Palladino and Cleveland

The recently elected Republican Nominee for Governor noted that the last major nominee from his hometown was President Cleveland.   There may be some parallels.  Cleveland was known as being honest, committed to classical liberalism, antagonistic to party politics.   Palladino may want to be a principled, small government Republican.  In the Nineteenth Century, they were called “Bourbon Democrats.”  He ignores issues of race, which has always complicated class issues in this country.

The problem?  Their policies didn’t work.

The scripture this lesson seems to map out a plan.  Cut the debts of the poor; condemn hoarding; may the rich spend their money on friends and family generously.

Jesus was a Keynesian.

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On Beck

I’m not all that sure about what the kerfuffle is all about, but I’ve gained a few insights about the man.

Initially, I didn’t get indignant or outraged that Beck was having a revival on the same day as MLK’s historic I have a Dream speech.  Although a speech that is now iconic in American history, it has been played out to the point of parody (“I had a really weird dream last night“), and I don’t think it was even his best one.

The rally, however, did reveal some aspects of Beck’s personality.  I’ve always found him insufferably (deceitfully?) ingratiating, obsequious at times, and insulting on others.  His whingy sentimentality merely makes me even appreciate Bill O’Reilly’s strong arm.

The rally made me consider that he truly does want to make a difference.  In itself that is admirable.  But it seems to me that he’s really got a secret Obama envy.

Instead of working to challenge the powers, to gather the people, the hard way, as Obama had done, Beck consistently takes the easy way out.   Obama’s mettle has been tested:  he worked hard to get through school, was disciplined in his personal life, and has sacrificed a potentially lucrative career of that of public service.  Instead, Beck has been rewarded for his immaturity, his identification with the resentful, anxious and fearful element of the American Public.   He seems to be one of those people who thinks that Obama has gotten more than he has deserved, and that he is not fit to run the country.

What outrages me is the audacity that Beck would hold a revival when the man has no flesh-and-blood congregation.  His interest in the lives of the public seems opportunistic at best, and non-existent at worst.   From where does was he given the authority?  At the very least, pastors are given the authority from congregations who’s everyday difficulties aren’t ideological, but concrete.  He pontificates and orders people about, without the real relationship building that most pastors consider part of their work.  How dare he preach to anyone about spiritual improvement from the vantage point of arrogance about his own supposed gifts?

Was it a success?  We’ll see.  Building a movement isn’t for the charismatic:  it is for the organized.    My suspicion: he is even a two-bit propagandist, a man who should be challenged as a fraud at every step.  He wants desperately to be taken seriously; but since he cannot, he offers his followers what they want.  The adult wing of corporate party has the responsibility to ask him directly:  does he really believe the things he says, and will he sacrifice his career on them?  Or will he be revealed to be an opportunist?

Until I see that time, I will continue to be baffled by why he has the attention he gets.  Although, like any bright child, it is exactly what he is good at.

Gawain de Leeuw3 Comments

The Tea Party

I’m in the midst of doing some community organizing in my county, and I’ve been struck by the contrast between the work I’ve been doing and what is happening in the tea party “movement.”

Some interesting social analysis has been done about them.  Most of the tea party is white.  They don’t want to be told what to do.  It represents the hyperindividualism that reflects part of our cultural consciousness, and the more recently cultivated antagonism toward the behemoth that is The Government.

Reasonable people can critique the “therapeutic state” and its diminishment of civil liberties.   Institutions, after all, engineer cultures (did you know that the English propensity toward tea was based primarily on a conscious decision to prefer Tea corporations to Coffee corporations?).   Anger toward corporations, generally, is well placed, even if tea partiers aren’t that consistent.

But the tea party, which seems proud that there is little leadership or organization, seems to be blind about the nature institutions, government and the public.  Their view is of the mass, “taking over” which is more like the cultural revolution (choose any) than of getting work done.

The tea “party” ignores that politics is about people in institutions.  Joe Schmoe is just a dude spouting off about paying taxes.  He’s got some anecdotes, and he’s pissed, but just because he knows his car’s broken doesn’t mean he knows how to fix it.   It just looks like another narcissistic blowhard who doesn’t know who’s responsible for his lowered standards.

Good Government requires some leadership and management skills.  Politicians will make difficult decisions.  If tea partiers don’t want leaders, and don’t think government should manage, their task is going to be incredibly challenging as they get stuck in their internal bickering.   They will perpetually seek a consensus that will never emerge.

No government will make everyone happy.   Kenneth Arrow showed, in my view, decisively that there is no perfect government or economic system.  Someone will feel screwed.   Perhaps the rich will find some of their money confiscated; or the middle class will find their pensions cut.  Sometimes liberty wins, sometimes security.  But in a democracy we live together whether we win, or lose.   Although I talked, admittedly, about emigrating to the Netherlands after Bush won a second election.

Leaders will inevitably disappoint some people.  It’s the nature of leaders that they get hit, that they compromise, and choose between two bad, or two good, decisions.   A tea party that isn’t sure what it wants, besides being left alone, and resists any leader trying to compromise between the various publics, will find itself just another discussion group, a loud mob unable to accomplish anything.

I have not been worried about the tea party because they do not take organizing seriously.  In someways, they are like some parts (not all, of course) left – get people angry, hold a couple marches, find some politician who says what you want to hear. The hard work of engaging communities, discerning their values, discovering what keeps people up at night, and then acting upon it, is substituted for quick fixes.  Like corporations, politicians and even some progressives, the tea party thinks there is a quick fix, and that is to vote the bums out.

It doesn’t work like that.  It’s one reason I fell in love with the church. Granted, plenty of priests try to find quick fixes.  The daily life of church, however, resists it. Although I believe there may need to be a reboot of the church,  bodies of people coming together are what the church does.  Perhaps we have not done so well at that over the last 30 years.  We’ve not been able to manage within the new economy of attention.  I don’t think it’s hopeless, but I do think it will require a different kind of work.  The tea-party illustrates what we should not be doing.

I’m not hard on the tea party.  As a reformed anarchist, I’m actually sympathetic, aside from it’s loose resentments that stem from race populism.  I wish that there were some elected officials who would really challenge the economic system.  As it is, some of the tea party officials seem like stooges for state capitalism.    Which is a lot different than democratic capitalism.

One of the reasons I think that democracy, and capitalism, are fruits of some hard consequences of Christian morality is because, in the case of democracy, we learn to lose some times; and when we win, we treat the losers with respect.  Battling things politically is far better than fighting a civil war.  In capitalism, we coordinate desires, trusting in each other’s ability to share goods (I’m not talking about the system of high finance).  They are held in tension – sometimes they contradict each other.   And then we should be able to learn to choose.

The tea party needs to learn how to live within the former.

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Slacktivist on Health Care

Fred explains why we’re not getting raises and knocks down a couple sacred cows.

15. Do you see the point here? You are angrily, loudly demanding that Congress make sure that you never, ever get another pay raise as long as you live. Because of you and because of your angry demands, you and your family and your kids are going to have to get by with less this year than last year. And next year you’re going to have to get by with even less. And if you keep angrily demanding that no one must ever fix this problem, then you’re going to have to figure out how to get by on less and less every year for the rest of your life.

The entire rant.

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