The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Dan Kervick's picture

    Optimistic about Change

    By Dan Kervick on Wed, 02/23/2011 - 11:48pm |

    I don't want to go on too long about this, because I think the liberal fondness for hyper-reflective navel-gazing and group therapy is one of the least attractive features of liberal culture.  The liberal attitude always seems to be, "Why write 200 words, when 20,000 will do just as well."  And everybody thinks their inner pains and insights and feelings are oh so precious and special.

    But here's my upbeat take:

    I have been quite optimistic lately about the renewed potential for progressive change.  I sense some important cultural, class and intellectual shifts under way, on a global scale.  The world is rocking and shuddering.

    The understanding is catching on throughout the US, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere that the dominant political cultures and corporate elites exist to protect the interests of the most affluent, and are engaged in a wide-ranging and savage assault on the dreams, the security and standards of living of ordinary people.  Forced austerity, immiseration, wage hits, capital flight, exploitation, and upper-class resentment and contempt toward the struggling lower orders are now so obvious they can't be ignored.   People are really starting to get the reality of class warfare, even people whom one would never have imagined were capable of seeing things that way.

    The Egyptian Revolution inspired me with its dramatic demonstration of the potential for organized grass roots activism to turn the tide against seemingly unchallengeable power.  After seeing the fate of the formerly stony and immovable autocratic Pharoah Mubarak at the hands of the courageous Egyptian people, powerful corporocratic folks like Jamie Dimon, the Chamber of Commerce, Barack Obama, the Koch brothers, Robert Rubin, Mitch McConnell, William Daley and Pete Peterson don't scare me so much.  We can change their brutal and exploitative old world.

    My optimism has nothing to do with the sad old Democratic Party.  The established Democratic Party is a moribund dinosuar at the present time.  Perhaps it will manage to rebuild and regenerate itself in the changes that are coming; perhaps not.  I don't worry about that right now.  Thjat's not where the new political scene lives.   The Clinton-Obama era is over.   They might not know it yet themselves, but it's over.   The world will change, whether the Dem establishment wants to be a part of it our not.   I don't listen to anything that comes out of the Obama administration at all these days, and have turned my attention to more hopeful and constructive prospects.  You can find excitement and optimism if you step out of the old, rusted frame.

    Unfortunately, poor Obama just seems totally lost to me.   He's trying deserately to stay relevant and catch up to sweeping global and national changes that he barely understands and can't control.  Maybe he'll change; maybe he won't.   Right now he looks like Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover.  Nobody really seems to care what he thinks anymore.

    I have started reading a whole different collection of blogs and news sources where the attitude is, I find, both more constructive and more likely to influence people.  If people want to hang out in fellowships of the Democratic miserable to indulge their rage or reflexive meta-meta-analysis, they shouldn't feel surprised that they feel impotent and depressed.  Get out there and find the excitement.

    I use social networking tools more now.   The Egyptians convinced me that that is the wave of the political future.

    Here's what's going on:  Americans - and the ordinary English, and the ordinary Irish, and the ordinary French, and a whole bunch of others - are being fleeced by an elite coalition of the top financilal dogs and their political servants, who are bent on protecting the bank accounts of creditors, destroying the power and potential of democratic government; burning up government budgets and the social safety net in an engineered fiscal train wreck; and maintaining the wealth/power spread of the exceptionally wealthy over everyone else.  That realization is about to go viral.  All the old coaltions are being disrupted.

    Comments

    I'm getting that sense too Dan.  Like a juggernaut has been unleashed, and even if the oligarchy recognized it, and wanted to put the genie back into the bottle, it wouldn't be able to in time to stop the changes that are inevitable.  On a side note, what blogs are you reading that are reinforcing your this optimism?


    by miguelitoh (not verified) on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:12am

    I'm also getting a bit of the sense Dan and you have M2O, but want to know where he's reading. I've been putting some time lately into learning other computer, internet and social networking skills, but would like to find the zones people are finding rewarding. My faves recently have been... sports blogs. Lots of conversations going on at a hockey site I frequent, often turning political, and with clear guidelines and culture against any and all racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. I think there's a lot of such social/cultural spaces that are moving this way.


    by quinn esq on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 1:23am

    Some of them:

     

    Angry Bear

    Billy Blog

    Debtonation

    Economist’s View

    Heteroconomist

    Naked Capitalism (Yves Smith)

    New Deal 2.0

    Prime Economics

    Nouriel Roubini

    Social Democracy for the 21st Century

    The Big Picture (Barry Ritholz)

    The Center of the Universe (Warren Mosler)

    Triple Crisis

    New Economic Perspectives (William Black and others)

    Unsettling Economics

    Washington’s Blog

    Mike Norman Economics

    Matt hew Yglesias


    by Dan Kervick on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 7:20am

    I read a number of those, plus:

    http://warincontext.org/

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/


    by Anonymous stardust (not verified) on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 7:46am

    Forgot  http://www.democracynow.org/


    by Anonymous stardust (not verified) on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 7:59am

    Thanks for the links.


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 9:06am

    Here's a great post from Bill Mitchell:

     

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=13595


    by Dan Kervick on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 11:18am

    Thanks Dan.  I read a number of those myself and will check out the ones I'm not familiar with.  I suppose the fact that we're seeing people like Yves Smith being interviewed more often in the MSM nowdays is a positive sign.  Still, the economic MSM is lagging way behind the blogs listed here.  Still it does seem to be having a collective effect on people's understanding and attitudes.  Now if we would only have some real investigations and prosecutions of someof the bad actors that helped precipitate the financial crisis it would go a long way towards restoring faith that the system isn't just designed to benefit the fat cats.


    by miguelitoh2o on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:12pm

    What? Somewhere else besides dagblog?

    My curiosity is piqued. What are the other blogs that you recommend?


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:22am

    Oops, miguelitoh already asked that.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:32am

    Are you thinking about getting off?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc-eDaEZ4LU


    by Resistance on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 1:03am

    Dan, I think you need to, in the words of Governor Walker, make 'some real money'....not the play money or Monopoly money, or whatever you've been getting groceries with. And, also, in the words of the Wisconsin Guv, don't be pragmatic, don't worry about 'trying to get things done' (like that Democrat Collin guy Gov. Walker mentioned), just be political. Then you'll be 'one of them!'

    You'll sleep better. The same probably holds true as a good plan for Obama.

    Maybe we all just need to trust the Koch Brothers, the bankers of Wall Street, Gov. Walker, Newt Gingrich, the New Breed of Republicans led by John Boehner, TV preachers, and Fox News. Or maybe not!!


    by NCD on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:54am

    Poor Obama. 

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/key-senators-block-gop-effort...



    http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2011/02/obama_says_us_preparing_fu...



    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/obama_doj_say_part_of_...

    All of this in one day.


    by LisB on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 1:22am

     Thanks for that, Lis.  I'd like to light a fire under Obama, too, but only in the sense that I want him to move faster on the issues that are most meaningful to the poor and the working class.  I don't mean I want to burn him at the stake.  If we spend the next two years trying to get rid of Obama I guarantee our next president will be a Republican or worse. 

    I'm no longer thrilled with Obama and the Democrats, but if there's going to be a revolution, there had better be a tried and true leader waiting to take over.  I don't see one.


    by Ramona on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 7:42am

    If you would really like to know how everything that FDR stood for has been systematically rolled back, take the trouble to view this documentary from the BBC. It is all here.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 3:14am

    Very interesting.


    by Dan Kervick on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 7:58am

    This is a great documentary. I highly recommend it as well.


    by Anonymous mage (not verified) on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 10:33am

    Optimism from Dan?  To respond to this, I have to recall my childhood, when a young Destor was first dropped off at preschool and then... left there.  The pain and feeling of abandon--

    Hang on, back to topic.

    I think Obama is befuddled by this.  Remember, this is the guy who saw people gathering pitchforks to go after Wall Street and purposefully stood in the way.  Obama's agenda has always been to make the order, as it is, more comfortable for the people subject to it.  His opponents on the right have painted that as a radical agenda, but we know better than that.

    The concern is that there's no coherence to the revolutionary feeling in the air.  In the U.S. people will demonstrate for specific things.  In Wisconsin, oddly, it's the right to collectively give up their pension benefits.  See the disconnect there?


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 8:26am

    Just a question. (Maybe related?):

    Is it true Obama borrowed Jimmy Carter's sweater to wear to Cleveland during his talk about business and WTF, in which he said NOTHING about the growing national assault on worker's rights?

    Great blog Dan K. The old politics simply ain't working anymore. And the reality of the Class War that has been prosecuted against us in the working class has proceeded so far along that it's becoming more increasingly apparent even to those who insist on denying it.

    Standing in Madison these last couple week, I have been surprised to find myself identifying concrete parallels between my home city and Cairo. Madison and Cairo are both infused with hope and with a belief in ourselves - a fundamental, unshakeable belief in our strength and our abilities and our WORTH.

    I don't pretend to suggest that these are sufficient attitudes or characteristics to ensure we will prevail in the end against the powerful forces aligned against us. In fact, reality seems to argue against such an outcome.

    But what we share in Madison with the people of Cairo is a realization that at this point it really doesn't matter. I (we) are tired of taking the same old shit, hoping it will be different tomorrow. I (we) see no future in "incremental change" within this system that limits the degree of increment to only as much change as the other side will allow. I (we) are tired of talk about "competitive wages and regulations" and "small business jobs" and "innovation" and all the other tropes that are intended to explain why we must suffer less wages, fewer benefits, and a depressed quality of life so that "our (sic) economy can grow and prosper." 

    No, the event in Madison - just like the demonstrations in Cairo - are really nothing more than a bunch of tired people with high aspirations standing up and giving the finger to the whole of the ruling elites. "Fuck you!" we say, just to see what the reaction will be. It can't be worse than abject surrender to this idea that "austerity" is a virtue, but only for the working class. And who knows, we just might be surprised to learn that there's been a whole world full of people who have been waiting to say those very words for a long, long time. 

    Solidarity, Dan K. For now, it's just about all we've got. But I'm glad to raise my voice with yours, if for no other reason than to see what happens. Fuck 'em!


    by SleepinJeezus on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 9:06am

    Matt Stoller has been really strong lately, and I think you'll like this piece, Jeezus.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/matt-stoller-the-liquidation-of-society-versus-the-global-labor-revival.html

    Stoller was the voice behind this, remember?   ;o)

    http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2011/01/14/time-to-remove-the-blinders-dems-both-parties-are-elites/


    by Anonymous stardust (not verified) on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 10:04am

    Glad to hear you were out there exercising your civic duty! Unfortunately, I suspect the civic pride Wisconsin has over this issue isn't fully appreciated in the other 49. I believe things has to get far worst than the elimination of collective bargaining for unions before public reaction to overzealous GOPer politicians over-reaching their constitutional authority for Party politics over public needs is realized. And as we all know, once a little snowball starts to roll it quickly becomes an avalanche that can't be stopped until it reaches the valley floor. I don't think the issue will get resolved untl the entire nation stands up and says enough is enough. That's what it took to topple Tunisia and Egypt so I'm not holding my breath on this one.


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 10:58am

    I wasn't too keen on the Egypt simply because I was expecting the GOPer's were looking for an excuse to usher in political change order (PCO) while everyone was distracted.

    Interesting that the Rust Belt has been the arena for that change...it has both the most to loose and to gain depending on which way the pendulum swings. The US could either pull herself up by her bootstraps and the public takes charge of affairs or they can allow the state governments to dismantle all public safeguards. Both of which are being carefully watched by other like-minded GOPer state legislatures. In other words, it's fast becoming a political watershed moment. We're at a crossroad and someone is going to make a decision which way to go and we all have to follow. What's troubling is the decision will be made without public consensuses...the legislators will take it upon themselves to make a political decision over the fate of the public regardless of the impact over public concerns.

    Personally, I don't believe there's enough common cause rage in the US as there was in Egypt or Tunisia for people to join together and take it to the streets. The GOper's have worked hard over the years to maintain a clear division between Us and Them. It would take some event to occur beyond Obama and Democrats control to get the public's ire up. And I don't see anything on the event horizon to suggest it. For now, the anti-union fervor in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana (I think they're the ones) is right out of the GOPer playbook and they have the satisfaction of knowing their base is secure with their actions.

    For a common cause rage to occur, something will have to happen that crosses both Party lines and drags everyone down at the same time regardless of political affiliation. And that I can't see happening.


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 10:43am

    BJ, it's entirely possible that you're right about all this.  But reading it I couldn't help but think back to the quoted Bush WH official in a Ron Suskind piece awhile back.  It was to the effect that the Bush WH, the Right and the GOP create reality, whereas the Democrats and the liberals analyze it to death (implied that they--we--do that to the relative exclusion of taking action, making it easier for them to make headway.  The contempt and disrespect for their political opposition in that comment was breathtaking.) 

    And that triggered lots of attention in the blogosphere and elsewhere about people being proud members of the reality-based community.  And how unsurmountably arrogant this attitude expressed by that WH official was (quite true).

    The arrogance, however, is not about the view that it is possible to change the world, to change the current reality.  Each of us has impact on the world whether we wish to or not--there isn't anything we can do to escape that reality even if we wanted to.  We are also interdependent creatures and could not escape that predicament, either, even if we wanted to, the bizarre views about the socially unembedded nature of the individual and the self of some of the wacko Randians apparently to the contrary. 

    Liberals and the left have been so often unsuccessful, taken so many losses for so long now, that there has developed a strong sense of impotence among some of those who identify with those broad orientations, one that is plentifully on display in the left of center blogosphere.   

    I certainly have observed a phenomenon in (as well as outside) the blogosphere whereby someone expresses optimism and typically gets beaten down for being naive, ridiculous, utopian, etc.  It's almost as though some people have an investment in being correct about the obvious fact that we are all hopelessly screwed.  And in persuading others that that is the inevitable reality and they should just accept that and, I don't know, relax or something.

    Well, please pardon me, but fuck that.  There is an individual who writes at dag sometimes whose stuff I just stopped reading because, to my way of thinking, it reflected that stance.  I found it so utterly depressing and disempowering that I just said enough already, why would I do this to myself when I don't have to?  My wife and I have two kids and other people have kids and there is a world of suffering out there and what the hell, I'm here, why not try to do constructive things (not discounting constructive criticism)?  What is there to lose?   

    It's empirically wrong that groups of people acting together cannot change the world.  As Margaret Mead said, that's the only thing that ever has changed it.  People in Egypt, facing far greater dangers, have created opportunity, possibilities, for themselves.  What, and we who disagree with the long-term direction of this country can't?  We are best advised to adopt a stance of hopeless passivity and acceptance of a predetermined demise? 

    I do not accept that.  I know there are some who do.  Like DanK I find myself wearying at times of being in the presence of heavy doses of that mindset.  I have also considered finding other places to hang out online not frequented by people who come across as though their goal is to win some political writing contest wherein they write the most brilliant essay ever written settling once and for all the hopeless truth of humanity's predicament.  But rather are talking and thinking and acting with one another to try to change it.  And in so doing are also emotionally sustaining one another and maintaining or even creating some sense of hope, however fragile and inherently uncertain and frustrating it all gets at times when each of as single individuals contemplates the limits of what we can do and the obstacles and powerful forces and dynamics that confront us. 

    I realize that a counter-consideration is the old saw "scratch the surface of a hardened cynic and you'll find an idealist waiting to come out."  I try hard not to write anyone off once and for all.  Many of us go through stretches, sometimes very, very long ones, where the sense of discouragement is so overwhelming that it can become difficult to put one foot in front of the other, metaphorically speaking, and act.  And some of us are simply deeply gloomy by temperament.  I have a fair amount of that myself and it's been a lifelong project to try to become, and stay, positive enough so as to be able to act constructively.  I'm grateful to those who didn't make up their minds about me, once and for all for the worse when I've gone through my own darker stretches.  

    Thanks for the links, DanK.


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 11:43am

    You've got the fire and the rage that's been missing from the debate...good to hear that! But there needs to be more people filled with rage and willing to speak out. And it has to cross the line to the other side if it is to be effective...this can't be one-sided. Perhaps there has to be an element of danger where one can lose something cherish or value just like Egypt to get the rage going. If people are beginning to feel the rage grow within them, all it will take is a single event to trip the circuit breaker. However, I still see the GOPer base in formation and marching in lock-step at the moment. Nothing will happen until they break ranks.


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 1:35pm

    And they won't break ranks until they start to lose. Wisconsin looks like a good time and place to fight.


    by acanuck on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 2:24pm

    the Democrats and the liberals analyze it to death

    But but but it seems to me the blogs DanK recommended are all very much analysis. Looking at his list above, seems like less outrage and emoting, more analysis of policy and alternate policy suggestions are what makes DanK optimistic.

    While I'm only vaguely familiar with the other sites, only a very occasional visitor, I've been reading Yglesias regularly for a long time, and I don't believe I've ever seen him do outrage or a "call to action" and most of the others on DanK's list seem to be very similar. One thing Yglesias certainly does not have is what Beetlejuice above calls "the fire and the rage that's been missing from the debate. " (Makes me laugh to even think of Yglesias being described that way. He may indeed have some kind of fire in his brain to be as productive as he is, but rage doesn't seem to be part of his makeup. And "fight" doesn't appear to be in his vocabulary.)

    It's true that doesn't ever imply being hopelessly screwed either, he obviously thinks talking  rationally and without anger about different policy ideas is a good thing to do. I don't know if anyone knows if he thinks he can change the world doing that. I like to presume he thinks knowledge is power. I do see commenters to his left bash him for that often enough, as if it is both elitist and naive ivory tower type thinking, and that outrage and anger and calls to action are what we need and the calm thoughtful Yglesias' of the world,  analyzing all sides of an issue and making suggestions, are the problem.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 3:14pm

    While knowledge is power, it seems that, in general, emotions motivate. I say this as someone who is much more likely to be persuaded by a logical argument than an emotional one, or at least that's what I want to believe about myself. (But seriously, I really do think that accurately describes me.) That said, there's also a difference between being persuaded and being motivated. Logic might persuade me to vote for candidate X, but it might take something more to get me to canvas for or donate to candidate X.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 3:30pm

    (My reply is extended so I will put it up as a separate post.)   


    by AmericanDreamer on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 4:29pm

    One person who believed that it was possible to change the world for the better, and who himself changed a great deal in adulthood in response to his experiences and what he learned about the world around him, was Robert F. Kennedy. What follows are a few RFK quotes that seem appropriate to me at this time.  I am at the moment especially fond of the last one on this list, something I had not known he had said until doing this quick search:

    All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

    Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

    It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.

    Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

    One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

    There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

    Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_kennedy.html


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:08pm

    I love that last quote about tragedy.


    by Dan Kervick on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 12:16pm

    "And yet others see things as they are, and respond with 'WTF'"

    Sorry, but I couldn't resist.

    Absolutely GREAT comments, AD. They can never beat us if we never surrender, regardless of how weary we get. Keep the faith!


    by SleepinJeezus on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 4:56pm

    FWIW, Dan, while I appreciate the point about navel-gazing I have in the past found your long comments, as well as the short ones, interesting and well worth reading.     


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 1:18pm

     "Why write 200 words, when 20,000 will do just as well." 

    You're right!  I was so inspired, I didn't bother to read past that. The Egyptions inspired me too!  In fact let's have the military take over and everything will be just again.  Oh, oh, but first let's make a facebook group! With a twitter thread!  Forget those meanies Clinton and Obama, we can do this! Yay! And maybe we can get together and sexually assault some hot 'jewish' journalist. 

    Really Dan?

    I haven't read you in a year and I am very sad to see your thinking has grown so flacid.  A decade of Al jazeera coupled with suddenly crippling food prices are the cataylsts of the uprisings in the middle east, not some damn tweet from an arab Tomas Paine.  It ain't roses overthere, we can be hopeful but lets not be foolish.  I hate to borrow an overused analagy but 1989 it's not, 1848 is closer, and it might even be more like 1725 with a dash of hope thrown in.  

    To be honest I am not really sure what optimism you are getting out of Roubini and company, I read most of those blogs and I am just get more anger validation.  But it's good to see you are happy, it's nearly springtime. And the cliche springs eternal, as it should.   


    by Saladin on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 11:03pm