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Marching? Again?
What's the use of marching... again? Link: AlterNet: The Washington Iraq Peace March: A Protest to Be Proud of.
WASHINGTON, DC -- A dazzling sun beamed down on peace activists from around the countrywho gathered on the National Mall Saturday to demand an end to the Iraq War. Beneath this benevolent sky, the event read as much like a victory parade as a protest march. These were not the angry demonstrators who took to the streets of New York City in February 2003 in an attempt to avert a war, or the beaten-down and beleaguered ones who marched through US cities in March 2005 to protest US occupation of Iraq, or the slightly bedraggled group who last Spring tied US spending on the Iraq occupation to mismanagment of the crisis as they traced Hurricane Katrina's path in a three-state "March to New Orleans".
Estimates of the crowd size vary -- CNN put it at "tens of thousands" and event organizers insist nearly half a million showed, DC police declined to speculate -- one thing is certain: Today's marchers were as satisfied as cats who stole the cream, cats who were almost ... celebrating.
"Before, we were a minority marching to convince a majority that occupying Iraq was a terrible idea," says Hany Khalil, spokesperson for march organizers, United for Peace and Justice. "But today, for the first time we are out in force representing a majority of Americans who want us to get out of Iraq."
I didn't make this march. The bus I was going on was canceled at the last minute. I wasn't too disappointed, though. I had other stuff to do. And, I had marched in New York last spring, plus regularly in my area. So, it's not like I haven't marched.
But to what end? Why? Especially these days?
Some want to say that peace marches helped end the war in Viet Nam. Better analyses emphasize that it took congressional balls, the willingness to stop funding the war. "Ending" segregation (or at least legal segregation for a short time) also had more to do with the Supreme Court and with Johnson's push for the Voting Rights Acts--not demonstrations.
So, what's the point of marching around? It gives the police more opportunities to practice crowd control. It let surveillance cameras have more opportunities to surveil.
And does it do any good? Really? Some will emphasize the good it does for the protesters--really, it's about them, their feel good moments, their ability to see themselves as part of the solution, their connecting with others, face to face. I admit, this isn't nothing. This is something; something that matters. But, weirdly, it requires the conceit that this be denied, that the actual purpose be something else. So, the most valuable aspect of the march is not what can be openly stated as its most valuable aspect.
And, of course, the whole thing depends on media. It's a staging for the sake of getting televised, printed up in mainstream papers. It's a staging for the sake, then, of the big Other. The big Other has to notice...or it doesn't matter.
Is this so bad? Not really, not if one wants to change the dominant perception, change the big Other. But, notice, the quoted article says that this change has already happened, in advance of the protest--this protest was not to convince a minority at all. So, there is no change in the big Other.
Worse: Bush of course supports the protesters rights of free speech. He applauds their efforts. They've been heard. And this may be the worst part of all: the protesters confirm the fiction of democracy, the fiction of a responsive political system, when we know full well that this is lacking.
The march, then, is a political fetish.
By Jodi | January 29, 2007 in Politics | Permalink
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Funnily enough, I was just revisiting the "populism" debate from a while back; I had this to say about marching then:
http://codepoetics.com/poetix/?p=196
Posted by: Dominic | Jan 29, 2007 9:25:52 AM
The only thing less effective than not marching is marching.
Posted by: dave | Jan 29, 2007 11:33:00 AM
Jodi--that's an interesting bunch of perceptions, but I disagree with some of the main ones even with far fewer marching credentials.
I have frankly been worried till the last couple of years that the great tradition of the protest march was going to disappear. Whatever it didn't seem to be having an effect on, it does now seem that it was at least part of something that finally had some effect: Everything is not all speeding around curves on the road with views blocked and just hoping there won't be a truck on it--or if there is, well, won't that be fun too.
I think these marches have more psychological effect now than I did a few years ago, and that while they don't have much 'precision' about them, in that you can't link them directly or immediately to political action, they obviously have some cumulative effect at least in conjunction with other movements, that I wasn't aware of.
This 'victory march' is, to me, especially convincing, not the other way around. It consolidates the defeat of Bush and Cheney, no matter what recklessness they then try to go on to, or even do go on to. It's not possible to protest Iraq policy, Iran policy and Israel policy all at once and make sense. A march like this, with huge attendance, bothers Bush and Cheney a lot more than they'd admit, I'd even bet on it. In short, I like this march in particular, because it's a rare case of anti-war 'doing it to death.'
Of course, it's also important that if Bush is saying he supports the protesters rights of free speech, even that is a good bit different from what he was saying back when he was still effectively really cocky: He was literally saying back in 2003 that he was paying no attention to them. He still has not got as much power to the executive as it would require to say what he still really does feel: That he does not support the rights of free protest speech, and that he is smoldering with rage now far more than in 2003, because he is finally beginning to be kept in check. No matter how Cheney keeps saying that these things will not affect us at all, they both know that they'll have to pay more for their recklessness than they did a few years ago. But since they do continue to pretend to ignore all public opinion and even polls (maybe they even figure out ways not to find these out), continued protests of all kinds are a sign to the Democrats that they are going to have to keep up the pressure, and I thought Frank Rich was good yesterday on how Hillary is now doing Kerry-style bullshit to cover her ass about her Iraq vote. She's not stupid, though, and will figure out that this won't work, is my guess.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 29, 2007 11:39:25 AM
This recent post by A was linked already on my own blog, but may as well again. Similar veins.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 29, 2007 12:21:21 PM
Imagine a ramped-up, Mary Shelley sort of Hillary, or medusa laughing type, showing her tits to the masses, dumps Bill, and her zulu handlers, denounces Xtians as well as mooslims and joos, takes up with some hot coed from Brown or.... Chelsea......
Phreaks for Hillarity!
Posted by: Sean McCallahan | Jan 29, 2007 3:40:50 PM
A march like this, with huge attendance, bothers Bush and Cheney a lot more than they'd admit, I'd even bet on it.
I rather think that in certain situations Bush Inc love the marches, even perhaps tweak policy or the timing of policy to encourage them, as they galvanize the republican base. Or, at least, they did with Iraq. How do you think a zillion marching NYCers, elite society types, kids with piercings, media studies students from NYU, giant puppets etc plays in the heartland? Even now, how does the parent of a solider, tilting against the absurdity of the war, react the sight of "coastal elites" marching up seventh avenue in Chelsea, milling around the Mall in DC?
It's a very tough question, what to do. But I'm not sure that Bush Inc have an unambivalent relationship to these events / images. Someone somewhere recently was talking about the possibility that a well-timed invasion of Iran would trigger well-timed and more aggressive protests than we've previously seen, and in turn polarize the nation back to the 50/50 and beyond.
Tough to say. Back in my NYC marching time, I was always quite ambivalent about my participation in such things.
Posted by: CR | Jan 29, 2007 3:56:04 PM
Jodi,
I am curious why it is necessary to look at these events with what I would describe as a lidless eye. By this I mean looking at each event to reveal its meaning in light of a judgment waiting to be made about its validity as a “political” action, or an “effective” action. It seems to me that in this case, and perhaps in others, that this is largely a function of the position taken with respect to such action, which is revealed in the assertion that these things find their meaning in their effects on the participants. This is what leads to the conclusion that in order to feel those effects, or perhaps even as the condition of possibility of those effects, they must be denied as an aim. I myself have not participated in many marches here, and have been out of the country for some time, but I have been part of similar mobilisations in other countries in which this aim is neither denied nor is it set against, or perceieved to be set against, other aims. So I wonder how much of the critique of the marches is based in a general feeling of a lack of political effectivness, or perhaps even lack of political character or wholeness in some sense, of the individual, looking at themselves. Not to say it is an abstraction of personal anxieties, but that it refelects a general anxiety manifested in the person, perhaps intensified or caused by introspection or self-reflection. I think this also has something to do with the implicit juxtaposition of movements and marches with legislative and judicial action. Perhaps the problem lies in the focus on political “action”.
I think the telling remark though is where you mention that the march is useful if it aims to change the perception of the big Other, but that this cannot be the case since the article notes that its character follows rom the fact that this has already happened. I note also many of the comments deal with the changed behaviour of the adminstration and current candidates. I think something to explore is the rift between the big Other as the public, and as the government, assuming for the moment that the charactersation of the march by the Nation is accurate. I think it is significant that one might ask which is the target here. I think I understand that the danger is that any political action can be coopted by those it opposes, but I wonder what the impact of such a complete rift, and the recourse not only to outright lies but a more systematic falseness, is on thinking about political action.
Posted by: William S | Jan 29, 2007 4:59:22 PM
Jodi,
I share your ambivalence about the effect, at this moment, of marches such as these. It is quite possible that they have either no effect or one contrary to their aims. But I went out on Saturday because one never knows, ultimately, what can happen. On your blog, you've expressed exasperation with electoral and legislative solutions. If there is to be some kind of participatory movement that seeks other kinds of political solutions, wouldn't building the kind of base for this happen with anti-war marches like those this weekend? Here in San Francisco this weekend the most vocal of groups were those like the I.S.O. involved with labor issues, and seeking to use the age-old strategies of labor organization to put pressure on the war. Very few people with Obama and Hillary signs. The question above is not a rhetorical one. I really don't know. But I do know that historically small groups of people have had decisive political effects, just as large groups of people have had no effect whatsoever. Nothing like that this weekend, certainly. But something to hope for nonetheless.
Posted by: | Jan 29, 2007 6:44:22 PM
'How do you think a zillion marching NYCers, elite society types, kids with piercings, media studies students from NYU, giant puppets etc plays in the heartland?'
'The heartland' does not know what 'types' are marching, even if you mean the previous ones in NYC. They'd be more likely to know that marchers travel to these thing. They see New York as the big American city, they don't see 'a zillion marching NYCers', for one thing because that is not what was there, but also because even if they were, they would not be any more readily identifiable than the 'NYU media studies students.' 'The heartland' is not synonymous with 'Republican base', which has never been enough to tip the balance by itself, and was recently even proved to be so (if that wasn't already obvious.) Given that the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq War and this is well known by now, they are probably not even going to worry about Susan Sarandon and other 'elite society types' (unbelievable construction for this context); in fact, I had a hard time remembering her for 48 hours myself. Now I recall a face-lift wake-up call in the photo. Thanks ever so much.
'Even now, how does the parent of a solider, tilting against the absurdity of the war, react the sight of "coastal elites" marching up seventh avenue in Chelsea, milling around the Mall in DC?''
They'd react differently to any anti-war march, but I am sure none of them, for or against, thinks about 'the sight of coastal elites', which is preposterous. There is no such thing as 'the sight of coastal elites', but certainly there was not even any imagining of a 'sight of coastal elites' in anyone's mind when it came to the Washington march. '7th avenue' would have sufficed. Nobody at all was thinking about 'Chelsea' unless they want to point out places they've had brunch.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 29, 2007 7:13:02 PM
I'm sorry Patrick. I guess you don't have a television set. Which is, of course, fine. But not having seen how these things play on there, I guess it's understandable that you'd feel the way you do.
And I'm glad we've settled the issue of the age-old ambivalence between middle america and the big coastal cities. Phew! That was a tough one, but you've done the trick. Thankfully, it is true, that the massive, massive turnout for the first set of anti-war marches galvanized the nation against the war, especially in the so-called redstates. I'm awfully glad that the entire Bush two-step, from day one, hasn't revolved around a cynical deployment of his own stupidity and a sneering contempt for "elites." That's why John Kerry won the election, duh! It sure as hell wasn't the green tea stuff, the windsurfing, the Frenchness, etc. It was an matter of policy plain and simple, and he won, as the issue organized polls indicated he would!
The heartland' is not synonymous with 'Republican base', which has never been enough to tip the balance by itself, and was recently even proved to be so (if that wasn't already obvious.)
Well, except of course when it does. Thankfully, again, we've recently learned that that will never ever happen again, and even if it does, it will surely be republican voters in Vermont and California that do the trick.
There is no such thing as 'the sight of coastal elites'
This is just what I keep telling my in-laws in Memphis! They simply can't understand that just because I am paid to do my own thing, work on exactly what I want to, and lived in a place in NYC that cost as much as, well, every house in their zipcode, and despite the fact that they are either unemployed (downsized!), just out of prison (heroin!), on their way to Iraq (17 years old!) or working at a corn oil plant that will close next month or so, despite all this - they simply can't understand that there is no such thing as the "coastal elite." We're all in this together - and when I march, they know damn well that I'm marching for them. Shit, when I brunch, they know that I brunch for them too - usually not Chelsea, almost always, back in the day, at Robin des Bois on Smith Street where the Stella's cold and the Croque Monsieur comes with some very nice Bechamel.
No wait. I had crepes once near Chelsea Market. I think it was Sunday, but when you keep academic hours, who the hell knows, right my friend?
Posted by: CR | Jan 29, 2007 10:56:40 PM
But seriously, I marched in all of the marches. From the big IMF one in 2000 through to the end of my time in NYC (2005). I just have always been agnostic about their effectiveness, the way they play in this nation that is so terribly allergic to politics and protest, and so deeply divided socio-economically and geographically that an almost surefire trump card for the right is to say "See what they're thinking out in NYC / CA? Is that for you? Is that who you are?"
I understand this march is in DC, and that makes it a bit different. I was writing about my experience of marches - mostly NYC with a few DCs thrown in.
Posted by: CR | Jan 29, 2007 11:08:49 PM
I wonder if you could try something a little more smug if it's going to have to be indigestible. It might be possible that a more brilliantined sort of smug wouldn't sound so suburban--but since you left in 2005, the city has changed a great deal, which you would unquestionably not be able to discern on brief visits back. You know nothing about which restaurants and retail stores on Bleecker and down by Varick and Hudson have closed and at what exponentially increasing speeds. All you were able to see if you were to come back briefly is that Rite-Aids and Duane Reades do not continue to populate with great speed. I mean, why would they? They have proliferated at a rate in which one may now even close from time to time. You know, this does happen. I saw a Burger King close in the late 90's and have never forgotten the sensation. I saw a Dunkin' Donuts close on 6th Avenue in the early 80's when I was in a 'giving period' and the chubby girl who had worked in the place said 'they move to Queens', although such things are not possible. This was not La Caravelle or even Nathan's. Those are places that could 'move'.
*
'There is no such thing as 'the sight of coastal elites'
'This is just what I keep telling my in-laws in Memphis! They simply can't understand that just because I am paid to do my own thing, work on exactly what I want to, and lived in a place in NYC that cost as much as, well, every house in their zipcode, and despite the fact that they are either unemployed (downsized!), just out of prison (heroin!), on their way to Iraq (17 years old!) or working at a corn oil plant that will close next month or so, despite all this - they simply can't understand that there is no such thing as the "coastal elite."
You are simply too slobland here. Of course there is a 'coastal elite'. I said there is no such thing as the 'sight of a cultural elite' that one could recognize as such in yesterday's march--with or without a television, either going up the street or turning mine on, if I have one, certainly not in Washington, as you tacitly concede in your final 'surprise twist'. You cannot recognize it yourself, and if television tells you by way of innocent bystanders making false comments, then of course that is propaganda of the sort that the Bushies use as well as you clearly will. They think they can gain leverage by identifying coastal elites, and you probably want to identify with coastal elites since...'They simply can't understand that just because I am paid to do my own thing, work on exactly what I want to, and lived in a place in NYC that cost as much as, well, every house in their zipcode...'
Yes, you LIVED here. And you'd like to do slum clearance in Memphis, it seems--not necessarily, but only if you have to. But are they as impressed by how your mortgages are being paid off, or if they even already have, wherever you live by now? Do they think you are as coastal elitist as you would have been had you been able to use the present tense throughout, not just 2 out of 3? Do any of them dream of the days of your condo in New York, which they hated but secretly worshipped with the passion of voluptuously denied pleasure?
'I had crepes once near Chelsea Market.'
Probably either in the Market itself or at Rue des Crepes, both of which have that special yuppie-style flatness that also can be found at Spice Market and Park.
'I think it was Sunday, but when you keep academic hours, who the hell knows, right my friend?'
Yes, it must be difficult--you know, the imprisonment, the way you can't just go to a Chelsea establishment unless it is in a sort of 'business trip' context.
'I understand this march is in DC, and that makes it a bit different.'
That long journey to this next to last little morsel--the one making a slight bow to truth--is very like something Tom Friedman must have started doing when he first realized that some fancy footwork to be on the winning team of Iraq War public opinion was not going to work. It was going to be slow going unless you were to seem like you had actually been influenced by those New York Review of Books types. They might be speaking to him at Da Sylvano by now, I don't know. He's definitely improving his shtick.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 12:34:46 AM
So let me get this straight. You're simultaneously
1) Making fun of me for no longer living in NYC, since you apparently have been there forever and
2) Criticizing me for having no perspective compared to you on what non New Yorkers think about New York.
You see the problem here, yes? I'd hate to say that this is stereotypical nyc behavior on your part but....
Posted by: CR | Jan 30, 2007 1:24:44 AM
I just said some accurate things that pissed you off. It was interesting which parts you concentrated on. They were the same ones as before. I feel like Jennifer Fucking Melfi.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 1:42:48 AM
"I feel like Jennifer Fucking Melfi."
Ah, I see. Jersey envy. Got it.
I am aiming to be, when I grow up, the second most famous person born in Westwood, NJ, after, of course, James Gandolfini.
Posted by: CR | Jan 30, 2007 1:49:31 AM
Jodi,
World Beat (a branch of fpif) has published something on the latter motivation you mention, here.
There's also some online coverage of Sean Penn, Jane Fonda and crew here about whom (the literary as well as pragmatic qualities) maybe the less said the better.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 30, 2007 10:50:55 AM
I went to the march. Never underestimate the value of people going to these things. One reason things get done 'over' relates to a fundamental truth of our existential condition, pointed out by Nietzsche: there are constantly new actors. For many people, marching is still pushing the envelope; it's still transgressive; it's still community building; it's still a leap away from the norm. Do you think it's so easy to get in a bus with a bunch of people and travel hours and hours? That's a rhetorical question, of course you know it isn't easy. Or convenient. It's like those fake statue people in Europe. They stand there on a box with a sheet over them that has been covered with flour and they look like a statue. True, this is better than mimes, because statues don't move, and are easier to avoid. But there are still all these people who stop and say, "Gollee, look a dat dere, dat guy looks like a statue, only he ain't, just watch, and if you put some money in that little box he'll wink at ya and you'll see it ain't no statue, not really." And if you've been in Europe for a while, say 48 hours, you see one of these fake statue people and you want to vomit, you want to push them off their box, you want to say to people (using the Cartman voice) "Hey! It's not cool to look at the fake statue people in Florence cut that out that's a bad kitty!"
Walking around the march you can focus on the trots with their predictable front groups or the bad 'street art' and if you want material for ironic distancing, it's ready to hand. But the significant moments for me was walking around and hearing someone approach a stranger -- "You from Wisconsin too?" New actors!
Posted by: Swifty | Jan 30, 2007 11:28:11 AM
'Jersey envy. Got it.'
No, it's Paramus Professional Building Envy, even though most mention of Paramus is for Carmella to go to the Pa-ray-a-mus Maw-ull and spend blood money. I just always think Melfi's office looks like it's in those horrible buildings in what has passed for downtown Paramus for a dismally long time (at least since the early 80s.) They'd be instantaneously transformed into places of great joy by the production of big billable hours inside them.
You are not careful enough with your details, but it's been obvious for some time that '[you are] aiming to be, when [you]grow up, the second most famous person born in Westwood, NJ', and, while I don't care for fussiness, fame also no longer exists except in an increasingly coarse form, so you needn't worry about the details (Friedman certainly doesn't.)
Frankly, what I don't understand in this post is why it is a complex matter, or how anyone would think it up. It would not seem at all obvious to me that, as the White House continues to go about its business of defying all standards of decency as long as it can get away with it, that an anti-war march that is sizable and in the nation's capital, could be anything but a strong and continuing bolstering and support of the anti-Iraq War sentiment which now exists in the U.S. populace. It's but one symbol, but they should be everywhere and more of them. There certainly has been no cessation in the attempts to regain a sense of some lost ground by the White House since the Nov. elections. Might as well say, as before, that the Republicans might as well have won those, it would be no different.
'But, notice, the quoted article says that this change has already happened, in advance of the protest--this protest was not to convince a minority at all.'
What minority? It's a show of solidarity about something that has in no way ended, nor any solution been brought forward that is known to be in any way workable, and none that doesn't immediately collide with what the government says it's going to do anyway. Since you, Jodi, are a marcher and I'm not, did it make you feel slightly guilty not to get there (I wouldn't think you should, but it might be different if you have often marched), so that you might imagine there might need to be some doubt as to the value of it? Admittedly, the marchers are the only ones who have earned the right to ask what this value is, but non-marchers can be also the ones to say that they think well of the march, that it is not 'just about the marchers,' that they support it. I remember after 9/11, I didn't want to go to any of the candlelight vigils, but my sister in Georgia actually spoke of them in a condescending way, which I found unbelievably shallow. Of course, you are not doing that, since you have marched and know the territory, I had just been reminded of that coincidentally.
So that the only real question really is 'would you rather there not have been the march?' and so how would that have been.
'James Gandolfini.'
But he lives in the Village now, and I saw him on 7th Avenue between 12th and 13th a few weeks ago. I wrote this up in a contribution I sent to a journal that is being given a lot of publicity at the moment, but the 'curator' of the journal had never seen 'The Sopranos.'
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 11:59:11 AM
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/01/washington-antiwar-protests.html
For the British socialist point of view. I haven't had time to read the comments yet.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 12:07:08 PM
'James Gandolfini.'
But he lives in the Village now, and I saw him on 7th Avenue between 12th and 13th a few weeks ago. I wrote this up in a contribution I sent to a journal that is being given a lot of publicity at the moment, but the 'curator' of the journal had never seen 'The Sopranos.'
Sounds like a fascinating piece, ground-breaking really. I wonder, though, whether said editor might not have been having a little bit of fun with you. Just a guess.
Posted by: CR | Jan 30, 2007 12:22:30 PM
'Just a guess.'
I couldn't agree more, since it's a fact. You're all ego, as far as I can tell, and take yourself so seriously that the subject is completely submerged by it. I'll refrain from addressing you any further, as your playfulness is much like George Bush's basketball playing.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 12:50:51 PM
'a fascinating piece, ground-breaking really'
It is, actually, but you could not know that, as the Gandolfini episode comprises 3 lines out of some 40 pages. It is just that a piece that is good can withstand taking a strand of it and letting it further itself down another direction--I can add for you especially that Gandolfini standing on the veritable edge of Chelsea is even fatter than he used to be, and that he does indulge in Byronic poses which are totally unsuited to him. This is the form for hardtail married types.
I should include that, of course, I was making fun of your no longer living in New York, because you cannot really effectively use that against any putative Memphis relatives and expect, in your turn, to make fun of them thereby. It's obvious you'd buy up their zip code if you thought it would further your career, but if you wanted to be condescending to them, it did not make sense to put this in the past tense and expect anyone else to still dwell on its spectacular conspicuousness except yourself.
Posted by: Patrick J. Mullins | Jan 30, 2007 1:04:15 PM
Enuf is enuf, I agree. I am not however condescending toward my Memphis relatives, not at all. It marks you as rather dim, tone-deaf really, that that's what you would take from the above. Their situation is bleak; mine is not. There is a gap between us that mirrors a truth about the reception of media images. I don't "use that against them." I use that, rather, against us, me.
Read it again slowly. Maybe it will dribble through.
Posted by: CR | Jan 30, 2007 1:23:28 PM
While I confess my feelings remain very ambivalent about the current protest culture (the originality/exigency of 'Seattle' seeming light-years away from this kind of stale repetition)....still, albeit belonging to the contemporary political fad of "far too little much too late," witness a faint glimmer of legislation.
Call it the political party of FTLMTL, if you like.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 30, 2007 6:49:45 PM
CNN tonight: a report on congressional hearings (I think) on confronting Iran was actually interrupted by BREAKING NEWS - a Pentagon source is speculating that a relatively recent attack on US troops was conducted by Iranian nationals. Wolf Blitzer seemed very excited.
They next had an analyst on to speculate about what would happen: we'd bomb some reactors, they'd start mining the strait of hormuz (remember 1988? remember Iran Air 655?) and, lo and behold, "they'd" "hurt" "us" by driving oil up to $150 a barrel.
Guess it's time to pull out our Greg Palast pieces and Retort stuff again, no? It's getting harder and harder to think anything else at all (can somebody explain even the darkest possible logic for messing with Iran at this point other than oil supply disruption) is driving this...
Posted by: CR | Jan 30, 2007 9:53:21 PM
The last sentence of th post struck me. "political fetish?"
We are all used to the polemics of not getting in the streets. and used to the apathetic arguments for it being a waste of time...but the idea of it being a "fetish" is interesting, not in the sense of it being merely fashionable or "chic" as the classist panhandler Tom Wolfe would have it, but in a deeper sense of it being a mis-en-scene of political activity in a nihilistic de-politicized space of privitized innoculation....yet we still look for the the place of political resitance in terms of agency....
I'm thinking here of the type of individuation that Henri Giroux talks about in terms of Identity and Representation....
Perhaps the idea of Agency is merely a lark, and a fetish would indicate it is not a crisis of "identity" but rather related to the idea of property and Community understood in the anarchist sense....
Posted by: nate | Feb 2, 2007 10:12:51 PM
[...From The Existence Machine: On Marching and Politics...]
Posted by: | Feb 3, 2007 1:13:18 PM
I think this observation of nate's is important, concerning 'agency', since the discussion is mostly concerned with whether or not one should participate in marches. What I am curious about is how the political efficacy of the march is judged - is it judged in terms of an ideal political action or state, or in terms of its possible absence? This sort of juxtaposition makes sense only if you look at the march in terms of a possible individual action, in that you cannot ask the second question otherwise. It seems significant that though the discussion seems to center on individual participation in marches, the second question is not asked. I suppose the implication is that there is no irreducible political character of individual lives in the sense of individual agency.
Posted by: William S | Feb 3, 2007 5:41:01 PM
Re: populism, aka The Democrat Amnesia Meme: making decisions via consensus does not entail that correct or "just" decisions are being made.
Instead of another miserable season of populist masscult, progressives might consider implementing some emergency voter reforms, by whatever means are available (" yo ChairGal Nance: check this out""). A poll test–-say covering basic quantitative, analytical and reading comprehension skills--would unlikely play well with poor urban minorities, but might keep large numbers of uneducated, redneck bible-thumpers and grunts out of the voting booth; for that matter it might keep some dyslexic "techies" who can't read or write from blindly clicking away for their favorite political flavors.
One could imagine other alternatives to pure populism: say, a chess tournament between the presidential candidates. That might even give Boy Obama a fightin' chance. e4, Hill.
Posted by: nominalist | Feb 24, 2007 1:13:09 PM
or phuck the troll, listen to H.L. Mencken on Voting:
"[W]hen a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental–men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… [A]ll the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre–the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.
Isn't there a way to rectify that situation without resorting to Bolshevikism, or, er, Mussolini? One would like to think so......................
Posted by: nominalist | Feb 24, 2007 1:36:16 PM
What if Iraq was the United States in 1964?
February 1, 1964, at the height of segregation in the United States, the British send a military force taking control of the south of the United States deploying forces across Alabama, Tennessee Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida.
Following repeated warnings voiced in the United Nations and through media outlets, the British rally the support of Spain to create a "coalition of the willing" to oust the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seen as directly responsible for not fully supporting legislation to implement a Civil Rights Act, in strict violation of the Magna Carta.
The British draft an extensive dossier which highlights the abuses to large portions of the African American population including state sponsored lynching, unlawful imprisonment and execution. The dossier adds the actions of the United States government violate the principle of habeas corpus, the legal action by means of which detainees (in this case African Americans) can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. The British dossier presented Mississippi as an example of the dire situation. In 1960, 42% of the population was black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching, executions and jailing was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population. The last section of the dossier included testimony from the families of Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14) who died at the Sixteen Street Baptist Church on the 15th September,1963. An additional twenty-three other people were also hurt as a result of the bomb placed by Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan following the end of Sunday school classes at the church.
Posted by: Dark One | Mar 1, 2007 12:23:51 PM
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