In the 60s we finally broke the mold of conformity, and as that decade went on we started to realize that there was something Dreadfully Wrong. The 70s lost us the faith we once had in our institutions (courts, police, military, etc.), culminating in the doubt that still afflicts the basic civics notion that government's primary function is to protect its citizens.
The 80s tried to console us with rampant consumerism, even as our faith in institutions sagged further toward collapse, while the 90s gave us a taste of the waste products of such consumerism. The engineered attempt by the GOP to destroy the Clinton Administration only made us more cynical about government.
And now here we are at a crossroads. Do we regain our faith in civic institutions, the ones that protect us from others, and if so how? Can an actual leader be found, or are we doomed to wallow in Presidential mediocrities until the states start to think that maybe it'd be a good idea to declare their own independence?
Orcinus' columns are very thought-provoking. The above are just my first impressions of them.
Sumpin's gotta give.
Personally, I think nothing will change until it has to. That's the way things seem to work. It's just a matter of having the leaders, institutions and most importantly, documentation in place to make the right changes when the critical moment comes.
Do we just fix it? Do we fix it so it never happens again? But the status quo is not sustainable. Fixing the status quo will probably require a massive rethinking of all our disciplines, starting with Economics, going through Philosophy and Political Science and ending somewhere in Sociology and Theology.
The data we've gotten from this go-around needs to be used when designing the next loop.
Karmakin, that assumes that the people who will eventually establish the new values, mores and disciplines are actually going to pay attention to the lessons history is teaching us.
Fascinating series by Mrs. R. Good comments too. One of them was that in deciding which of the presidential candidates really are for change and not just sprouting platitudes, investigate which ones have a track recoord of dealing with change in their own lives. Seen from that point of view may explain why Sen. Obama and Edwards seem more confortable discussing the issue.
Also I think what Mrs. R. said about seizing the narrative may explain why Obama is seen by some as vague. In seizing the narrative and writing a new one, one has to a great extent "wing it" and make shit up as one goes on. One could spend time working through detailed policy statements as events happen, but by the time one is finished, quite possibly some one else has seized the narrative and their version may not be so appealing.
This also connects to what LM and jwe
previously said about the language of a leader which is to create the broad canvas and have the specific brush strokes filled in later by the underlings.
Wanderer: I agree with your assessment completely. This is how things come apart. And the most likely outcome here is that the seeds that were planted in the 1960s will finally sprout in this coming era.
Karmakin: "Fixing the status quo will probably require a massive rethinking of all our disciplines, starting with Economics, going through Philosophy and Political Science and ending somewhere in Sociology and Theology." Interestingly (to me, anyway) futures as a discipline takes in all of these -- with the exception of theology (the modern field seems to regard it as passe, and no longer a change driver) but one of my missions is to fix that rather gross oversight.
But I agree with you that a memetic shift is needed; and that it does start with theology (or, at least, myths and metaphors, from which worldviews and systems and structures and conventional wisdom -- in that order -- emerge).
Periwinkle: There are a lot of ways the leader thing can work out. Neither Lincoln nor FDR looked anything like a "leader" in this sense while they were running for office. They were both faced with an occasion to rise to; and found it in themselves to do it.
Both did quite a bit of winging it, too -- though this comes more easily if you've had enough experience (and that wonky touch) to know intuitively what's possible and where to press...though not so much that you're bound to the present system. That, too, takes a special kind of politician -- one who understands not just the workings of the current system, but also the places it needs to be broken, and is willing to do that.
At this stage, we might either find someone who looks like a leader (like several of the Founders did); or simply elect someone who seems likely to be able to rise.
I've gotten a lot of comments from people who are chary of the idea of A Leader. I think you're clarifying my response to this, which is that a leader only expresses the dreams and potential within the people. Leaders draw the broad strokes; WE fill in the details, and that's what makes the work our own.
The whole premise of our government is that leaders can only lead where the people are already demanding to go. We've had a very hard time convincing our politicians that we need this kind of leadership, because corruption has deafened them to us. But I suspect they're beginning to realize that we've had enough -- and if they don't get with our program, we'll elect ourselves some leaders who will.
Mrs. R.,
You say "..that a leader only expresses the dreams and potential within the people..."
Maybe this is a mass version of the old saying that "when the sudent is ready, the teacher will appear".
My own concern is that the system, as currently exists, is so skewed to favor the people running it, that change may well be impossible. The fix is in. I genuinely think the current-day Democratic "leaders" are perfectly willing to lose elections rather than lose control of the Party. That's what we saw happen in 2000 (and, to a lesser extent, 2004). Luckily for them, they had a perfect scapegoat in 2000 in the form of Ralph Nader. That there was no such person in 2004 doesn't seem to have worried them overly much.
Of course they want to win - I doubt that the Egos involved in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party are any less grotesque than the ones running the GOP - but they only want to do it on their terms, and that certainly doesn't involve doing anything to inconvenience the denizons of the Village. They're loyal to their own people, after all.
The real question is are they willing to see the whole country destroyed? After watching their behavior over the past 2 years, I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that, yes, indeed, they're completely willing to continue down this road even if it comes to that. I wonder if they're even capable of seeing it in those terms? The Dem "leaders" are encased in their own reality-warping bubble every bit as much as the Bush Rethugs and the media, and they're an extremely selfish and short-sighted group of would-be Aristos. This does not bode well.
John, I had a long talk with Chip Berlet about a month ago, and he raised a concern that I think touches on yours.
He was annoyed that the progressive movement -- as an entity separate from the Democratic Party -- is on its way to being co-opted by the party. The fact that our main focus of change right now its pinned on elections, money-raising, and other things that support the party more than they support the goals of our own movement bothered him. He was afraid that we're starting to define "change" in the party's terms, rather than our own.
As an old 60s activist, Chip's already seen this movie, and has reason to be nervous. I do think that working the Dems hard is one important part of our change effort -- but we lose the war the minute we lose sight of the line between the party's goals and our own. We stay with the party as long as our own goals are being served. When that doesn't work, we have to be willing to pull back and do something else. And the threat of that happening needs to be credible.
I agree that there are business interests who are perfectly willing to see not just the country, but the world's economy destroyed -- as long as they can profit from it. Those people won't go away until we a) get meaningful campaign finance reform to get them out of our government and b) start taxing the shit out of them to get back some of what they've taken from us.
In times like this, there's a higher-than-usual potential for that to happen. FDR did it, after all.
But there also came a point near the end of that crisis (and the Civil War one, and even the Revolutionary one) when the money powers had to be dealt back into the game for the sake of restoring some stability. At that point, you have a lot of control over the terms under which they'll be allowed to participate; but nobody's ever succeeded in keeping them out entirely. And, over time, they'll eventually find a way to shake off the shackles, and take over again. It's just how the cycle goes.
Which is precisely why we need to make the most of the chance while we have it. It's the best, and perhaps only, one we're likely to get in our lifetimes.
Sara, I don't particularly disagree with anything you say here, and I certainly agree that we have to work with what we've got. It's just that I'm not an optimist, and I very much fear that (a.) the historical point you name may well already be past, and (b.) pinning our hopes (which, as stated here, are pretty Goddamned modest in my opinion) on a band as out-and-out treacherous as the current crop of Dem "leaders" is an open invitation to getting fucked over before we're even started.
I cannot emphasize the latter point enough. I think that both Hillary and Obama are completely on the side of/identify with "the business interests" you name. I think they are those business interests, and as much as I hate to say it, I have serious doubts about Edwards as well. I appreciate the fact that he wanted to fight in 2004 while Kerry was sobbing that they simply didn't dare challenge the media, but nothing he's done in this election cycle has impressed me. Yes, the media is trying to sink his campaign, but he's not exactly doing anything to counteract that in any effective way, which is the least he'd have to manage in order to not be completely useless to us.
I don't like to go on like this overly much, as I don't want to be a pill. (I've also started a new job recently, so I don't have as much time for posting here as I used to.) Still, there it is: I strongly suspect the Democratic Party is beyond repair and that (as you put it) its current owners are all too happy to see the country torn apart as long as they profit personally. And I think Hillary and Obama are part of that mind set.
We're facing a crisis not dissimilar to the period leading up to the French Revolution, and our so-called leaders are simply not up to avoiding that historical moment...All IMO, of course, and I'd be happy to be proved wrong in this case, but I doubt I am. There's a school of thought that says FDR enacted his reforms to essentially save the Ruling Class from itself, and while I'm not sure how much I buy into that theory, I think it's undeniable that that was one of the side-effects of his policies. Unfortunately, standards have deteriorated since his time, and there's nobody around now in any position of responsibility that's even remotely capable of taking the hard steps he did...even for motives that are purely selfish and self-serving. That's what scares me most.
If it comes to violence, we're all fucked, so I hope histroy doesn't go down that path. But as I said, I'm not optimistic.
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