoulders to the wheel and start pushing for real change, which means
electing more progressive legislators and making a series of unhappy
compromises. If it is Trump, then as I go into the sunset, I will probably find
myself sitting in the health center here watching reports of the nomination of
Ivanka Trump as our next president after Donald finally decides he has ruled
long enough.
I would really like that not to be the last thing I see as I
shuffle off this mortal coil.
29 comments:
A few months ago, I was listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky. He was talking about Erik Loomis, a labor historian. He said Loomis's research on working people's movements showed that these movements succeeded ONLY when there was a somewhat tolerant, sympathetic presidential administration (one that possibly responds to pressure). Loomis's findings and their implications seem important, both in general and in the context of the 2020 election.
Well put.
“Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.”~Judge Learned Hand
This morning there is news that Trump’s methods are starting to infect other nations. Boris Johnson is taking a page out of Trump’s playbook on governing by deliberately creating chaos and hoping that something positive will fall out in the end. Johnson has decided to renege on the Brexit deal which the UK negotiated with the EU, and the EU has announced it is going sue the UK in the International Court in Brussels. The UK is breaching the Brexit deal by overriding the Northern Ireland Protocol, which put an end to The Troubles that plagued Northern Ireland for decades. Johnson is doing this, apparently, to draw attention from his ineffective dealing with the corona virus pandemic in Britain. Trump is not only a menace here, but to the world at large.
MS
Quite so. And to add to that, next year is redistricting, And if you live in a state
where that's a political process, flipping or securing your state legislature could help ensure sympathetic majorities for the next decade, on both the state and national levels.
I'm tempted to say that down-ballot races are even more important than the top of the ticket this year for that reason alone.
Having listened to and enjoyed your lectures on Kant (as well as some of your lectures on Freud and Marx), and from there followed on to your blog, I regularly find myself taking pleasure in your easy command of language and ready turn of phrase. Half a moment's reflection yields the obvious conclusion that a lifetime of reading, writing, and teaching has produced this (apparently) easy facility. Well duh.
"The trouble with legislation is that it always involves compromising with people one would rather eviscerate," is a marvelous sentence.
My only quibble with your post is that our current circumstances are so dire that even if the legislation and appointments of Joe Biden were indistinguishable from that of, let's say, George W. Bush, then even that would be a dramatically positive change from our current nadir and such a circumstance would at least allow the possibility of the preservation of democracy.
I have hope that the sweep of events will force the democrats to make dramatic changes that they otherwise would not even consider. As an example, consider how quickly relief packages of several trillion dollars passed a few months ago. For those of us who grew up being shocked that it took "a billion here and a billion here" to constitute real money, the ready jump to trillions is arguably a watershed in and of itself.
"My only quibble with your post is that our current circumstances are so dire that even if the legislation and appointments of Joe Biden were indistinguishable from that of, let's say, George W. Bush, then even that would be a dramatically positive change from our current nadir and such a circumstance would at least allow the possibility of the preservation of democracy."
I am not a Trump supporter. I will be voting for Biden. However, this sentence overlooks what is extremely important: Bush murdered a million Iraqis, got into an illegal war, and started an international torture regime that brutalized many innocents and returned foreign policy and policing to the dark ages. Trump hasn't done that. Trump could ruin faux-democracy, yes, and that's awful, but he hasn't started a maelstrom of international violence.
If it was Bush vs Trump, or Bloomberg vs Trump, I'm not sure I would vote, or I would vote third party.
No need to leave. One of the worst aspects of the Trump presidency, to my mind, has been the degree to which it has allowed Democrats and Liberals to 1) forget how awful past Republic regimes were, and 2) to side with the very people who instituted the international torture regime (e.g., David Frum and Bill Crystal are now part of the 'resistance'). And this goes to Jerry's point, these Liberals would sooner break bread with war criminals and murderers (e.g., defense contractors, wall street types, ceos, etc), just because they have a veneer of decorum, instead of an obvious unconventional, egotistical, moronic jackass like Trump. Trump says the quiet parts out loud, whereas past Republicans kept the quiet parts quiet, and looked good on TV. Trump is awful. I loathe him. But I also remember loathing Bush Jr and feeling just as much dread when he won his second term, as I'm presently feeling about Trump's second term.
How does one even calculate what's worse here? The decline of American faux-democracy is bad. International torture and war is also bad. My gut tells me the latter is worse. And I think all of the victims of American imperialism would probably say "we would accept the loss of your faux-democracy if it meant you finally left us alone". Ugh...
^ the above is a response to PhilosophicalWaiter's post, which he deleted.
Philosophical Waiter,
Here is additional food for thought. The most serious issue facing the U.S. and the world is the impending meltdown caused by climate change. There is no question that a Pres. Biden will deal more effectively with this issue than would a re-elected Trump. But even legislation which Biden will introduce may not be sufficiently radical to forestall disaster, and, moreover, the U.S. cannot deal with this problem alone. In a prior comment, responding to a point raised by Eric, I made reference to the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Juliana v. United States, 947 F.3d 1159, issued on Jan. 17, 2020. The Court issued a 2-1 decision dismissing the lawsuit on the basis of standing, maintaining the relief the plaintiffs sought – an Order directing the Executive and Congress to enact measures requiring a reduction in the use of fossil fuels – could not be provided by the judiciary, but could only be obtained directly through Congress.
There was a dissent by J. Staton, who in an elaborate and elegantly written opinion took issue with the majority that the judiciary does not have a constitutional role to fill on the issue of climate change. He argued that under the Constitution, as stated in the Preamble, the purpose of government is “secure ‘the Blessings of Liberty’ not just for one generation, but for all future generations – our ‘Posterity.’” He proceeded to argue that the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to demonstrate climate change presents an existential threat to our posterity, which under the Preamble and the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments, government has an obligation to address; that where government is not just failing to address the problem via neglect or disinterest, but is taking affirmative steps via legislation to make the problem worse, the judiciary has the jurisdiction and authority to step in and order that the government cease and desist and take affirmative steps to address the problem – just as the courts did in ordering busing in order to enforce the S. Ct.’s ruling in Brown v. Bd. of Education. J. Staton’s opinion is one of the best reasoned, elegantly written dissents I have read in recent years and I commend it to the readers of this blog. You can find it on Justicia.com.
The plaintiffs have filed an application with the 9th Circuit requesting the case be heard en banc – by a panel taken from the 29 judges who sit on the 9th Circuit. Such a panel is to consist of the Chief Judge and 10 other judges selected randomly from the other 28. The application is still pending. In the event the Court grants the application and affirms the dismissal, the plaintiffs would then have to seek certiorari to the S. Ct. – i.e., asking the Court to grant review, which is entirely discretionary. Given the likely composition of the S. Ct., I believe it highly unlikely that the 6-3 conservative Court will grant review.
Had Hillary Clinton won the election (I know, I can’t give this up), Merrick Garland, instead of Gorsuch, would have been appointed to the S. Ct., making the composition of the Court 5-4 liberal. When J. Kennedy retired, another liberal would have been appointed, making the composition 6-3 liberal, which would have been maintained upon the passing of J. Ginsburg. Rather than having filed an application for en banc review, the plaintiffs in Juliana would have had the option of seeking certiorari before a 6-3 liberal S. Ct., which would have been more disposed to grant such review than the current court, and more likely to have adopted the reasoning of J. Staton’s dissent.
We had better elect Biden, and then aggressively fight to elect Harris, or another moderate to liberal candidate, to succeed him, improving the odds of legislation being passed to address global warming, and so that when vacancies open up on the S. Ct. (and two more are likely to occur in the conservative ranks), we will have a President who will appoint liberal justices who will be more inclined to adopt J. Staton’s reasoning.
MS
Anonymous makes an excellent point. So let me make clear, I do not suggest a direct equivalence between a Biden administration and a GWB administration, or that we should see ourselves making such a choice.
My response, narrowly, was to assert that even if Biden accomplished virtually nothing legislatively and appointed cabinet members, en masse , equivalent to those who served in the GWB administration, that would bring us back from our current precipice of potentially having heavily armed, violent right-wing groups take to the streets to steal the election.
But my comment did commit the unpardonable sin of glossing over the (arguably) genocidal sins of the younger Bush administration in Iraq, which, sadly, is all to easy to do, comfortably sitting and typing while staring at nothing but a computer screen all day. mea culpa
In response to Anonymous "The decline of American faux-democracy is bad. International torture and war is also bad. My gut tells me the latter is worse."
As bad as the sins of American democratic regimes have been, I submit that the United States untethered by even its own flawed democratic conscience would be terrifying beyond all recognition. One might hold out the hope that the U.S. would then devolve inward in isolationism and so cause much less suffering beyond its own borders, but even that seems too hopeful.
I make my living as a mild-mannered software developer type, working and thinking in almost purely abstract terms as a matter of course. As such, I typically find it a trivial matter to imagine almost any outcome, no matter how gruesome, since all I am doing is engaging is manipulating notions completely abstracted from any human content.
But in this matter, for once, I find myself completely unable to conceive of the larger implications of the United States, with all its might, not only unconstrained by some measure of a democratic conscience, but turned towards an awful and venal purpose.
I recoil in horror.
My god, for the sake of everything, we must not fail.
"potentially having heavily armed, violent right-wing groups take to the streets to steal the election."
Hmm. So far it's mainly been armed leftist groups that have been fomenting chaos throughout US cities.
I have to make a confession of sexist bias in my comment above. In discussing J. Staton’s dissent, I repeatedly referred to the judge using the masculine pronoun. I did this quite subconsciously, assuming, I suspect, that such a well-reasoned and superbly written legal opinion must have been written by a man. Well, wanting to know more about Judge Staton’s credentials, I Googled the judge’s name and read the Wikipedia article about - Judge Josephine Staton. May the spirit of Justice Ginsburg forgive me.
MS
Re: Anonymous, leftist groups.
That's actually a complete sentence, Mr. President, well done.
Philosophical Waite,
Il Duce is no doubt keenly interested in the erudite discussions on this blog of the philosophies of Kant, Hume and Marx, and checks in every day for the latest elucidations on these and other topics – after he has finished watching Fox News.
MS
And in other news, Hope Hicks, who was traveling with Il Duce on Air Force One, to the debate in Ohio Tuesday and to a campaign rally in Minnesota on Wednesday has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. In the manner of a minor bureaucrat with the meaningless title of Zweiter Beauftragter für Administrative Fragen, one allows oneself a fleeting, virtually imperceptible smile.
Sehr, sehr komisch, Herr Brux. Es tut mir freudig.
MS
Sind Sie ein Wettmann, Herr Unbekannt? Der Präsident hat positiv getestet!
That's the October surprise.
Herr Brux,
Das wurde wundebar sein! Und alle seine feige Verwalter!
MS
Herr Brux,
https://www.newser.com/story/296940/trump-diagnosis-shakes-white-house.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top
Von dein Mund zu die Ahre von Gott! Hallelujah!
MS
It is really shameful that you, a self-proclaimed marxist, put his name in the same paragraph with this middleclassy bullshit: > The central problem is assembling a coalition of millions or even tens of millions of men and women who will do thousands of different things in an effort to make the world somewhat better.
This is the "incalculable tragedy", not "the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" as you naively lamented on the day: the American left being a silly slave of a local bourgeois democracy.
@ Boris Dagaev
What is your own practical political prescription? Do you have one?
P.s. While I can make out a bit of the German, it would be much better if Brux and MS switched to French. Thanks :)
LFC,
Ich wurde gleich zu anpassen, aber Ich weiss keine Franzosisch.
MS
La planète se défend du mieux qu'elle peut. Propager cette maladie comme des anticorps contre un envahisseur.
Oui c'est juste (assuming I understood it rightly)
MS that's ok, we all shd have studied Spanish in school anyway.
LFC,
Ha, ha. That, or Chinese.
MS
LFC> What is your own practical political prescription?
What for exactly? What ailment do you intend to cure?
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