One of the purposes of this blog is
to share with each other what actions we are taking as individuals to change
politics this year (before it gets even worse). And by sharing our involvement,
magnifying our efforts and sharing part of our lives with each other. Whatever
we may think about the Democratic Party (we volunteered for Bernie), the
Democrats are all we have at this moment to affect change in 2018.
To this end let us start by pointing to one simple, obvious and necessary model for action; namely choose one candidate that stands a chance to win a House or Senate seat and walk into the campaign office to volunteer or volunteer online. Some of us have done this in the past and some have not; voting this year will not be enough to affect change. Some may be working on state seats, and this is great but more for long term effect, 2020.
Once in a campaign, as we all know, there is the straightforward and necessary work of telephoning, knocking on doors, getting people registered, talking with candidates, contacting media, writing papers, helping to organize events, strategizing, etc. And this by no means exhausts the possibilities, there are all kinds of actions that people with our backgrounds and experience can and will contribute. Civic engagement as opposed to watching others carry our water on TV.
For those who have never done this before it is not always glamorous but can be mind-enlarging, working with other campaigners, talking with all kinds of people and points of view, dealing with all kinds of issues that inevitably come up.
Some are already contributing analyses in the blog as part of their actions and this is completely necessary if we are to understand what we are doing. Let us make good use these analyses as we make our contributions in accordance with one or another model of action.
The following address is one listing of possible candidates. We are not completely happy with the list and are trying to find better ones: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/everything-you-need-know-about-2018-midterm-elections-n832226
Ellen and
John Brightly
I'm happy to add my ruminations to the cud. The Brightlys' proposal and Peter Benfield's both may need the same motor to power them and, without it, do little to alter the profound dysfunction that has infected us. I'd agree with the impulse to set up a special mechanism, a forum clearly separate from the Chorus that would serve as an infrastructure for affecting the 2018 election. We may be able to support a blue wave. But to my mind, the whole mechanism of political action is bankrupt, corroded by the failure of sustained face-to-face encounter between persons -- Buber's idea of Meeting. So proposing campaign machinery -- door hangers, TV spots, etc. -- will only exacerbate the problem. And we'll have the satisfaction of having participated in the rescue, but the cause of the emergency we responded to will remain unaddressed. As my middle name is Quixote, I am pursuing a more radical surgery.
ReplyDeleteIn Charlottesville, when the controversy over the confederate statues erupted, I tried to get Opposites -- the "Virginia Flaggers" (a Confederate Heritage group) and the local left -- into a room to "meet together as Americans." No dice. As long as "some quirk in the American psyche made up of nostalgia, resentment, anti-intellectualism, and fear makes backlash populism an abiding presence on the national political scene," there has to be some more potent mechanism than politics to impel us into the kind of colloquy we all wish for.
Maybe at any point in history but particularly at this one, I think the project of restoration–oriented toward the past and a culture already always thrown out behind us, like the shining city on a hill–is bound to fail. It looks like an ideal out ahead of us, like The American Dream, but it's too easily a self-serving mechanism of staying where we are, or were. We need to reinvent the wheel, not to rehash its glories. Otherwise we are left in a grid of ideation with categories already inter-related, a system of labels already established -- Racist, Political Action, Deep State, the Individual, Common Values, Shakespeare and Chaucer.... All these are the already-invented wheel.
What I'm calling common ground is a fundamentally different phenomenon, and creating it a different project. It comes into being with an ontologically distinct motion. The movement which takes us into the future is the turning of one person to another, in the usual concourse of a day or in extraordinary circumstances like those Outward Bound generates, with the invitation to a living mutual relationship. That's the animal we need to feed, the propulsion we crave. (Maybe, Nate, that's what happened with the story circle, the wampum belt.) Democracy, an algorithm with its own inputs and outputs and rote functions and malfunctions, works well only when pulled by this musculature of personal encounter. The energy of common ground is the ATP of relationship, not an outcome of study or reflection or understanding. (Forgive my mixed metaphors.) The present Republican party may be seen as a danger to the Constitution, but the danger to the Republic is the absence of the mutual pledge: our lives, our fortunes.
Can we think of concert venues and formats in this country which would have the same effect as the ones the original Chorus created in the early tours of the Soviet Union? I wasn't there, but I bet the difference we made then was not because we espoused or defended a position, still less a political party, but because we engaged in Meeting them.