I received by email a posting by Judith Butler. In this piece, “Uncritical Exuberance?” Butler reflects on the reactions that Obama's win have elicited in the left. Although the title offers some space for ambivalence (the title is in questin marks) the rest of the piece forcefully argues against the risk of identifying Obama’s victory as our own victory.
I have some superficial objections to this piece. Many statements made in the first pages are explicitly or implicitly contradicted later. It relies on anecdotical evidence of questionable verosimilitude (the inverse Bradley effect exemplified as “I know that Obama is a Muslim and a Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the economy.”) The picture of an Obama-lover ready to gain deliverance by the simple election of a black president is equally unbelievable. “The election of Obama” Butler writes “means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle.” I didn’t know that such naïve people could actually exist and I doubt their actual existence. It warns us against "nationalism" and the inexistence of a general "we" but it cannot avoid inscribing itself in that paradigm when the time for political concreteness come. Last but not the least, this piece relies on an image of Obama that is too close to the one produced by the media and too far from the one that prevailed in the people who mobilized themselves behind his candidacy.
But I have also less superficial disagreements. They belong to three orders. The first one I will call, following Butler herself, the domain of the exuberant. The second has to do with the reduction of the political to a liberal and even neo-liberal version of the dynamics of antagonism. The third one refers to the level of the actual construction of reality in political terms.
My first objection to Judith Butler’s piece is that after eight years of obscurantism invites us to be oblivious to the simple fact that the sun rises. Its sober tone (a tone perhaps affected by what appears to be a devastating triumph of right wing politics around proposition 8 in California) is an invitation to an always necessary reflection. But there is no politics and much less progressive politics without imprudence and exhilaration. If there is one thing that we have learned after the socialist collapse is that alegría is one of the most vital components of any progressive politics. Alegría is of course a Spanish word without proper equivalent in English –and in very Heideggerian fashion, I would say that a good deal of our progressive future depends on the possibility of translating alegría. Alegría reminds us that politics is part of existence and that even in defeat (and more rightly so in victory) we have a claim to happiness. Finally, alegría cannot be aligned with the politics of calculation in which everything is translated into numeric gain and loses. This politics of calculation, of tactics without present and strategy without future is the one that has been so deeply inscribed in our everyday life by the neo-liberal colonization of political mentality.
This latter observation is already an introduction to my second contention. Butler’s piece leaves something very important out: the people. (And yes, I am a populist). The heroes of her narrative are Barack Obama, a few leftists (and inside the few the few who are immune to uncritical optimism) and millions of voters who become political subjects every two or four years. In her piece politics takes the form of a vertical relationship between leader and populace mediated by imaginary identifications. But is not this, exactly, the style of political liberalism (Clinton’s style) against which Obama campaigned? Was not his call a call to end political decisions based on polling? Was not he insisting that the value of a strategy cannot consist in the way it agrees with the prejudices of the day? During his campaign, Obama repeated several times that the problem with the Clinton administration was its failure to change the mindset of Americans in a way that will alter the ideological domination of conservative ideas in American cultural and political life. Clinton suffered from fatalism. He became conservative because he thought that the US is an incurable conservative country. For Obama, on the other hand, some form of social, political and cultural engineering has always been part of his political agenda. It is not by chance that the last image of Obama’s 30 minute infomercial is a dimming off of his own figure while the voice in off invites people to regain “our democracy”. This fight against fatalism was also an important part of his strategy in the Democratic primary, where the forces of destiny were also defeated. To sum up: Obama’s call is in good part a call for political activism. In contrast, I perceive in Butler’s piece a deep a-political resignation to the way the dices roll. It is telling to me that the word that defines perhaps better than any other Obama’s message, mobilization, is completely absent from Butler’s posting.
The lack of attention to the fact that politics is about changing people’s minds and hearts is perhaps at the center of one of Butler’s most polemical statements. “It becomes all the more important to think about the politics of exuberant identification with the election for Obama when we consider that support for Obama has coincided with support for conservative causes.”
Butler is indeed pointing to the most salient feature of the recent election, although drawing, in my opinion, the wrong conclusion. This salient fact is simply that a center-right nation voted a center-left, liberal president. Butler cautions us: don't be too high on Obama, the same people who voted for him also voted for prop 8. The truth is that many people in the country would have also voted for prop 8 if they have had the chance. And yet the same people (or some of the same people) also voted for Obama. The real question (and reason for cautious exuberance) is: How is it that a country terrorized by its press and its priests, bombarded by all forms of stereotypical propaganda, managed to vote for an Afro-American candidate called Barack Obama? Judith Butler sees here a "disjunction” and even a masking of “conflicting beliefs.” She doesn't ponder the fact that this disjunction did not fall from the skies, but was caused by the political process itself or better said, by Barack Obama himself. The disjunction is the result of political praxis or of praxis as politics. This is why these kind of contradictions are so common in modern democracy. They are the essence of what we call “hegemony”. A politics of dis-identification can never be the answer to a politics of identification. But what is specially worrisome in Butler's argument is how identification/dis-identification replaces the political tout-court. The political is that moment when people change. They do things they haven’t done before. The disjunction is real but it needs to be interpreted. I want to offer an optimist interpretation here (it doesn’t matter that is not the true one, it can always be turned into the true one because the event is yet undecided): some conservative people voted for Obama because they don’t want to be conservative anymore (Colorado). And yet they do not know how to be something else. This takes me to the final point.
It is through sustaining the disjunction that we reach the deep level of what really is: the concept of our time. And the concept of our time, fueled by the destruction of the speculative bases of neo-liberal dominance, is the problem of reality itself. (See my posting La vida es sueñofor a clarification on this). The concept of our time is the gap opened by the fact that a conservative people have voted for a non-conservative candidate and by the fact that they did so with full and complete awareness of their act. No "reverse Bradley effect" will suffice to explain this astounding result. Obama's explanation itself, this shows the vitality of American democracy, is the most verosimile, but is not enough. As a matter of fact, the whole in reality opened by the financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama, cannot be closed theoretically, but only practically. This practice should take as its point of departure the specific political opening caused by Obama’s triumph. Leftists, liberals and lovers of life in general should embrace this opening as a way of affecting history. Not very often in a life time is the political destiny of a country in reach of those who want to change it. If I agree in anything with Butler is that this change will not come from Obama, but it will not come either from sustaining a “critical relationship” towards the processes of socio-political identifications. Instead, we need to clarify the level of political reality or, what is the same in this context, the level at which political change can be effected. In this point, I find Butler once again, conservative and too oblivious of the actual changes this election have brought about. Butler goes on to lay down a political agenda that will satisfy the left (closing Guantanamo, ending the war in Irak, find a diplomatic solution for Afghanistan). All this, she adds, has to be done in the first two months in office if Obama doesn’t want to risk the disillusionment of a left that, we have been told, is wrong in entertaining illusions anyway. Although I agree with Butler’s agenda, she fails to take notice of the opening that Obama’s electoral victory is providing. It is, after all, not only a matter of keeping the old left satisfied, but more importantly of expanding and even creating a new left. And for that creation other venues are possible. The one that I uphold can be ciphered in two words: immigration reform.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Obama's first hundred days as president
In the critical first one hundred days of his government, Obama has the chance of securing political hegemony for years to come. How to do this is very simple, but it requires political decision.
First, Obama faces the challenge of governing a Republican country which has voted Democrat. The Democratic base should be expanded and the best way to do that is by increasing the number of Democratic voters in key southern states. This can be accomplished very easily by declaring an immediate amnesty for all illegal immigrants without criminal records. These people should be encouraged to become citizens in the best tradition of Americna immigrant enfranchisement. This simple strategy will send Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina to the democratic side and change the face of Americna politics for decades to come.
First, Obama faces the challenge of governing a Republican country which has voted Democrat. The Democratic base should be expanded and the best way to do that is by increasing the number of Democratic voters in key southern states. This can be accomplished very easily by declaring an immediate amnesty for all illegal immigrants without criminal records. These people should be encouraged to become citizens in the best tradition of Americna immigrant enfranchisement. This simple strategy will send Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina to the democratic side and change the face of Americna politics for decades to come.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Why education cannot be a national priority
For any visitor with a flavor for ethnography, the United States is a land of striking contradictions.
The very outcome of the coming election is itself a classical American excercise in contradiction (and a reminder of the complex legal and political structure that makes these contradictions possible): a liberal politician like Obama, and a liberal democratic Congress will preside over what is actually a conservative (and hence pro-Republican) society.
In the recent debates between Mc Cain and Obama the question of education emerged as one of these contradictory sites of American life. The moderator put forward the following question: we are the country that expends more money per student in the world and yet the results are far from good. American students tend to underperform when compared to students from countries as different as Norway or South Korea. What would you do to correct this problem?
Provided that these statistics are meaningful (something I personally doubt) the answers of both candidates failed to address what constitute in my opinion the cultural root of the problem (and justly so, they are politicians trying to win an election, not intellectuals trying to explain the world). Obama’s solution for the American lagging-behind in education is more investment; Mc Cain’s more accountability.
What no candidate said is that the reason why student’s performance is better in Norway or South Korea may lie in the fact that in those countries education is a highly recognized social and cultural value. In other words, I suspect that in Norway or South Korea being educated, intelligent or cultivated is a ground for respect while often in the US the same attributes are perceived as the mark of a moral flaw or a revelation of a dubiousness of character. Only two weeks ago the front page on-line version of CNN asked if the label of “intellectual” may hurt Obama. This label of "intellectual” is itself interesting. It seems to mean that Obama has a surprising tendency to think problems over. It also seems to suggest that he is not straight ignorant as could be expected from somebody who wants to be president of the most powerful country in the world.
To the gallery of contradictions of American culture the ethnographer of modern life has to add this one: an anti-intellectual culture living side by side with a genuine concern for education.
The very outcome of the coming election is itself a classical American excercise in contradiction (and a reminder of the complex legal and political structure that makes these contradictions possible): a liberal politician like Obama, and a liberal democratic Congress will preside over what is actually a conservative (and hence pro-Republican) society.
In the recent debates between Mc Cain and Obama the question of education emerged as one of these contradictory sites of American life. The moderator put forward the following question: we are the country that expends more money per student in the world and yet the results are far from good. American students tend to underperform when compared to students from countries as different as Norway or South Korea. What would you do to correct this problem?
Provided that these statistics are meaningful (something I personally doubt) the answers of both candidates failed to address what constitute in my opinion the cultural root of the problem (and justly so, they are politicians trying to win an election, not intellectuals trying to explain the world). Obama’s solution for the American lagging-behind in education is more investment; Mc Cain’s more accountability.
What no candidate said is that the reason why student’s performance is better in Norway or South Korea may lie in the fact that in those countries education is a highly recognized social and cultural value. In other words, I suspect that in Norway or South Korea being educated, intelligent or cultivated is a ground for respect while often in the US the same attributes are perceived as the mark of a moral flaw or a revelation of a dubiousness of character. Only two weeks ago the front page on-line version of CNN asked if the label of “intellectual” may hurt Obama. This label of "intellectual” is itself interesting. It seems to mean that Obama has a surprising tendency to think problems over. It also seems to suggest that he is not straight ignorant as could be expected from somebody who wants to be president of the most powerful country in the world.
To the gallery of contradictions of American culture the ethnographer of modern life has to add this one: an anti-intellectual culture living side by side with a genuine concern for education.
Friday, October 17, 2008
La vida es sueño or the present financial crisis of global markets (Second Part of You will never make it...)
In every debate Barack Obama and John Mc Cain have been asked what sacrifices they will require from the American people in order to sort the present financial crisis. Neither Obama nor Mc Cain had answered this question. Mc Cain vaguely talked about saving two or three millions dollars on research on Grizzlie bears and Obama mentioned all things he is NOT going to cut.
Perhaps both candidates believe that the exorbitant size of the American economy makes this crisis easy to surmount. The US can still laugh at 700 billion dollars…and to more than that too.
My concern is not related to the size of the crisis, but to the label of crisis itself. A crisis is a fleeting accident that happens to a more or less established structure. There are reasons, however, to believe that the present financial crisis is not a temporary upheaval of a normal economic cycle, but rather than the economic boom of the 1990’s was the real anomaly that is now being corrected. The illusion lasted the last 13 years. What we suffer now is life outside the Matrix. However, as in the matrix, our deeply inscribed neo-liberal self crave that dream from which we don't want to wake up.
Obama hinted to the rudeness of this awakening in the second debate when he said "we have been living beyond our means.” It was Bill Clinton with his absurd re-appointment of Allan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve who inaugurated this style of living "beyond our means." Under Greenspan, the Federal Reserve injected tons of money into the economy at ridiculously low rates. The banks lent that money at equally ridiculously low rates and since money kept coming through the pipeline (uncle Mao was happy to subsidize the American economy so Americans can go shopping for Chinese products) an extended but also deeply false feeling of economic well-being spilled through most of urban and suburban America.
Clinton's idea was to use cheap credit to buy Al Gore into the presidency; but the master plan finally sank in the ashtray of his famous cigar and the costly beer that some American voters decided to have with their pal from Texas. Bush took good note of the example. When the time of his second election came around, America was literally flooded with cheap money. The availability of cheap money affected all the areas of American life: from sports to the real state market, from CEO bonuses to advances for unwritten manuscripts of future best-sellers.
Bush's solution to the current financial crisis (inject 700 billion into the system) ignores that this crisis is as much a crisis of credit as it is a crisis of debt. And since this crisis happens in the middle of a recession it is very likely that the interest services of this debt will outgrowth its potential indirect benefits. Even the argument that the size of American economy is so big that 700 billion is an important but small intervention is partly flawed: this gigantic GDP includes consumer spending and retail performances as one of its main components. Both will be reduced in the next years by the absence of easy and cheap credit.
If seems clear that it is no longer possible to return to the previous levels of liquidity. A mirage that lasted fifteen years is coming to an end. The problem is that fifteen years is a long time; enough time to trick us into believing that what we are living is just a dream from which we will wake up and not the harsh reality that we had escaped for too long already.
Perhaps both candidates believe that the exorbitant size of the American economy makes this crisis easy to surmount. The US can still laugh at 700 billion dollars…and to more than that too.
My concern is not related to the size of the crisis, but to the label of crisis itself. A crisis is a fleeting accident that happens to a more or less established structure. There are reasons, however, to believe that the present financial crisis is not a temporary upheaval of a normal economic cycle, but rather than the economic boom of the 1990’s was the real anomaly that is now being corrected. The illusion lasted the last 13 years. What we suffer now is life outside the Matrix. However, as in the matrix, our deeply inscribed neo-liberal self crave that dream from which we don't want to wake up.
Obama hinted to the rudeness of this awakening in the second debate when he said "we have been living beyond our means.” It was Bill Clinton with his absurd re-appointment of Allan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve who inaugurated this style of living "beyond our means." Under Greenspan, the Federal Reserve injected tons of money into the economy at ridiculously low rates. The banks lent that money at equally ridiculously low rates and since money kept coming through the pipeline (uncle Mao was happy to subsidize the American economy so Americans can go shopping for Chinese products) an extended but also deeply false feeling of economic well-being spilled through most of urban and suburban America.
Clinton's idea was to use cheap credit to buy Al Gore into the presidency; but the master plan finally sank in the ashtray of his famous cigar and the costly beer that some American voters decided to have with their pal from Texas. Bush took good note of the example. When the time of his second election came around, America was literally flooded with cheap money. The availability of cheap money affected all the areas of American life: from sports to the real state market, from CEO bonuses to advances for unwritten manuscripts of future best-sellers.
Bush's solution to the current financial crisis (inject 700 billion into the system) ignores that this crisis is as much a crisis of credit as it is a crisis of debt. And since this crisis happens in the middle of a recession it is very likely that the interest services of this debt will outgrowth its potential indirect benefits. Even the argument that the size of American economy is so big that 700 billion is an important but small intervention is partly flawed: this gigantic GDP includes consumer spending and retail performances as one of its main components. Both will be reduced in the next years by the absence of easy and cheap credit.
If seems clear that it is no longer possible to return to the previous levels of liquidity. A mirage that lasted fifteen years is coming to an end. The problem is that fifteen years is a long time; enough time to trick us into believing that what we are living is just a dream from which we will wake up and not the harsh reality that we had escaped for too long already.
You will never make it
Barack Obama keeps repeating a line that didn’t work for Al Gore and is only half working for him now: Mc Cain’s tax cuts is for the five or ten percent of wealthiest Americans, while his tax cut is directed to the large (although shrinking) middle class. (Also known as "the rest of America", homless excluded).
The reason why the message wasn't sucessful in the past and is half working now, is that many Americans don't like to think of themselves as this "vague" middle class that struggles to make ends meet. They rather prefer to think that they will make it.
If we consider the statistical side of the expression "middle class", we can see that the concept itself is an illusion and that Democrats has little to win by invoking it. According to the census bureau, the average household income in America was 50.233 dollars in the year 2007. In actual percentage, around 25% of American families actually live with that income. These people pay little taxes and no tax break can help them. A tax break can only be significant for those making above 100k, a 32% of households in 2005, of which 60% is solidly Republican.
But statistics are not the real reason why the Democratic message takes so long to sink. The real reason lies, of course, at an imaginary level. Anybody who grew up watching American television knows that outside the world of "The Wire," all American policemen live in five bedrooms houses with hard wood floors and spectacular views of the Golden Bridge or the New York skyline. The so-called middle class, and more importantly the actual middle class, had bought a fairy tale that tells them that, somewhat, they will climb the ladder of social rank to the very top. They can make it to the million dollars! Why not? Mark Cuban did it and Mark Cuban is one of us. This lovely trait of American hyper-rich people of looking like normal people is transformed in the minds of middle class America into the mirage that since Mark Cuban uses the same trashy t-shirts I use, I can become ultra-rich as he his. It is on this fantasy that Republicans prey election after election.
A strategic fight for political hegemony in the US should include this harsh, direct message: NO. You will not make it. You will never make it. Never, ever, ever. The odds of you making it are as good as your odds of walking from a Vegas casino with 100k in your pocket. This simple existential awakening should have definitive social and political consequences. People may stop ignoring their actual lifes in favor of a life they will never enjoy. They may even actually measure themselves by something else than their bank accounts, how much money they will leave to their children and how they are going to pay for their own funeral. And I am convinced that politics gets much better when people like their lives. The whole system of expectations changes when the postman and the teacher, the employee and the lawyer, demand to be happy on the bases of what they actually are and not on the bases of what they will never become.
The reason why the message wasn't sucessful in the past and is half working now, is that many Americans don't like to think of themselves as this "vague" middle class that struggles to make ends meet. They rather prefer to think that they will make it.
If we consider the statistical side of the expression "middle class", we can see that the concept itself is an illusion and that Democrats has little to win by invoking it. According to the census bureau, the average household income in America was 50.233 dollars in the year 2007. In actual percentage, around 25% of American families actually live with that income. These people pay little taxes and no tax break can help them. A tax break can only be significant for those making above 100k, a 32% of households in 2005, of which 60% is solidly Republican.
But statistics are not the real reason why the Democratic message takes so long to sink. The real reason lies, of course, at an imaginary level. Anybody who grew up watching American television knows that outside the world of "The Wire," all American policemen live in five bedrooms houses with hard wood floors and spectacular views of the Golden Bridge or the New York skyline. The so-called middle class, and more importantly the actual middle class, had bought a fairy tale that tells them that, somewhat, they will climb the ladder of social rank to the very top. They can make it to the million dollars! Why not? Mark Cuban did it and Mark Cuban is one of us. This lovely trait of American hyper-rich people of looking like normal people is transformed in the minds of middle class America into the mirage that since Mark Cuban uses the same trashy t-shirts I use, I can become ultra-rich as he his. It is on this fantasy that Republicans prey election after election.
A strategic fight for political hegemony in the US should include this harsh, direct message: NO. You will not make it. You will never make it. Never, ever, ever. The odds of you making it are as good as your odds of walking from a Vegas casino with 100k in your pocket. This simple existential awakening should have definitive social and political consequences. People may stop ignoring their actual lifes in favor of a life they will never enjoy. They may even actually measure themselves by something else than their bank accounts, how much money they will leave to their children and how they are going to pay for their own funeral. And I am convinced that politics gets much better when people like their lives. The whole system of expectations changes when the postman and the teacher, the employee and the lawyer, demand to be happy on the bases of what they actually are and not on the bases of what they will never become.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Who is the real Barack Obama?
When Barack Obama first started campaigning for the democratic nomination his name was synonymous with popular, vital politics. In Ohio, where the Clintons enjoyed the almost total control of the Democratic political apparatus, Obama's backers mounted a campaign using as "database" a list of laundromats's and hair dressers's clients. He didn't win Ohio, but for somebody starting from scratch his performance was just short of spectacular.
The enthusiasm elicited by Obama's candidacy was clear in the sudden politization of very young people: sometimes as young as six, seven years old. In some places in California, kids went to school wearing Obama's t-shirts. The movement was, if anything, spontaneous. Its effects shocked the democratic establishment. The politics of the apparatus was confronted with a wave of militants that Obama was recruiting right and left. Most of the time, he or his people were not even recruiting. Obama's supporters just showed up or started campaigning on their own. And Obama's speeches many times reflected this reality: he talked about mobilization, community, and people on the street. (In Ohio, Obama voters marched to the polls cutting the flow of traffic in the streets). The press first welcomed this breeze of fresh political air. But when became clear that Obama will clinch the democratic nomination, things started to change. By the end of the Democratic primary the media launched a vast program of domestication of the wild candidate.
This process of co-optation started the same night of Obama's triumph over Hillary Clinton. For more than a week after the election, NBC, CNN and other big media corporations, run programs and analysis of the primary election that turn all around the question of how was that Hillary Clinton has lost. Everything was about the mistakes that Hillary made, the stubbornness of her advisors, the arrogance that doomed her campaign, the lack of due attention to caucuses etc. Barack Obama did not win. Hillary Clinton lost.
It is true that Obama became more "presidential" after clinching the democratic nomination. But the media had made a point of ignoring the less conventional aspects of his candidacy. Instead we hear, now and then, reports about the "enthusiasm" elicited by Obama among young voters, a description soon followed by doubts about these young people actually showing up on election day. Even when Republicans attack Barack Obama asking "who is the real Barack Obama"?, they don't have in mind the street organizer (as one Republican voter put it in a TV interview: he worked to gave houses to people who could not make the payments), but rather a very petty-bourgeois system of associations that connect a former "terrorist" to a living room in Chicago. Obama is never attacked by his militant, radical liberal past (let's hope that also present). Some people don't even want to hear that these things are actually possible.
The Barack Obama representing a rhetoric of popular participation has vanished (or perhaps it has been banished) from the media. This teaches us a lesson in methodology. The system starts its work very early. As all those who live in the land of the free know, sometimes, as early as kindergarten. It seems that they couldn't get Obama at that early age. But they are going after him now.
The enthusiasm elicited by Obama's candidacy was clear in the sudden politization of very young people: sometimes as young as six, seven years old. In some places in California, kids went to school wearing Obama's t-shirts. The movement was, if anything, spontaneous. Its effects shocked the democratic establishment. The politics of the apparatus was confronted with a wave of militants that Obama was recruiting right and left. Most of the time, he or his people were not even recruiting. Obama's supporters just showed up or started campaigning on their own. And Obama's speeches many times reflected this reality: he talked about mobilization, community, and people on the street. (In Ohio, Obama voters marched to the polls cutting the flow of traffic in the streets). The press first welcomed this breeze of fresh political air. But when became clear that Obama will clinch the democratic nomination, things started to change. By the end of the Democratic primary the media launched a vast program of domestication of the wild candidate.
This process of co-optation started the same night of Obama's triumph over Hillary Clinton. For more than a week after the election, NBC, CNN and other big media corporations, run programs and analysis of the primary election that turn all around the question of how was that Hillary Clinton has lost. Everything was about the mistakes that Hillary made, the stubbornness of her advisors, the arrogance that doomed her campaign, the lack of due attention to caucuses etc. Barack Obama did not win. Hillary Clinton lost.
It is true that Obama became more "presidential" after clinching the democratic nomination. But the media had made a point of ignoring the less conventional aspects of his candidacy. Instead we hear, now and then, reports about the "enthusiasm" elicited by Obama among young voters, a description soon followed by doubts about these young people actually showing up on election day. Even when Republicans attack Barack Obama asking "who is the real Barack Obama"?, they don't have in mind the street organizer (as one Republican voter put it in a TV interview: he worked to gave houses to people who could not make the payments), but rather a very petty-bourgeois system of associations that connect a former "terrorist" to a living room in Chicago. Obama is never attacked by his militant, radical liberal past (let's hope that also present). Some people don't even want to hear that these things are actually possible.
The Barack Obama representing a rhetoric of popular participation has vanished (or perhaps it has been banished) from the media. This teaches us a lesson in methodology. The system starts its work very early. As all those who live in the land of the free know, sometimes, as early as kindergarten. It seems that they couldn't get Obama at that early age. But they are going after him now.
The Historical Meaning of the 2008 Election
Let’s be clear on this. The 2008 election is an absolutely historical election for both American and World History.
To realize the epochal significance of this election, we just need to pay attention to the possible outcomes and their historical significance.
If Obama wins the election, he will become the first black president of the United States.
If Mc Cain wins, he will be the first Latin American to become president of the United States (There are some technicalities here regarding the status of the Panama channel before the transference of sovereignty, but Latinos are already claiming Mc Cain for them)
If Mc Cain wins and dies, the first female president of the US will be Sarah Palin.
If Obama wins and dies, Joe Biden will become the first person crushed in a primary who will actually become president of the United States.
In this way, not only the historical meaning of this election is guaranteed, but also these four candidates will join a unique gallery of people who, as they were inaugurated as presidents, represented also first time achievements.
By way of example, let’s list
George Washington, the first president to become the first president of the United States.
John Adams, the first president with the name “John” to serve as president (not a minor achievement in the Anglo-Saxon protestan world)
Thomas Jefferson, the first president to be the third president of the United States.
James Monroe, the first president to have the same first name as the previous president. (James Monroe also holds the distinction of being the first president to share his last name with the alleged lover of a future president)
Van Buren, the first president to be confused with Von Braun and other names that sounds like appliances.
Woodrow Wilson, the first president to have identical name and last name initials. (Wilson’s achievement was so fantastic that pretty soon other presidents follow on his trail, like Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover whose names continue the tradition, first started by Van Buren, of sounding like commodities. Underwears and vacuum cleaners in this case).
To realize the epochal significance of this election, we just need to pay attention to the possible outcomes and their historical significance.
If Obama wins the election, he will become the first black president of the United States.
If Mc Cain wins, he will be the first Latin American to become president of the United States (There are some technicalities here regarding the status of the Panama channel before the transference of sovereignty, but Latinos are already claiming Mc Cain for them)
If Mc Cain wins and dies, the first female president of the US will be Sarah Palin.
If Obama wins and dies, Joe Biden will become the first person crushed in a primary who will actually become president of the United States.
In this way, not only the historical meaning of this election is guaranteed, but also these four candidates will join a unique gallery of people who, as they were inaugurated as presidents, represented also first time achievements.
By way of example, let’s list
George Washington, the first president to become the first president of the United States.
John Adams, the first president with the name “John” to serve as president (not a minor achievement in the Anglo-Saxon protestan world)
Thomas Jefferson, the first president to be the third president of the United States.
James Monroe, the first president to have the same first name as the previous president. (James Monroe also holds the distinction of being the first president to share his last name with the alleged lover of a future president)
Van Buren, the first president to be confused with Von Braun and other names that sounds like appliances.
Woodrow Wilson, the first president to have identical name and last name initials. (Wilson’s achievement was so fantastic that pretty soon other presidents follow on his trail, like Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover whose names continue the tradition, first started by Van Buren, of sounding like commodities. Underwears and vacuum cleaners in this case).
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Isn't your candidate concrete enough? Return him. In America satisfaction IS guaranteed
I watch the presidential debates on CNN. After each debate, CNN shows a focus group (a bunch of common people living in common places such as Ohio or Missouri) and their reactions to the debate. In the first two debates, it was common for the people in the focus group to vent their disappointment about the lack of concrete proposals by the candidates. They did not say anything specific –the complaint continues- about how they plan to handle issues such as the financial crisis or health care problems. The reporter would side with the common people and face the camera with an expression of unspeakable suffering, concluding something like: "Obviously, these folks think that the candidates are out of touch with the concerns of main street America." However, the truth is that both Mc Cain and Obama are very clear about their plans and priorities. The charge so often repeated in these focus groups that the candidates "don't say anything" is plainly false. The question, then, is: why can't the American people hear them? Two possible explanations. The first is that American people are not used to political discussions anymore. Perhaps the slow but steady destruction of common spaces that took place under neoliberlism is finally taking its high toll on American politics. The reason the audience thinks that Mc Cain and Obama only say "general things" which don't concern them (the audience) is perhaps because they (the audience) are no longer able to identify themselves as part of something general, a public. A second explanation is also possible. Often candidates have to phrase answers in such a way that their message doesn't offend a public sense of property and politeness. Republicans have found this rule of courtesy very useful when defending themselves in a context in which they can be blamed for so many things that it is a miracle that they have a candidate actually running for the presidency. The rule of courtesy helps Republicans because at its center there is an article of faith that reads: it is unpatriotic to criticize America. Candidates, above all Democrats, have to be very careful in phrasing their observations in such a way so that, even as they denounce the fact that the health system is broke or that the financial institutions have withered away into thin air, they simultaneously uphold the idea that this is the best country in the world, the most progressive force in history and that its institutions are the envy of the whole civilized universe. Let's go back to the focus group for a moment. The person waiting for a "concrete answer" to his concern (health care in this case) doesn't want to hear that the problem lies in the speculative practices in the pharmaceutical industry or in the fact that the hospital networks in low and medium income areas are underfunded. He wants a solution for him, not for the problem, because attacking the problem entails the possibility of embarking on an un-American journey.
These two attitudes, the impossibility of conceiving of a public dimension and the impossibility of criticizing America constitutes a sort of shopping mall mentality. Voters, citizens or consumers (whatever they are) crave some kind of personalized attention because this fake friendship is the one they get in their everyday doings with corporate America. As for the conviction that criticizing America is un-patriotic, it seems rooted in a form of pre-emptive satisfaction active in corporative mentality. In every Starbucks there is a sign that reads: if your drink is not good, let us know and we will do it again. Corporations are smart. They know that there are only so many times that you can send your drink back.
These two attitudes, the impossibility of conceiving of a public dimension and the impossibility of criticizing America constitutes a sort of shopping mall mentality. Voters, citizens or consumers (whatever they are) crave some kind of personalized attention because this fake friendship is the one they get in their everyday doings with corporate America. As for the conviction that criticizing America is un-patriotic, it seems rooted in a form of pre-emptive satisfaction active in corporative mentality. In every Starbucks there is a sign that reads: if your drink is not good, let us know and we will do it again. Corporations are smart. They know that there are only so many times that you can send your drink back.
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