Thu, 10/01/2009 - 7:09am — vastleft
My response to Natasha on why she's quite right to worry about "Conscience Clause" expansion and other slip-sliding further into a rightwing agenda:
Sadly, progressives have done the opposite of giving themselves leverage on issues like this.
Most are reticent to criticize Obama or "make him do it," and most are content amusing themselves with the foibles of the rump Republican Party (Look, over there -- Sarah Palin! How about that Joe Wilson!)
I'm impressed with the organizing acumen of the "public option" gang, but its choice of agenda and its position toward more-progressive advocates are, IMHO, extremely problematical. It is advocacy for a compromised and intrinsically compromisable position -- and there seems no way to question or fine-tune such an agenda, except by fiat of high-status bloggers and activists.
So, we have a progressive community that operates primarily on two speeds:
* Blindly love Obama and rationalize everything he does as 11-dimensional chess
* Uncritically take marching orders from a consensus of A-list blogs, MoveOn, etc. (I say uncritically, because there seems to be no vehicle or appetite in those circles for open debate on agendas and course-corrections)
Given Obama's flagrant disregard for liberals and their concerns, it's fairly shocking how quiet a drumbeat exists of dissatisfaction and pressure from the left (a handful of persona non grata C-list blogs, and the occasional sigh from more-respectable types).
In such a climate, those who need and seek progressive policy -- anyone who hungers for reproductive rights, separation of church and state, economic justice and so forth -- better hope for change, because hope looks like all we've got.
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Well, with NAIRU at 7%...
... I suspect a lot of the rest of us are going to have the free time to build the parallel institutions that might help save us. Eh?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
In sports terms...
The major league plays in Health-reformville and other select cities -- attendance is great, but the quality of play is disappointing to "purists" who don't like that the home team always bunts, even with two strikes, and that the sausages they sell have an unsavory smell.
The league doesn't have a team anymore in Stopwars City, Financial-Reformville, Jeffersonswall, and other such locales, though it still plays the very occasional exhibition game there.
Attendance at the minor-league parks -- which dot those neglected burghs and others -- is substantially lower, and sales of banners and jerseys is lower still. Some secretly peek at the minor-league standings but are loath to admit such guilty pleasures, as it's commonplace to decry the uncivilized game played in the minors, if the topic comes up at all.
The minor-league franchises struggle along, swinging for the fences in front of small crowds, and selling sausage that won't make you sick, but at unprofitable margins.
What, as a minor-league franchise proprietor, would you do to improve your attendance and finances?
This brilliant metaphor...
... needs to be thought through and expanded.
"The love of the game" isn't enough, that's for sure. I do remember that my father, in his late years, really started enjoying women's basketball. Because the game was more pure. (Which brings up the racial angle too, I suppose. Jeebus, this shit is complex.)
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Sports metaphors are intrinsically dangerous
but equally irresistible. The reference to women's basketball is apt, because fundamental skills seem to remain an important part of the game, whereas the lure of Big Bucks has corrupted the men's game, so much so that many observers believe the standard of play in the NBA has fallen (much more so college basketball) and indeed American NBA'ers no longer effortlessly dominate international competitions.
The success of Obama's candidacy was driven in no small part by the Big Bucks -- brilliantly spun as a grass-roots movement that contributed to the "aura of inevitability" for Village
Idiot consumption and neatly obscuring how much Big Money swung in his direction. Our current cast of political NBA'ers are more and more openly saying that they care more about their endorsement contracts with Nike than they care about playing the game the right way (let alone winning championships).
The fork in the road is whether you develop players with sound fundamental skills in the "minors" and boost them into the majors in the hope their skills and tenacity will overcome the money-gorged incumbent "talent" in the majors and win championships, or whether you largely turn your back on the majors (as Paul Rosenberg has been advocating over at OpenLeft). As a native Washingtonian I never thought I'd see the day that I thought the system was irredeemably broken, but watching the events of the past 18 months or so I am really wondering whether the "majors" can rejuvenate themselves, as our republic did under the leadership of Lincoln and FDR. To restore representative democracy by, in effect, building up the minors to a point where they effectively compete with the majors is an incredibly tall order -- I have to wonder whether the country will start to unravel first.