Jerome Armstrong: A blogger is the first follower, not the leader

It’s just an observation that without politicians willing to lead, blogs are going to be limited in what, if anything, they are successful in doing. If you can’t find a politician worth backing, you won’t have any ability to demonstrate the strength and size of a blog and its members. Understanding the political incentives facing politicians and why they “stop dancing” is important for figuring out how the progressive blogosphere can and cannot be successful.

M L King was a leader put not an electable politician. MLK was a leader for an ideology, as Ian would say. Jesse Jackson followed MLKs script and ideology. Ran for president, lost, quit dancing perhaps. Ralf Nader similarly. Currently the Pauls?

The Pirate Party in Germany shot up to 3-4% on an ideology and a technology. The technology was what they called “Liquid Democracy” or Adhocracy. Their limitation was the thinness of their ideology but the strength of their technology propelled they beyond the limits of their ideology. Just saying that there is something there in the technology that calls for some careful attention.

Texas Nate, I’ve always voted policy, not cult personality, that’s why it’s been clear to me SINCE 2003 that Obomer was/is a Randian ideologue. Conversely, now that Bush [the 2nd] is a seasoned CiC would you want him leading the country again? Jerome’s experience can teach us lessons, but they do not confer upon him wisdom…or…more importantly, predictive powers. Back to Obomer…anybody who voted/supported Obomer was not looking for a man with worldly experience.

I do on occasion, vote strategically, but unlike the sophistry of “the lessor of two evils”, when faced with two evils, I vote for a pol who has the least capability to enact his evil, either through his own incompetence and those that he surrounds himself with, or the political forces arrayed against him. A blogger can inform his/her readers of this option, which supporters, or mainstream media CAN NOT DO, but not…if they are on the take. FYI, whatever the form of payment, you’ve been bought.

The whole idea that the job of bloggers is to find followers, a pied piper…is exactly how I left most sites, once so married to a candidate [however secretly] the justifications and rationalizations start and the independent analysis stops. Barry Ritzholtz and Ian are the only two blogs I visit daily, I visit these very different bloggers precisely because they are independent men, beholden to no one.

I disagreed with this post when it was in comments, sometimes perfectly decent men come up with perfectly stupid ideas. Professional credentials can’t make a bad idea good, or do you still think Obama is a Constitutional scholar?

Apologies Jerome, I like much of what you say about making common cause when interest[s] coincide…after all that is the underlying premise of democracy…and southerners are nothing like the upper class “liberal” based stereotypes. Oh, it’s easy to be a “liberal” in safe enclave, it’s a little harder to do it when you are outnumbered, courage matters.

So Jerome, what about Chuck Hagel? He argued against a Syrian bombing campaign, hell of war record [yes, folks courage matters], competence, high energy, good speaking voice, good looks, decent morals…can Hillary be stopped…I don’t want anybody to be President of the United States, who was amused by an anal rape with a knife …there’s just something about that, that doesn’t sit right with me…you?

It makes sense only given the assumption that one must remain within the system and follow duly anointed system Leaders. Which, I agree, is what “progressives” are and what they do. So it’s appropriate to the context. (Nor do I think “voting Green” or something like that changes the dynamic.)

But it doesn’t begin to exhaust the options that were open to an outfit like FDL, if it had wanted to try to do what’s right and necessary, rather than what fits into the bounds of crackpot “pragmatism” but is neither good nor sufficient.

Meanwhile the real goal is to get completely new movements going, from the soil up. If those will have leaders at all, it’ll have to be their own organically arisen leaders. Otherwise one might as well give up.

I’d say bloggers can most likely be “leaders” in the sense of what Eric Hoffer called the revolutionary men of words. Like the 18th century philosophes, who certainly weren’t looking to their favorite noblemen or ministers to lead them within the bounds of ancien regime politics.

If you think about it, it’s a testament to how deep the two-party indoctrination has sunk, how far the rot has gone, that so few bloggers see themselves this way.

I agree with Russ. Tying your fortunes to one of two corrupt, corporatist parties and their predictably anti-progressive candidates is a recipe for failure. We should not be out pursuing politicians. We should be creating a movement with a clear vision and clear programs to get us there. Political candidates and a political party should be recruited out of this movement. No compromises and no playing nice with the legacy parties. And if any of our candidates don’t fight for our program, they’re gone, period.

We need to understand that movements are where power really resides. The demise of American unionism can be traced back to the anti-Red attacks in the early1900s not on the unions themselves but on the social movements which powered them. Unionism became institutionalized. It ossified and by the 1980s came under withering and sustained attack which has largely marginalized it. On the other hand, look at the Tea Party which isn’t a party at all. It’s a movement, and look at its power, bastardized, incoherent, and astro-turfed as it is within the Republican party. If a Republican ignores them, they primary his/her ass, doesn’t matter who it is.

Think what we could do with a movement that was actually for somthing worthwhile, which described in clear and simple terms the kind of society most of us want and how to get it, and which stayed outside the two parties altogether.

None of this is rocket science. People a century ago understood how to do this. It’s just we have forgotten and had it indoctrinated out of us.

@Jerome Armstrong, how you deal with structural and systemic failures depends on your ideology. The pressing issue for the largest number of Americans in the immediate future is financial insecurity, most notably among the un- and under-employed. I’d say we will increasingly see a large population become disconnected from the psychology of employment. We’ll see more unable to feed and educate children. And more suffer the financial effects of natural disasters as weather becomes more extreme.

Conservatives are likely to continue to believe that it’s the fault of the takers and moochers, who are just unwilling to work. That’s ideology that leads to repression. Neoliberals are likely to phrase it differently, to wring their hands over the necessity for American standards of living to fall so that those in developing countries can rise (fairness, you know), and to recommend modest training programs to teach victims the skills that they claim will enable everybody to climb back into the middle class. That’s ideology that more gently leads to repression.

Some of dfhs embrace the right of every member of a society to the means of a decent life. We want a basic income, health care, education, and pensions for everyone in a rich society. That’s ideology that looks to figure out how to create and distribute resources in ways that address the structural and systemic problems whose symptom is our widespread financial instability. People who can’t attach to the current employment society are likely to be open to an alternative ideology, but we won’t get there unless we have a way to explain that “working hard” is neither necessary nor increasingly possible. The declaration of independence was at least as much a statement of ideology as a blueprint for dealing with systemic failure.

My view is that the American way of life is over, and that the global way of life has started out the gate looking a lot like corporate hegemony. I would like to see a worldview that is global & populist start emerging.

@S Brennan After about 40 campaigns from 2003 through 2012, I’m done. I’ve retired last year from working/consulting/advising on anymore elections. I am hoping to get around to write some reflections about ’08.

I am with Russ and Hugh. MLKJr was part of a much larger movement for social and economic justice. Rosa Parks was too. I don’t think the designation leader or follower means much in that context.

When I think of movements, I think of the tremendous contribution that Alice Waters has made with her farm to restaurant movement and edible schoolhouse idea. She has impacted in a good way more than DiFi or Pelosi from San Fran. She’s an originator , a visionary.
Look at the Zapatistas too. And the squatters.

When Ian first proposed a new ideology I was struck with the word itself. I myself have a philosophy that guides me through life. The difference between ideology and philosophy is a whole blog entry in itself. And I’m on my second glass of wine so it may have to wait.

@ nihil obstet & Montanamaven

Excellent points. Progress as defined by leaders will destroy us.
Philosophy is the theory about how to live life.
Education and curiosity, coupled by intelligence, provide the way; no theories required…

I think the ideas/solutions are already out there Ian. I am reminded of that Dylan Ratigan video I liked to a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJBfYNpV1m4

Where he said he quite the oligarchy at MSNBC when it became obvious:

A. Knowing that the solutions to reform the system already exist.

B. That pretending we don’t know the solutions exist is the easiest way to maintain the system.

We have the technology, wealth and abundance to provide everyone on the planet for their food, shelter, education, and healthcare needs. But it’s a system of greed, ignorance and fear that prevents the technology, wealth and abundance to be accessed by everyone.

Or as Ratigan says there too: “99% of the people on the world are fearful, narcissistic, and insane.”

Which means that the 1% have to change to live by being brutally honest authentic and transparent. Revolutionary. We’re just planting seeds in the hope that 7 generations later the ignorance of humanity hasn’t destroyed the planet– that we are by then living up to the ideals.

@ Jerome Armstrong November 6, 2013

Which means that the 1% have to change to live by being brutally honest authentic and transparent. Revolutionary.

How nice to see that vanguardism is alive and well. After all it’s worked so brilliantly well every time it’s been tried elsewhere.

The fact that it’s alive and well and living in America with its long long long history of imposing how it thinks other people should live and think by violence does not, I admit, fill me with joy.

Tell you what – perform the experiment on your fellow Americans and only on your fellow Americans first if it works you can be certain the rest of us will follow along.

mfi

Ian, to what are you referring when you say that “Americans had a pretty good idea of what ideology they wanted before the revolution”? One recalls the slave society built up around the Virginia colony, or the fact that the Mayflower Pilgrims were so stuck-up that they couldn’t make it in Holland because Holland was too tolerant, or the severe penalties the colonists had to impose for mingling with the societies of the native peoples of this land because “going Indian” was simply too attractive. What was Crevecoeur’s advice to new immigrants? “Get yourself some slaves.” Early America was a society of reactionary European rejects of various ideological stripes who had to stick together because the penalties for not doing so were too high. “Democracy” came about in such a society because the elites among them couldn’t decide who was the mostest, though they could decide who was the leastest — see e.g. Shay’s Rebellion. The real revolutionary ideology of that time was French, and it became real to the world in 1789 with the publication of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.”

Jerome, I think the “system of greed, ignorance, and fear” is called “capitalism.” The 1% created it to maintain themselves as a 1%, and the only reason any of the rest of us have more than a few crumbs off of their tables is because, once upon a time, the 1% were at one point in history threatened by a utopian movement called “communism.” Now, human beings are versatile, so we are capable of dreaming “communism” in a great variety of ways and in fact we are capable of forming a great diversity of societies in a great variety of ways. But to spell out the enormous diversity of which we are capable (and thus the utter ridiculousness of the “there is no alternative” Margaret Thatcher doctrine) is not to say what we will be corralled into doing.

@ Che Pasa
Representative government needs a big discussion. It does not work here. The system was rigged from the get go. (Read Sheldon Wolin’s scary brilliant “Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism” -His chapter on the elite and their “Eyes Wide Shut” cult will have your hair stand on end. Also Jerry Fresia’s “Toward and American Revolution”.)

Direct democracy for all its hazards (the rabble) works but on a smaller scale than we have here. Swiss direct initiatives are interesting. Iceland’s citizens could challenge the power of the elite. Yes, you get the criticism from progressives that we will return to the bad old days of Jim Crow if more decentralization happens. But “states rights” is not all bad and the phrase needs rethinking. Here in Montana we passed more money for children’s health care and we stopped the use of arsenic in gold mining with citizen initiatives. Our coal loving ex governor also wanted a state health care system with cheap drugs.

Much to discuss which is what I use blogging for. Get the conversation going.

Southern slaves arrived in Yankee ships.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Bargain-Slavery-Struggle-Constitution/dp/0802714609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383749871&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+bargain

To the yankee’s credit, Abolition.

Maybe Abolition for the rental of humans, as opposed to their sale, might have global populist appeal.

If I ever have the chance to create a statue or a monument, it will be of Thomas Paine in statue form, with 4 or 5 quotes imprinted on nearby stone that open peoples mind.

Representative democracy or republican democracy has been largely a myth in US history, if not an oxymoron. The Framers were of the propertied class and represented their interests. The system of checks and balances was both to limit one faction of them from gaining control but more importantly to defend their interests against the mob, i.e. ordinary citizens. Shay’s Rebellion was an example of this defense, but the Framers built into the Constitution others. There is the electoral college which still exists. And direct election of Senators did not occur until the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. The franchise was not defined in the Constitution. State laws initially restricted it to white property owning males. It was not until Jackson and the 1820s that the push was made for universal white male suffrage. And while the 13th and 14th Amendments ended slavery and extended in theory equal protection of the laws. Poll taxes and literacy tests persisted for another century. Even nearly 50 years on from the Voting Rights Act, we continue to see voter suppression on a wide scale, and validated by a reactionary Supreme Court. It was not until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 that women got the vote. And of course, we live in an age of the gerrymander where House seats are drawn as anti-democratically as possible and where the Senate itself is a kind of gerrymander favoring low population states in the South and West. And we live in an age of kleptocracy where the rich own the government and the elites and use them solely to defend and increase their wealth.

So looking at US history and the present, I am hard pressed to see any era where there has been even an approximation of representative democracy. And while today we have the form of it, I can think of no time in our history where we have ever been more distant from the substance of it.

@ Jerome Armstrong November 6, 2013

Are those feeble non-sequiturs which incidentally demonstrate that you have neither read his NS article or watched the BBC interview the best you can come up with?

Or are you trying to evade my point about vanguardism? Let me spell it out for you. Everywhere and every time what you are proposing has been tried the result has been a vicious tyranny that has slaughtered its own civilian population before launching wars of aggression. Your vacuous and glib response is a damned good example of why your movement failed – and why it deserved to.

mfi

@mfi you are sure quick to turn implacably hostile. Settle down.

@ Nate Wilcox November 8, 2013 Do you think that a lifetime of dealing at firsthand with the results of American viciousness and the sort of intellectual and ethical vacuity displayed by Armstrong above might have something to do with that Nate? The standard American reaction to people not acting and thinking in a way they approve of is violence to force them into the approved way of thinking and doing things. That’s what Armstrong and his vanguardist solution is proposing.

Which means that the 1% have to change to live by being brutally honest authentic and transparent. Revolutionary.

The inevitable result of what he’s proposing is a tyranny that is brutally repressive at home and warlike abroad. You’re right I’m implacably hostile to it I’m hostile to it both on principle and because I’ve seen it in action.

mfi

@mfi — you’re leaping to battle against something Jerome didn’t say based on your misinterpretation of a casual comment on a blog post. Again, please settle down. You contribute some really smart stuff but there’s no need for us to be so hostile and suspicious amongst ourselves is there?

@Matt Stoller — I don’t have any objections to democracy, it’s the idea of representation without accountability. In theory a congressperson answers to their electorate but at ~1/2 million people per district there’s no actual relationship between the congresscritter and those nominally represented.
The part that really galls me is the way there is no accountability from the elected official to the people who actually got him elected. I’m thinking that perhaps smaller groups should be elected to represent larger groups up to the point where a congressperson would directly answer to a council of say 30 people from their district and could be impeached by them at any time. Those 30 would represent in turn another 300 or so, who in turn represented 3000, who represented 30,000 who represented 300,000. Just throwing that out there, thinking out loud.
@Che Pasa My understanding is that the Occupy movement was not implementing anything approaching direct democracy. There was no solid parliamentary procedure being used just a sort of sham direct democracy that was controlled from behind the scenes by a small cabal using a number of tricks coming from the old Bolshevik school of control & manipulation.

The Archdruid had a very nice analysis of that. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/12/enacting-democracy.html

@ Ché Pasa November 8, 2013

The American system as it is now is an anachronism, grossly out of step with the rest of the world, inherently disenfranchising and unrepresentative. It is perhaps not as tyrannical — yet — as some of its critics make out, but the signs are clear where the system is heading, and that’s not toward more and greater freedom and democracy for the common herd. Just the opposite.

So what should we do?

Take a leaf out of Hizballah’s book. They succeeded because they provide the services that people wanted and I’m not talking about their military services, I’m talking about their social ones. In another social context the same is true of the Social Democrats in the Sweden. At their height (say from late 1930s upto about 15 years ago) it was possible to have a cradle to grave life experience using SD-run institutions starting with kindergartens and ending with a funerary services. For a very long time they were seen by everyone as the ‘natural party of government’.

Much of this would involve going back to institutions such as the Friendly Society – what we now think of as co-ops, and the credit union. To name but two.

mfi

@mfi I honestly have no idea what you are talking about or who or what you think I am. If you were in Texas maybe we could hash it out over a beer. If you think jump-starting the Howard Dean campaign and helping start one of the only populist insurgent movements in the US Democratic party in the past 30 years (Jerome’s signature accomplishments) was the acme of human evil, not sure what to say.

@ Nate Wilcox

@Che Pasa My understanding is that the Occupy movement was not implementing anything approaching direct democracy. There was no solid parliamentary procedure being used just a sort of sham direct democracy that was controlled from behind the scenes by a small cabal using a number of tricks coming from the old Bolshevik school of control & manipulation.

Haven’t had an opportunity to do more than skim your link to Archdruid’s assessment, but I think, from what I have read, he’s off on another track altogether which had very little to do with how various Occupy efforts were attempting to implement models of direct democracy. The basic framework and model comes from here:

http://takethesquare.net/2011/07/31/quick-guide-on-group-dynamics-in-peoples-assemblies/

Of course, it’s evolved since then, but that was what was adapted or attempted by hundreds of Occupy encampments. It’s not a parliamentary or representative model, it’s a consensus model. None of the dozen or so Occupy operations I was familiar with followed an identical pattern, however. They were all somewhat different, sometimes radically different. Some actually used Roberts Rules as the basic framework for Assemblies and decision making, hardly direct democracy at all.

Others did their best to emulate the Madrid example, but it was such an unfamiliar model for nearly everyone that it proved very — VERY — difficult to handle. Most participants had never been exposed to anything like it and had no idea how it worked. Initially, even getting a copy of the Quick Guide was no easy task, and few people had time to sit through some other Occupy that was trying to conduct a General Assembly and get it right. The one that I found came closest to an ideal was Occupy New Haven, but what else would you expect from a bunch of Yalies with time on their hands?

As for the idea of a cabal of Socialists or Marxists (Bolsheviks? Good god) running things: they wish. Oh, the initial struggles between our Socialist/Marxist betters and those who were actually going to put this Occupy juggernaut into gear were short but fierce. It was occasionally operatic. The Socialists eventually said fuck it and left, never to be seen again — because they could not handle the reappearance of anarchist alternatives to their carefully worked out ways of doing things, ways that were obviously (in their minds) superior and time-tested.

Was there a cabal of any kind running things? Depended on where you were. Remember, there were hundreds of encampments and there are still dozens of active “evolved” Occupy groups. Some of them were being “run” from behind the scenes by a small group who maintained power for however long they could manage it, but resistance to this kind of authoritarian control was generally pretty swift and certain, so I didn’t see cabals running things for very long.

I was very nervous about the Spokes Council model being introduced in New York, though, because I thought it would lead directly to a cabal-like situation, but I understand the Spokes Council model was never really implemented in New York — not only was there a tremendous amount of resistance and opposition, but the Nov 17 raid on Zuccotti Park took place during what I understand was the last real attempt to implement it. There were a few Occupy efforts that adopted it nonetheless and they seemed happy enough. It was their choice. There was no effort I was aware of to force it on any other Occupy, and the way it was handled in New York was… unfortunate.

Generally speaking, it was too easy for the loudest voices or the most persistent demands to subvert an assembly. It could also be remarkably easy for an energetic and coordinated working group or affinity group to take the assembly in directions it probably was ill-advised to go. These were among many other hazards that are difficult to work through, and for many groups there simply wasn’t time.

The learning curve for this sort of group dynamics is pretty steep and long, and with literally no one to show how to do it successfully — which was the case nearly everywhere except New York and a few other cities where experienced people came from Spain and Greece and the Balkans to demonstrate, critique and hand-hold or there had long been an active anarchist anti-globalist community — it was tough and almost bound to fail.

@Che Pasa thanks for the info. My ignorance on the subject of Occupy is as boundless as my ignorance on many other topics. Do you feel that the methods they attempted to use to implement direct democracy were the best available?

@mfi thanks. Do not address me again you rude person. Your comments were off-topic in the first place and since you’re so happily and definitely not part of the old “netroots” project and have such contempt for everyone who was not sure why you commented in the first place beyond doing the bidding of your handlers and disrupting discussion here by creating conflict out of nothing.

Hugh said, “So looking at US history and the present, I am hard pressed to see any era where there has been even an approximation of representative democracy. And while today we have the form of it, I can think of no time in our history where we have ever been more distant from the substance of it.”

Really well put.