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Obama Defeats Antiwar Movement

By Paul Street at Apr 17, 2009

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Here is a nice piece by my friend Glen Ford: "First Black President Defeats U.S. Antiwar Movement" (read at http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/first-black-president-defeats-us-antiwar-movement). Please give it a read, ZNet comrades. Nothing surprising of course.  This is exactly what I predicted in my Obama volume last year. It's no small part of why I wrote the book (which I wanted to title "The Audacity of Deception").  And  I recall my second favorite author (after Noam Chomsky) writing the following in May of 2008: "What is Obama’s attraction to big business?  Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy’s [in 1968].  By offering a 'new,' young and apparently progressive face of Democratic Party – with the bonus of being a member of the black elite – he can blunt and divert real opposition.  That was Colin Powell’s role as Bush’s secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US antiwar and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults.  If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent." See John Pilger, "After Bobby Kennedy (There Was Barack Obama),” Common Dreams (May 31, 2008), read at www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/31/9327/ 

Nicely predicted! I'm finding that the satisfaction of telling so-called left liberals "I told you so" on Obama is real but rather fleeting. Same on the financial crisis/recession, the empire budget, instiutional racism. and so much more...
 

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Re: Obama Defeats Antiwar Movement

By Kurkulos, Maryellen at Apr 21, 2009 14:10 PM

Paul - This is interesting and no doubt reveals a good deal of truth about some facet(s) of the anti-war movement and many in this country who consider themselves Dems or Progressives. But I disagree for a couple of reasons. First, Ford's evaluation is very different from what I'm aware of. Among my own circles, I know people are just as active as ever and diversifying, even radicalizing, their tactics - we've already had several workshops this year - just this weekend there is an almost unprecedented Connecticut-wide antiwar conference at Wesleyan organized by students on several campuses. This kind of thing has truly not happened for decades.  Our bimonthly vigils in Providence are as well attended as ever and we engage more people on the street than a year ago. Another group I work with has split up to focus on counter-recruitment and more long-term efforts. Even I am shifting my emphasis from more ostentatious work against militarism to educating and radicalizing people on the left.

There are several other examples I could site. But my point is that the low ebb of activity seen by ANSWER, UFPJ and other top-down antiwar organizations can easily be explained otherwise, rather than by a straightforward post-Obama fizzling away of antiwar involvement. The phenomena Ford cites are also consistent with increased grass-roots response I'm seeing, with people becoming more creative and sophisticated and no longer requiring the huge anti-war protests that, frankly, did little to interrupt the murderous and horrific system we live in. Protests were - and still can be - important for coming together, exchanging ideas and building community, but there are so many more important ways of taking down this monster - the strategy of a "death by a thousand cuts", to quote a local activist friend of mine. So I, personally, am in fact more optimistic than I've been in a long time. Even Chomsky perceives that activism in the country is at a peak that rivals any time in the last several decades - it is simply being manifested in different and less obvious ways.

 

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Re:

By Street, Paul at Apr 21, 2009 17:05 PM

Well, not much in that way in Iowa City, where the Obama tonic was and remains quite strong and crippling, but one thing I do notice is that people are more responsive than ever to connecting a critique of miltiarism/wars to a critique of capitalism/the profits system. "Fight the rich not their wars." We are having a May Day event and there will be very little said (by me or any other speakers) about Obama per se.  A lot will be said about the crisis imposed by capital and about the empire ("defense") budget and about the need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and to go with real health care reform on the single-payer model. Also some good stuff on immigrant rights. Obama will be besides the point to no small degree. It's still "Obama all day"  on dominant media but over-exposure is coming; people are just going to get sick of  the president's face and voice and demeanor after a while...enough is enough.  If I had the energy to write a book this year (i don;t) , it would be titled "It's the Profits System, Stupid" and Status QuObama would get a few paragraphs at most.  I've published four books in my life and it is an interesting indication of the political culture's obsession with individual candidates and presidents that the book on Obama (really on the Obama phenomeon and its place in U.S. social and political history) alone has easily outsold (1) my 2004 book on Bush, 9/11, empire, and inequality + (2) my 2005 book on school segregation + (3) my 2007 book  Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (a better book than the Obama volume) .   Sad but true.

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Reflections

By Street, Paul at Apr 20, 2009 09:47 AM

The charge of “despising Obama” is a regular part of PFO (“Progressives for Obama" --- more on them below) agent Davidson’s anti-Street/anti-Ford smear campaign. It is of course a way of trivializing substantive left critique of the reconfigured corporate-imperial neoliberal bloc formed around the Obama phenomenon (which I picked as probably unbeatable for the presidency in December of 2006) and of avoiding PFO's own deep complicity with Empire’s New Clothes, who has recently (for example) embraced the denial of habeas corpus to the  secretly detained “enemy combatants” as long as the mainly Muslim victims are flown to the Bagram prison in Afghanistan instead of Guantanamo (since prisoners in "war zones” can be more readily denied basic rights)!

This month, Obama has followed in George W. Bush’s footsteps by deciding to boycott the second international conference on racism, the “Durban II” gathering in Switzerland this month and for the same two basic reasons as Bush. First, the conference dares to raise the issue of slavery reparations. Second, the conference dares to discuss the racism experienced by Arab Palestinians under the apartheid-like system in the occupied territories.
 
Meanwhile Obama is finding ways to sustain the petro-colonial U.S. occupation of Iraq and to expand the related U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He revealingly resists pressure to investigate and prosecute the monumental war and human rights crimes of the Bush administration, claiming that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” This from a former and supposedly liberal law professor, someone who should be expected to understand that one investigates and punishes past human rights crimes precisely in order to discourage and prevent their occurrence in the present and future.  
 
So much easier to accuse Obama’s critics of “despising” the new president than to actually deal with one’s own complicity in these sorts of nauseating nut thoroughly predictable policies. The embarassment of "progressive" association with all this terrible policy (I'm leaving out a of course, including the Obama-Geithner-Summers-Bush-Paulsen Wall Street bailouts) is certainly profound.
 
It is relevant that "Progressive for Obama” (PFO) congealed around the Great Barack (a smooth talking neoliberal fake-progressive centrist from Harvrd who bored me to tears in Chicago and Illinois during the late 1990s and early 21st century) even before Kucinich and Edwards were defeated.
 
As for the standard amnd repeated Davidson charge of dysfunctional ultra-leftism, here is a passage (written more than a year ago) from my book’s introduction – a passage that is useful also for refuting the charge of “despising Obama” in a personal way:
 
 
It’s Systemic
 
Rather than hold up Obama as some sort of singular “poster boy” for the dark essences of U.S. politics suggested here, this study seeks to understand him within the broader historical, societal, and institutional framework that has long harshly delimited, conditioned, and defined seriously “elect-able” U.S. presidential candidates. Obama, I argue, possesses no particular immunity to the historical and sociopolitical forces that have long pushed such candidates and the Democratic Party towards the corporate, imperial, and racially accomodationist “center.” The significantly power-friendly, militarist, and neoliberal Obama portrayed in this study is hardly the first and certainly not the last conciliatory and conservative Democrat to be produced by the U.S. election system and political culture.  
 
Consistent with this argument, this book will contain numerous critical reflections on other leading Democratic politicos, past and present, including Obama’s main competitors for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. While I have chosen in this volume to focus above all on the Obama phenomenon (an especially relevant and powerful development in the long history of progressive illusion generated by America’s corporate-crafted, “winner-take-all” political system), I do not wish to leave the impression that other leading Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole don’t deserve searching radical-democratic criticism along the lines applied to Obama in this study. They do. Obama is I think an almost perfect-storm epitome of a deeper problem with U.S. elections, the American political tradition, and late-capitalist political culture: the inherent conflict between popular-democratic promise and authoritarian, corporate-imperial reality.   Whether the phenomenon will (against historical odds and its admittedly brief historical record to date) function in any meaningful way on behalf of that promise, remains, I am willing to acknowledge, an open question,
 
What’s a “Progressive?”
 
Some final comments on terminology used in this study and the author’s qualifications to write it. As any good historian of the late 19th and early 20th century (" Progressive Age") United States knows, the word "progressive" can elicit numerous diverse and often contradictory shades of sociopolitical and ideological meaning, ranging from the corporate liberalism of the onetime National Civic Federation to the middle-class reformism of a Jane Addams and the democratic socialism of onetime left presidential candidate Eugene Debs.[i] During my tenure at a corporate-captive (post-) “civil rights” and social service agency in black Chicago between 2000 and 2005, I periodically received issue briefings through an Obama associate from a think-tank associated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) – an organization whose historical mission had long been to move the Democratic Party away from its connections to the civil rights, labor, and environmental movements and closer to big business. The name of this think tank was “The Progressive Policy Institute.
 
My own “progressive” moral and ideological heritage hails from a left-libertarian tradition that includes such notable thinkers as Gerrard Winstanley, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxembourg, Rudolph Rocker, George Orwell, and Noam Chomsky. My anti-authoritarian vision of the good and truly democratic society is distinctly unimaginable and “utopian” from the perspective of dominant ideologies today. Its realization would require something along the lines of a revolution in existing political-economic structures and cultural frameworks.. At the same time, I have long worked as a real-time  progressive seeking substantive change – “reform” – within the “really existing” U.S. sociopolitical order By “progressive,” I mean a set of values and policies aligned with the following interrelated principles: economic equality and social justice, opposition to socially constructed hierarchies of class, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and empire; ecological sustainability; political democracy (“one person, one vote” and equal policymaking influence for all regardless of personal wealth, status, and connections); and the egalitarian and participatory organization of work and schooling. Along with the left-liberal group “Progressive Democrats of America” (PDA) and much of the U.S. populace, I support the following policy priorities: [ii]
 
● Rapidly ending the invasion of Iraq and redirecting funds spent on that war from military occupation toward social needs at home and humanitarian aid in Iraq.
 
● Quality health care for all on the basis of a single-payer government health insurance system that replaces private insurers and introduces administrative savings of $300 billion or more.
 
● Economic justice through progressive taxation, fair trade, increased labor and consumer protections, significantly expanded union organizing and bargaining rights, enhanced government regulation of the financial and corporate sectors, and expanded government spending and investment in the public good.
 
● Clean, fair, and transparent elections through comprehensive public financing among other key electoral measures designed to reduce the disproportionately high influence of concentrated wealth on the U.S. “dollar democracy.”
 
● Ending global warming through reduced dependence on fossil fuels and increased investment in clean energy and public transportation.
 
I would add at least two things to this list:
 
● Rolling back and reinvesting the broader and extreme budget and culture of U.S. militarism and imperialism. The Iraq War is a large and distinctly troubling (indeed criminal) expression of American hyper-militarism and the related dangerous and expensive U.S. quest for global dominance.
 
● Ending persistent endemic racial and gender bias in the operation and structure of American institutions and policies.
 
As an anticapitalist left-libertarian, I am skeptical about the extent to which these principles can ever be meaningfully honored under the currently hegemonic corporate-state profit system. But reform and revolution are not polar opposites in my perspective. They are dialectically inseparable and mutually reinforcing aspects of a meaningful left-democratic political project that permits Left activists to retain their “big” vision and identity while working on a practical basis with liberals, moderates, and even conservatives for specific, objectively progressive measures like the public financing of political campaigns, the achievement of enhanced union organizing rights, and mandatory caps on carbon pollution.   
 
Contrary to one strongly pro-Obama writer’s characterization of me [iii], I am capable of making “pragmatic” and “realistic” accommodations with really existing American politics. During the long primary leading up to the pivotal Democratic presidential caucus in Iowa, for example, I (despite being personally well to the left of Dennis Kucinich) worked (alongside activists from SEIU, UNITE-HERE, and the United Steelworkers) as a volunteer for the John Edwards campaign, knocking on hundreds of doors and making hundreds of phone calls in and around eastern Iowa in the late summer and fall of 2007 (in advance of the pitoval Iowa presidential Caucus). This activism was based on three basic and interrelated calculations:  that the Republican Party was too dangerously extremist and reactionary for progressives not to try to remove it from control of the most powerful single office on earth in November 2008; that the highly imperfect (from a Left perspective) Edwards was the most elect-able of the viable Democratic presidential candidates; that Edwards was the most progressive of the viable Democratic contenders (a judgment that will find some support in chapters two, three and four of this study), especially on domestic  policy [iv]
 
This book does not criticize Obama only or mainly for not being a Left radical like the author. I cannot honestly deny that that criticism is present here, for I think that he and other leading public personalities would contribute more to America and the world by resisting dominant power structures than by trying to accommodate and climb them. Still, this study’s criticism of Obama focuses mainly on questioning the extent to which he has lived up to his claim to be simply a “progressive” Democratic reformer. It holds no fantastic expectations that Obama could or would ever embrace hard Left ideals.
 
Whether or not Obama could or would conduct a recognizably half-progressive presidency (leading a “another New Deal”) if and after he reaches the White House is not something I would have the audacity to try to foretell. What this book will dare to suggest, based on Obama’s record and on the deeper history, structure, and culture of U.S. politics, is that an Obama administration would be likely to move in a relatively conservative direction unless and until it was pushed to the left from below by an aroused and organized populace....


*** P.S. (4/20/2009): the Edwards thing was my first and last tango with the Dems.  It was very useful and interesting in a participant obseratory way for the book but I would never engage with the other business party (see Lance Selfa's recent excellent book The Democrats: A Critial History for an excellent analysis of the party from the Left) in any way and in fact I voted for Nader last fall.

 
[i] Glenda Gilmore, ed.. Who Were the Progressives? (New York: St. Martins, 2002); Richard McCormick and Arthur S. Link, Progressivism (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1983); David Kennedy, “Overview: The Progressive Era,” Historian 37 (May 1975): 453-468; Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History (December 1982): 113-181; Peter Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,’” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 20-34.
 
[ii] Progressive Democrats of America, “PDA Priorities” (2008), read online at http://pdamaerica.org.
 
[iii] John K. Wilson, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest (boulder. CO: Paradigm, October 2007).
 
[iv] For some of my “real time” campaign reflections (by no means completely flattering) on the Edwards campaign, see “Corporate Money on the Democrats: The Bad News,” Z Magazine (December 2007); . “A Very Narrow Spectrum: Even John Edwards is Too Far Left for the U.S. Plutocracy,” ZNet Sustainer Commentary (August 29, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-08/29street.cfm; “John Edwards and Dominant Media’s Selective Skewering of Populist Hypocrisy,” ZNet Magazine
( June 29, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13177; “Imperial Temptations: John Edwards, Barack Obama, and the Myth of Post-World War II United States Benevolence,” ZNet Magazine (May 28, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12928.
 

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Re: Reflections

By Davidson, Carl at Apr 20, 2009 13:57 PM

With this response, I think I'll just rest my case on your attitude, along with your critique, of Obama.

My critique of him, btw, is as a neo-Keynesian--not a neoliberal, which he's not, even if he has a few shamefaced 'reconstructed' neoliberals around him. But the sane socialists these days are in a tactical but critical alliance with the neoKeynesian program, and defend much of it against the die-hard neoliberals, and certainly against the rightwing populists and proto-fascists they're urging to become 'armed and dangerous' in their efforts to take down Obama. As for Afghanistan and other such adventures, Obama will either break with his current course or it will destroy his presidency, not to mention the impact more widely, here and abroad. We've said that consistently from the begining.

But where in the world do you come up with my 'complicity' in denying habeas corpus to anyone? I've been a long-standing advocate, even with the worse core al-Quada people captured, of charging them as criminals and bringing them to a court of justice. If you can't do that, let them go.

And Glen Ford cuts no ice with me. Anyone who can proclaim Howard Dean as a great anti-racist leader, and then turn on Obama with his degree of ultraleft vitriol, has some 'splainin' to do. There's a reason Black Agenda Report exists separately now from Black Commentator, and when you read the two, it's not hard to figure out why.

My book purchasing budget is rather slim these days, getting by on my limited SS check. But here's a deal. I'll exchange my book for yours, just give me the snail mail address. Then we can comment on each other's work.

 

 

 

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Re: Re: Reflections

By Street, Paul at Apr 20, 2009 15:17 PM

No deal.  Doesn't strike as an exchange of equivalents and you didn't specify which book you'd want....

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Re: Re: Re: Reflections

By Street, Paul at Apr 20, 2009 15:57 PM

Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberly are all very sharp; BAR brings more to the table than BC. I'm sure you did a wonderful book, CD. Here's an interesting book useful as a conversation point for overcoming at least some of the deadly conflict inside the Left: Andrej. Grubacic and (mainly) Staughton Lynd, Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism. Marxism, and Radical History ..a plea for mutual interaction between Marxists and left anarchists among other things. It's a nice read and i highly recommend it to all ZNetters.

 

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Reflections

By Street, Paul at Apr 21, 2009 08:35 AM

"I think I'll just rest my case on your attitude, along with your critique, of Obama."

Street: this is totally bizarre.  It has no meaning.  "I'll rest my case on your attitude and critique of Obama" -- a critique you won't purchase or get at te library or borrow.

Oh, okay.

I think these sorts of statements must provide the historical context for the famous teen comment: "whatever."

Bad "attitude": I assume some of your elders accused you of having one of those when you were a Sixties radical.

"There's a reason Black Agenda Report exists separately now from Black Commentator, and when you read the two, it's not hard to figure out why."

Street: Again, just bizarre.  Yes, they had a split - that's right.  I remember that split. Glen and Bruce were to the black Marxist left of the people running BC (where I used to do a lot of pieces) and so went off and formed their own zine - a very good one on the whole.  There was also something about money and/or format. Whatever, Ford and Dixon have been consistently dead-on accurate about the nature of the Obama phenomenon, particularly with regard to racial politics, and very empirical about it: their writings are  loaded with research and evidence.  Some of Ford's essays and commentaries have been positively brilliant. .

Okay so we ran this thing out to 20 comments (fueled by yet another Street-Davidson spat) but my original point remains....I see zero comments on other blogs and the political problem of restricted commenting (complex though it may be in terms fo the site's decision) lives on....

 

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685347

Re: Obama Defeats Antiwar Movement

By Petersen, Leif at Apr 18, 2009 13:36 PM

As for your post, I am not so sure. My feeling is that Obama's star is fading fast.

The Republicans continue to antagonize him. The Democrat left wing knows he's a fraud, and since he has given them no influence whatsoever, they have little to lose by opposing him.

To me it looks like Obama's presidency can turn out a huge failure, and that together with the obvious lunacy of the right wing, could bring some real change into American politics.

But who can fill the void?

 

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Re:

By Street, Paul at Apr 18, 2009 14:03 PM

If you mean small-d democratic left wing (as in the radical left, including the marxist and left-anarch left)  then yes knowledge that BO is a fraud is widespread.  If its the Democratic Party's so-called left liberals, including The Nation and PDA and MoveOn etc. then no they're not there (except for rebels inside institutions, like Cockburn and perhaps Scahill and Greider at The Nation for example) yet and still seem a long way off and in fact I wouldn't hold my breath for them to ever come around. .Obama-Emanuel et al. have little to really worry about from them as far as I can tell.  The use of liberal/center fear of the (insane) GOP to justify the official DP "left" (including PDA and Green fusion types and labor and so on) lining up in lockstep behind the system's head Democratic Shock Absorber in Chief should continue through the 2010 mid-terms and into a largely uncontested primary non-race. I suppose the economy and Af-Pak (and who knows maybe Iraq) could implode so harshly and with such extreme consequences that he could be contested in 2012.

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Re: Re:

By Petersen, Leif at Apr 18, 2009 14:43 PM

The only American media I read regularly is Huffington Post, which to my untrained Danish eye seems like the Democrat left wing.

The critique of Obama there is frequently very acid. They bring real news (along with a lot of tabloid stuff), without the usual corporate media twist.

Just now I read this from HuffPo front page and almost spit out my coffee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/18/chavez-gives-obama-a-book_n_188582.html

Chavez is priceless, his audacity made me laugh out loud :-)

 

 


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586561

Re: Re:

By Davidson, Carl at Apr 19, 2009 06:20 AM

Suppose every single member of the 140,000 PDA members, plus the 2500 signed up on one of Progressives for obama, plus the 5 0 in CPUSA and another 500 in CCDS, all joined the Paul Street fan club and started trashing Obama, what would it matter at the top?

I doubt it would bat an eyelash. some might even say 'good riddance, let them corral themselves on the margins with their circular firing squads.

Suppose they all signed up for the Greens and left their work in labor and the black community behind to the ordinary liberals and centrists, would that change a single major election? Hurt the Dems at all?

I think not.

We face much more serious problems, and dumping obama to the right wing wolves is not going to solve any of them. time for serious strategy discussions, which, unfortunately, is far too rare around here.

 

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Re: Re: Re:

By George, Justin at Apr 19, 2009 07:52 AM

Hi Carl,

I see your comments and replies on Z often but have not seen any of your own writing on these issues now that Obama has been elected. I checked your Z page and the last I could see was a review of Van Jone's book 'Green Collar Economy'.

Perhaps you can write on the strategy perspective/discussion you would like to see so we could review your arguments in one place and start such a discussion.

Perhaps you and Paul could have a debate series, like the many that have appeared on Z in the past, perhaps on 'Obama and Left strategy' ?

As we have a clear idea of Paul's position it might help to get a more detailed idea of your stance via your own blog or essay, the nuts and bolts so to speak, to go along with your regular critique that appears via comments.

A remedy-  "serious strategy discussions", to what you find problematic- "far too rare around here"

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Re: Re: Re: Re:

By Davidson, Carl at Apr 20, 2009 08:58 AM

My assentment of the Obama campaign, its aftermath, and current tasks are fairly well outlined in my 'Bumpy Road' piece posted on my Z-Blog, and the 'Green Jobs Meeting the Solidarity Economy' piece is a practical case-in-point about what I think we need to be doing.

Bill Fletcher and I put together an organizational proposal on how to move forward, posted at http://progressivesforobama.net, click the 'Discussion on Our Future' tab.  It's also posted at http://ccds-discussion.org , along with some other interesting papers. More theoretical stuff is at http://solidarityeconomy.net Click the Core Document button.

I don't have much of an idea, however, about what Street's approach to strategy and organization actually is. I know he thinks it's his role, along with others, to explain to us that Obama is part of the imperialist ruling class, with all that entails, and that he needs to keep being hammered on until every progressive in the country depises Obama as much as Glen Ford and he does. That's fine, I suppose, if you see yourself as an anarcho-Trotskyist polemicist trying to get more people to be anarcho-Trotskyists. To me, the more interesting question is what faction of the ruling class, what is the nature of his neo-Keynsianism vs neoliberalism, and how he differs from those who have gone before him, and who is the main immediate danger. Hint: it's not Obama, although it may include a few on his team.

But strategy, assessing friends and adversaries, in all their complications, getting an accurate picture of the relation of forces, getting clear on what can unite a majority as well as what can unite the left, then taking it out into the working class shops and neighborhoods, and building some fighting organizations, well, that takes a little more. But maybe I've missed something.

 

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Davidson, my book, etc.

By Street, Paul at Apr 19, 2009 16:18 PM

I'm not sure anyone gets a full view of my position from reading ZNet - that requires reading the book I did on the BO phenomeon and its place in U.S. political history and culture. Davidson has been instructed to read the book and its clear to me that he hasn't and won't.  We should have a new paperback edition out later this year and it will assess the first six months of the Obama presidency and maybe then CD can look at it.  When the updated version comes out --- it's a very serious and scholarly (and respectful) book, by the way, contrary to what anyone would expect from reading Davidson's slew of comments on me --- I'll be happy to debate a leading left-liberal Obama fan.  I doubt they'd want to put up Carl and suspect they'd want to go with someone with more intellectual credentials....a Dyson, a Hayden or even a Wise or whatever. 

The "'Paul Street fan club" line is misleading since  there's a bunch of names to cite and deal with when it comes to serious left criticism of  Obama (and the Dems more generally).  Look at all the names mentioned in this opening paragraph to a speech I'm giving at the end of the month:

"Thank you for inviting me to speak on the new administration’s first hundred days of centrist rule. Along with a number of other left writers and speakers over the last two and a half years including Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberly, Michael Hureaux, Pam Martens, Michael Hudson, John Pilger, Chris Hedges, Juan Santos, Matt Gonzales, Sharon Smith, Alexander Cockburn, Ralph Nader, Anthony Arnove, Ken Silverstein, Lance Selfa, John R. MacArthur, Joshua Frank, and Noam Chomsky, I have been living proof that the FOX News crowd is out of its mind when it says that all of 'the left' is deeply and hopelessly 'in love with His Holiness the Dali Obama.'"  

Here (for the Hell of it) is a forther opening comment from that speecht: "more ordinary working people and even some highly educated so-called left liberals are starting to see the deeply conservative nature of the Obama phenomenon, something my comrades and I have been talking and writing about for quite some time now. More and more Americans are starting to situate Obama in the world of power as it is instead of the world of power as many of us wish it to be."

"This is a healthy and democratic thing and, by the way, it has nothing to do with cynicism. Speaking of cynicism, I hope you’ve all heard what George Bernard Shaw once said about it. 'The power of accurate observation,' Shaw wrote, 'is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.'"
 
Those names I put in boldface are a shortlist....you could easily add a large number of other writiers and activists. And of course we have some remarkable criticism from Obama's left from moderate progressive economists like Paul Krugman and James K. Gailbraith.  I could add from Iowa that during the long and pivotal Caucus campaign even John Edwards could be quite scathing on Obama's ridiculous "corporate-Democratic" desire to accommodate big business and to "sing Kumbaya" with the GOP and Wall Street.

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Re: Davidson, my book, etc.

By Davidson, Carl at Apr 20, 2009 09:31 AM

You're right, Paul, if you want to debate a 'left liberal Obama fan,' it sure won't be me. I'm a case-hardened old Marxist, and fan of Lenin, Bukharin and Mao to boot, even as I try to stay on the cutting edge of cybernetics. As for 'intellectual credentials,' that's a hoot. Even with my lowly philosophy degree and various high-tech certifications,  I think I could mop the floor with a good deal of what passes for 'intellectual credentials' these days, both on their terms as well as my own, which tends to test ideas in practice.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Street, Paul at Apr 17, 2009 14:39 PM

Ok, so WTF? That's three state zero comments....If we had open commenting on Z blogs as we once did my guess is that this and last post I did (on the surprisngly large # of Americans who choose socialism over capitalism) would already be at  50-100 comments.  I think it looks very weak to have all these posts with zero comments! It's like staging a low-attendance march or demonstration; often its better not have the action unless you have reasonably good numbers. Am I the only one who thinks it is a tactical mistake to restrict commenting to paid up Sustainers, tehreby creating this horrific zero-comments spectacle on Z blogs (compare with the massive flood of comments at liberal blog spaces like Daily Kos and My DD etc...). Why design things to look weaker than you are?!

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Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Shapiro, Tali at Apr 17, 2009 19:44 PM

agreed Paul. I think I'd like to see Zmanagement address this. It deters people and doesn't make any sense to charge people who otherwise have no hosting needs. I'm having to convince my friends they should pay in order to join. it doesn't work and its too bad.

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Re: Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Small, Brian at Apr 17, 2009 20:35 PM

It would be nice if bloggers could toggle the setting, which post is open for comments. Even end commenting at a certain point when following the conversations you might have instigated gets overwhelming. I haven't figured out if there's an RSS feed option that will notify you if any of your material has been commented on. Would be nice to have a page that tracks all that for you.

  THE SNS sites(Well, MIxi in my experience)  have privacy options - you decide if you post is fit for public consumption, for everyone in the circle out to friends of your friends, or just friends. The Japanes SNS Mixi site even has a private option for those times when you just can't finish and polish a post enough but don't want to risk losing track of the thoughts and info..

For people just getting started attracting a lot of nasty comments might be off-putting. Anonymous people can get personal and making you want to go find them physically and that just gives you stress. Would sustainers have the abliity to delete comments?

It would be nice to see more comments, if Z could come to rival 'liberal sites' Can you see how many people viewed your entries? Mixi has a footprints function where you can see a list of people that visited your space. I think Facebook users were circulating a petition for similar functionality..

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Re: Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Street, Paul at Apr 17, 2009 21:51 PM

ZNet started having a blog system sometime in 2004. It had open commenting.  If I did an especially poignant or juicy or (whatever) post, comments would sometimes go over 100.  Same with David Peterson and others. Now some of this was driven by outrageous trollls and some of it was quite nasty but much was better than that and you had the power to delete inappropriate comments.  My sense is restricted commenting was percevied as a revenue aid and God knows I want ZNet to have adequate revenue but the current system seems to make a blogger look more irrelevant than is appropriate.  I mean... to do a blog breaking out that remarkable Rasmussen Reports poll (the one showing that 20 percent of the U.S. population chooses socialism over capitalism and that just 53 percent are now sure that "capitlaism is better than socialism") and see zero comments....is ...not good at this point in time. I get email comments on blog posts from people who say almost apologetically, "I'd like to comment on the blog but I can barely sustain myself right now and so cannoty become a Sustainer." Granted this is an old dilemma and its not simple....

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Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Garcia, Joshua at Apr 18, 2009 00:46 AM

This series of Z Blog comments is the first time I've been compelled to reply to a comment.  I would agree that people should be able to join and comment without having to pay.  I feel the same way about the Z forums. 

It doesn't look like there's much connection between wanting to be Z sustainer and posting comments.  If that was the case, I think Z sustainers would be commenting a lot more than they do. 

I don't know why, but a large number of Z sustainers don't seem very interested in communicating with each other.  A lot of discussion on the Z website seems to be about what's wrong with the world today, but very little about what to do about it in our every day lives.  I don't think the website encourages  discussion about tactics and strategy or, maybe, I'm not looking at the right parts of it.  Whatever the case, I think there are a good amount of posts where Z sustainers are asking about tactics and strategy in their every day lives, but for some reason no one is replying.

Maybe, if more parts of Z were open to the public, there would be more discussion about movement building or just more discussion period.  I think this might even bring in more Z sustainers.  Either way, the lack of engagement Z sustainers have is discouraging.  I know I've been contributing to the problem, but maybe this is my first step in trying to do something more about it.

Anyways, I think this lack of commenting is just a small part of a bigger problem among the general Z population.  It's like we enjoy being atomized from each other.  Maybe, I'm being unfair...

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Street, Paul at Apr 18, 2009 10:33 AM

Joshua - my experience with the Z School is consistent with your observation on the lack of a strong correlation between paying some $ to support Z and wanting to participate in Z.  For two quarters now, I've done a course called "Critical Perspectives on Corporate Media" and I have to report that eliciting "participant" engagement is often like pulling teeth and this is with smart left folks who have paid $50 and sign up for the course. One could write a long essay about the different factors involved and the factors would certainly include the responsibility of the instructor along with how much the instructor is really going to do for very low compensation and the problem of time and priorties and so on.   Anyway, ...my more immediate point is that it looks bad, politically speaking, to have zero response to these often excellent blog posts.  Look at the inferior posts on boring left-center Democratic places like Daily Kos and MyDD ( a nice young lady blogger with the former one tried to recruit me to DK once and I said, "no, I'm too left for that...when I put on the 'blogger' hat I want it to be at Z") and of course they have gazillions of responses...which helps them seem and feel relevant for better or worse. Now I think folks have to be signed up there but they don't have to pay to comment, do they?  The fact that few Sustainers comment certainly suggests that the right to comment on Z is not a very big inducement to paying and that maybe not much would be lost by having open comments again. 

If you go with open comments, you do get headaches  from ttrolls and inappropriate comments and of course that becomes a site maintenance burden. Dangerous for the blogger's time  if he or she is too neurotically prone to respond to everything...reponding to 50 comments is too much. So its not simple and there's opportunity costs either way.

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685347

Re: Restricted commenting doesn't work

By Petersen, Leif at Apr 18, 2009 13:22 PM

Paul, like you I don't like seeing all the posts with zero comments.

So many people put great thought and energy in their work.

Since I know that unsubstantial comments like "Fantastic work" are disencouraged, I sometimes send people a private message instead to cheer them.

Of course I know very well that the (0) really doesn't tell the story. The quality is very high here, and I'm sure that each blog post is being read by many with great interest.

What I read on Z is my ammunition in discussions elsewhere. This is where the gold lies, and your posts are always a gold mine.

 

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