Is vs. Ought

     I've been having a lot of conversations lately with some of my fellow citizens on the farther end of the Left part of our political spectrum. Now, as a card-carrying northern Jacksonian member of the labor wing of the Democratic Party, this means I am to their right, despite, by objective measures of political preferences, being well to the left not only of the American people, but of the people even of Massachusetts, which is not Montana in terms of political coloration.
     So I think my interlocutors will agree that they do not (for the most part), and could not fairly, regard me as some manner of DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) Centrist, let alone anyone on the Right side of the aisle.
      Okay. Well then, it seems we must get to the nub of the problem: so we each give our respective answers to the questions: what is the problem? And: what is the solution?
      Now, if your answer to the first question is: what problem? Or: "government-run healthcare makes me sick!", I'm afraid there sha'nt be much of a conversation to be had. These answers indicate almost a sensory difference between us in the perception of the Times, of the Age -- die Zeit. So well you may be, on a personal level, a nice person -- you may not beat the dog (or tie him to the roof) -- but it doesn't seem to me productive to have a discussion with a person whose worldview is just thoroughly unmoored from the world of verifiable, observed facts. It could be about the carbon capacity of the planet or the math of social benefits, but a fidelity to a commonly-sensorily-perceived reality, with agreed upon (Newtonian or Einsteinian, or, you know, Arithmetical!) mechanisms, is a basic sine qua non to any kind of conversation that goes beyond the old Anglo-Saxon words. ("Tree", "Water", "Fight", etc.).
      So now: that I speak to those who agree that there is in fact a problem and that basic principles of modern empiricism ought to be cleaved to in the discussion thereof; now we go back to our two questions.
      1. What is the problem? The problem is modern capitalism and its consequences, especially its ecological consequences. The intersection of capitalism, population growth, and hydrocarbon economies is a disastrous one for the planetary future. Even the richest men must surrender to geologic time.
      I think most of my compatriots will agree with this, though not all. For political reasons, the President praises "free enterprise", and yes, it's good at 'wealth creation': but upon closer examination, irrespective of the distribution of that wealth, we can see that it was often simply stolen, as from India by England (how did the richest textile industrial region in the world go to buying cheap Manchester muslins in the space of 150 years? At the mouth of a Brown Bess musket). In other cases, it is simply borrowed from our unborn descendants, from posterity: I speak not, of course, of the strange fetishism among the Von Mieses types against government debt (or social security), which, in relying on the productive capacity of the economy in the future, has ever been a useful instrument of State in times of war or crisis -- a truth known, at least to some, since the 1690s and ratified even by Madison against Hamilton's restless shade after the War of 1812; no, I speak of our ecological borrowing, of our borrowing of the capacity of the atmosphere to sustain, not only to sustain our economic life, but to sustain our lives. At the very least, lives worth living. Lives not mired in the nightmare of +5C (or do we think, with the Cargo Cult of the libertarians, that the markets shall function, though the ports be under water?)
      2. What is to be done? Well, here we have another basic divide. The question is essentially Reform or Revolution, is it not? I am averse to the inevitable loss, shock, and sorrow of revolutions -- so let us see if reform can be our way. Is it too far gone to reform? Perhaps. But we shall only know if we try it. Why not reform first, then revolution?
             Moreover, and in a once and future republican society, the tools, the weapons at hand, in favor of reform, must inevitably be the greater. We have at hand the great institutions of State, of the Parties, of the labour unions, of the Press, of Public Opinion -- even, perhaps and if rightly tamed, of the great Industrialists (tho' never mere Speculators); ought we not use these, which are in the world-historical scale mighty swords and ploughshares alike at hand? Especially given the fact that this is exactly a global problem, the destruction of the institutions of State that would accompany any purely Revolutionary change would inevitably exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the Crisis of Climate. Or how are we to enforce our treaties if we are struggling for control of the police power? (Or what, more realistically, of the likelihood that White, with the Bigger Guns, may defeat Red -- and black and brown -- in any revolutionary war?)
         
          So that is my "for now" answer to my friends on the revolutionary Left. The dialectic of radical people's movements and popular left-center politicians has moved every reform in American history, from the Revolution through Abolition through the Establishment of the Social State by Roosevelt -- indeed, through no less a figure of left-wing opprobrium of Lyndon Johnson was the Civil Rights revolution effected.

          Come, my friends -- 'tis not too late to dream a newer Democratic Party. And if it be too late to prevent a rise of the global temperature, it is not so late that it might not be catastrophic -- but only if we act to move toward a carbon-neutral economy. And isolated screeds and contempt for public opinion -- whatever its deficiencies -- shall not get us there. The People will come to us when the facts are made fully and forcefully known.
      This is my affirmation; this is my belief.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan No. 4

Subject: Andy Pandy Have-a-fuckin-Shandy

Jesus Christ, you are an awful comrade; "I'm not sure if he has it in him [Obama]." He does. Your panic discredits you and demoralizes the troops. You ought to go do some canvassing if you're that scared.

  You move with the wind, lad; with the slightest passing airs.

  JBC

p.s. Enjoyed your poor-little-rich-girl whine about how slow the Internet is in ... MANHATTAN. Our self-parodic Pobresito....

Farms for the People

  If I were running for governor; or if I knew anyone doing so; or even anyone in the state legislature -- why, Novanglus, you sot, you ought to write this to the legislature! Or perhaps someone has already done something on it, one of those policy types....(ever have I wondered, how can Policy be a thing, reified, to study? Isn't it a form, in Platonic terms, rather than content? How can we have a school of mere forms? I don't know).

  Anyway. I would attach a community farm to every public school in the Commonwealth. Agriculture of, by, and for the People! Rooftop gardens and chicken coops would count. The Jockocracy in the suburbs would yield some of their fields for sport that the people might eat. In the country we could have cows and goats.

  Bear me out in it, O Agricolae!

Morning Thoughts (Andrew Jackson)

 I was going to entitle this one using German, because "morgen" (morning) is very pretty, but then I looked up 'thought' and it's 'denken', which isn't all that lovely. So use English, I figured, not only where you ought to, but also when it's prettier. You've got to love our totally sui generis "th-" sound, no one else in the world really has it. At least not Europe and its recreations.

 At any rate, I was just thinking, that if we in this country enfranchised people today the way they did in Jackson's America, we'd really see All the People of the country voting; that is, undocumented migrants and reformed felons, and all the other little folks that the great and comfortable consider uncouth and ignorant. And we'd be making every effort in the world to get Everybody out to vote. We'd have a national holiday (though liquor sales'd be banned until after the polls were closed) for Election Day. We'd place a damning fine on any boss who dared try make his workers labor through the very hours their quadrennial chance at the ultimate act of self-government came up. We certainly wouldn't make a bunch of overtly racist laws to combat phony abuses and keep millions of voters from the polls.

  And if we did that, a man like Andrew Jackson could get elected in today's America.

  As it is, the pundits, the Courtier Press, the so-called "Independents" among the populace (read: lace-curtain and can't make up their minds, or possibly just a f---ing fool), let alone the Money Power, would tear out their hair denouncing his partisanship, his 'radicalism', how he wasn't "centrist" or "moderate" enough. When they say these things, of course, in 1832 and 2012, what they really mean is that he dared to believe the Common person in this country had the same right to the Declaration of Independence as the wealthiest Bankers and 'best' people (at what we dare not ask) of the Yacht Clubs and Prep Schools. And he dared defeat them as the Champion of the many millions.

  Which is why, of course, they hate him.

Letter to Andrew Sullivan #3

Subject line: "He may even have lost the Election tonight"

Excitable Andrew, as per usual. Wouldn't want to have you reporting on the
Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. "I think we may have lost the war today;
Nazi invasion of England imminent!" Such conclusions might get some play
from your Boss Tina Brown and her Wreck of the Hesperus version of NEWSWEEK
as 'counter-intuitive' and 'edgy'. They'd also be wrong, just like you are
now.

 JBC


p.s. Doing any phone-banking or volunteer work for Obama? If not, why not?
I thought you wanted him to win -- or is that work for lesser people, you
know, people who don't have the time (or the inclination) to go blog to
thousands about how much they love their own dick. Or is it that your
Obama's-a-Tory is yet another position taken to be a step-and-a-half au
courant of the Conventional Wisdom as it courses through the DC-NY media
bubble? Forgive us, but Democrats in this country really ought to take the
words and prognostications of such a stalwart as yourself -- who supported
Clinton in '92, Dole in '96, Bush in '00, and Kerry and Obama in '04 and
'08 -- with a metric ton of salt. Old Tom Paine had a phrase that comes to mind when we contemplate your record: "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot."

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

Or, a Program of Government for Southeastern Massachusetts, Should Revolutionary Conditions Ever Return Here Once More

by An Old Republican

 

1. Immediate implementation of "Smart Growth" measures; moratorium on construction of new cul-de-sacs, developments, etc. Safeguarding of aquifers, wild-lands corridors, etc.

2. Seizure by the County Governments of the thousands of McMansions lately colonizing this land, with subsequent division into multi-family units. OR, were the late Yuppified residents of said McMansions to wish to pay a fee of twice the house's appraised value, for them to be allowed to stay in said McMansions, but to have to publicly abase themselves before the People in General Crowds Assembled.

3. The use of those fees, confiscated from the McMansion Aristocracy, to revitalize the hundreds of old mills lying in disuse (or worse, being turned into Yuppie Apartments) across southeastern Mass. These then could be tasked with the production of those manufactured goods we presently import into our country from abroad. 

4. A reintroduction of the arts of agriculture into these Counties, with a special focus on its introduction into the Common Schools.

5. The proscription and outlawing of Private Schools.

6. The proscription and outlawing of private Yacht Clubs and Country Clubs -- dens of class and race privilege.

7. The division of each incorporated Town into wards of c.100 people, each ward to be governed along principles of direct democracy. Maintenance of the traditional Town Meetings alongside this Ward Democracy (Jefferson's phrase). County legislatures to be elected by the Town Meetings.

8. The granting of some measure of justice to the Indians, with preferential choices on housing, milling rights, and agricultural locales. Public acknowledgment of the realities of Conquest in the 17th century. 

9. A tax on SUVs of 100% of their assessed value per annum.

10. An immediate movement towards renewable energy; investigation of possibilities of tidal power in our estuaries, of hydro-electric power on a micro scale on our many streams and rivers, wind power both on and off shore; solar power where appropriate. The closing and mothballing of that Atomic Bomb down the Coast , aka the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant.

11. Suggestions welcome!