I have re-written this entry so many times it seems that nothing I say will satisfy me. Undaunted, I plunge ahead once again. I am focused on something that does not seem to be a part of what is considered politics today, and yet it is vital to the kind of political effort I would like to see and can imagine.

America is poised on the threshold of another major political shift, analogous to what began with Nixon's 1968 campaign, when he recognized and developed a new anti-liberal constituancy, the silent majority. This direction was supplemented after Nixon's defeat by the organizational work of what became the New Right, which managed to completely reverse the image of Conservatism. Goldwater and his followers had been labeled elitist and dogmatic, such that Nixon could not even refer to them in 1968. In a short twelve years the Right consolidated its success in the 1980 Reagan election.

The shift we are looking at now with the Obama campaign is in the direction of the left, but lacking several major elements, among them self-organization (compared to the anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-busing groups, which the New Right appropriated), and real ideological change, a new way of thinking, which is my interest here. In the earlier shift, people had to feel that New Deal liberalism no longer represented them, and they had to reverse their very self-perception as political beings. Partly this meant a breakdown of altruism as luxury one could not afford; liberalism meant some form of sacrifice for others “less fortunate”, an image of society as an organic whole rather than a collection of self-interests. Moreover, at that time party membership was more like traditional belief, as if it would be an irrevocable, personal stain for one who had voted “all my life” for the Democrats to move to the other column, something like the rule that “I have never crossed a picket line”, now largely a forgotten maxim. Liberalism on a practical level was held together by family, class, neighborhood allegegiance. Breaking this was a major accomplishment of the Right, de-traditionalizing politics, an irreversible and radical change. The shift can be viewed from a radical perspective as politicization, bringing into the process, empowering, those who had taken their political choices for granted and had been on the political sidelines for years. These were liberals who became radicals, as in “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!” They were first given a spokesperson, Nixon, and then ten years later became themselves empowered to organize for what they perceived as their interests. What the right did is what the radical left had aimed at: wake up (consciousness raising), get angry (speak your mind), and organize for change (mobilize).

Of course there's a question of which side of the bed you wake up on, what you get angry about. But the radical left and radical right seem to agree, in their activist, expansive periods (both of which are past) as to what political activity is about.

Without going further into that past story here, let us at least ask what precisely we want to see happen. I leave aside results we might agree on--the withdrawl from most world military commitments in favor of attention to domestic needs, etc. In my view, putting the results first is part of the notion of politics that is the problem. Let's assume, if we can, that we don't know what we want and instead ask: what do we want to be doing as our political activity?

The right, back in the seventies, took their cue from the radicals, who in the end could only antagonize liberal america, proclaim it as the enemy. If we choose to inherit anti-liberal radicalism, as leftist anti-Obamists do, we are making a mistake. But it is important to try to locate that mistake, which I see as deep rooted in the notion of politics as a matter of EITHER proclaiming one's considered political opinion and seeking to rally others to it OR manipulating others into holding opinions that they have failed to consider seriously. This characterization obviously favors the former, and so it collects people who stand on their opinion and believe, in effect and often verbally behind their backs, that those who don't agree are stupid or lazy, that is, their views are not truly their own because they have not come to them out of consideration or did not value “thinking for themselves”. The political task then becomes to get people to be more like us, people who presumably think for ourselves about what is the right, ethical direction to take.

How would we begin to get out of our mistake?

There are many directions to take up at this point, I will focus on one: face to face argument. Here is a possible form of political engagement which illuminates what is wrong with the radical left conception of what is to be done.

To be continued!  ¶ 10:48 AM