Enough.
I have heard enough.
Those of us in the West live in democracies. Those democracies are not perfect, but they admit the possibility of organized change.
There are three levels to this.
The first, and most superficial, is voting on election day from a slate of candidates chosen for you by other people. Though superficial, it is not meaningless. Electing Nixon mattered. Electing Reagan twice, mattered. Electing Bush in 2004 and having the election close enough to steal in 2000, mattered. This also matters in local elections, in the Senate and the House or whatever your legislative body is. Fairly consistently, for almost 40 years, the more conservative candidates have been more likely to win.
The second level is the first level of production: the primaries. You can join a party, and vote for which candidate is placed before the public. Again, consistently, the more conservative candidates have won. In 2008 Obama was the right most of the major candidates. The truly liberal candidates weren’t even considered “viable” and never stood a chance, even though 2008 was the year that almost anyone could have won as a Democrat.
The third level is creating the candidates, taking over an existing party, or creating a new party. All of these are possible, all of them can be done.
In theory.
Also, in practice, if enough people really wanted to do it, wanted it enough to do it.
They don’t.
We are consumers. We are a consumer society. Consumer are not producers. We choose from the options presented to us, we do not make our own options. Whoever controls the menu, controls a consumer society utterly. You can choose between Neoliberals 1,2 & 3.
But even as consumers, Westerners have failed. Again, we have very often chosen the rightmost candidate of those offered to us. Our political parties, the primary voters, are even worse. Fairly often general voters choose the leftmost candidate (even if he’s only left within the context of the same neoliberal policies); primary voters have often been given the choice of real liberals, real left-wingers, and have virtually never put them up as candidate, certainly not for the top slot.
The abject refusal to accept any responsibility as a group or as individuals is at the heart of the problem. Accepting responsibility means accepting power: people without any power, slaves, have little to no responsibility. They could not, can not, make a difference.
Refusing responsibility is a way of saying “we have no power to change this.” If that’s so, you are subjects, slaves, not citizens.
America is what it is, the West is what is, the world is what is, because of Americans, Westerners, and all of us, respectively. It cannot be any other way.
Those of us who live in democracies, in particular, bear more responsibility. We were given Republics and Democracies, if we could keep them. We either have, in which case we are responsible for what they do, or we have lost them, in which case we are responsible for losing them.
We have choices, and we can make new choices. If we, again, as a group, fail to do so, then as a group we are responsible for our fate.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Mark Blevins
Thanks for your work. Tho’ poor, I will donate/subscribe; just
see if I don’t. ;]
Really commenting now to say it’s very nice to see Mr. Newberry back
in circulation. Best to you both.
MB
Ian Welsh
Thanks Mark, and as good as your word. 🙂
markfromireland
Yup. There’s another point here and it’s an important one. From time to time one person or another has squealed something along the lines of:
“You being so nasty is not conducive to dialogue”.
I’m not even remotely interested in dialogue with people who willingly eschew all responsibility. They’re chosen to be impotent to be little better than slaves – why the f*ck would anybody waste their time in dialogue with them?
Come back when you’ve successfully wielded political/social/economic power. Then we’ll talk. Far more importantly those who currently lord it over you will suddenly want to negotiate and be willing to make concessions rather than simply dictating how matters will be.
Wielding political/social/economic power is not difficult, people like me do it all the time which is why conservatives such as myself are far higher up the pecking order than voluntarily impotent ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ such as you dear reader. The structural function of ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ as matters now stand in the ‘Western world’ is to serve as figleaves for an increasingly vicious authoritarianism. I say that wielding political/social/economic power is not difficult and it isn’t but first you have to be prepared to take responsibility and to set out to change that which you find unacceptable. That means abandoning the outlook of the parasite and adopting the outlook of the citizen. I’m not holding my breath …
mfi
markfromireland
PS: You’ll note dear reader that I’m paying you the compliment of pretending to believe that ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ actually believe the cant they spout. In reality a lifetime of dealing with them has proved to me that the American ‘liberal’ and the American authoritarian bordering on fascist are two sides of the same coin.
mfi
johnthebon
Nice essay. Reminds me of the Rousseau line about westerners, who “do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains”
someofparts
You know, even at the microcosm of my job I notice that some of the key people in charge have a corrupted relationship to responsibility. Designated scapegoats are held responsible for things they don’t do, things they don’t even have the power to do. Meanwhile, the corrupt ones who have a bit of power decline to accept responsibility for things they actually do in front of multiple witnesses. Not just decline, but get positively outraged at the very idea that they should.
Imagine the most cut-throat gangs that stereotypes tell us to expect to encounter in the most desperate slums. Now dress those folks up in the most expensive clothes you can find and put them in the finest cars and biggest mansions and you have a good idea of who runs this place.
Larry
“Wielding political/social/economic power is not difficult, people like me do it all the time which is why conservatives such as myself are far higher up the pecking order than voluntarily impotent ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ such as you dear reader. “
Damn, someone is full of themself.
If you dear mfi, and your ilk are the masters of the universe, why did you let the global economy slide into this god awful recession? Or will you be trying to blame someone else for that?
someofparts
Conservatives are farther up the pecking order because you have such a powerful machine of disinformation setting things up for you. The possibility of even having an effective conversation about important things has been deliberately destroyed by rendering the language useless for it. Any organizing done here can’t just start with grass roots. People would have to be separated from our televisions and taught from the ground up how to re-attach useful meanings to our own language.
markfromireland
@ Larry April 2, 2014
Really you need to get a grip but thank you for demonstrating so clearly why nobody gives a flying f*ck about what American ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ such as you say or do. Nowhere did I claim to be a master of the universe. It’s well known that I’m a Conservative European Catholic and heavily inv0lved in Conservative Catholic politics. It’s equally well known that the conservative parties have dominated European politics for more than a generation. We’ve done so because, unlike you Larry, we concentrate on fulfilling our political agenda and keeping our electorates happy. We cut loose with the non-sequiturs and the ad-hominems only after we’ve achieved our goals. You should try it sometime. That’s the difference between us and the frivolous dilettantes that constitute the American ‘left’ – we’ve concentrated on setting the agenda and achieving political power so that we can accomplish our political goals whereas you just fritter away your time and energy on … on nothing Larry dear boy, nothing.
That’s why you can’t get people to vote for you and God knows the quality of your opposition is so drastically inferior that chucking them out of office should be a cakewalk. I sometimes wonder if that’s why people like you are so petulant and then I think ‘really who gives a damn if they want to live their lives as serfs let ’em’.
mfi
markfromireland
@ someofparts April 2, 2014
Excuses, excuses. I repeat what I’ve just written above. The quality of your political opposition is so inferior that getting rid of them should be a cakewalk. But you’re not going to do it because as I’ve also written above the American ‘liberal’ and the American authoritarian bordering on fascist are two sides of the same coin.
Government can only take place with at the very least the acquiescence of the governed. The fact that that has to be pointed out to you is really quite remarkable.
mfi
Larry
MFI,
“It’s equally well known that the conservative parties have dominated European politics for more than a generation.”
Which means you need to be held accountable for the failed economy not only in your own country but with folks like you around the world who caused the greatest economic collapse in about 80 years. I noticed you avoided this in your snotty little response to me so would you like to take another shot at it
For all of your huff and puff, you appear to be nothing more than another arrogant clown troll.
scott
@markfromireland
Generally speaking, if you’re actually confident in being right about what you believe, you talk about that rather than wasting energy calling people you disagree with serfs, slaves, and parasites. That sort of invective fits in quite well with someone who’s authoritarian and wants to demonize or de-humanize his opponents, which makes your stated opposition to authoritarianism risible. I agreed with Ian’s post, which accurately indicts our failures as Americans and points the way to doing something about it if we can get off our asses. Your comments add exactly nothing to what he said, although you seem to have enjoyed them, which I guess was the point. Cheers, dude!
markfromireland
Larry people like you are the ones with something to prove. You’re the ones whose intellectual, ethical, and philosophical shallowness has ensured that despite the fact that your opposition consists of a catastrophically inept government dominated by right-wing extremists going back for more than a generation that you can’t get people to vote for you. We’re the ones with public transport systems that work, whose schools produce children that can read, who have health systems that work, and so on. Or to put it another way we live longer than you and are better educated than you and we have those advantages because we fought for them. Your the one who has chosen to allow all those things to be taken away from you.
mfi
Celsius 233
@ markfromireland
April 2, 2014
… Or to put it another way we live longer than you and are better educated than you and we have those advantages because we fought for them. Your the one who has chosen to allow all those things to be taken away from you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Touche’!
None so blind as those who won’t see.
Americans are on their version of the Titanic, with the stern well under, and screaming at the “quitters” for abandoning the ship (changing course/policies, for those too dense to get it)
and refusing the reality staring them in the face.
markfromireland
@ scott April 2, 2014
Why yes indeed Scott, which is why Larry’s immediate resort to ad hominem and non-sequitur was so pleasing to me. He wasn’t capable of answering my points and proved it. The utter inability of people such as Larry to cope with people who contradict them is one of the many reasons why the American ‘left’ has been manifestly intellectually and politically bankrupt for more than a generation. It’s one of the many reasons why despite the fact that you’re governed by an spectacularly inept, incompetent, and corrupt government dominated by less than likable right-wing extremists that the American electorate have taken one look at what people like Larry are offering and rightly decided not to touch it with a bargepole.
It’s not that the current American government is either palatable, competent, or good, it’s that the alternative is even less palatable, less competent, and worse. Perhaps the Larrys of the world could try something really radical and make the miniscule effort required to raise the level of their game a tiny bit? It might pay substantial electoral dividends.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Celsius 233 April 2, 2014
The hell of it is that the level of utterly avoidable human suffering is becoming more and more appalling by the minute.
mfi
Larry
“Larry people like you are the ones with something to prove.”</i.
Yet you keep avoiding my simple question with your tap dancing maneuvers here MFI. If as you say you are part of that political group who "have dominated European politics for more than a generation", how did you let things get out of control and create the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Disparage me all you want and create personifications of me that fit your biases, but any response short of answering this succinct question in a succinct manner could indicate that you're not as smart as you are portraying yourself.
Greg T
Agreed with the post. It’s easy to blame the elites for the deteriorating condition of the country ( and there’s plenty of blame to be assigned there), but we ignore our own role in it. At some point, we as a country decided it wasn’t necessary to fight for what we wanted. It was easier to make accommodations. We took for granted the sacrifices made on our behalf by prior generations and frankly, we’ve squandered many of them.
Now, it has become an existential requirement for public involvement. Alternate power structures MUST emerge to counterbalance the pernicious forces at work in the society.
Power is not something asked for. Power is taken. The labor organizers of the 1930s did not ask for representation. They demanded it. And they were willing to go to the mattresses for it.
markfromireland
Larry you’re being more than slightly disingenuous in fact your being downright dishonest. The financial disaster to which you’re referring is the one made in America by American banks and speculators. The ones that were “too big to fail”. Your country, your government, your banks your failure. Your miserable abject failure. It’s not even slightly surprising that you’d try to shift the blame.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Greg T April 2, 2014
Yup, the horrific thing is that it’s been allowed to degenerate to this point. Competition may not always be a good thing in economics but the ability to ‘throw the bums out’ and put in a set of competing bums is pretty much essential in politics.
mfi
EGrise
For me this is the nut of what both MFI and our host are saying. The political “left” in the US has been coasting for decades on the inertia of the New Deal and the Great Society, while the conservatives and corporatists have gotten organized, planned and acted. Sure, many of them are vicious nutbags but they’re effective nonetheless – certainly more effective than the “frivolous dilettantes” and third-wayers we’ve got now.
Imagine what an actual ground-level US “left” party would look like. Imagine a party that provided free child care for working parents, all you have to do is sign this card and party members will look after your kids. And when you come to pick them up, here’s a flyer about our slate of candidates coming up in the next city council election and a short explanation of why the rent is too damn high and what we plan to do about it.
But that would require work, dedication, sacrifice, a vision for a better tomorrow for everyone (including others unlike one’s self – see Stirling’s previous entry) and courage (we know such an arrangement would be attacked by the corporatists as Communist, Socialist, Cultists, Child Molesters, etc. so the party would have to fight back hard).
I don’t see those qualities coming to the fore until things get REALLY bad, and currently American elites are in a race to construct an inescapable surveillance and security state to forestall any sort of challenge (I don’t think it will work, but that’s another subject).
So I understand Ian and MFI’s contempt(?) for so many American leftists. We’ve really let ourselves degenerate and we have no one but ourselves to blame.
EGrise
Greg T:
Exactly right.
someofparts
Well MFI, I plan to keep making my own damn choices about my own situation regardless of any other person’s opinions about it, including yours. I know zip about life as it is lived in Ireland or Europe and I don’t imagine you know squat about trailer park life in the American South. When it comes to dishing out attitude, you’re actually downright civilized compared to the fuckers I live around.
nihil obstet
Endless Apologia, next chapter
What’s the point? That we should all be like Boxer in Animal Farm, working for the brighter future? That we accept collective guilt?
Should we fear the hand of God striking us with plagues because we have been insufficiently leftist? I guess that’s the big one, because every nation has wallowed in sin, however you define sin. The Romans loved bread and circuses too much, the Soviets didn’t love their tractors enough, the Chinese in the later 1960s lost their revolutionary fervor. They’re all sinners, sinners I tell you! And they got their just reward as we will get ours.
It is a great temptation to preen in my own righteousness by indulging in these contemplations about how sinful the rest of the world is. I’ve been a card carrying socialist ever since I heard Michael Harrington over 40 years ago. I have volunteered in campaigns, and worked to get candidates to run. I have joined demonstrations. I have lobbied my elected representatives. I have been in the voting booth every time they opened, primaries, elections, referendums. I have voted for the farthest left candidate, meaning that the candidate for whom I voted in the primary never became the Democratic candidate in the election. But I usually voted for the slightly less evil, although in a few cases I couldn’t stand it and did a write-in.
I guess my error in thinking is that I haven’t yet advanced to the conviction that most of my fellow humans are just bad. Given their support of things like torture and mass killings, I inch in that direction. However, I still believe that we are all just highly adaptive, and in a complex world, that adaptivity can be led to bad things. A decent political system will work with humans as they are, not with humans as it needs them to be.
One of my reasons for reading here is that I find the analysis illuminating and probably that I usually agree with enough of the assumptions that a dialogue is possible. However, I wonder if anyone here who accepts his or her responsibility “as a group” is doing so without a mental asterisk pointing to the note that “I saw through it all; I’m not responsible.” The right at least blames the left for causing God to send hurricanes; the left just blames each other. I doubt that’s a winning strategy, no matter how good it feels personally.
Eureka Springs
Sadly, I don’t recall ever disagreeing with Ian more than I do now. I don’t see the U.S. from its founding to this very day as a democracy. And with each passing year of my near 50 years on this blue marble I see it as less and less debateable.
My major measures of democracy are (but not limited to):
Representative of the will of the people.
Rule of law…most especially at the top.
Ability of the people to directly amend the constitution. Put another way, ability to abolish or dramatically change our government peacefully. Mentioned in the declaration of independence but avoided like a plague in the constitution.
Open government… no secret law, courts, budgets, etc.
We the people were never given the opportunity to directly vote upon the constitution we live under. The constitution establishes a republic… which in our case is contempt for even fearful of democracy… yet so many still claim democracy is what we have?
As for people accepting responsibility for the way things are… no matter how well one does this or nay… it does not make what we live in a democracy.
Larry
” The financial disaster to which you’re referring is the one made in America by American banks and speculators. The ones that were “too big to fail”. “
Really mfi? This is your response? It may have started here (by conservatives btw), but the austerity programs that European conservatives initiated afterwards made it much worse and enduring there than it was here. The stimulus money Obama got passed through Congress, though not nearly enough to do what needed to be done, enabled the U.S. to recover far faster than Great Britain, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, et al.
And since you think this is really all of the America’s fault, wasn’t it in London where the Libor scandal broke which is administered by the British Bankers’ Association? This scandal reverberated around the world depriving millions of people here and in Europe funds that could have been used in vital areas of education, health care and housing.
Were you and your ilk twiddling your thumbs when this was going on?
Dan Lynch
Ian, you lost me at the 3rd sentence, where you claimed we live in a democracy. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Switzerland may be a democracy, but the US is a plutocracy, and was DESIGNED to be a plutocracy from day one.
It’s hard to think of any election in my lifetime that made much difference.
The Vietnam war would have happened no matter which party we elected.
The late 70’s – early 80’s recession would have happened no matter which party we elected.
Deregulation would have happened no matter which party we elected (deregulation began under Carter and continued under Clinton).
The Great Recession would have happened no matter which party we elected.
TARP would have happened no matter which party we elected.
As for Al Gore possibly making a difference, recall that Al Gore was pro-austerity, pro-deregulation, pro free trade, pro-Israel, and selected a rabid NeoCon as his running mate. In the end, Gore couldn’t even carry his home state.
Disagree on being able to start new parties in America. Our winner-take-all elections assure a two-party system.
Disagree on being able to take control of existing parties …. not without money to make it happen.
Ian, you are blaming the victim.
Mandos
While American banks did a lot of harm, mainstream European (conservative) politicians have also refused to face certain realities and are busy preparing the ground for the European far-right in refusing to face those realities. There’s more than enough attempt to protect TBTF French and German banks going on in Europe, not to mention the whole playing of German pensioners off against Spanish youth. It’s disgusting. That hardly excuses Americans, but European conservatives are self-righteous clowns. The mainstream European left is, of course, mostly useless in rather familiar ways.
Aside from one or two countries running gigantic unsustainable trade surpluses, the rest of Europe is in the process of deconstructing itself, with the rise in Greek infant mortality just the tip of the iceberg.
Like I said, disgusting.
Ian Welsh
Electing Nixon in 72 mattered. Electing Reagan in 70 mattered. Not selecting Kennedy over Carter Mattered. Electing Bush did matter, it did again in 2004.
Winner take all systems often have three parties. Canada does, Britain does, and on occasion the parties flip places.
Remarkable how 90% marginal taxation every happened in a plutocracy. If you can’t explain FDR and the post war crush the rich consensus with “designed plutocracy” and you can’t, then you’re wrong.
How did you lose the post-war good years? You had the rich on the ground, your foot on their throat, and you let them get back up.
You’re the victim because you lost. Why did you lose?
Endless apologia.
Mandos
Not only do I completely agree with Ian’s point, BUT I also think that progressives have made some of their own bed that they lie in, and I don’t just mean some Democrats, I mean some of the sorts of people who frequent blogs like these.
The truth is that mfi is right: the quality of the American right is extremely poor. But they’re good at one thing. That is: understanding the system within which they operate and the society on which they operate. Convinced American left-progressives cling to a form of puritanical idealism with one hand, but then are happy to throw groups under the bus with the other hand. So the dominance of right-wing politics is not surprising: the left simply hasn’t showed up.
Mandos
To be fair they don’t have empowered, directly elected presidencies. France has a directly-empowered presidency, and they have a mostly two-party system: PS vs some incarnation of a conservative party that is now the UMP. The rise of a third option (FN/Le Pen) is not generally considered a sign of health in the French case. I can’t really think of a country with an FPTP parliament AND a one-person directly-elected empowered presidency which has healthy multi-party politics. Brazil, for example, has PR in its lower house. India has many parties but currently the only viable “main government” parties are INC and the BJP (and the presidency is mostly figurehead).
Mandos
Germany has multi-party coalition politics, and despite its own HUGE, DISPROPORTIONAL contribution to Eurosclerosis, at a domestic level is somewhat healthier in governance than most other countries. It has mixed-member PR and no empowered presidency (there is a figurehead who gives pretty speeches and awards and is elected by a quasi-legislature in a weird ritual). I think this is probably the best model for highly-centralized representative democracy currently extant.
Eureka Springs
Mattering does not make what we have a democracy. Honestly Ian… don’t you think the word democracy would at least accidentally appear one time in the constitution if it is at all what we are?
How can you so dutifully (thank you for doing so) point out things over the years like the 100 to 1 ratio against bank bailouts…and the high percentile from all stripes who would have the US in some sort of single payer for all situation… and countless stories like Naomi Wolf’s article today making as clear as Kent State that the government would rather make dissenters terrorists and violently usurp them than have anything remotely near a democratic process…and still call what we have a democracy? I’m truly baffled.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
Eureka Springs
Apologies if this is a double post. I think my first attempt vanished into the ether.
Mattering does not make what we have a democracy. When neither of the choices are at all there to represent anyone but their few owners. Honestly Ian… don’t you think the word democracy would at least accidentally appear one time in the constitution if it is at all what we are?
How can you so dutifully (thank you for doing so) point out things over the years like the 100 to 1 ratio against bank bailouts…and the high percentile from all stripes who would have the US in some sort of single payer for all situation… and countless stories like Naomi Wolf’s article today making as clear as Kent State that the government would rather make dissenters terrorists and violently usurp them than have anything remotely near a democratic process…and still call what we have a democracy? I’m truly baffled. In fact I think Stirling’s post below and your new post on Europe are filled with points demonstrating how far we (the west) are from being democracies.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
Jessica
Making elections matter requires having the power of a mobilized social movement. Maintaining such mobilization is inherently difficult. Exercising the power of concentrated wealth on the other hand is quite easy. This is also why comparing conservative and left politics has little point. The one has the power of the oligarchs and their elites at their backs. The other has that same power aimed against it and also encouraging it to sell out.
The experience of the Populists in the US in the 1880s and 1890s is instructive. Through its experience of class war at the hands of banks, corporations, and local land owner-loan sharks, the Populist Party had come to the radical position that the monetary system itself needed to be democratically controlled. They were hijacked by Silver Democrats, whose substitute proposal was to replace the gold standard with a gold+silver standard. (This is somewhat analogous to the use of the public option to prevent discussion of singla payer.)
Two factors in this destruction of the Populist Party are most relevant. First, the Silver Democrats derived their power from funding by silver mining interests. Second, the hijacking of the Populist Party as a whole was achieved by taking it over in those states where it was a purely electoral phenomenon and its leadership was mostly elected officials and candidates concerned about their own election. The states where the Populist Party grew out of a powerful social movement (the Cooperative movement) opposed this. (Two of the strongest states were Texas and Kansas.)
At this point in time, at least in the United States and parts of Europe as well, elections serve primarily to create the illusion of legitimacy for oligarchic policies.
It is interesting that in your list of elections that mattered, you did not list 1992/1996 or 2008/2012. Our experience with Clinton and Obama suggests that elections turn out to matter far less than the campaigns make it seem like they would (or would have, in the case of Gore/Kerrey/Carter/Mondale).
S Brennan
I’m not sure anybody in a first world country have any idea what [Wall-St/DC] have turned the USA into.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/02/3421937/ups-fires-250-drivers/
paintedjaguar
Ian: “How did you lose the post-war good years? You had the rich on the ground, your foot on their throat, and you let them get back up.”
Good question. And as a citizen of the US I don’t have any good answers, other than our heritage as a nation of grasping hucksters. What I do know is that even before WW2 was over, the Cold War was being ramped up, much of it in secret. Within the first decade after, the Democrats and Big Labor purged their leftist factions, the anti-labor Taft-Hartley act was passed and the AMA (American Medical Association) spent at least four million to defeat national health care in the US. So maybe US elites were never all that down and out, however loudly they complained. And whatever the causes, the sidetracking of the “Left” into identity politics makes it easy to keep the game of musical chairs going.
It’s quite true that the US constitution was specifically designed from the beginning to keep elites in the driver’s seat. That was never a secret, except perhaps to the heavily propagandized masses. Add to that relative prosperity for some portions of the populace (for as long as necessary, anyway). Short of desperation, people cling to what comforts they have. Obamacare is the latest major example of this divide and conquer strategy in action. Sounds rather too much like Secret Masters of the Universe, doesn’t it? Hard to determine such widely distributed and self-working causation, but a lot of machinations are actually documented, though not publicized. Is it still a conspiracy if a great deal of the process takes place out in the open?
It might be useful to ask how Great Britain could lose its’ public railways and seems poised to lose its’ healthcare system, as Holland already has. Can you blame European decline on American dominance? I’d say that a key component in the US is loss of community and atomization. Is that inevitable, given Western values? Does a certain level of prosperity always entail the loss of democratic rule (assuming such exists to begin with)? I certainly don’t know.
someofparts
“Remarkable how 90% marginal taxation every happened in a plutocracy. If you can’t explain FDR and the post war crush the rich consensus with “designed plutocracy” and you can’t, then you’re wrong.”
FDR and 90% taxes happened before television. Maybe the insidious machinations of mass media, which is so costly only plutocrats can own it, is the elephant in the living room here.
theowlsarenotwhattheyseem
If you can’t see that FDR and the New Deal were the same “plutocrats” wielding their power, and you imagine that during the FDR era the “left” was putting its boot on the throat of the “right,” you are working under a false left/right paradigm that never existed. The New Deal was a short term fix, for “jobs” that were not permanent but which did give a brief period of income for a few. A real revolutionary displacement of the “right” would not have been the New Deal, it would have been a complete restructuring of the US Govt. And that didn’t happen.
The New Deal was a loss leader, in accounting terms. When you see that, and accept it, you can begin thinking of what power the “left” can wield. If you imagine the New Deal as a great thing, you are lingering in the fantasy, and I would assume that you are lingering because it soothes your ego’s identity as a “leftist” who needs a success story to point to and hold out as your Glory Days.
scott
@Jessica
I agree with her that the lessons of history seem to show that elections without strong social movements to drive them are pretty empty. I guess my question for anyone on that is pretty simple-minded, which I’m sorry about, but here it is: How do you build a strong social movement now? I’ve heard variants of this solution for maybe the last five years, ie, make a movement to force politicians to do what we want, but I’ve never read anything that explained to me plausibly how you go about doing that. I’m not being snarky. I totally agree that’s what we need to do. But either from my own inexperience or lack of imagination, I can’t picture the big HOW which will make that happen, although I really, really want to. If anyone could enlighten me on that, I’d really appreciate it and would be honestly thankful.
Bruce Wilder
In the U.S., the New Deal institutional system was going to be taken apart. That wasn’t, in itself, a choice. Like any structure, it would have to be renovated and rebuilt, and the schedule for that was built in, from birth. The same was true of the post-war social welfare state in European countries, and the European Union project, though the timing might have been slightly later, since the date of birth was slightly later.
After 1970, the Left pretty much collapsed. A lot has been written lately about the rise of Movement Conservatism, about how they built organizations, about how Reagan succeeded, about how Thatcher succeeded, and some about how neoliberalism emerged, a little about how New Labour emerged. Maybe there’s a literature I’m not aware of, documenting how the previously socialist Left got absorbed into the consensus, coalition politics of western Europe, giving up all possibility of resisting, as it mindlessly consented to the expansion of the European Union into a corporate wetdream.
The American social liberals and the social democrats in Europe had no vision for that inevitable renovation, redesign and rebuilding project. There was no left architecture. And, no understanding, really, of how the architecture of the old system worked, or how any architecture of political economy works.
Mainstream political commentary and debate in the U.S. became scripted into a conversation (and sometimes a televised shoutfest) between neoliberals and conservative libertarians, both paid professionals. Their ideologies, stripped of any insight into, or genuine conviction about how the world worked, were just little rhetoric-generating engines, spewing out synthetic, bland, predictable opinions, which rationalized everything that was going on, without giving anyone much understanding of the choices being made.
So, we’ve had a dismantling project underway, for 30 or 40 years, and an endless stream of synthesized political narratives, the main feature of which has been complacency and a denial of conflict or choice.
And, each moment of crisis is staged in the same way, as a hold-up. Collapse of the system threatens. The Sky is falling. “What’s your alternative?” And, there’s no alternative.
It is a failure of responsibility, rooted in a failure of architectural vision that leaves us with a cowardly preservationism.
The Left simply does not know how to think in terms of building institutions. And, can only negotiate impotently over their controlled collapse.
Ché Pasa
Oh for doG’s sake. There is no genuine Left in American politics, and there hasn’t been one for decades. There are two rightist parties, one active, radical and reactionary, the other passive, protective and conservative. Both serve the interests of plutocrats and oligarchs. Other parties are possible, but unless they are aligned with or funded by one or the other major party, they have no chance of achieving political power. The system is designed that way and it stays that way no matter the vicissitudes of the People.
This is true whether or not the People are in an uproar. It is baked into the American two-party political system. It grows out of the very Constitution which is so revered by so many Americans and others around the world.
The election of Washington mattered, perhaps more than any other election except for those that came afterwards. As much as they have mattered, the political principles of the system they are and have been a part of hasn’t much changed over the centuries despite numerous upheavals and a terrible civil war that left half the country in ruins and under a ten-year occupation subject to renewal as needed.
Those principles which abide through all the political vicissitudes and uproars include authoritarianism, imperialism (both domestic and overseas), resource stripping, economic exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few, continuous small-scale warmongering and occasional major-scale warmongering, and oligarchic rule — among other permanent aspects.
These principles do not change no matter who is in the White House.
They can be expressed and implemented with greater or lesser degrees of cruelty and brutality, with a smiling face or with a sneer, but they are fundamentals, and we the people do not have the option to change them through the few allowed democratic processes.
Those who say we the people do have the power to change these fundamental principles through the means we are allowed are full of it.
scruff
Eureka: I tend to not view the American social/political order as a serviceable democracy either (which is probably explained by the fact that the first general election I could vote in was stolen by court order), but much as I would like this to abrogate my responsibility, it doesn’t. Even if we go so far as to say that the US government is essentially an occupying force in the nation, it remains up to the citizenry/subjects to take responsibility into their own hands if they want to do away with an occupying power.
Mandos
BINGO BINGO BINGO. Institution-building is the key. There must be something to hold onto.
different clue
There is a blog called Rigorous Intuition 2.0 by Canadian journalist and blogger Jeff Wells which offers answers to some of these “how did it happen” questions. Part of weakening and disabling the “left” was achieved through Deep State assassinations such as Kennedy, King, Kennedy, X, and numerous less famous people. CoIntelPro and other broad-scale government programs were conducted to prevent or disrupt and destroy the organizing of which some people here speak. Such Occupation Government control methods and people remain in place today. “Occupy Wall Street” was broken up fast and hard, was it not?
Eureka Springs
Agreed scruff.
Silversalty
I agree with you for the most part but I think you go a little too far, at least in ignoring the forces that manipulate elections and average people’s attitudes. When I state that I agree, it was on one of those blogs from years ago that I disagreed with Newberry regarding the suggested difficulty of overcoming the effects of gerrymandering. If the politician of a gerrymandered district was so misrepresentative of the people in the district – say, as today with the 0.1% – then (s)he’d not be elected.
But consider this. Progressives are supposed to be so supportive of unions. But unions are not progressive and average Americans and average workers don’t like unions. And it ain’t envy as some asshole suggested and ditto heads regurgitated. Look at Christie in NJ. He got elected with enormous backing from unions. Why did they back him? Because they’d get a good cut of the rip off he was going to pull on the people of NY and NJ. All the insane construction by the Port Authority is being done by unions and paid for by average people. Working people. Unions are happy to rip off average workers. And they have been since not that long after Woody Guthrie left us.
Look at the Hollywood black list. Driven by unions. Against who? The very people, American socialist and American communist, that dedicated much of their lives to empowering unions and workers. Without those people there’d never have been an FDR New Deal. Reagan was a union head. Speaking of Reagan, union workers loved him. He was the manly man. Not like Carter and certainly not Dukakis. Was there a union uprising when Reagan destroyed the air traffic controllers union? Fuck no.
In NYC the Transport Workers Union went on strike a few years ago. Most people supported them. What happened after that? Cab drivers had a 50 cent per fare tax added to pay for the union deal. That was about $15 a day that cab drivers had to work for to pay to union workers. Have you ever heard any expression of concern from the TWU? Fuck no.
Carter was actually viewed as a liberal and, with the help of unions, a pussy liberal. When the American embassy workers were taken hostage in Iran every construction site in NYC had a giant sign indicating how many days the hostage situation had been going on. Of course every day the local papers had a photo of the updated signs. Did you see any construction sites posting signs of how many days Bin Laden had been free after organizing the murder of almost 3,000 people in America? Fuck no. Do you think the bullshit at Tora Bora would have happened if union workers had daily signs like that? Do you think it would have been so easy to switch to Iraq if union workers had put up signs like that? Fuck no.
You wonder why Scott Walker defeated the recall effort? Because the campaign against him was mainly a defense of unions. It was an incredible mistake by the progressive community. It should have been about the 99%. Let the unions fight for average Americans rather than the other way around.
OK. Enough about unions.
Ted Kennedy was never going to beat Carter. Carter was an incumbent and Kennedy was viewed as a playboy, nothing like RFK or JFK (the JFK playboy aspect was always kept hush hush). Chappaquiddick.
Manipulated elections. Muskie should have been the candidate to run against Nixon in 1972. To this day I don’t understand the “Canuck” line. But somehow it ended Muskie’s candidacy. McGovern had the charisma of a dead log. Reagan had the “October surprise” and the help of unions in ridiculing Carter. Carter had an asshole lead the raid to free the Iran hostages. His presidency was dead after that.
Gore invented the Internet. Kerry had band aid medals (remarkable considering a squealer like McCain was always considered a great hero – but then that’s all part of the manipulation of the perceptions of the American public).
And of course we’re now stuck with the Great Black Hope-a-Dope. The man has been going after social security and medicare since day one in office. His Obamacare is a massive gift to the biggest parasites in health care, basically institutionalizing them – and that’s supposed to be the proudest progressive achievement of this presidency. But in contrast to what you’ve written I think most average Americans viewed Obama as the most liberal .. err .. progressive. He was black after all and he went before crowds of tens of thousands of people and itemized their problems and they felt, ‘He knows. He’s lived it, in spades.’ “Postpartisanship” indeed! Perceptions.
In NYC the Occupy Wall Street movement was harassed by police from the beginning eventually pepper-sprayed out of there while at the same time the bronze bull a few blocks down Broadway had a 24 hour police guard. Police. Another union. A billionaire killed the movement by suggesting it was dirty. DFHs!! Perceptions. Has anyone challenged Wall Street before or since?
Andrew Pataki?
Americans are fucked. And yes, you’re right. There should be much more protesting. David H. Koch lives at 740 Park Ave. Why there isn’t a crowd there day and night to harass him like there is at abortion clinics is beyond me – though the police would rapidly race to the scene to protect him and beat the demonstrators. I suspect the people at abortion clinics are paid to be there while the people that find the Kochs abominable need to work to survive – if they can find work.
Celsius 233
Silversalty
April 4, 2014
Americans are fucked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And fucked up!
But what really chaps my ass? American citizens failure to understand the basics of what constitutes responsibility. IMO, that is the single biggest failure of America’s citizens.
And until that is understood; nothing, fucking nothing, will change for the better; only for the worse, in terms of human rights…
reslez
An arsonist breaks into your house, ties you to your bed and sets about building a really big fire. Who’s fault is it when your house burns down?
Is it “endless apologia” to say the homeowner’s responsibility must necessarily be moderated by the coercion and force wielded against him? Now, if the homeowner scoots over in his bed (under the ropes) and goes back to sleep, that is pretty damning, but how much how much of a free actor is he, really? What about his wife struggling in the bed next to him — she also deserves to burn to death? The “apologia” you deny others is the one you need them to give you for even suggesting this.
The problems you’ve identified are not unique to a place or time. They are true of people in general. The problem is not a particular society or country — the problem is human nature. Whether that problem can be solved is a question of whether culture can override biology.
The human brain fears loss more strongly than it hopes for gain. The rich fear losing a part of their wealth more intensely than the poor hope for a better life. And conversely the poor are more afraid of losing what they have than they are willing to fight for more. This makes human beings fundamentally conservative. It makes it very difficult to motivate people for change. The culture of the West, of the world majority, makes these problems worse. Is this apologia or the simple truth?
Jessica
@Scott
I don’t know of anyone who knows how to build a social movement, particularly under current conditions in the West. Step One may be to simply admit that and to stay with that knowledge, even though it is unpleasant.
One thing that does seem to be clear from the Arab Spring and the events in Ukraine is that if you don’t have a clear organized program ahead of time, someone else will step to the head of your parade the moment you throw out the old regime. But that just brings us back to “we need a social movement”, doesn’t it.
Right now, I think that the understanding of the current situation by the kind of people who would want a social movement is still quite low. Not because we are bad people but because things have changed so fast, so much opacity has been added to the system, and previous venues where some degree of shared understanding could be developed have been deliberately polluted (universities) or squashed (unions). So building up some reasonably accurate model of how things work now would help. Developing the capacity to discuss things without immediately descending into emotional attacks would help. So would learning to write/speak in a way that encourages discussion rather than just satisfies one’s own need to vent/demonstrate superiority/whatever. Skepticism toward any theory that boils down to “he is/they are assholes” would help. (Yes, they may act in a way that within your and my value system males them an asshole, but what is going on, what is the social structure that allows and rewards that kind of behavior.)
Understanding what factors were working to help previous successful social movements would help. For example, having so much of the work force working together in quite large numbers in factories was a big factor in the eventual success of the labor movement. The role of mechanization of Southern agriculture in reducing the dependence on super-exploitation of African-American workers and the training and confidence that African-American veterans brought back from WW2. All the Rosie the Riveters and college educated women immediately after WW2 who went back to the kitchen in the 1950s but whispered in their daughter’s ears “Don’t settle for the kind of life I had”.
My best guess is that building a powerful enough social movement will require far more theoretical understanding than we have now, and not in the form of one or a few geniuses, but understanding built up among a fairly large number of people. We will have to figure out where our advantages lay and where the blindspots of the current system are. I think we will find that excessive reliance on social media, at least as constituted up till now, can only build willowy movements that grow large without growing dense, that are too easily blown over, and that are easily hijacked.
Lately, I have the sense that we need some kind of moral maturing. People need to be able to understand on a deep level that someone owning billions of dollars is not anything like you or me owning a house. It is in fact the exact opposite. We need a moral system such that the word “billionaire” takes on the same tone as “child molester” but without being simply and purely envy. To put it another way, we need to be able to clearly distinguish between creativity and innovation on the one hand versus taking the products of many people, even of the culture and making them your own private property on the other hand (e.g. Zuckerberg).
None of the traditional religions has been capable of this, not on a society-wide level, but what form this moral maturing takes, it will need to speak both to believers and non-believers (at least in the US; not as big an issue in Canada or Europe).
Finally, my guess is that a widespread social movement will come from somewhere none of us are expecting. It may not look like a social movement or at least not anything with political significance. Or it will be something that finds a way to stay more or less off the grid. Some way to build rhizomatic networks of trust before showing up too much on the system’s radar. Because a society based on cooperation will have to be more sophisticated and mature than one based on coercion.
But again, my short answer to your question is I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else does either.
paintedjaguar
The root of civic disengagement may be as simple as an overabundance of entertainment, where engagement becomes strictly a chore for most of us, rather than a potential diversion as well as a duty. If so, I don’t know how you get out of that trap. Even if this is true, though, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other factors involved.
Many have wondered why the U.S. should be the most conservative of developed nations. One can make a good argument that it’s due to building on a fundamentally restrictive and undemocratic foundation – the U.S. constitution. The best explication I’ve run across is Daniel Lazare’s “The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy”:
http://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Lazare/e/B001H6WRUW/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Here’s a shorter look at this idea from Seth Ackerman, who calls the U.S. constitution “a charter for plutocracy”:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/03/burn-the-constitution/
“At this very moment, when expansionary monetary policy and debt relief for homeowners are demanded by the Left to address the ongoing, grinding social crisis, it should not be forgotten that “a rage for paper money” and “an abolition of debts” were precisely the sorts of “wicked project[s]” that James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 10, specifically hoped his Constitution would rule out.”
Petro
The inclination to share power, to disdain power, to relegate power to baser instinct, to eschew it, to roll one’s eyes at it… these are all virtues of the liberal mind.
Of course, almost all of liberalism’s aspirations require that a tipping point of fellow humans share these virtues. As it is so obviously not the case at present – although the data is extremely skewed because a minority holds true power – said minority is free to laugh at us and mock us for our “impotence.”
And so they do (I’m looking at you, markfromireland, and a few of the usual obsequious suspects here.)
It’s an old argument, not “becoming your enemy.” But it’s a fact. The mindset that is required in order to wrench the power and make things go “our way” is the very mindset that we despise.
If you are a liberal, don’t get dragged into that gutter of criticism. It’s a criticism framed from power-philia.
So laugh away, and crucify away, and maybe it will always be this way. But I will never be that way. Because I listen to the rhythms of life, not the tattoo of the ordering mind.
Greg T
Power is really just the ability to get what you want. It’s also the ability to defend your position from onslaught. It can get out of hand, certainly. The oligarchs are proving this as we speak. There exists a fine line between exercising power and abusing it. If you’re referring to abuse of power, Petro, I agree. But obtaining power is critical for survival. At present, the public has ceded power and control to an aggressive, anti-social coterie of private interests. Left unchecked, our very survival is threatened by this.
It may be distasteful, but counter force is necessary.
Eureka Springs
Seems to me any social movements these days are always a response to something rather than establishing and sticking with their own values/agenda. Also how many social movements are democratic in structure in and of themselves? I’m thinking in particular of my involvement with progressives and the web site firedoglake for several years as well as OWS.
Rarely if at all do large numbers of people democratically define the problems… or democratically define needed solutions…and least of all do they stick with it.
Demos aka progressives were lied to on an overwhelming majority of issues by every senate/congressional/presidential candidate they backed. Just go back and read Blue America live chats with those prog. candidates in ’06 and ’08. And to this day they have demonstrated no spine on any issue since. Except how to usurp their own best interests. Remarkable spine there.
OWS a potential social movement, went way too fast for most newbies. Problems are massive in number, systemic in scope. Solutions suggested almost always omitted benefit for more people than they include. People new to the scene knew far less details than we who read the likes of Ian Welsh dot net over many years. People did not know or fully accept they live in a police state rather than a functioning representative democracy.
The whole 99 percent meme and get money out of politics… were both great but every detailed solution fell far short of a plan which would have changed things. You don’t take money and power from the oligarchs, their politicians and the police state with half measures and apologies. Never even start a negotiation with half measures or even just what you want. hell If want to pay a dollar for an item at a garage sale I start negotiating at nickel, maybe a quarter!
I believe the next effective social movement should be democratic, should work to establish democracy… but I do not believe most (as evidenced here and in my other experiences mentioned) realize we do not have a functioning democracy therefore we are not about to see social movements who work toward those ends anytime soon. First you have to admit what the root problems are. If you can’t admit there is no democracy at the governmental level…. All evidence I see suggests we don’t even know how to organize institutions/movements in the form of democracy. Perhaps because the majority don’t want one? Just like single payer vs for profit insurance… we in the US really never knew how to do single payer. At least other countries had working models on that front which most progs decided to ultimately ignore.
We know of closer to functioning democracies in Europe, but no actual real democratic nation/model out there functioning today. Of course these things never work in a vacuum which is all the more reason to define and not allow the constant massacre of words, their meaning.
S Brennan
The last three sentences explain how/why Obama became a US President.
http://io9.com/how-to-get-people-to-accept-unfairness-1553491099
Lisa Simeone
There are people around the country developing the institutions required for change — such as alternative currencies, such as locally controlled banks, such as citizen brigades stopping foreclosures, such as the Occupy-inspired funds that are relieving student debt. There are genuine people on the genuine left doing this work, hard work. Many resources here:
http://www.popularresistance.org
markfromireland
@ Jessica April 2, 2014
No it isn’t. Which is why American right-wingers who are only marginally less incompetent than American so-called ‘left wingers’ have been doing it for generations. It isn’t difficult but it does take determination and commitment and a willingness to work hard for their principles and beliefs. Qualities singularly lacking in the American ‘left’.
Keep on making the excuses Jessica you gladden the hearts of your political opponents every time you do so.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Petro April 4, 2014
That’s right Petro I mock them because mockery is what the unprincipled cowards that constitute the American ‘left’ deserve. Mockery is a very effective technique at preventing those who might otherwise be inclined to contemplate the American left’s ludicrous nostrums from doing so.
I also mock the sort of buffoon who uses words such as ‘obsequious’ in such a way as to make it perfectly obvious that they haven’t got even the remotest idea of what that word means:
obsequious: definition of obsequious in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)
American Heritage Dictionary Entry: obsequious
People can say many bad things about me and some of them may even be true but nobody has ever before been stupid enough to accuse me of obsequiousness, thank you for the entertainment.
The rest of your apologia for a hypocritical and craven refusal even to contemplate trying to make the world, if not a better place at least a somewhat less awful one, would be equally risible were it not so contemptible.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Ché Pasa April 3, 2014
Truth.
mfi
markfromireland
@ paintedjaguar April 3, 2014
I would say that it’s inevitable given American values. Your values are materialist – you’re taught to admire the rich. You’re also taught that “greed is good” – granted it was a fictional character that said that but the portrait that film painted of American social values was true to life in many ways. For at least a generation Americans have been taught that greed is good they’ve also been taught that it’s relatively easy to become rich in America. I suspect that this is why so many Americans vote for and support policies and politicians that are inimical to their interests. I once heard this explained as “Americans vote for their aspirations rather than their interests”. Seems about right to me.
It’s not exclusively an American phenomenon I see it here in Denmark as well. As Danish society became more prosperous it also became far less communitarian and far less egalitarian. I see the results of this particularly in the younger generation – the generation currently starting families. They’re far far less likely to be members of trade unions than people of my age. They are thus far more vulnerable to exploitation. The move from being a ‘samfund’ – a communitarian approach to life, to a society with a far more individualist ethos in which people live ‘hver for sig’ – everyone for themselves will, I fear, ultimately cost the average Dane dear.
mfi
markfromireland
Paintedjaguar’s point about “an overabundance of entertainment” is worth making. Not that it’s new, in fact it wasn’t new when Juvenal coined the phrase ‘panem et circenses’. The current batch of oligarchs seem to be dispensing with the the panem – presumably just circenses is more cost effective.
mfi
markfromireland
@ Greg T April 5, 2014
Yes, absolutely. I’d take it a little further in that I think one can usefully distinguish between negative power – the power to stop something happening or the power to stop somebody from doing something to you, and positive power, the power to make a desired outcome come to pass. A good (by which I mean an effective) trade-union/social democratic movement is a good example. Here in Scandinavia the unions had (and still do have to an extent) the negative power of stopping the capitalist class from trampling all over their workers and various positive powers such as a decent healthcare system available to all.
I keep on pointing out that government or rule if you want to get very basic about it is only possible with the, at the very least, acquiescence of the ruled. Once the populace no longer acquiesce (let alone consent) government becomes impossible.
mfi
markfromireland
@ someofparts April 2, 2014
I suspect I know a lot more about trailer park life in the American South than you think. In part because as a teenager I got a Jesuit scholarship to go to school and travel round the USA. Most of the schools I went to were in the South. Some of the things I saw (and heard – like a DJ reveling over the airways in the fact that somebody was about to be executed “burn Gary burn”) stay with me to this day. Far more importantly I’ve spent pretty much my entire adult life as a UN peacekeeper in the Middle East. I’ve had decades of seeing and hearing and smelling exactly how the trailer trash in uniform that constitute a large part of America’s armed forces behave – particularly when those whom they are treating with barbarity aren’t white. That culture – American trailer trash culture, those values, are the ones that now dominate your society mostly because those who had halfway decent values lacked the courage of their convictions.
I seem to remember you saying something along the lines of how you were able to defend yourself using firearms – good. Because as a conservative somebody like you whose not prepared to be trampled on and is prepared to put a fight to prevent it comes very much under the heading of good citizen. People unprepared or unwilling to defend their principles and their freedoms are unprincipled and deserve whatever’s coming to them.
mfi
markfromireland
@ EGrise April 2, 2014
You don’t have to imagine it. This is exactly what the Social Democrats did in Sweden and Norway (and to a lesser extent in Denmark) . Which is why they ruled those countries for decades.
In other words it would require having principles and principles moreover that you’re prepared to fight for. I’d love to see it happen. The current American government small ‘g’ and big ‘g’ alike is dominated by radical right-wing extremists that’s a bad situation and getting worse. Despite being manifestly incompetent to say nothing of arrogant and vicious they get away with it because their opposition is even more contemptible than they are.
I don’t hate American ‘leftists’ and ‘progressives’ I despise them and I despise them because as other commenters have pointed out above they’re just another wing of the only American political party in existence that matters. The authoritarian party.
mfi
scott
@Jessica @Lisa Simeone Thanks for (respectively) a very thoughtful long-form discussion of the things that need to happen for a mass social movement and citation of very specific things that are already happening. Both of you were helpful, and I appreciate it, hope others do too.