[Dialogue] Civil Society Slow Motion Train Wreck like Wisconsin

Wed Jun 6 06:37:16 PDT 2012

Thank you, Steve, for this earnest admonishment to us all. We've got a
counter-revolution on our hands, and they are winning.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of steve har
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 9:13 AM
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Dialogue] Civil Society Slow Motion Train Wreck like Wisconsin

To Sunny Walker and others who kvetch about whether the President should
wear "white gloves" in policy and politics. Really curious about your view
point, where you stand that makes this an interesting question.

Today's  Wisconsin election results make it clear -one more time- who has
set the table of policy and politics in this country and who is causing a
slow motion train wreck in civil society. What I say is there is an Ayn Rand
conservative counter-revolution going on and it leaves critiques of Obama
pretty irrelevant.

Obama kvetching actually mises the entire point, something like the fans
watching a  baseball game at Wrigley field on Fox News mis the point. They
don't notice  #10 million dollars that the Wrigley Field owners choose put
into socially conservative political campaigns and support political
functionaries like Scott Walker. The TV game watchers love watching the game
real or political baseball, but her opinions actually make no difference
whatsoever.

In Costa Rica, where I often gather with the Democrats Abroad and try to get
US Citizens to register and vote from abroad, many people -Costa Ricans and
Americans alike- see the stakes in the game quite differently because there
is a little longer view to things, a little further away from things.

Since the Reagan era there is a systematic counter revolution underway to
take apart FDR style social democracy which created a large middle class by
bootstrapping people into the middle class with universal education, bank
loans available to ordinary people, social security and medicare.

It is the model that Costa Rica followed after 1948 after the revolution
against United Fruit and others. FDR style social democracy helped Costa
Rica to become a stable peaceful country with a large middle class. It is
one of the reasons Costa Ricans so admire the United States and are so
concerned for the future direction of the country and its well-being.

The shape of FDR style social democracy is like the shape of a diamond, like
a wide baseball diamond,  with a really wide middle class, a relatively
small wealthy class and a relatively small poor class.

The shape of the conservative model- underway since the 1980s - is Ayn
Rand's  model of Libertarian oligarchy where the social philosophy is
something like "I got mine, why don't you get busy and find some work".

The oligarchy is a pyramid. There s a group very wealthy people
libertarian-conservative people on top - people like the Koch bothers
- who organize and fund people like Scott Walker to look after their
personal and financial interests with tax breaks and tax loopholes and
attacks on pensions, teachers, public employees, and the rest of it.

There is a whole class of fanboys like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh
getting wealthy by hooting and hollering and shilling.   Everyone else
isn't really a matter of concern unless they by the soap suds.  The trendy
name for this oligarchy is th 1%. Everyone else is the 99%

So Sunny I'm thinking your views attention & diserve respect and and good
humor too. But I differ re your Obama criticism because it misses the point;
I think your views are the views of a detached spectator watching the game
from the peanut stand and the peanut stand  doesn't notice the train wreck
happening in civil society.

There is a story developing now to tell about an entire group of middle
class managers, teachers, firefighters, ordinary people outsourced from
their jobs - even highly skilled facilitators - watching this  game playout
- this slow motion train wreck taking place -some are wide awake, some are
putting on and taking off their white-gloves.

I'm interested in finding out where you stand in the revolution-counter
revolution of our time.

JP Sartre CS1 paper on Social Revolutionaries is a more interesting topic to
me than the topic you raise.

Consider this poem that I can still hear in Charles Lingo's booming voice
http://www.kalliope.org/da/digt.pl?longdid=lawrence2001061107

If you like I'll get you some digital photos of Kaye Hayes teaching notes on
Sartre's paper to help you figuring out where you stand in the
counter-revolution at hand. You don't get to be a spectator with
"interesting opinions".

I think "professional facilitators" can and may loose their gigs too, just
like the teachers and firefighters and police that are going to loose their
jobs in Wisconsin thanks to The Kochs and right wing money funding Scott
Walker's 31 million dollar campaign.

Wondering why you're kvetching about Obama?
Wondering if you have anything to say about the editorial in the Nation this
morning?

Steve Harrington
---
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168242/recall-campaign-against-scott-walker-fa
ils

Robert M. La Follette, the architect of the progressive movement that a
century ago made Wisconsin the nation's "laboratory of democracy,"
recognized that the experiments would at times go awry. "We have long rested
comfortably in this country upon the assumption that because our form of
government was democratic, it was therefore automatically producing
democratic results. Now, there is nothing mysteriously potent about the
forms and names of democratic institutions that should make them
self-operative," he observed after suffering more than his share of defeats.
"Tyranny and oppression are just as possible under democratic forms as under
any other."

Those words echoed across the decades on the night of June 5, as the most
powerful of the accountability tools developed in La Follette's laboratory
-- the right to recall errant officials -- proved insufficient for the
removal of Governor Scott Walker.

The failure of the campaign against Walker, while heartbreaking for
Wisconsin union families and the great activist movement that developed to
counter the governor and his policies, offers profound lessons not just for
Wisconsin but for a nation that is wrestling with fundamental questions of
how to counter corporate and conservative power in a Citizens United moment.
Those lessons are daunting, as they suggest the "money power" populists and
progressives of another era identified as the greatest threat to democracy
has now organized itself as a force that cannot be easily thwarted even by
determined "people power."

--
Steve Harrington
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