One more note on the New York Gay Marriage, Cuomo and the Gay Rights Movement

2) The reason gays get anything is that unlike the rest of the left, they did two things: they cut off the donations, and they got ugly in people’s faces. They stopped playing nice. They stopped playing by the rules.

This description sounds a lot like lobbying to me. They followed the “pay-to-play” rule for getting representation. Those who do not follow this rule (or who pay less than someone else) do not get representation in legislation. It is no coincidence that aid to pregnant women, infants, and children (AKA, WIC) and medical aid to the poor (Medicaid) are being cut in the federal budget. These people have not paid lobbyists to bribe donate to the campaigns of the “representatives.” Cough up some money, infants.

Ian, I’ve been arguing this till I’m blue in the face. You can also see this divide-and-conquer strategy and the accompanying back-slapping on many supposedly liberal blogs.

We’re trying to hang together for the October action, that’s what we’re pushing for, but it’s an uphill battle.

I agree with Satan Mayo.

The politics of symbolism, long a staple of the Republican Party, has come full bore, to the Democrats. Republicans have made symbolic politics their staple for a long time, which is why their political ranks are now dominated by the good-looking spokes-model politician, seeking celebrity in place of power.

George W. Bush was all about mobilizing an electoral base with symbolic gestures. A very important one was referendums on gay marriage, in fact. It just happens that this is an issue, where, if you simply talk about it a lot — doesn’t really matter what is said, within some civil bounds at least — people’s discomfort with the idea declines. People come out of the closet, etc. The fact that Republicans pushed as often as they did on that hot-button issue actually contributed to the acceleration of attitude change.

But, for Dems or Reps, the politics of symbolism carries no political substance, and very little resource cost.

The politics of income and wealth distribution can be completely divorced from the politics of cultural symbolism in a plutocracy. Democracy of a ceremonial sort can even continue, in disputes over these symbolic issues. In fact, making these kinds of cultural issues a salient part of our visible politics actually helps the plutocracy, because they may reduce any sense of felt solidarity among the masses.

Obama is, himself, a potent example of symbolic politics. And, he’s the first Democratic President since Grover Cleveland to completely fail to do better than Republicans in delivering on economic substance for the mass of Americans.

What I’ve never understood is why anyone would assume that there was any great connection to begin with. Who you want to sleep with has no bearing on your thinking about economics, foreign policy, or anything else. Being a target of public hate might make you more sympathetic to other people in the same situation, but I think we’ve seen historically that it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

No, the reason gays get anything is that the super-rich have no problem with gays getting things. Being part of “the left” neither helps nor hurts.

True–if it had been a matter of money, then there would have been no change. Those whose financial interests would have been hurt would have stopped it. Their lobbyists can pay more money. The larger point is that there is no representative democracy. Politicians in office are not passing legislation because it is what the majority wants. They’re passing legislation that is paid for, in one way or another.

But the point of the original post is that it took lobbying in order to get the change. The two large political parties did not want this to pass because the issue was useful to both of them for elections (D: “vote for us! we support civil rights for people who are gay!”; R: “vote for us! we support your bigotry!”). It helped them hide the larger point about there being no representative democracy. Elections are used for this, too.

Friends in NY state government have explained that Andrew Cuomo’s program is to forestall draconian Republican cuts to government likely if he were defeated for re-election. He makes cuts now, on his terms, and the expected business recovery plus his reputation for making the system work, will see him re-elected (and an attractive candidate for US president).

Problem: the recovery is doubtful, and state services cannot be financed without increasing taxes on Cuomo’s (and Obama’s) rich friends and supporters. The premises of Cuomo’s master plan are very likely faulty.

I wasn’t one of those waving “Thank You Gov. Cuomo” signs yesterday, but it was nice to celebrate something we’ve worked for, for years. State Assembly members Dick Gottfried and Danny O’Donnell laid the groundwork, and the state-wide gay organization Empire State Pride Agenda provided the groundswell of constituent support. Cuomo did the necessary politicking to finish the deal, but many unsung activists deserve credit.

And, always blighting the victory has been the question of what Cuomo traded away to get his validation as a successful progressive. We’ll find out, eventually. One more thing — I wish we had a cohesive movement that could take the over-all progressive stands that Ian wants. But looking back, it’s the unions that have betrayed allies — gays, minority workers, women — time after time for temporary advantage. In these times, I don’t feel guilty for taking a limited, tainted victory. It may lead to better things.

A man can be rich and homosexual at the same time. Indeed it would be the rich homosexual who would fight the political battle for his right to marry. I can see no automatic association between socialism and homosexuality: nontraditional social mores do not always mean nontraditional economics. The same problem exists for conservatives: many traditionalists mistakenly assume that, because the rich (falsely) trumpet the virtues of freedom in the marketplace, the bankers and chief executives will therefore protect the unborn or help the deserving poor.

Don’t forget about the AARP agreeing to Social Security cuts. What possible good is an elder persons’ advocacy group that won’t protect SS?

Now here’s Dan Savage on TV saying that people who oppose gay marriage aren’t “really” Christian. God, why is the left so blind?

Eric Alterman points out a key part of the coalition behind the gay marriage bill:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/26/andrew-cuomo-s-flawed-liberalism.html

…To win the necessary votes for passage, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his team turned not to Republican senators or their constitutents, but to their top-dollar donors. People like former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and the billionaire Paul Singer, who speaks proudly of the “wedding album of my son and son-in-law,” married in Massachusetts, and the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb who “had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure.” Within days, Cuomo had $1 million in his Republican gay marriage fund and a “path to victory.”…

vanessa’s ‘new york for marriage’ summed it up best. “it’s time for new york to realize that gaii marriage is a passe topic and if we don’t pass it now flatlander states will make us look bad.” it’s hardly a victory and means little except to richer gays with property, children and/or insurance who want to play biff and susie or protect their interests. and yes, it’s going to be used as cover for democratic moves to enforce austerity, but i don’t really care about that because if it wasn’t us, it would’ve been some other bone tossed to some other group. it was just, for a rare change, our turn. i mean, don’t get me wrong: go ny gays, good job. money helps; those rich gays who funded this probably threw some good parties with nice boy toys and blow. meanwhile, i still don’t have equality. i can still be fired just for being who i am. i don’t want to join the military or get married. so i’m still a second class citizen.

Bernard:

When The “ERA” failed in Congres, that begin the fall of the various groups that got the Civil Rights Acts going. since then, it’s been all downhill/via separate and divide.

And to a large extent the “separate and divide” tactics of the Right succeed because among the Left in America, on virtually every issue, attacks, marginalizes, and finally destroys its own left flank. The Right doesn’t have to do this because the Left does it for them. On every issue, to appear “reasonable” and “moderate”; including on gay rights.

What the Left doesn’t realize is that destroying one’s left flank doesn’t cause the Right to suddenly love you. The AFL-CIO kicking out communists didn’t cause a flood of corporate support for organized labor. What it means is that *YOU* become isolated at the leftmost post of the Overton Window, and instead of being “moderate” and “sensible” you now become the wild-eyed liberal. By contrast, the best way to appear “moderate” is to have groups a degree or two to the left of you. While you might differ with these, you include them and don’t seek to aid in their destruction. They are helping you get what you want.

The Right gets this. Even after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Republicans suppressed investigations of rightwing militias and neo-fascist organizations in the US. Most Americans learned that Timothy McVeigh had been inspired by The Turner Diaries, a book described as merely being “anti-government” by the MSM but which is in reality a *neo-Nazi* book written by William Pierce, a book filled with images of the mass murder of African-Americans and Jews after its successful revolution.

-StewartM

The gay community is not particularly united and it’s not fair to write us off collectively – movement gays (HRC, GLAAD, etc.) have increasingly been middle/upper-middle class whites concerned with gaining the “rights” to live like their heterosexual counterparts.

There’s been a complete marginalization by those self-same “leaders” of the many non well-off gays who don’t want a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2 cars, a dog and 2.2 kids or even necessarily to get married.

The split first showed up quite publicly in the 90s when we all (including impoverished AIDS stricken transexuals) were exorciated by the leaders for not getting behind their focus on gays and lesbians in the military. Concurrently, gay history started being rewritten (erasing the fact that Stonewall was started by Latina drag queens, not white gay “straight-acting jocks).

Now, the gay movements have largely been co-opted by the dominant corporate orthodoxy (witness GLAAD’s letter of support for the AT&T – T-Mobile merger ironically dressing it up as increasing diversity) and the embrace of Ken Mehlman (the gay Lee Atwater) by Chelsea. West Hollywood has been turned into a playground for the rich that can’t wait to toss the poor (of any sexual orientation) out of their rent-cotnrol apartments.

Sigh, we are a long way from the days when it semed Harvey Milk forged alliances with blue collar unions by, for example, getting gay bars to participate in the Coors beer boycott. Then the gay movements believed in their power to transform society and to address many important issues of social justice, such as single payer healthcare.

The bourgeois takeover of gay rights took place a generation ago. The very fact that “gay marriage” is front-and-center as desideratum is a tribute to Republican conservatives like Andrew Sullivan. The HRC — the brown-paper wrapper of gay rights organizations — was always a rich man’s club, and GLAAD was always about giving parties, and hoping celebrities would show up.

Be that as it may, Ian’s point — that the euphoria over this gay rights victory, and kind words for Cuomo, points up the weakness of the alliance that makes up the economic (or “socialist”) Left — still deserves explication, even if Ian’s desire to pound on the alleged perfidy of the gays is misguided.

GLAAD’s endorsement of a cellphone company merger, like beer company sponsorship of gay pride events, is just life in a corporate plutonomy. It is no different that the NAACP whoring for Visa and the Banks, or that New Deal 2.0 subgroup taking money from the Peterson “Let-them-eat-catfood” group out to destroy Social Security.

The economic Left, to have any real power, needs to have mass-membership organizations, in which the members have invested some of their personal identity. Feelings of solidarity are the political sine qua non of economic-Left politics. And, those feelings of solidarity have to reach the leadership of those organizations and/or the leadership has to be genuinely dependent on the membership for its elite status and livelihood, and the membership has to see the leadership deliver. It’s not transactional politics or identity politics — those are its pale ghosts. It is a politics of solidarity, and social identity follows from that, but the economics matters; the economics, centrally, includes a doctrine that allows followers and leadership to share an understanding of ends and means, which also explains the opposition of the opposition.

Here’s a critical thing about mass-membership groups and organizations: they will include a lot of people, whose politics are founded, not on theory, but on attitude, and those attitudes will be the attitudes (in a psychological sense) of “right-wing authoritarian followers” (using Altemeyer’s psychological, not political terms). The Left cannot get to a large enough coalition in democratic politics, without taking large numbers of authoritarian followers away from the demagogues of the Right. And, the economic Left needs authoritarian followers, willing to submit to discipline and do the grunt work well, to develop the kind of militancy, which gives the Left a credible ability to mobilize mass opinion and mass action.

In purely American political terms, the Progressives need the Populists (and the labor unions and the urban political machines), to enact an agenda.

Historically, racism (and ethnic and sexual prejudice), for better and worse, drove a formation of political identity, which put large numbers of authoritarian followers into the Democratic Party, and kept the right-wing of the Republican Party blessedly small. The Solid South of white supremacy and populist politics, the big-city machines of Catholic ethnicity, the labor unions, even the faded Grange — these all formed a foundation of mass politics. And, they are all gone.

What’s left on the Left are the descendants of the Progressives, with their upper-class prejudice (and self-interest), paternalism, and high-principles. And, their principled disdain for solidarity.

To circle back to Ian’s point about the euphoria over Cuomo and Gay Marriage: it does reveal a cleavage on the Left. It’s the same cleavage we’ve seen growing steadily since a few insightful souls (not including me) first saw that Obama would be exactly the same as Bush.

It’s the cleavage between those, who wish to preserve the existing order, even in its advancing decay, and those, however reluctantly, who have come to see a revolutionary imperative in that decay. It’s the cleavage between those, who wish to be players, no matter what the cost, and those, who see that the game must stop, must be broken.

Even in the worst of times, liberals tend to make poor revolutionaries. We’re too reasonable to be effectively millitant Our instincts are always focused on incremental reform. The idea that the village must be destroyed to save it, comes hard, even when it is manifestly true. But, the imperatives of American decay into a plutonomy and a fascist state call for a destructive zeal.

Real financial reform would literally destroy significant parts of the banking and financial sector. Real health care reform would literally destroy an economically signficant part of the health care and insurance sectors. Do I have to explain the economic implications for the military-industrial complex of ending the most expensive wars in American history?

No one can make a career out of championing such destructive zeal, however, without a mass-movement, by mass-membership organizations, united by an economics (aka an ideology) that makes sense of the need for that destruction, and which can rationalize as meaningful the painful side-effects, while opposing effectively the cynical grasping of the would-be plutocracy.

I don’t see betrayal in the support for Cuomo. What I see is that those still playing the Game are still playing the Game. And, people, who, broadly, share my views, aren’t. Maybe, there’s some probably ephmeral self-deception at the margin — people, who will do anything to avoid focusing on the logical implications of our economic situation and the economic policies pursued by alleged Democrats, celebrating a social and cultural advance. I understand: even if the ship is slowly sinking, jumping into the icy water doesn’t seem all the appealing. And, up in the first-class dining hall, sinking is just a rumor — only in steerage is anyone cold and wet.

Jesus christ, what Bruce Wilder just said. Nothing I could possibly add.

There you go, Z, precisely the point. For anyone who has seen Gasland, you know what comes next. You may suffocate from the methane emissions and choke on the water, but at least you’ll die a married gay person, so it was all worth it………it always was thus.

More on the lobbying: We got the gay marriage bill passed in NY. If you don’t pay, you can’t play. Pay us to lobby for you! (h/t Matt Stoller)

StewartM and Bruce Wilder both tell it how it is (i.e., how I see it). They raise the question, How can you play the game, in order to get by in the gamers’ world, and still work to change the game? How can you recognize that the leaders you are offered are servants of the oligarchy, but thank them when they allow some little benefit like marriage equality to make it through the system? Cuomo pulled a lot of forces together to achieve marriage equality, which will improve quality of life for many, and he’s STILL a Republican-lite bastard:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/58142.html

As was pointed out above, we need to reduce the armed forces, close overseas military bases, and shutter the wasteful and greedy medical insurance companies — and doing so would put thousands of people out of work in a faltering economy. You can’t do only good. It does sound like destroying the village to save it. But the village is built on a sink hole. We may get our new start soon, whether we’re ready or not.

Another way to say “You can’t do only good” is “There are no side effects — only effects.” Every action has results you want, and results you may not want. People who want to think well of themselves tend to ignore the bad effects of their noble policies or to deny them. The unwanted consequences must be dealt with, if not in the planning, in the aftermath.

“Destroy the village” is a historical allusion, not a direct analogy. All the things that Bruce Wilder mentioned need to be reformed or replaced — but doing so would destroy Business as Usual, the Powers That Be, the DC “Village” that Digby excoriates. (That’s a daunting prospect, so that it’s tempting just to try to run up a few points in the game, knowing that it’s rigged against you.) The present system is unsustainable and will be replaced, hopefully with arrangements more local. The village will be destroyed — the question is what will replace it.

Ok, how ’bout the Titanic metaphor used by someone on this site?

That metaphor has been used many times, on this site and throughout the internet. It is a long discussion about how that metaphor would be applied to the current state of the world.

When the “destroy the village in order to save it” excuse was first used, it really amounted to avoiding saying “We killed all of the civilians, and now we are grasping at straws, trying to find some way to change the subject and excuse our crime.” That expression is short and sounds applicable to many situations where those situations need a complete overhaul or revolution. But it not appropriate because what the expression is saying is “We committed a horrible crime, and don’t want to be held accountable for it.” After all, you cannot hold someone accountable who was trying to “save” a village. That’s a laudable ends. Therefore, it must be able to justify the means (killing all of the civilians). Or, so the actors in the crime would have us believe.

It’s possible that I have misunderstood the writers who used the expression. Maybe they wanted to say “We’re going to have to commit a (moral or legal) crime in order to solve the problem, but it will be worth it.” If so, then they used it appropriately.

Idiom police:

http://www.gocomics.com/candorville/2011/07/02

(I agree that members of the armed forces don’t make a sacrifice — they are the sacrifice.

anon2525:

Slightly off-topic: In his interview on Democracy Now!, Christian Parenti brought up the following statistic:

“An interesting fact, in World War I, 5% of casualties were civilians. World War II, it was 50%, by Vietnam it was 80% now it’s up to 90%.”

I had a similar discussion with someone of the “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” mentality.

My example in that discussion of our fall from grace when it comes to morality and warfare? None other than Robert E. Lee.

Mind you, I know he’s a Confederate general and a slaveowner. But hear me out.

When Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, it occasioned that some Pennsylvanian civilians took up arms and took potshots at Lee’s soldiers. Lee’s response? Summary hangings? Mass random executions? Burning of whole towns? No, Lee merely disarmed such civilians.

Now, I’m not saying such gentleness was the norm in the US Civil War–heaven’s, no. But what I am saying about this example is this: Lee thought the world of his soldiers, calling them the best in the world, and they lived up to his opinion. But despite this, Lee drew an old-fashioned line between soldiers and civilians and where the risk should lie. As much as he admired his soldiers, Lee realized that running the risk of being killed and maimed was part and parcel of their job description, whereas babies don’t sign up for war. War should touch civilians as little as possible.

Nowadays, we celebrate “our boys” so much that we would rather 100,000 foreign babies die than one American serviceman or woman get a scratch. And we fight our wars that way now too: tons of ordinance unloaded on the enemy and mayhem inflicted, inflicted on the civilian populace as well, even before a US serviceman steps within rifle range.

As an aside, the stupid rag Southern Partisan had an article about which Civil War general most resembled Norman Schwarzkopf’s conduct of Gulf War I. One choice was William T. Sherman, and I think the other was Lee or Beford Forrest. They predictably and laughably chose the Confederate option.

But both were wrong. Schwarzkopf’s conduct of Gulf War I was right out of the playbook of none other than George B. McClellan, conspicuous for his reliance on logistical superiority and avoidance of any sort of risk whatsoever. Waiting more than a month while his air force hammered the enemy to a pulp before taking a single step forward in fear of casualties sounds hardly “daring”, it’s ultraconservative. A truly daring commander wouldn’t have dawdled so. The Israelis wouldn’t have.

-StewartM

Frankly it seems to me that as a description of the American left this is precisely backwards. Further, the attempt to wedge the two apart, it seems to me, is a description more of right-wing strategy than left-wing mores. And just how did the NDP manage to surpass the Liberals to become the #2 party in Canada last election? Populist politics.

Yes, but the social and cultural context of Canada and the USA are different, speaking as someone who watches both up close. It’s no coincidence that the bulk of the NDP advance came from Quebec, which as soon as it was willing to drop its linguistic nationalism at the federal level, found it easy to marry its economic populism and its social liberalism. That is the legacy of the Quiet Revolution.

The NDP had a harder time in the more American-influenced English-speaking parts of Canada, because in large parts of post-Trudeau Canada, economic populism is identified with the social right.

The USA has a hard time marrying economic populism and social liberalism for deep-seated cultural reasons that aren’t mere distractions to frustrate the aspirations of leftists.

Um. I’m very certain that I know what I’m talking about and that you’re not correct, Canadian though you may be. The NDPs biggest increase came in Quebec and that is no accident; many Liberal collapses in the RoC went to Stephen Harper. Go argue with the numbers.