Rant E. McRanterson

Pyramid Schemes

2005-10-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

-- A Party Inverted by Bill Bradley

While I agree in principle, and would love to see such a magnificent infrastructure of liberal thought and implementation... who's going to build it? I mean, I've got a couple bucks they can have to start off with.

Here's what worries me about the whole proposal, and with how the Right did it: such a move is about power, it is only about power, and it is always about power. The organizers of the Right Pyramid must have sat down, looked at eachother over their brandies and cigars, and said to eachother, "So we need to take over America." They could not have said, "So we all agree on fundamental points of view, so let's build an infrastructure with which to promulgate those views." Or to put it another way, the latter is exactly what they did, their common views being "We should have more money."

I don't see how the Left can go about building this coherent pyramid without buying in to the proposition that it's more important to have power (represented by this giant infrastructure) than it is to do, say, or believe the right thing.

The base of the Right Pyramid is money. Some people will give money to Peace, Equality, Justice, and Progress. Every day of the week, however, more people will give money to protecting the money they already have, creating more opportunities to make more money, and preventing other people from making money that they might be making. And the people and organizations with giant piles of money to be giving... well, they're the ones more likely in the second group. It's nice that we have people like Teresa Heintz Kerry who have gobs of cash and want to use at least some of it to improve the world, but there are more Rupert Murdochs in the world than there are good-hearted ketchup manufacturers.

The Left can't be the Right, and we can't use all of the tricks that the Right has used. I think there is tremendous opportunity in creating networks instead of pyramids, with an eye towards generating synergy rather than piling up a big stack of power. Perhaps it is not as lasting, but on the other hand, it's more flexible, and my money is on the side that makes a dynamic system, and not a piece of architecture. I mean, really. Look at where the pyramids are now: exactly where they always were, in the middle of a desert, full of dead guys.

Right wrong, Left confused.

2005-10-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

So my brother , who still has some faith in the Christian Church (unlike my heathen self) lent me a copy of the book God's Politics by Jim Wallis. Wallis, my brother said, offers a critique of both Left and Right (the book's slogan is "Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left doesn't Get It"). He touted it as a proof -- or at least a good example -- of thinking Christians who are not slaves to the Religious Right. Now I know there are some people of faith that are not drooling minions of Dobson and Fox News -- in fact my friendslist has a good few of them -- but I'm afraid Jim Wallis isn't it. Jim, at best, offers Religious Right Lite, and while he certainly gets the Right right, he proves that he just doesn't get the Left.

The Right he accuses of being run by a rich elite that subverts and inflames religious doctrine to further its agenda of growing richer. The Religious Right he portrays as two-issue (abortion and gay marriage) simpletons drunk on power and willing to support anything that doesn't conflict with its two pet points. Wallis repeatedly excoriates the Right for ignoring economic injustices and their role as a foundation for so many social ills and for trampling on the rights of ideological minorities in order to maintain unity and consolidate its power. Yup, that's the Right.

Jim really wants to like the Left -- they get the root of evil that is poverty, they prefer peaceful means to violent ones, they recognize the lasting divisions embedded in racial inequalities. But despite all this, he is frustrated with the Left, because "a strong group of secular fundamentalists still fights to keep moral and spiritual language out of the liberal discussion." Jim's simple equation of "moral and spiritual" is at root, here: if they don't talk religion, they're not talking real morality -- despite the fact that the entire liberal discussion is a fundamentally moral one. Wallis' later blithe assumptions that all Americans are Christian (especially telling whenever he tries to use statistics) only reinforce the thoughtless dismissal of anything that derives from a different moral foundation than his. Jim repeatedly claims to "know liberals" who were just as outraged at the Superbowl wardrobe dysfunction as any conservative, or who want family values for their kids, et cetera, but it's plain that he knows these token liberals only superficially, or they are members of the Religious Left (all those cute liberation theology guys). Over and over again, he portrays the Left as "just like normal folks" as if he were trying to destigmatize us -- we're just a little confused, but we have our hearts in the right place.

Fuck you, Jim Wallis.

We are not Christians who forgot that homosexuality was wrong. Most of us were more disturbed by the reaction to a little booby than the breast itself. I mean really, you're watching an annual ritualized orgy of violence (football, for the slow readers) and you get all uppity because there was some titty involved? Please. For the record, the liberal discussion eschews framing its inherently moral discussion in religious terms because -- get this -- religious terms aren't common to all parties of the discussion. That's right, we have people that don't believe the same things you do. In fact we have people who don't believe the same things I do. That's our whole gig -- the celebration of different points of view, and the acceptance of the ambiguity of the universe. We do all that discussion that you so earnestly wish the Right did. We have it right here, Jim, the only cost is that you can only enter the debate as an equal. You have to discard your assumption of moral superiority at the door. If you base your argument off of an unverifiable authority, um, sorry, we're not interested in your argument. If you base your argument off of the faith that you hold that we don't, um, sorry, your argument holds no water with us. That rabid core of secular fundamentalists that are cockblocking your proselytization? They're quality control, making sure that everybody can participate. We have a word for it: we like to call it Democracy.

Wallis' argument is creeping absolutism of the rankest kind. He calls for political action that is "economically liberal but socially conservative on personal matters" -- it's nice that you care for the poor people, Jim, but if you support legislation that erodes civil liberties, that still makes you a fascist. He decries the materialism and rampant sexuality of mass culture and suggests that we should do something about it -- by placing tighter restrictions on what can be shown on television. Heaven forbid the children see anything related to sex! Wouldn't want them to be, you know, informed about anything before they start dating and marrying and having children of their own. Puritanical bullshit can't possibly be to blame for a generation of people realizing at 40 that they're profoundly unhappy with the marriage they jumped into blindly at 18. But that would be encouraging dialogue and experimentation, and both are direct threats to the dictates of religion. Throughout his book Wallis encourages, not the open discussion of possibilities, but the establishment of better societal controls to prevent unwanted possibilities from ever being discussed. His agenda, like that of the Religious Right he thinks he differs from, is to mold the culture into a shape that he likes better.

Both the Left and the Right are atheistic movements, perhaps agnostic. The Right subverts religion and makes it a tool of division and oppression; the Left allows for religion to color and inform individual opinions but disdains its malfunctional rhetorical use. Get it, Jim? It's not that the Left "doesn't get it", it's that the Left doesn't use it like a thing. We have too much respect for it. Unlike you have for us.

An Alternative to Road Rage

2005-09-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

This space is for me ranting.

Usually I do most of my impotent ranting in the car, translating my hostility with fellow commuters into politics. Occasionally I'm near a computer, and then watch out!