Wisconsin comes to Washington?

The mechanical analog that is central to understanding modern American politics is the ratchet. This mechanism allows motion in only one direction. Ever since Reagan, that direction has been toward greater inequality in America. The main difference between the two American parties is the number of clicks by which the plutocratic ratchet moves in each election cycle. Once this analog is understood, the false drama of Democratic/Republican squabbles is revealed. There is nothing more at stake than the rate at which the wealthy aggrandize themselves.

At some point, a massive political upheaval will break the American plutocratic ratchet mechanism, but until that day comes, following the politics of our broken democracy is a waste of time.

It’s just very hard to imagine a 2011 budget deal in which the Democrats give away less than the Republicans’ opening demand. It’s inconceivable that Obama would suddenly turn around and stop agreeing with Republicans on the main issues where he’s already conceded to them: more stimulus is off the table, the deficit is the big problem, the federal budget is comparable to a household budget.

The Democrats in 2012 will run on a platform of “we are not the Republicans.” They will be to the right of Reagan, but they will demand the votes of liberals anyway, and those who object will be firmly told that there is no one else to vote for, you dirty fucking hippies.

I believe that the plutocratic elite are highly pleased by the efficacy of their propaganda tools in securing public acceptance of massive unemployment and declining living standards. They will exploit these tools right up to – and past – the breaking point. They will continue to maintain that general prosperity will result from concentrating wealth in their hands – until there is blood in the streets.

Apparently we’re not a very hopeful bunch today.

Apparently we’re not a very hopeful bunch today.

On the bright side, it does look like about 200 more Wisconsin voters (out of 1.5 million cast) were willing to make the symbolic example of rejecting a candidate associated with the loathsome Governor Walker, than were willing to stick by his operation. So there is a tiny bit of hope, maybe.

Gerry Brown is telling us, that if the tax extensions are not passed (almost certain to not happen), UC costs will be $25K per student. So I guess this is mixed news. It will cost me more to get my kids through, but because of the large number of middle class kids who are sure to be priced out of college, the value of their degrees ought to go up, as a consequence of scarcity. I think this is part of the dynamic, if you are within the top 5-10% inequality of opportunity favors your progeny over the common people, so why not go along with the plutocracy project.

It would be different if left third parties were stealing the ball and running with it.

It would be different if the left were willing to participate in Democratic party politics (county/state level appointments, etc). The lack of understanding on the left of how to effect political change short of a revolution is a big part of the problem.

Don, as mpowell is the latest to point out, there are more productive paths available than either reflexive support or sulking on the sidelines. You’re making his point for him.

In our system, supporting a third party IS sulking on the sidelines. I don’t like that any better than you do, but it’s reality.

In our system, supporting a third party IS sulking on the sidelines.

Presidentially. There are two independents in the senate, none in the house. A third party gets more viable the more locally you focus your politics.

Even a slightly left-of-center political majority requires an alliance, and a fairly broad one. The basic formula in American politics is: Populism + Progressivism. Translation: combine the liberal elites, which are based in college-educated professions with appeals to the working classes. Appeals to the working classes requires appeals to people with fairly authoritarian attitudes about politics, based on feelings of political solidarity. On the good side, historically, that meant labor unions; on the bad, it meant ugly stuff, like nativism and white supremacy. But, it’s how stuff moves forward in the U.S.; it’s how the Civil War was won and how Progressive reforms were enacted, how the New Deal was done, and how the Great Society came into being.

The Democratic Party went off the rails, because of the decline of mass, popular organization in American life, and the increasing hostility of liberals to even the idea of political solidarity. Clinton and Gore carried the last thin wisp of southern white populism, and poor whites from Greater Appalachia — never mind whites in the Deep South — voting for Democrats. Obama completely alienated those people, while he delighted idealistic, upper-class liberals. Add in the decline of unionism into insignificance, and you get a Democratic Party, which is simply incapable of marshalling a majority, because, frankly, without a foundation in solidarity, Democratic politicians cannot be trusted. At this point, they can not reach the fading, fabled “independent” voter, who doesn’t comprehend a politics of “ideas”, issues and laundry lists, because solidarity is alien to the liberal, as well as neo-liberal, idealism.

The Tea Party rhetorically is exploiting that vacuum of political ideology and organizing. The actual Tea Party participants, and especially financiers and organizers, are the usual far-right of the Republican Party — they are FDR’s “economic royalists” and “Impeach Earl Warren” John Birch Society morons of the 1950s. But, today, their rhetorical frameworks are lightening rods, to deflect the political storm of mass dissatisfaction and frustration, which the Democrats are so pathetically unable and unwilling to exploit and organize.

Political solidarity sufficient to secure a left-of-center majority for economic reforms will require some pretty fierce, populist rhetoric. Liberals are too damn reasonable to do it; they need to lose enough of their idealism, to permit a degree of America First sentiment on issues like “free trade” and immigration and globalization and economic regulation and taxes. Get mad. Then, get even. But, do it with a loyal army behind you. A bunch of liberals dreaming of a better day, while wearing “kick me harder, Obama!” t-shirts ain’t cuttin’ it.

But they weren’t satisfied with local nibbling- they wanted the whole ball of wax. And they went out and got it.

I was only talking about third-party viability, which is real. It’d be awesome if the Democratic Party became the nightmare their activists would have you believe it is, so by all means reclaim it. But it isn’t sulking to, say, imagine another Bernie Sanders somewhere.

maybe we should give um the whole ball of wax

When they start to shut down Social Security and Medicare, it won’t be the youth in the streets who rebel; it will be the old folks, and they are much more active and effective politically than our iphone-addled youth. It will be the oldsters that take down the Tea Party Republicans.

It’s worth noting that there are right now a goodly number of liberal and even left-wing people in Democratic party politics from the precinct level up. But it’s proven very hard to translate the usual party leverages into accomplishments higher up because the resistance is well funded and willing to use its own leverage to negate expressions of popular desire from within the party as well as without.

This isn’t to say that there’s no room for more. Of course there is. It’s worth doing. But we have enemies who are just as willing to cheat and steal from party operatives as from anyone else. Heck, the only reason we know just how much the Democratic establishment is capable of when aroused is seeing what they threaten and then do to primary challengers – if we only had the evidence of their response to challenges from the right, we’d be much more likely to conclude that they’re just wimps rather than that they’re willing collaborators.

Straightwood The plutocratic inequality ratchet doesn’t stop at the top 5%
This is true, but I think few in the 5% to .1% bracket realize this. So the divide and conquer strategy is working. Owning the bigmedia opinion transmission network is a huge plus for the plutocrats.

Please post more. IIRC Clin ton and the Republicans hammered the poor in 1996. In any case that was the year of welfare reform (Clinton vetoed a welfare reform bill around the time of the shut down).

In contrast, in 1994, Clinton and the Democrats introduced 3 strikes and your out (3 felonies means life without parole) and the death penalty for 50 more crimes. Neither provision matters much, because most trials are in state courts under state law. I think no one has been sentenced to death in a federal court for any of the crimes made punishable by death in 94 and I don’t know if anyone has been convicted of 3 felonies by federal courts.

Again IIRC the main thing related to the poor that Clinton had signed before the shut down was the massive expansion of the earned income tax credit which was part of the bill raising taxes on the rich (passed with 0 Republican votes).

Straightwood: “The plutocratic inequality ratchet doesn’t stop at the top 5%”
Omega Centauri: “This is true, but I think few in the 5% to .1% bracket realize this. So the divide and conquer strategy is working. Owning the bigmedia opinion transmission network is a huge plus for the plutocrats.”

And it’ll take a while to really hit the top 10% that they’re not just under some pressure, but slated for reduction to upper middle class (at best). Until then,
they’ll eagerly support the crushing of everybody below them because (a) they’ll profit and (b) they’re Real Americans, who generally don’t mind their lessers taking it in the privates.

“There Is No Alternative” (TINA) You MUST work Within The Corrupt System To Fix It …”

Is this a synthetic a priori?

Florida comes to Wisconsin

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/119410124.html

The hard right activists were able to take over the Republican party because they were supported by those with money. In contrast, the Democratic base finds it more difficult to take over because those with money oppose such a takeover.

I want to emphasize my agreement with this point. Liberals should be trying to take over/maintain control of the Democratic party, but their efforts should not be denigrated if they are not as successful as the Republican right because the movement on the right is aligned with the money. So on the one hand, you have to work from within. On the other, it won’t work that well. The situation sucks. We should have done public campaign financing in the 60s and maybe we wouldn’t be in this spot now, but we are where we are. Personally, that’s a top priority for me, but I’m not sure people realize how crucial it is.

It seems to me we’ve got to be able to change the conversations and thinking of the country. Its not just that big money has corrupted the political system. Or even that they’ve corrupted the media meme conveyor belt. Its that their project has been vigorously and diligently pursued for decades, never wavering in its determination to remake the country in their choosen image. Rewriting rules and regulations one at a time. It used to be disastrous for a politician or journalist to be caught in a lie, now it hardly causes an eyebrow to raise. It is an expected and accepted part of the business (at least the business of ideological propagation, as practiced by the right). Undoing this is not going to come quickly. Not, if our population would rather be enetertained than educated. Fact checking, and logical thinking, those are for party pooper whimps! Until we can convince enough that such weaknesses come at a very high price, we aren’t going to make headway.

There’s much to be said on both sides of the work-within/work-outside-the-Democratic Party debate. But anyone who wants to understand just how vicious and unscrupulous Democratic party leaders can be in resisting grassroots challenges should read Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny by Theresa Amato, Nader’s campaign manager. The extremes to which state Democratic officials went, in state after state, to keep Nader out of Democratic primaries and the national election will make your stomach turn.

Sounds like they were converging, but now it’s all gone; now it’s about the percentage of Latino women CEOs and stuff like that.

Don’t think so. Boston bussing protests were probably the signal case of non-convergence. In any case, “convergence” is one of those desires for a grand narrative that doesn’t actually exist.

In contrast, in 1994, Clinton and the Democrats introduced 3 strikes and your out (3 felonies means life without parole) and the death penalty for 50 more crimes.

Anyone know if this is a fixed thing, or one of those things that are more flexible if you have a good lawyer? I know people who definitely at the risk of committing three felonies, if for no other reason than drugs. I think the law is stupid in any case, but if the people I know were to suffer under it that would be actually intolerable.

Boston bussing protests were probably the signal case of non-convergence.

But forced busing is exactly one of those liberal programs that I blame for non-convergence and fragmentation; programs with the focus on race, instead of exploitation.

Don at 40 and Peter Ramus at 42:

I think its important to point out that Democratic politicians are spineless because most of the Democratic base likes them to be spineless, that is they like them to compromise.

See: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/democratic_spinelessnes/

The argument of a shift of disaffected low-information voters from left to right certainly explains Palin, the American Evita Peron. But a better explanation is the manipulation of ethnic and demographic divisiveness in uncertain economic times. In America, it is much easier to hate one’s economic inferiors than one’s superiors, and the “Conservatives” have excelled in focusing popular discontent on the dark-skinned poor and their wicked protectors in government. Until large numbers of white Americans are facing impoverishment, the American plutocracy will continue to flourish.

HV @30: “What were the reasons for the decline of mass popular organizations in American life? You didn’t say. What are the reasons for fragmentation of solidarity; could it be that the liberal obsession with identity politics have something to do with it?”

A bunch of reasons. Success was one. The Women’s Suffrage Movement became the League of Women Voters, because they won; they didn’t become the feminist movement, for the same sort of panoply of reasons that the Pennsylvania Railroad did not become General Motors and Western Union did not become AOL. It was natural that the NAACP would gradually evolve from a political movement founded mostly by whites into a organization dominated by earnest ambitious black professionals, and post-civil-rights success, an organization focused on the concerns and interests of upper-middle-class blacks, promoting and celebrating the rise of a few blacks into the boardrooms of corporate America.

The success of the progressive/liberal New Deal economic program permitted the success of the liberal cultural program of breaking down white supremacy in the South, and Yankee supremacy in New England, and corrupt unions like the Teamsters, and the sexual oppression that restricted contraception and abortion, kept women in stereotyped occupations, gays in the closet, etc.

Television has played a role. First, by sponging up the excess leisure time that might have gone to the Elks or the Knights of Columbus, and, then, by dumbing down the mass capacity for critical thinking and reliance on critically assessed fact.

Without understanding all the reasons why, I do think it important to simply notice that the expression of affiliative needs is at a low ebb in the American culture. Society has become atomistic to an individual level; more adults than once would have been thought possible (by psychologists and sociologists) report to pollsters that they have few, or even no!, close friends. Television again: think about how popular “reality shows” have become; it is as if massive numbers of people are taking lessons in social dynamics, by watching the treachery and alliance-building on Survivor or Real World.

Another thing to simply notice is that the scale of human society is completely unprecedented. Most of human evolution probably occured against a background of small, nomadic bands of families, loosely organized into clans and tribes of a few hundred, or at most, thousands of individuals, engaged in constant, murderous warfare. The technology to live a sedentary life is less than 10,000 years old; the organization of large-scale military hierarchy, 3000 years old; large-scale corporate business organization, with its wage-employees, professional managers and financial securities was invented around 1600, and did not become ubiquitous until the 1880s and 1890s.

I’m not much on Internet Millenarianism, and only a little partial to American exceptionalism. Twitter and Facebook are not going to fuel the Revolution, or pave the road for the Antichrist, either. But, there’s something to the idea that America is facing a challenge to develop a new kind of social organization, that doesn’t depend for its security of membership on racial and sexual markers and orders, or even geographical proximity.

OC @41: “It seems to me we’ve got to be able to change the conversations and thinking of the country. . . . Until we can convince enough . . . ”

It is a natural part of the liberal worldview to want to believe that people can be educated, and that politics can be founded on a well-informed public opinion reaching a consensus, based on shared values and an “objective” assessment of reality. It doesn’t work that way. Most people are too busy with other things, living their lives in the world, not in their heads, to have the time or spare braincells to really think thru politics.

Authoritarian political attitudes do not mark out a type of person, or some kind of psychopathology; they are the natural condition of those cells of the body politic, which are subservient, dependent and scared, and not part of the leadership systems of the society. Politics, like all human organization, needs leadership and followership, and it is folly to think otherwise.

But, authoritarian political attitudes are not a natural monopoly of the Right; the Left can play the game, if it get over itself. It is not the nature of authoritarian followers, which makes them conservative; it is the ease with which they can be manipulated by the unscrupulous Right-wing demagogues, and the reticence of the Left to supply skilled demagogues of their own.

American politics has always been tribal, because people are, at base, tribal. What’s different is that the tribes are largely defined by slogans and worldviews and a puddle-deep ideology, and the Right has much more institutional capital invested in leading the tribes they can capture and confuse. The politics of Rove and Bush, of the Shock Doctrine, increases the proportion and intensity of authoritarian political attitudes in society. That’s why people are electing a raft of tough-guy authoritarian governors across states like New Jersey, Florida and Wisconsin (and, I suspect, why Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo are stylin’ the way they are.)

Liberalism has become reactionary and conservative in mode, if not doctrine; there’s no critique or agenda. Even if there were an educating moment, when most Americans were really paying attention, what would you say?

We’ve had a major financial crisis, and liberals, in Congress and the Obama Administration, fully supported by academia and the Media, united with the corrupt centrists to try to preserve the system. Liberals, who are trying to preserve a corrupt and decrepit system, are useless, politically. And, they did it, instinctively, because they did not have a critique of the political economy, at hand.

Kevin Phillips did a great job, analyzing the politics of theocracy and financialization. Tellingly, he’s an old Nixon hand, not a liberal.

I like Paul Krugman, Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong — leaders of the center-left econblogs. But, not one, in the moment of crisis, said, this is an opportunity to destroy a corrupt system, let’s take the risk. Because they were not prepared, mentally. They are neo-liberals, cheerleaders and even architects of this rotten system, if the truth be known.

In the 1920s, there were a number of critics of the American political economy. People were aware of deficiencies in the failing farm economy, the oppressive wage economy, the burgeoning corporate economy, and wrote books. And, conveniently, Hoover and the Republicans thoroughly destroyed the economy, before the Democrats came in, so preservation was never a realistic option. There was a ready progressive agenda of mutualism in finance, a ready ground for creating a universal system of old age pensions, ideas about how to manage agriculture, ideas about public electric utilities and regulation of private utilities. And, a taste for blood. FDR sued the iconic Republican Treasury Secretary of the previous Republican administrations, Andrew Mellon, for personal tax evasion. The head of the New York Stock Exchange went to prison. The chief of private electric utilities in Chicago was driven into poverty and a fatal heart attack by Democratic opponents, one of whom leveraged that feud into a cabinet position.

The Left will be effective, when they (we) are willing to fight, and willing to wreck the existing system. A conservative left is a useless, impotent thing, by nature. And, the Left will be potent, when it is willing to overcome its scruples to lead people with authoritarian attitudes.

Bruce, I think you assume too much about human nature. People can be tribal or cosmopolitan; their attitudes authoritarian or libertarian. You are what you eat; your consciousness is a product of your social environment.

The outstanding [political] ‘sin’ of the current Democratic leadership has always been their utter failure to recognize the essential role that emotion plays in politics. The Republicans understand it well.

They know that they represent the interests of only a small percentage of the total electorate and that, in a nominal democracy, they must find a way to win the support of many voters who are not able to comprehend the fine points of complicated policy discussions. They understand that they need to communicate with those people on a level they can understand.

The Democratic Party opposition will only become the majority party when Democratic politicians come to understand that they must define who the ‘good guys’ and and who the ‘bad guys’ are with some palpable emotion. The emotion I’m talking about is FEAR, not anger.

From an article I wrote back in 2004, following John Kerry’s defeat, THE REPUBLICAN NEMESIS:

Democrats need to understand the importance of showing Swing Voters that they fear Republican rule. The more apparent it is to Swing Voters that a lot of Americans are truly scared of George Bush & The Republicans, the more they’re going to wonder if maybe they should also be afraid of him. (Typically, we first learn to fear things that we didn’t fear previously after seeing fear in the faces of others.) Some Democrats might think it would be better for us to emphasize our anger, but we need to be aware of the ways that this can backfire. We do not want to be characterized as “Angry People” who are always angry [in a threatening sort of way]. Voters need to see that behind our anger is a real fear for the well-being of the American People and for America’s reputation around the world. We should never be reluctant to show our fear of Bush, but we need to make it clear in our tone that our fear is appropriate and that our anger is controlled & justified.

The problem with fear is not that politicians use to inspire voters; the problem is that some politicians create fears that are irrational or unjustified or exaggerated. When such fears are used to intentionally mislead citizens into voting against their own best interests, then the use of fear is unethical. In contrast, if the fear that politicians inspire is legitimate—and their intention is to alert voters to a danger that they can protect themselves from—then the use of fear is virtuous. What Democrats need to understand clearly is that Swing Voters can be persuaded to fear either party. Right now, too many of them fear The Democrats more than they fear The Republicans. They will return to their identification with the Democratic Party only after they have been persuaded that it is The Republicans whom they ought to fear, not the Democrats. It is the Republicans who are not like them, who are simply looking for yet another opportunity to play them for fools.

SoV @ 56: “So you don’t go for any of that stuff by Sidanius or Pratto about about SDO (social dominance orientation), or Altemeyer’s work on the authoriatarian personality?”

I go for all of it. Especially Altemeyer’s work on authoritarian followers.

HV @ 57: “People can be tribal or cosmopolitan; their attitudes authoritarian or libertarian. You are what you eat; your consciousness is a product of your social environment.”

I wasn’t aware of saying anything to the contrary.

Yes, some people will be cosmopolitan and some authoritarian and lots will be a bit of both, and vary over the course of their lives; that potential is in everyone, but the society will always contain both, or rather, a diverse array, a continuous spectrum. Mix a metaphor. At base, even before conflicting material interests, a diversity of political opinion starts as the social expression, in specialized roles, of human ambivalence.

Lots of people are in circumstances, which just naturally produce authoritarian political attitudes. A lot of liberals seem to think they are duty-bound to try to talk a large segment of the population out of their resentments and prejudices and ignorance and committment to convention or tradition, and into voting for a dubious calculation of economic self-interest, while ignoring other values.

Liberals/progressives are never going to be, by themselves, a voting political majority, and trying to create such a majority of like-minded critical thinkers by indoctrination is goofy. Billionaire libertarians seeking dominance and status are even more numerically limited, so there’s that. Liberals, if they want political power, will have to lead authoritarians, and rather a lot of them, and prevent ruthless demagogues from assuming that leadership role. That means crafting political appeals aimed at authoritarian followers, which, predictably appeal, not to liberals, but to authoritarian followers. The general term for such appeals, in American politics, is a style of politics known as “populism”. It means using rhetorical frames, which make use of the kind of religious, patriotic and conventional sentiments and images and in-group/out-group themes, which authoritarians tend to be inclined to understand and credit.

It means finding ways to promote and nurture mass membership organizations and even mass tribal identities. Authoritarian followers are loyal members of groups and organizations; this is a good thing, which can actually strengthen organizations, which need people, who are willing to simply do what they are told, and do it well, instead of debating and contemplating and coming up with “creative ideas” all the time.

Populism is always going to conflict with Progressive ideals on some key points, because, at base, “liberal” and “authoritarian” are antonyms, and represent opposing poles of human ambivalence and temperment. But, mostly, there are ways to reconcile conflict and move forward; that’s the nature of coalition politics and getting to 51%. For example, authoritarians are inclined to accept conventional norms uncritically, while liberals want humane rationalizations of principle; the trick is for liberals to make sure that the conventional norms are in harmony with liberal principle: patriotic fervor for ideological committments to constitutional principle, and all that. Authoritarians will never, by nature, care for the content of 1st amendment protections for the unpopular speech; but, they can be led to support such protections almost ritualistically, as a conventional norm.

Liberal economists could win the macroeconomic policy debate, if they could leave aside the counterintuitive Keynesianism, and come up with a morally prescriptive standard for policy, which made sense to authoritarian followers. Not understanding the appeal of the conventional moral imperatives associated with austerity, to people, who are scared and don’t have the time or education to figure out arcane abstract arguments about the functions of monetary policy, is no excuse for a failure to lead.

Robert Putnam, a leading observer of the decline of US social capital, fingers commercial TV as the main likely toxin. The extraordinary ability of the US plutocracy to come through the crash of the financial markets with undiminished political power is proof of the remarkable efficacy of their television propaganda machine.

What’s the connection? Because – all the complaining to the contrary – the mainstream media didn’t seem to have much of an effect on several mainstream issues. The polls, for example, showed that clear majorities favored the public option in the U.S., that clear majorities wanted taxes raised on people making over $250 K/year, and that clear majorities wanted the financial sector to “pay” for it’s malfeasance. And these polls aren’t hard to find at all :

Poll reveals cross-party desire for banks to pay back more and majority support for a Robin Hood Tax

March 21st, 2011 at 12.56 pm.

Supporters of all political parties insist banks should pay to repair the damage caused by the economic crisis and only one in nine of the British public believe they have paid back enough, a poll published today shows.

The poll of 2,226 adults by YouGov for Oxfam reveals that 87 per cent of Conservative voters, 91 per cent of Labour voters and 93 per cent of Liberal Democrats believe that “banks, hedge funds and financial institutions have a responsibility to help repair the damage their actions caused”. More than half of supporters of all the main political parties strongly agreed with the statement.

So if the media is so all-fired effective at molding public opinion, how come the public still holds views antithetical to those the ruling classes wish them to hold?

A lot of liberals seem to think they are duty-bound to try to talk a large segment of the population out of their resentments and prejudices and ignorance and committment to convention or tradition, and into voting for a dubious calculation of economic self-interest, while ignoring other values.

Could you be more specific? I find these sorts of generalities hard to talk about precisely because they are so vague that they are hard to refute or confirm as a proposition.

Furthermore, on certain specifics at least, I think you’re wrong about “liberals” being ineffectual at talking people ’round to their point of view. Does anyone truly think that a majority of the public sincerely believes that lower taxes and less regulation on business is the economic prescription for what ails the U.S., for example? I happen to think otherwise, and a lot of polling seems to lend weight to this particular view.

Of course that may just be me clinging desperately to another “liberal” shibboleth: that eventually the voters get it right :-)

Bruce Wilder, 61:

The general term for such appeals, in American politics, is a style of politics known as “populism”. It means using rhetorical frames, which make use of the kind of religious, patriotic and conventional sentiments and images and in-group/out-group themes, which authoritarians tend to be inclined to understand and credit.

I can second a great many of the points you have been trying to make, Bruce. The one I cited above focuses on the absolute political necessity of addressing two different audiences at once. Sure, it is important to develop a logically defensible collection of high-brow arguments that defeat all challenges, but it is equally important to speak to the not-so-educated on a level that they will readily understand.

Democratic politicians really do not understand The Swing Voters, the individuals who always determine the outcome of elections in America. “The Issues” might actually be important to many Swing Voters early on in a political campaign, but after both sides have had a chance to pick apart each other’s facts & interpretations, the typical Swing Voter quickly becomes confused. As the debate over The Issues drags on, Swing Voters realize that they don’t understand the details well enough to make an informed decision, so they end up relying on their impressions of the candidates. Republican strategists understand this all too well.

It is the reason why they continuously seek to create doubts in the minds of the Swing Voters re: the character of the Democratic candidate. They know that it doesn’t really matter if they can’t find any real flaws in their Democratic opponents. Accusations, insinuations, & innuendo will work just fine. They express doubts about the motivation and dependability of The Democrats. They try to create the perception that Democrats are “defective” in a disturbing way. By simply accusing, the Republicans suggest—to the Swing Voters—that they are not defective, like those danged Democrats.

All of this is in the service of the supreme goal of dividing America into two camps: ‘we virtuous Republicans’ and ‘those who are not in our group.’ They need an opposition party to castigate, in order to [indirectly] establish their implicit virtuousness in the eyes of the Swing Voters. It will never, ever be the goal of Republican political strategists to unite the country. Democratic politicians have so much to learn re: how the political game is played in America.

Lenin’s Tomb typefies the way in which the left – for reasons which are deeply unclear but shurely very very stupid – insists on insulting and demonising a huge constituency which is just begging to be brought into the fold (whatever of it remains) instead of being told to fuck off and go play with Dan Brown:

I think it’s worth distinguishing between a few different things when we talk about conspiracy theories, then: there is that which precedes political analysis, that starts from the proposition that the world works through the secretive actions of a nameable few, which is a kind of magical thinking (Robin Ramsay wonders why interest in conspiracies often goes along with an interest in the occult, and this may be why); there is that which is sensationalist, and which haphazardly picks up on topics where there is some salacious interest and where it is politically harmless; and there is that which is strictly historical and provisional, rooted in a deeper and broader political analysis, (for instance, that provided by Daniele Ganser).

Missing from this analysis is the category of ‘that which represents a recognition of actual instances of the workings of the ruling class, and betokens a deep disquiet and curiosity about it, even though naturally (and sensibly, empirically, reasonably) enough, the initial approach is via the ordinary world of things everyone can understand without having to be steeped in and sugned up to some dubious (and, it appears, irremediably inchoate, i.e. mirageous!) unified field theory of politics’.

Twio of the main methods of the apologists of current power relations are:

(1) to place the notion of corruption of any kind – but especially endemic radical corruption, of course – outside the pale of sane discourse, while of course continuing to peddle their own top-down xenophobic mythology (an entirely different breed of ‘conspiracy theory’ from the critical parapolitical hypotheses of the 9/11 sceptics etc.). Instead, all is cock-up, or like the business cycle the unavoidable thus unregrettable upshot of the workings of a Panglossian system.

(2) to deny the possibility of intentional progressive action (see the recent reactionary bingo post), and to ‘analyse’ social and political events as the workings of abstract (market) forces, with individuals mere price-taking cyphers. Nothing, as Bruce Gold put it, succeeds as planned. Instead, market forces are at the helm, and ‘individualism’ means never focussing on – real individuals and their actions!

The left’s reaction, along with – obviously – the centre, is t0 happily to kiss up and kick down, retaining the purity of whatever comprehensive institutional theory they fondly imagine themselves to have established. They agree that of course it is unutterably vulgar to pay any attention to actual plots, machinations and conscious intentional action. For if it can in the end be explained by general theories, it cannot matter at all, and must not be acknowledged, not for long or not publicly, for fear that the less level-headed may fetishise the proximate cause or be distracted by intarctable investigations. That way of thinking is dangerously seductive, and there madness lies.

But the basic premise of this strand of reflex anti-conspiracy theory attitudes is that it is the committed members of the left that we are talking about here – so tha dnager is that of being distracted from the ‘real’, comfortingly abstract and mathematically certain, issues.

In fact all those paid-up members (those not at risk of expulsion) share the anticonspiratorial prejudice, and all the talk of distraction is bunk. If the problem with critical, ‘populist’ conspiracy theories is that they are a distraction – rather than, what is mnore plausible, an important part of the raw data of critical political discourse – then there is no problem, for those identified as subscribing to them have nothing to be distracted from. And thanks to the left’s puritanical refusal to engage with them, there is nothing to distract them away from their misguided interest in uncovering and publicising the workings of the uncontroversially powerful and onto a more fruitful (?) understanding of the real problems which underly these negligible surface phenomena of backroom deals, assassination, smears, stich-ups and corrupt practice within already corrupt institutions.

Hofstadter and Popper stand united against the nascent political conscousness of the great unwashed. These people really should stop meddling in matters which don’t concern them. Once we dismiss all the double talk, the strawmen thrown into the mix, the guilt by association, the fastidious insistence on exclusively theoretical analysis, the feeble appeals to distraction of those never attracted in the first place, the genteel distaste for ‘shrill’ or ‘breathless’ commentary, we are left with the bald fact that so-called conspiracy theories are simply hypotheses about the obvservable workings of the ruling power.

And anyone who is interested in that, willing to spend long hours trying to research it, and willing to try to understand every aspect of it, including any more useful analysis that the soi-disant left might have maganed to assemble in between wanking sessions, is obviously not the kind of person we want to associate with. I mean, you might get sneered at by Oliver Kamm.

Steve: “not that many people actually watch cable news”

Cable news is news-as-entertainment: boring “entertainment”.

Ditto for much of political print journalism: reporting and opinion.

And, local news and public affairs is simply non-existent. (Last night, local news on one of the major L.A. stations led with a weather story, featuring home video of hail falling on someone’s backyard ping pong table.)

Back in the Dark Ages, Speaker Tip suggested that all politics is local. Local news and public affairs programming is non-existent. A couple of days ago, I got a robo-call from my Congress critter. I vote in every friggin’ election there is, dude, and I did not recognize her name!

My general point was: the main political effect is not the specific content of the propaganda; it is not effectiveness as indoctrination that counts, it is effectiveness in confusing and boring us. The general effect of the medium is to prevent the social processes of mass politics, not to manipulate them in detail.

for pity’s sake, can someone please turn off that hyphen transformation rule?

Tim @72: I guess if you are not aware of it, then the example doesn’t make any sense. The Koch brothers have become emblematic of billionaires financing right-wing causes for many on the Left. It helps that the Koch’s actually do give away a lot of money, so you can bring up their name, in association with seemingly disparate political actors: climate-change denial, the Marginal Revolution blog, Cato, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. (Of course, you could throw in Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera, but that would be distracting.)

Human beings have had large, anonymous business and government bureaucracies for less only about 120 years; we don’t have a vocabulary or a narrative framework for the achievements or the aspirations of such organizations, and yet, everything about us, good and bad, is a product of their concerted efforts. From the iPhone to war to highways to finance, bureaucracy rules. In the old days, we made history out of the collective biographies of “great men”: “Columbus discovered America.” We could hardly say, “Neil Armstrong landed on the moon” (though that’s literally true) and count it as a narrative explanation of the NASA project.

I think conspiracies are popular, partly from a need to exercise that pattern-recognition wetware we call, “paranoia”, but also because it is a relief to personalize political action. With no terms or frameworks, we are struck dumb, much of the time; hardly able to think or speak with confidence about these strange giants in our midst, government agencies and corporations. It is a relief to be able to put a face on a phenomenon, and to gossip about it. So Movement Conservatism becomes the Koch Brothers. And, for some people, conspiracies provide the same sort of relief, with names to be added, at a time to be determined. If it is a conspiracy, it is explicable in human terms and can be discussed. If it is corporate policy, well, then what is it? Who is it?

Indeed, the outlines of the common project disappear from sight — even the sight of many key participants — as their preferred narratives of their own, personal actions drown out the emergence of any narrative explication of the common project.

It is only retrospectively, as history, that we, apparently, can recognize the pattern of a “loosely coordinated” common project. I don’t think that’s just a matter of establishing distance. As individuals, we have voices, and a need to cast ourselves in the drama of our own lives, to explain ourselves to our selves and those in personal acquaintance with us. The project may have no singular voice of its own, and no self-consciousness need to acquire one.

I was struck last night, by President Obama’s, and Senator Reid’s, apparent need to cast themselves as something other than losers. They spoke of the “historic” reduction in spending as if it must be “objectively” (in the sense of perceptions of a shared reality) a good thing, an achievement.

There he was actively taking credit for a policy of spending reduction that he nominally opposes. He very mildly allowed that he would not have made the cuts at this time, on his own initiative, but went on to tout the accomplishment of the cuts.

Was Obama cooperating all along with the opposition, to create the dramatic opportunity to make these cuts, just as he cooperated with the opposition last Fall, in extending the Bush Tax Cuts?

It is very easy, and economical in an Occam’s Razor sense, to fall into the tropes of conspiracy, in building a narrative of Obama’s political behavior. An efficient narrative — efficient in the telling at least — puts a lot of weight on intention, and on linking intention to outcomes. In this case — in most important cases in a world of clashing institutions — the actors had opposed intentions. But, here, the most important actor is rationalizing the outcome as intended somehow objectively necessary to a sufficient extent as to justify self-congratulation.

Commentators like Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman noticed immediately that Obama has accepted the frame that what America needs, is spending cuts.

The difficulties, here, all have to do with the problems of constructing convincing narratives about how collective entities ought to behave. In the first instance, the political dispute is about whether the government should have to “tighten its belt” in the recession, or whether we should worry about the size of the Federal deficit in the short-run. Analogies are made to the situation of households or individual actors, to enable us to use the narrative templates we have. And, then, the chief actors themselves seem to lose themselves, rationalizing the outcome of their oppositional behavior. We get really confused.

I freely admit that I find the semi-conspiratorial thesis appealing: that Obama is working for the plutocracy, a ringer as it were, who set up the drama last night to get the plutocrats what they want, just as he delivered the extension of the Bush taxcuts and, earlier, TARP and other financial rescues. It seems the most economical explanation. But, it is an narrative on an intentional individual, and what is happening is actually the behavior of large institutions and loose groupings, rivalrous and oppositional. Maybe, such an economical explanation, in the circumstances, is necessarily wrong, precisely because it disposes of all that organizational/institutional detail. But, such a narrative would be novel, even alien, and hairy in its details and many strategic/group processes like your convergency.

Yeah, this is somewhat similar to the pagan concept of various anthropoid deities controlling the natural phenomena. Thunderstorms happen because Thor is angry. Taxed on the billionaires are cut because Obama wants this or that, or because he’s playing multidimensional chess. Personalization of natural phenomena is comforting.

Yes, of course, if we get down to the details, we’ll find individuals there: the usual suspects (businessmen, lawyers, politicians, journos), taking predictable actions under predictable circumstances. But hey, hate the game, not the players.

I freely admit that I find the semi-conspiratorial thesis appealing: that Obama is working for the plutocracy, a ringer as it were, who set up the drama last night to get the plutocrats what they want, just as he delivered the extension of the Bush taxcuts and, earlier, TARP and other financial rescues.

Heh. You want conspiracy theories? Here’s mine: Say what you will about Hillary Clinton being an insider DC type, that we’d probably be in Afghanistan, Libya etc or that the already vast powers of the Presidency wouldn’t be expanded even more[1], same as for Obama, but in one key respect, I think she would have been different – we would have gotten much more meaningful health care reform under President H. R. PuffnS, er Clinton than what we actually got with the current bounder in office. Which was why she lost the primary, and in such a puzzling fashion as well.

Yes, one could say that Obama is a policy wonk as well. But the difference is, she’s old school and he’s new. Also, I suspect there might be some old score-settling with Clinton that would have had the side effect of actually benefiting the little people. Ah, there’s those “intents” sneaking in again. If nothing else, they are a marvelous short-hand, are they not?

[1] He’s gone off the rails a bit recently, but Stirling Newberry earned my hard-to-win respect when he said that no matter what and no matter which party, the next President would be Bush-Lite. In 2007.

Ah, Scent (“it’s contrapositive, . . .”) clearly is ridiculing those who are lazy and don’t check their work before they hit the “Send” button.

Straightwood remarks: The plutocratic inequality ratchet doesn’t stop at the top 5%. It will keep working until a few hundred families/corporations have nearly all the wealth.

No, the inequality ratched will keep working until there are 7 oligarchs with all the wealth in America. Just as in Russia.

As Neitzsche pointed out, “He would chases the dragon long enough eventually becomes the dragon.” For 50 years of Cold War America battled the Soviet Union: now America has turned into the Soviet Union.