The Hypothetical Citizen

I was not astonished when I saw that the remnants of the progressive left were planning demonstrations at the Bush Inaugural. That was too easy to call. It was cold and bitter that Saturday. For 30 years the sounding notes of the left have fallen into a deep, hollow boredom where the heart of things sleeps, interrupted by a splattering egg or wild shout or a decent papier-mâché mask. Young people are filled with good conscience and more power to them. But, their elders made some mistakes.

Here is some advice to the progressive left thrown out there in the spirit of play:

  1. Get rid of all European graybeard thought that belongs in the 19th C. and assigns the nature of conflict to immutable classes. This thought introduces the political sin of generalization and a loss of loyalty from anyone who really thinks and is not, necessarily, greedy for power.
  2. Destroy all assumptions about yourselves as progressives. Challenge every orthodoxy that has come down the past 30 years. And remember that these orthodoxy's are embedded in many institutions and will be very difficult to dislodge.
  3. Learn about the society you wish to change.

They should gear themselves because the next four years are going to be a rocky ride. I'm still not sure whether President Bush will be the next James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover. Each of those men ascended to the presidency as great shifts were occurring. For Buchanan it was the question of slavery and secession. He palmed it all off as a "state rights" issue and the Civil War was on. For Hoover it was the economic collapse after the happy party of the "Roaring 20's". I'm sure a citizen in 1927 would have been absolutely shocked to see what happened a few short years ahead, in the 30's. Change is a swift wind and takes no prisoners. Neither president responded to these shifting grounds and the ground opened up and swallowed the people and their times.

Democracy is about establishing an infrastructure for an enriched, liberal, democratic culture. When it breaks down into the theocrats and ideologists it loses that foundation and becomes a useless war that consumes a generation or two. Every citizen needs to reflect in themselves the nature of their own intellectual development, imagination, spirit, and soul. How are these qualities maintained? How are they enlarged? What do they need to be surrounded by? What threatens them? A culture in its useless wars between the theocrats and the ideologists would destroy the necessity to do so rather than encourage it.

A political culture is determined by the individual person and the qualities he or she is able to build into his or her life. By extension, each will want those qualities for all but doesn't force the issue.

I sympathize with those who oppose Bush's appointees. But, one terrible fact seems uppermost on the federal level. The conservative, Christian coalition Baptist's of the South and Midwest, even West dominate the voting rolls. They constitute a huge block of voters that the reform-minded left will never equal. That they slumbered during the 60's and 70's gave the reform left the illusion that they had won the political war but as a professor told me years ago, looking over the political landscape and self-congratulating activists, "wait until they experience the backlash....." The backlash defined the 80's and 90's and is a fait accompli beginning with the Bush Administration. I'm afraid it will be that way for decades until, again, the conditions arise for another reform period. The only strategy available to the remnants of the progressive left is to reach into the heart of the middle-class and make peace.

People will have to stick to their principles, esp. environmental values because there is political clout in those principles. But the activists need to regroup, get rid of ideology, get pragmatism, gather evidence, take a stock of things. The activists have to assess how much of their cause is really significant any more and what is either impossible dream or persistent, personal frustration disguised as political thought.

The federal system, for the normal citizen, is implicated primarily in the region we live in. Therefore, as the new President gets sworn in, I think of some of these issues and ideas that are a part of my region.

  • Encourage growth in the entrepreneur area
  • Keep the federal hands off the Internet
  • Encourage the development of solar and other alternative sources of energy
  • Husband the environment and keep wilds, wild
  • Put a premium on knowledge
  • Let kinship flourish between peoples, regardless of their backgrounds

Whenever I hear a graybeard wax poetic about the "60's" I yawn. They leave out the two most extraordinary facts of that time: 1) the adventure into space and 2) the threat of nuclear annihilation. These were the facts that have shaped the last 40 years. The transitory facts that caught all the passion 30 years ago ebb and flow in a fracture of space and time. Sometimes, as in the 60's, good values emerge such as civil rights and environmental husbandry. Everything else, all the passion and shouting, all of the bs, goes by the wayside.

The key to a liberal, democratic culture like the US and those who have modeled themselves in like fashion is "negotiation." Political ideas have to negotiate across several pluralities. For instance, the left wants more money shifted into programs for the poor. For that to happen they have to negotiate with the middle and upper middle- class tax payers. And they never do so because they politicized everything years ago and they view the middle, upper middle class with contempt and without legitimate power since all power is at the peak of the pyramid in the eyes of the left. As a result, the middle-class has marginalized the left, made the left a laughing stock, and is decidedly Clinton centrist.

Negotiation respects the "other." Negotiation recognizes balance and due process. The politics of confrontation, of street theatre, of "in your facism" negates these things and people, quite rightly, de-legitimize the message when those tactics are used.



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David Eide
January 24, 2014