Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Here's a bit of burble from a fresh-faced young Obamaphile, Sara Haile-Miriam, in the do-it-yourself section of the Huffington Post:

I don't agree with Senator Obama's vote on the FISA Bill, and yet, I'm thankful. A year ago I wouldn't have understood the ramifications and so his ability to draw me into the process, empowering me to have an opinion, is something to be celebrated. I think it's extraordinary that thousands of others felt empowered enough to confront him on it, on his website no less.

Americans are starting to see the power of organizing on behalf of causes that we believe in. We've been empowered by his words, and that power has enabled us to insist on better.

Still, the debacle over the Fisa controversy frustrated me.... [But] before we stalk off yard signs in hand and insist upon keeping our donations and our time hostage, remember that.... [h]e will be a President who will enlist the American people into a mission to change our country for the better. He will be a President who compels us to ask more of our leadership....

Refining a policy is now seen as blasphemy, even if the intention of the original policy was to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Evidently, consulting the Generals on the ground isn't seen as careful, it's seen as backtracking.

She had to be "empowered" to have an opinion? And this divine afflatus was bestowed, somehow, by a senator from Illinois? Others have been "empowered" to post squeaks of protest on the Great Man's web site. Oh man, the Tennis Court Oath was nothing to this mighty popular upsurge. We now have the "power" to "insist on better" -- though where the power will come from to enforce our insistence does not clearly appear.

Obama appears to have fulfilled Isaiah's messianic promise:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

Actually, she's right about this "process" thing. This is the reason why I loathe the Democratic Party. I'm sure Sara is a fine, good-hearted, well-meaning person. But Obama, like some sort of moral ju-jitsu master, has used her own strengths of character to lever her into the "process" -- where she rapidly descends to arguing for a "careful" withdrawal from Iraq. What does Sara think will be happening during this extended period of "carefulness"? We will be very carefully and judiciously killing more people, that's what. Don't kill hard -- kill smart.

He will be a President who compels us to ask more of our leadership....

And the only thing we'll be able to do about it is "ask". Please, Sir, may I have some more?

-----------

(*) Sara means our rulers, of course, when she says "leaders". But this euphemism per contrariam is universal.

Small-boat sailors know that they should always stay well clear of large vessels. There's a very dangerous suction that a container ship, or a tanker, creates, as its enormous hull shoves through the water -- a suction that can draw a small craft right up against the behemoth's hull, with predictably unpleasant consequences.

There is a similar phenomenon in politics. It's one of the reasons I disapprove of voting -- much less working -- for Democrats. The well-meaning pwog, in his or her little coracle or catboat, ventures out into the harbor. He falls into the suction of a mighty steel-hulled commercial ship, like the SS Obama. He is drawn closer, and closer. He collides with its cold, unyielding adamantine sides. His fragile craft is smashed, and he is pulled under, and drowned -- drowned intellectually, and politically. Things that would have had him baying at the moon, if Bush had done them, he now finds excuses for -- when a Democrat does them.

I call it Fanship Undertow.

I've seen it time and time again. There's a lot of it going around just now. An occasional correspondent of mine -- let's call her Sadie -- recently wrote:

Rahm's an interesting choice- I know that there's some concern about him being a partisan figure but he's (in my view) not facilitating a partisan role. His main objective is to keep the ship in order and his experience in the Clinton administration would indicate that he knows how to navigate the waters (so to speak). Even more importantly he's ultimately pushing Obama's agenda....

But she has given her heart to Obama. And a heart once given is not easily taken back. So the Fanship Undertow has gripped her. Her good, well-meaning heart has been drawn under. Will she survive? I hope so. How long can she hold her breath?

Two things strike me about her ingenious, hopeful email:

1) She has become a Crackpot Realist. All of a sudden this youthful insurgent has come to value order -- experience -- knowing how to "navigate the waters."

2) She is still delirious with giddy, utterly unfounded hope. Rahm will "push Obama's agenda." From what we know about Rahm -- and we know a lot -- does he seem like the sort of guy who would push anybody's agenda but his own?

"Hey Annie. Looks like what's old is new again. Clinton's third term!"

She looked at me sourly. But she's game. "After eight years of Bush," she observed, "Clinton doesn't seem so bad."

Now there, if you like, is as beautiful an illustration of the ratchet effect as you could hope to find. The two parties' well-practiced collusive pas de deux has got her giving thanks now for things she despised eight years ago -- things that she correctly saw as deeply reactionary and detestable.

So it goes. By conceding the legitimacy of Reagan and Bush I's revanche, Clinton prepared the ground for a further revanche under Bush II, who took the ball and ran with it it so far that he makes Clintonism in retrospect -- well, in blurry, amnesiac retrospect, anyway -- look comparatively benign.

This phenomenon is at the heart of the American two-party system. The only thing that ever interrupts or arrests it -- much less reverses it -- is those blessed outbreaks of near-insurrection: the Populist upsurge, the Thirties, the Sixties.

Man, are we ever overdue for another one.

Photo credit to Agitprop

When I was a pre-pubescent schoolboy, I thought it would be so cool to be Mr. Spock. He stalked gracefully through the neurotic meltdowns of life on the Enterprise and gave people crippling nerve spasms in their necks. This was important to me. I attended a school where the headmaster wore a codpiece, a strap-on on his forehead and nothing else. The faculty encouraged studious behavior through forced cannibalism. Every semester around midterms, the headmaster would scream "cull the herd, cull the herd!" over the PA system. Then he'd run through the halls, whinnying, goosing people with the strap-on, as we students cast nervous glances at the caldrons tended by our home room teachers and lined up to sharpen our #2 pencils. It would have been nice to get through this with Spock's splendid indifference. It would have been even better to give the headmaster a crippling nerve spasm. This might have spared my earliest friends the ghastly fate that attends poor test performance and spared the contingently meritorious the sad task of eating them. I had to settle for disgrace and expulsion.

When time permits, I worry about the people who did make it through, I really do. As far as I know, the majority of them became "cultural creatives". That is, they became marketers, marketing consultants, people who sell patented marketing techniques to consultants and people who leverage marketing into consultancies. The trauma of their schooling has scarred them so badly that they force themselves to forget it. Regrettably, they also recreate the same dynamic in their workplaces. For comfort, they seek refuge in a dream, as I did, of salvation through Spockhood. Hence their enthusiasm for Obama.

Can they be helped? In a word, no. Corporate infantilization has destroyed all hope for change. Owen has argued in favor of rustication as a means of unlearning the corporate "virtues", but there are no salubrious rural areas left. They've been flooded by yuppie NeoAgrarians in search of public servant farmers. The landscapes are dotted with their fair trade yurts and enormous banks of recycling porta-potties block the few remaining migratory paths of the dwindling wildlife. It's time for them to stop sharpening their #2 pencils and come to terms with their fate. The caldrons are ready and their wingnut classmates are hungry.