...And?
Trying to think through the current political situation in America is a bit like trying to swim through a flood of molasses: you'll probably be sucked under and drowned before you make any headway. Something terrible has happened, and you can't even run with it, much less try to change it or hold it back; best to wait for it to pass, and take steps to ensure no catastrophe like it happens again. Any and all sane policies and projects are excluded from the realm of possibility before the discussion gets underway-universal health coverage, withdrawl from Iraq, re-examination of the US/Israel relationship, progressive taxation . . . shall I go on? For any given problem we face, if you want to know ahead of time what won't happen, just try to think of whatever might be just and reasonable, and you're done. Trust me on this.
I realize there's a difference of opinion on what constitutes what's just and what isn't: for example, there are people who think that denying health care to the sick on the basis of their ability to pay or conform to certain corporate cultures is a just way to allocate health care. There are also people who persist in beliving the earth is flat, but their rantings don't get much credence from sensible people, much less published in reputable scientific journals. Flat-earth and geocentric theories are simply shunned because even to entertain their possibility is destructive to a scientific mindset. And so it should be with all the toxic bits of moral idiocy that, ours being a nation in decline, are taken seriously: market-based solutions for social problems, the sine qua non of freedom being the right of its enemies to speak against it, war as a perogative of power, etc. At this point in my life, I have no interest more interest in trying to convince such people as these that their positions are vile than I would in trying to convince a serial rapist of the error of his ways-and I have every confidence that in time Social Darwinism and laissez-faire approaches to the general welfare will be properly regarded as the equivalent of mass rape and worse. No dialogue with moral degenerates.
As Turbulent Velvet said some time ago, there are layers to giving up hope. I've found that past a certain point, I've actually become more sanguine. Partly it's from being less emotionally involved in the current political process, but it's also from feeling freer to imagine what a humane, decent society would be like-not ‘the world we want,’ of those helplessly bound to structures and institutions that are part of the infrastructure of immorality, but the products of reflection undisturbed by hostile assholes with an insider mentality. Thus, the question: what precepts will we have to build on once the cretins choke on their own bile? Not even a list but a few random thoughts towards such a list:
- The welfare of society is not opposed to the welfare of the individual, and vice versa. The Rawlsian original position/veil of ignorance thought experiment shows pretty dramatically how this is so. The opposition of liberties (negative freedoms) and entitlements (positive freedoms) is a doctrine that has no basis in fact or reason and belongs in the trashcan of history right above the divine right of Kings.
- Capital is a social good and should be treated as such. Although I don't talk to moral degenerates, there are plenty of people with sound morals who are victims of propaganda (and 70+ years of insanity in the Eastern bloc) and who therefore think this means their meagre personal property will be at risk. Let me reassure these people: your house and personal property are not means of production. Large shareholders in utilities, manufacturing concerns, etc., and the overpaid upper management of such firms had better be prepared to justify their stewardship, however.
- Yes, I am talking about expropriation and redistribution, but I'm not an absolute egalitarian. In Theory of Justice, Rawls proposes what I think is an excellent “smell test” for material inequality (or personal accumulation over and above the norm): does a person's production benefit all society, especially those most disadvantaged? I don't know if this made it into Justice as Fairness unscathed, but I have to confess I don't lose sleep over it.
- Our political leaders would be subject to the rule of law. Clinton or Bush the lesser in the dock for capital crimes would be sufficient to encourage the others.
- A subject for a later post: brain-toxic behaviors would be felonies and no different from physical assault.
I don't expect to see any of these in place in my lifetime, but that doesn't matter. I hope to see myself and others who share these modern mores to associate, expand on them, try to create real cultural/institutional support to transmit them. Turbulent Velvet again:
What's at stake is liberal complicity in the destruction of a lifeworld that would produce qualities of character that would make sustenance and resistance possible, not just for the next electoral brouhaha but for generations to come, and not just in news-junkie blog discussions but in all the rockbottom ethical domains in which we get by from day to day...I'm not arguing "strategy." I'm arguing "how must we then live," for the long duration, down here in the nonwonk nonacademic lifeworld--maybe with a bit of traison des clercs thrown in, a finger given to those I think got us here now that there's nothing we can do about it. We're going to need a lot of courage and a lot of ground-level integrity for what's coming precisely because it now can't be stopped and because there will be no reward for doing the right thing.
“Response to Scruggs,” 19 Feb 2006
For the time being-and this time will be measured in decades and generations-we must accept that we are off the reservation, and the most and most important things we can do are provide material and institutional support for these ideas. Right now, nothing is more important that speaking openly and with an eye to action among ourselves. Towns and locales where in some modest way these notions have taken hold-become part of the “lifeworld”-will be very important, as will be practices to defend them.
And as for the fall elections? I'm not going to insist that people vote Green or 3rd party; in fact, for those who share these ideals but for whom not voting Democrat induces deep cognitive dissonance, I'd say vote the way you always have, and then keep an eye on the successful candidates you've supported. Are they doing anything to assist / maintain / sustain the way of life you want? Meanwhile, there are other things to be done.