"[I]n this election, you have two very different visions to choose from." - Barack H. Obama
If only this were true. The United States boasts two right-wing political parties which dominate statecraft. Indeed, Obama has surrounded himself with prominent conservative officials hand-picked from the previous Bush administration, including a few responsible for the financial collapse on Wall Street. How many voters realize this, though? If they're aware of the favoritism Obama demonstrates towards corporations and bankers, how can Obama continue to campaign as a 'leftist' candidate? The truth seems to be that voter apathy combined with general ignorance of political dynamics amongst the populace makes for a ruinous cocktail of delusional faith and resurgent cynicism in a corrupt system. Fortunately, though, Occupy Wall Street and its analogous offshoots constituting the broader Occupy movement spanning the globe seem to be shedding light on the social and political discontent towards capitalism and the democratic process which are inextricably tied to one another.
It seems to be a cycle. The general thrust of discontent in reaction to scandals and so forth demands that the targeted problem be fixed or overthrown in favor of an effaceable replacement. This manifests in episodic bursts of public fury and media profiteering for a considerable length of time. Then it quiets down, with dissenters having decided that their protests successfully challenged the monolith of state power. Until the next time, that is. If not because of that, it's due to reduced momentum in the public outcry. The call of the television set is too strong for some to resist. Energy has been spent with no visible effect beyond forcing the ghouls to retreat for an indefinite length of time. But the disenfranchised can take solace in the fact that at least for now, the menacing sword of Damocles has ascended -- albeit still hanging ominously above their heads.
Two party-scenarios tend to generate a positive feedback loop in terms of the response candidates receive from the public. In one sense, the situation is akin to Pavlov's dog. The drooling populace has been trained to respond to the bell -- in this case, the rhetoric of the self-appointed political moderate where there's no actual promise (the food) to be delivered on. One of the candidates concedes ground to appear moderate in comparison to the other, so as to cater to their voter base's demographics. For instance, the public consensus (that is, the policies the public wants but doesn't get) is much to the left of Obama, but decidedly to the left of the GOP mainstays. By appearing to be the lesser of two evils in light of this, Obama would have an easier time snagging an election.
This played out well in the recent Republican nomination campaigns. Romney successfully ran as a Republican moderate with several positions comparable to Obama's, which attracted criticism charging that he was pulling too far to the left. But I think that any significant shift toward the left (indeed, significant because the mainstream GOP is already so far-right) is due to the fact that the public consensus is decidedly left-leaning.
This is not to say that the consensus will be, in any meaningful way, satisfactorily met. It exists solely as a useful metric from which politicians can curry public favor in the publics' naive hope that their demands will be acted upon and not merely heard. Whether or not the strategy to cater to this trend is successful depends on who's running and what's at stake. Why did George W. Bush get re-elected, if the public consensus is to the left of either party? Irrational fear of terrorism is a prominent factor in his winning the mandate, in this case.
He wasn't elected because the largest plurality at the time was right-leaning per se, but precisely because the Left is too weak to effectively counter antidemocratic forces on a parallel scale. I mention the Left in particular because it heralds what I believe to be truly democratic values. This is not to say that conservatives are inherently undemocratic. The Left simply has a tendency to embrace genuine reformism, which I think is a necessary step towards democratizing power relations between groups.
Strictly speaking, reformism belongs to neither the Left nor the Right. But the dictionary definition of "reform" tends to disqualify conservative approaches to problems, and retains its meaning as it extends into the political realm. The concept of change in general is future-oriented, not past-oriented. Why is the Left weak? It's divided amongst so many issues -- owing to its extensive and diverse spectrum, tapering off into disparate tangents. To illustrate, we boast a bevy of anti-state leftists: democratic socialists, anarcho-communists, Marxist communists, libertarian Marxists and Luxemburgians, to name just a few. Social democrats and other reformist liberals throng the statist Left. Genuine anti-statism is acquainted with the leftist tradition.
This intellectual diversity is not negative in itself, but renders the Left prone to needless sectarianism when ideology is elevated above solidarity. Western conservatives tend to be reactionary and thus find their identity rooted in a concretely defined heritage in the classical Liberal tradition, whereas leftists lack a concrete ground because their reformist tendencies mean they address issues as they present themselves. This leads to unique solutions to compliment unique problems.
If we attempted to catalog these approaches into an overarching theme, we would run into numerous contradictions. For instance, both Marxists and Anarchists desire the formation of a stateless, egalitarian society, but disagree on the approach to realizing such a conception. In contrast, there are disagreements, but conservatism is not nearly as disparate or fragmented. It's interesting to note that tendencies identified with contemporary American conservatism were decidedly progressive within their historical context. They have since been appropriated by modern-day conservatism as distorted caricatures of their former selves, standing in stark opposition to what the drafters of the Constitution intended.
I will take this opportunity to highlight the nuanced and layered meaning of "conservatism" within political discourse. "Conservatism" is best described as an attitude which is resistant to change. Yet there are several principles in politically conservative Islam which conflict with Western political conservatism. This is thanks to the two having developed under two different historical circumstances overarching different spans of time. Western conservatism is resistant to departure from classical Liberal values, whereas conservative Islam seeks to preserve the political structure under Muhammad.
It would also make no sense to label George Washington, for instance, as a political conservative. Historically speaking, that would make him a monarchist. Within the historical context in which he lived, he was a progressive with clearly defined aims. The particularism of a given attitude is what separates a passive belief from an active doctrine which utilizes that attitude as a means to an end. In this case, what is now termed political conservatism would be progressive in the historical context from which it originated because it seeks to democratize (to an extent) relations of power for the betterment of the majority. Hence why the movement is formally referred to classical liberalism: the political spectrum has greatly expanded in scope since then.
Back on point, some scholars have proposed that Thomas Paine, leading pamphleteer and author, was a left-libertarian, which renders his inculcation into the present-day conservative ethos ironic. The progressive attitude of the founding fathers would certainly explain the provisions secured within the Constitution which allow for change as time wears on. Note that I use the term "progressive" loosely to mean "advocacy of the betterment of [then] current conditions", not in reference to a specific political conception (that would imply statism, which is not the whole of the scheme I wish to sketch). Realistically speaking, humans as a whole have a vested interest in the betterment of current conditions. The drafters of the Constitution had specific aims, but labeling them 'progressive' doesn't effectively capture the whole essence of their vision. It's also problematic because the term implies a departure from established norms. What do we say of those who're interested in the betterment of current conditions, but not in a novel direction?
It's a general attitude just like conservatism is. It's not a complex philosophical doctrine with clearly defined aims. The question is to what ends and by what means those conditions are improved. The specific ends and means constitute the doctrine, which would be particularized in discourse to distinguish it from the general meaning to avoid confusion. On point, the drafters understood that political and societal attitudes evolve in tandem, and previously reviled notions become accepted and vice versa. Perhaps it seems strange to brand a revolutionary like Thomas Paine as "progressive" because we encounter the narrative from a historical perspective where Western (classical) liberal values are taken for granted in a first world Western society.
The context is not only historical, but also cultural. The nature of progressivism requires us to think of it in the present-tense and as future-oriented and sensitive to the unique conditions which necessitate its plight. The conditions in which it takes place constitute the 'culture' which partially accounts for variations in the focus between a range of progressive movements spanning the globe. The values that progressives rally for in our liberal Western society today will perhaps be common-place within a few generations, but not so in a place like North Korea, where progressives may exist but attempts at any sort of reform are curtailed.
Further, it belongs to a broader culture which disapproves of certain issues which progressives rally for, like acceptance of homosexuality. Tactics to bring this issue to the forefront of Korean popular consciousness will have to be innovative, and this is where the focus shifts and intensifies. Popular issues today may no longer be thought of as "progressive" according to what future circumstances dictate. But simply because inequality will continue to manifest itself in different forms in response to evolving societal relationships, so too will the aim and focus of progressivism as a general project shift in response to evolving incarnations of inequality.
On point, certain values seen as meaningful back then ceased to be examined as time wore on, bringing into question their credibility today given our evolving set of circumstances. It follows then, that a conservative approach to contemporary problems, by its nature, is fruitless. This refusal to adapt to evolving circumstances may partly explain why its proponents seem so detached from reality. Thus, in order to propose serious democratic reforms, we must embrace the reformist tendencies of the left, and scheme a cogent narrative which articulates what the plurality desires in general.
We must scheme a post-electoral democratic formula to address the root of these problems in contrast to being drawn back to the romanticized past which in part, perpetuated them. Do not be mistaken. There are certain values which must be defended in order to preserve individual liberty. This is perhaps the only context in which democratic leftists could be called conservative. Unfortunately, the masses are led to vote against their own interests. This is how governments can claim a mandate to pander to elite (right-wing) interests.
This mandate is exacerbated by the political power these interests possess. If the policy doesn't exactly bend their way, the elite interests have more then enough resources to pull a few strings to shape it in the direction they want. This explains, at least partially, the discrepancy between public policy drafted in the "public interest" and the actual public consensus that should inform such approaches. If the masses could see the aging husk of electoral democracy for what it was, we could sufficiently organize to represent our own interests instead of relegating those duties to officials who do an about-face on us.
We may vote for the lesser evils because they exist, but they exist because the electoral system is broken, and we continue to naively profess that it isn't. Or if not that, we've become trapped in the cyclical cynicism of a demoralized populace that has been taught only to vote as part of the new democratic ethos shrouding our collective perception in a hazy mist of ruinous delusion. The newer generations are taught en masse not to examine beyond the surface the hollow causes that candidates promise to deliver on or the system that perpetuates these failures. Instead, they are exhorted to profess faith in a 'democratic' America that never was. The ones who see the aged husk of electoral democracy for what it is are left stranded with no feasible large-scale alternatives to flock to.
Even then, for those who remain ignorant of the finer details either by chance of the conditions they're encased in, or choose to remain so, it's hard not to notice Occupy Wall Street. The movement and its analogous offshoots are a reaction to the elephant in the room which is silently acknowledged but not openly discussed. Has campaign and electoral reform ever been seriously proposed by candidates in either of the two major political parties, perhaps with the exception of Ron Paul and his loyal coterie of paleo-conservatives or Dennis Kucinich and his band of progressives? Has serious labor reform been proposed by these candidates? There have been proposals. But it's not widely acknowledged, let alone freely discussed. Or, if it has been acknowledged by some 'radical' elements, there is not enough momentum to organize the disparate criticisms leveled against the current democratic process (of which the electoral process is only a part) to formulate a unified platform on which the problems can be intelligently discussed and acted upon.
From this perspective, the Occupy movement has become both an iconoclast and a lynch-pin, forming a veritable bulwark against corruption. It is the culmination of the downtrodden's frustrations. It unifies the once disparate criticisms which floated serenely through the vacuous ether of political favoritism, acknowledged, but to whom a blind eye had been cast in favor of the former. It has risen up and smashed the manufactured reality of the democratic process -- the icon -- whose scope has been restricted to hollow electoral interplays, for a sharper insight into the matter would dispel such illusions upon exposing the internal contradictions within. It has also, more importantly, provided a platform on which these contradictions within capitalism and democracy can be reconciled. It signifies a major change within the American political consciousness. The recognition not only of what plagues the system, but the means and the will to eradicate it towards the betterment of all.
The elephant has escaped from the room, and it's on a stampede.
If only this were true. The United States boasts two right-wing political parties which dominate statecraft. Indeed, Obama has surrounded himself with prominent conservative officials hand-picked from the previous Bush administration, including a few responsible for the financial collapse on Wall Street. How many voters realize this, though? If they're aware of the favoritism Obama demonstrates towards corporations and bankers, how can Obama continue to campaign as a 'leftist' candidate? The truth seems to be that voter apathy combined with general ignorance of political dynamics amongst the populace makes for a ruinous cocktail of delusional faith and resurgent cynicism in a corrupt system. Fortunately, though, Occupy Wall Street and its analogous offshoots constituting the broader Occupy movement spanning the globe seem to be shedding light on the social and political discontent towards capitalism and the democratic process which are inextricably tied to one another.
It seems to be a cycle. The general thrust of discontent in reaction to scandals and so forth demands that the targeted problem be fixed or overthrown in favor of an effaceable replacement. This manifests in episodic bursts of public fury and media profiteering for a considerable length of time. Then it quiets down, with dissenters having decided that their protests successfully challenged the monolith of state power. Until the next time, that is. If not because of that, it's due to reduced momentum in the public outcry. The call of the television set is too strong for some to resist. Energy has been spent with no visible effect beyond forcing the ghouls to retreat for an indefinite length of time. But the disenfranchised can take solace in the fact that at least for now, the menacing sword of Damocles has ascended -- albeit still hanging ominously above their heads.
Two party-scenarios tend to generate a positive feedback loop in terms of the response candidates receive from the public. In one sense, the situation is akin to Pavlov's dog. The drooling populace has been trained to respond to the bell -- in this case, the rhetoric of the self-appointed political moderate where there's no actual promise (the food) to be delivered on. One of the candidates concedes ground to appear moderate in comparison to the other, so as to cater to their voter base's demographics. For instance, the public consensus (that is, the policies the public wants but doesn't get) is much to the left of Obama, but decidedly to the left of the GOP mainstays. By appearing to be the lesser of two evils in light of this, Obama would have an easier time snagging an election.
This played out well in the recent Republican nomination campaigns. Romney successfully ran as a Republican moderate with several positions comparable to Obama's, which attracted criticism charging that he was pulling too far to the left. But I think that any significant shift toward the left (indeed, significant because the mainstream GOP is already so far-right) is due to the fact that the public consensus is decidedly left-leaning.
This is not to say that the consensus will be, in any meaningful way, satisfactorily met. It exists solely as a useful metric from which politicians can curry public favor in the publics' naive hope that their demands will be acted upon and not merely heard. Whether or not the strategy to cater to this trend is successful depends on who's running and what's at stake. Why did George W. Bush get re-elected, if the public consensus is to the left of either party? Irrational fear of terrorism is a prominent factor in his winning the mandate, in this case.
He wasn't elected because the largest plurality at the time was right-leaning per se, but precisely because the Left is too weak to effectively counter antidemocratic forces on a parallel scale. I mention the Left in particular because it heralds what I believe to be truly democratic values. This is not to say that conservatives are inherently undemocratic. The Left simply has a tendency to embrace genuine reformism, which I think is a necessary step towards democratizing power relations between groups.
Strictly speaking, reformism belongs to neither the Left nor the Right. But the dictionary definition of "reform" tends to disqualify conservative approaches to problems, and retains its meaning as it extends into the political realm. The concept of change in general is future-oriented, not past-oriented. Why is the Left weak? It's divided amongst so many issues -- owing to its extensive and diverse spectrum, tapering off into disparate tangents. To illustrate, we boast a bevy of anti-state leftists: democratic socialists, anarcho-communists, Marxist communists, libertarian Marxists and Luxemburgians, to name just a few. Social democrats and other reformist liberals throng the statist Left. Genuine anti-statism is acquainted with the leftist tradition.
This intellectual diversity is not negative in itself, but renders the Left prone to needless sectarianism when ideology is elevated above solidarity. Western conservatives tend to be reactionary and thus find their identity rooted in a concretely defined heritage in the classical Liberal tradition, whereas leftists lack a concrete ground because their reformist tendencies mean they address issues as they present themselves. This leads to unique solutions to compliment unique problems.
If we attempted to catalog these approaches into an overarching theme, we would run into numerous contradictions. For instance, both Marxists and Anarchists desire the formation of a stateless, egalitarian society, but disagree on the approach to realizing such a conception. In contrast, there are disagreements, but conservatism is not nearly as disparate or fragmented. It's interesting to note that tendencies identified with contemporary American conservatism were decidedly progressive within their historical context. They have since been appropriated by modern-day conservatism as distorted caricatures of their former selves, standing in stark opposition to what the drafters of the Constitution intended.
I will take this opportunity to highlight the nuanced and layered meaning of "conservatism" within political discourse. "Conservatism" is best described as an attitude which is resistant to change. Yet there are several principles in politically conservative Islam which conflict with Western political conservatism. This is thanks to the two having developed under two different historical circumstances overarching different spans of time. Western conservatism is resistant to departure from classical Liberal values, whereas conservative Islam seeks to preserve the political structure under Muhammad.
It would also make no sense to label George Washington, for instance, as a political conservative. Historically speaking, that would make him a monarchist. Within the historical context in which he lived, he was a progressive with clearly defined aims. The particularism of a given attitude is what separates a passive belief from an active doctrine which utilizes that attitude as a means to an end. In this case, what is now termed political conservatism would be progressive in the historical context from which it originated because it seeks to democratize (to an extent) relations of power for the betterment of the majority. Hence why the movement is formally referred to classical liberalism: the political spectrum has greatly expanded in scope since then.
Back on point, some scholars have proposed that Thomas Paine, leading pamphleteer and author, was a left-libertarian, which renders his inculcation into the present-day conservative ethos ironic. The progressive attitude of the founding fathers would certainly explain the provisions secured within the Constitution which allow for change as time wears on. Note that I use the term "progressive" loosely to mean "advocacy of the betterment of [then] current conditions", not in reference to a specific political conception (that would imply statism, which is not the whole of the scheme I wish to sketch). Realistically speaking, humans as a whole have a vested interest in the betterment of current conditions. The drafters of the Constitution had specific aims, but labeling them 'progressive' doesn't effectively capture the whole essence of their vision. It's also problematic because the term implies a departure from established norms. What do we say of those who're interested in the betterment of current conditions, but not in a novel direction?
It's a general attitude just like conservatism is. It's not a complex philosophical doctrine with clearly defined aims. The question is to what ends and by what means those conditions are improved. The specific ends and means constitute the doctrine, which would be particularized in discourse to distinguish it from the general meaning to avoid confusion. On point, the drafters understood that political and societal attitudes evolve in tandem, and previously reviled notions become accepted and vice versa. Perhaps it seems strange to brand a revolutionary like Thomas Paine as "progressive" because we encounter the narrative from a historical perspective where Western (classical) liberal values are taken for granted in a first world Western society.
The context is not only historical, but also cultural. The nature of progressivism requires us to think of it in the present-tense and as future-oriented and sensitive to the unique conditions which necessitate its plight. The conditions in which it takes place constitute the 'culture' which partially accounts for variations in the focus between a range of progressive movements spanning the globe. The values that progressives rally for in our liberal Western society today will perhaps be common-place within a few generations, but not so in a place like North Korea, where progressives may exist but attempts at any sort of reform are curtailed.
Further, it belongs to a broader culture which disapproves of certain issues which progressives rally for, like acceptance of homosexuality. Tactics to bring this issue to the forefront of Korean popular consciousness will have to be innovative, and this is where the focus shifts and intensifies. Popular issues today may no longer be thought of as "progressive" according to what future circumstances dictate. But simply because inequality will continue to manifest itself in different forms in response to evolving societal relationships, so too will the aim and focus of progressivism as a general project shift in response to evolving incarnations of inequality.
On point, certain values seen as meaningful back then ceased to be examined as time wore on, bringing into question their credibility today given our evolving set of circumstances. It follows then, that a conservative approach to contemporary problems, by its nature, is fruitless. This refusal to adapt to evolving circumstances may partly explain why its proponents seem so detached from reality. Thus, in order to propose serious democratic reforms, we must embrace the reformist tendencies of the left, and scheme a cogent narrative which articulates what the plurality desires in general.
We must scheme a post-electoral democratic formula to address the root of these problems in contrast to being drawn back to the romanticized past which in part, perpetuated them. Do not be mistaken. There are certain values which must be defended in order to preserve individual liberty. This is perhaps the only context in which democratic leftists could be called conservative. Unfortunately, the masses are led to vote against their own interests. This is how governments can claim a mandate to pander to elite (right-wing) interests.
This mandate is exacerbated by the political power these interests possess. If the policy doesn't exactly bend their way, the elite interests have more then enough resources to pull a few strings to shape it in the direction they want. This explains, at least partially, the discrepancy between public policy drafted in the "public interest" and the actual public consensus that should inform such approaches. If the masses could see the aging husk of electoral democracy for what it was, we could sufficiently organize to represent our own interests instead of relegating those duties to officials who do an about-face on us.
We may vote for the lesser evils because they exist, but they exist because the electoral system is broken, and we continue to naively profess that it isn't. Or if not that, we've become trapped in the cyclical cynicism of a demoralized populace that has been taught only to vote as part of the new democratic ethos shrouding our collective perception in a hazy mist of ruinous delusion. The newer generations are taught en masse not to examine beyond the surface the hollow causes that candidates promise to deliver on or the system that perpetuates these failures. Instead, they are exhorted to profess faith in a 'democratic' America that never was. The ones who see the aged husk of electoral democracy for what it is are left stranded with no feasible large-scale alternatives to flock to.
Even then, for those who remain ignorant of the finer details either by chance of the conditions they're encased in, or choose to remain so, it's hard not to notice Occupy Wall Street. The movement and its analogous offshoots are a reaction to the elephant in the room which is silently acknowledged but not openly discussed. Has campaign and electoral reform ever been seriously proposed by candidates in either of the two major political parties, perhaps with the exception of Ron Paul and his loyal coterie of paleo-conservatives or Dennis Kucinich and his band of progressives? Has serious labor reform been proposed by these candidates? There have been proposals. But it's not widely acknowledged, let alone freely discussed. Or, if it has been acknowledged by some 'radical' elements, there is not enough momentum to organize the disparate criticisms leveled against the current democratic process (of which the electoral process is only a part) to formulate a unified platform on which the problems can be intelligently discussed and acted upon.
From this perspective, the Occupy movement has become both an iconoclast and a lynch-pin, forming a veritable bulwark against corruption. It is the culmination of the downtrodden's frustrations. It unifies the once disparate criticisms which floated serenely through the vacuous ether of political favoritism, acknowledged, but to whom a blind eye had been cast in favor of the former. It has risen up and smashed the manufactured reality of the democratic process -- the icon -- whose scope has been restricted to hollow electoral interplays, for a sharper insight into the matter would dispel such illusions upon exposing the internal contradictions within. It has also, more importantly, provided a platform on which these contradictions within capitalism and democracy can be reconciled. It signifies a major change within the American political consciousness. The recognition not only of what plagues the system, but the means and the will to eradicate it towards the betterment of all.
The elephant has escaped from the room, and it's on a stampede.
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