It’s time to bring some lucidity to our messy culture of politics. For all of us wrestling with the idea of social systems and personal liability for the state of the union, the whole culture of political ideas – from The Republic all the way up to the Ken Starr Report – seems impossibly disarrayed.
The truth is, there are probably a thousand ways to bring order to it and make sense of it, on a thousand different levels, but even finding ONE that’s effective has become an insurmountable challenge.
But I think I’ve got something.
Here’s where I’m coming from: I have no direct political training, but I subscribe to the idea that every person has both a right and an obligation to form a political opinion. Thus, I’ve read some political articles, browsed some Wikipedia write-ups, and dug through hundreds of reader comments attached to newspapers and blog posts. My background is in philosophy and media studies, and as committed as I am to the liberal cause, I’ve struggled incessantly to keep from being a narrow-minded partisan fanatic.
What follows is a political program that finally makes sense to me, a reasonably educated citizen who’s tried very hard to make sense of his own place in politics. It’s a three-tiered concept, a triad of "levels" of effectiveness that works as both a way of critiquing current politics, and as a guide to creating one’s own political life. It’s generally abstract, "meta-political," and some of it might seem ridiculously obvious. Nonetheless, it has its fair share of insight for anyone who needs some clarity, whether they’re radical, idealistic, realistic, or cynical.
Now, remember, these are levels of political effectiveness. None of them are "ineffective," so even if you’ve only got the time and energy to reach the first one, you’re still doing your part to improve a political culture that’s grown increasingly schizophrenic in the age of mediation and contradiction. Thus I commend thee.
Without further ado, here is Jesse’s Program for Political Effectiveness.
LEVEL 1: Stop bitching
If you read through comment posts, listen to political conversations, watch national news, or read almost ANYTHING in the political sphere, you’ll discover that we’re a culture that’s addicted to denial and complaint. It’s a neurotic side-effect of democratic media: we’re all critics, and in a world of critics, we tend to lose the energy to say anything constructive, EVER, because there’s little ground left to stand on.
So the right complains about the immorality and indecision of the left, and the left complains about the intolerance and militarism of the right, and (even worse now) the left complains incessantly about ITSELF. This is why we all think the world is going to shit: nobody can stop sniping, critiquing, and complaining.
For instance, take this smart, but generally negative and unconstructive take on feminism, written by Naomi Wolf of The Beauty Myth fame: Society Prefers Weak Women. It’s an insightful piece of criticism, worthy of some exploration, finally defeated by its own finger-wagging disapproval of our mass culture. Wolf is deeply committed to her cause, but that won’t help her fight the whole bucking beast of the mass media. All she’ll do is demonstrate the ineffectiveness of reprimand and renunciation.
Article comments
1 - Lumpy
Or...you could just stop being a leftist tool and develop some common sense.
2 - Jesse
Woah. I wrote "Mythbusters" instead of "Adbusters." Wonder if I can fix that? Or keep anybody else from noticing?
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Jesse,
Nice job in laying the groundwork for an intelligent discussion.
Your post is terribly Amero-centered - which keeps me from commenting too much, because much of what I would say is based on the reality about me in Israel rather than the one in which you attempt to survive.
But much of what you say could well be applied to the leftist press here. Unfortunately, since most of what they write is in the character of ignoramuses spouting their "wisdom" around a kiddush table while half drunk on schnapps and wine, it would leave pages and pages of blank space in the leftist vehicles here like Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv and Yediot AHronot, not to mention the Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Report, Unfortunately this also includes the scads of right wingers who have nothing to say and think they know it all...
Your advice about "stop bitching" is sound but impractical in this country. The only way to get a politician to pay any attention to you here is to resort to violence (if he is pushing your cause, it means he already agrees with it and you are the useful idiot standing in the hot sun making his points for him - or he has paid you to stand in the hot sun to make his points for him).
This is why the "pride parade" in Jerusalem last year was reduced from a parade of orgy celebrators to a "rally" in the Giv'at Ram campus of the Hebrew U., and this year, it went on almost as scheduled. The angry Hareidi "men in black" were called off by their rebbes, who instructed them to stay away. The thing that impressed the national government (including the police commissioner) last year was the threat that hundreds of police would wind up in hospital in protests and riots. This year, the government and Open House, not facing this threat, felt free to give most of us the middle finger and shove this travesty down our throats.
Your advice about defining one's ideas is also very practical. If you look at my articles here, you will see that many of them are devoted to just that. You don't have to like what I stand for, but I've followed your ideas - even before you set them out.
4 - Treff
I agree with Ruvy that this analysis is America-centric. In Russia, my former home-away-from-home, the trouble was to get people to care in the first place.
Yet lets look at this from an American perspective. I think it poses a good framework from which to approach political issues. Keep in mind, there are different types of "bitching" each with different ends. There can be beneficial bitching, but that has many caveats which I will bring up a little later.
First, I would like to thank Lumpy for providing a perfect example of Jesse's first point. It serves no purpose other than to abase the frame of the debate. It offers nothing new, only allowing Lumpy to massage his various complexes under warm fuzzy anonymity.
The "bitching" that can be beneficial can only be the beginning of the paragraph. Saying "x sucks!" contributes nothing. Saying "x sucks because of these well reasoned arguments" provides a little more insight, but still doesn't live up to its potential. Saying "x sucks for these good reasons, and HERE'S what we should do about it" is the way to go. The very concept of a suggestion implies that there is something that isnt great or could be better. I imagine Jesse has that in mind in his steps 2 and 3.
But that is hard. It requires people to figure out what they really think is important and go out on a limb by suggesting something that might not work. Destroying is easy; building is hard. But if we are going to fix the state of political discourse (especially on the web, Mr. Lumpy), we need to start offering solutions as well as problems.
5 - Jesse
It's true, this is pretty America-centric. I'm currently concerned, more or less, with the media climate and the changes of "democratic discourse" that have been shaping my own experience of politics, here in Washington and NYC.
I guess there are both benefits and drawbacks to this approach. On one hand, I think it cuts through a lot of the bias and cynicism and sensationalism and partisanism you get from mass media and popular preconceptions. On the other hand, it leaves me a little ideologically isolated, as both Ruvy and Treff have pointed out.
I think you can see that in my thinking, too... these suggestions are framed by the ubiquity of mass media and the Intarweb.
Re: bitching... I think the main thrust of that point was to advocate for a more positive (shall I even say progressive?) climate in America. It's awesome to be enthusiastic about your political principles, but that doesn't necessitate partisan hatred. Of course, there has to be some clash over these fundamental differences, but I'm tired of our bad collective habits of discourse.
I'm sure you're right, Ruvy, that your posts are constructive, because this comment was obviously coming from a constructive place. Thanks for the contributions, Ruvy and Treff.
6 - Zedd
Jesse
Great article. Start a cult and I'll join :o)
I would substitute #2 for #1 and place them in that order.