Only the exceptional states need apply

Apply for what position? As it turns out, the truly exceptional states could provide the only rightful applicants for the one position that would suit them: Sovereigns who possess prerogatives and powers which, in some cases, span the globe.

More specifically, what is the nature of this kind of state?

They are — or, better, believe themselves to be — accountable to no one. It is not simply that they have unlimited rights which other states must recognize and respect. Rather, they believe themselves to exist in a condition that is beyond justice and responsibility. Thus they see their powers as intrinsically limited only by the natural environment when it refuses to bow to their will. As unlimited in this way, their imaginations are free to concoct projects that brook no opposition worth recognizing. They are autonomous, and self-creative. They do confront humanly constructed impediments, but these are considered facts that could be otherwise. The world's resources are theirs to use when and where they please and dare. They recognize a law or the law only when they believe such legality reflects and serves their ends.

Theirs is an absolute politics.

The exceptional states are those which strongly embrace Hobbes' "state of nature." It is a condition defined by war and fear. They not only embrace the state of nature but they also willingly live within it while also believing everyone else must remain subject to a system of law if not to the law as such. Only the exceptional states enact laws to which they are not subject. Others obey these laws and lawmakers. The exceptional act. They make history. Others just provide some of the stuff from which history is made. As stuff, they lesser sort have a place in the history made by the exceptional — inconsequential fodder.

There is no irony in the belief of the exceptional that they are not hypocrites because of their conflicting assignments of legal accountability. They are, they believe, merely recognizing the true order of the world. A few states are subjects; the rest are subjected to the rule of the few. It is a matter of who has the power and will to act as they please. The hypocrites, as they might say, are those who believe in the necessity of legality but who break with this belief and the commitment which follows from it whenever doing so suits them. Legality is merely one of their tools.

There are few truly exceptional states. I can identify at least three states which approach the abstract characterization of such a state that I have drawn above. They are: The United States, Israel and North Korea.

North Korea might be the special or degenerate case among the three. It, like Pol Pots' Cambodia, appears to be a grotesque example of that tragedy which marks revolutionary socialism in the 20^th century. Its history is nearly unique and serves as a model for no one. And the country is now out of step with the times. Its predicaments make the regime untenable over the long term, for North Korea cannot credibly use the weapons it has or wants others to believe it has in order to blackmail the world indefinitely nor can it survive on its own, given the meager output of its economy. For North Korea to sustain itself, it required membership in the socialist world system, which no longer exists. In any case, North Korea's greatest threat was and remains to those over whom the North Korean state rules. Because of the limited nature of the threat posed by this state, the world now seemingly waits for the North Korean regime to collapse while hoping that it does not take anyone else with it when it does crash.

The same cannot be said for the United States — "Superpower," as Sheldon Wolin labels it — and Israel. They are not, like North Korea, a special (degenerate) case within the class of special cases. Both the United States and Israel are exemplary instances of the exceptional state category identified above. Why is this so?

Both are military and diplomatic powers, are considered legitimate by their citizens, are economically viable and are international powers. Consider the fact that neither cares a jot for its reputation, nor listens to the counsel provided by others. Nor, for that matter, can we expect either of the two to make a credible commitment to engage in civil discourse when confronting other states, to make a real effort to secure world peace, to participate in the rule of law as practiced by international institutions. They practice instead an imperial statecraft which uses as a resource without observing the spirit of an international civil society, of a project of world peace and of a practice of lawful governance. Their interests remain untempered by justice and mercy, by common sense and intellectual curiosity. They are, oddly enough, long-time allies who are perpetually at war with the world around them and at large, and who accept the reality of war as the human reality. They even seem to need and admire each other.

This, in any case, is the significance I drew from this report:

With much of the world expressing fury over the raid, the contrast with Washington's muted response could not have been more striking. 

"The situation is that they're so isolated right now that it's not only that we're the only ones who will stick up for them," said an American official. "We're the only ones who believe them — and what they're saying is true."

The official was referring to Israeli protestations — backed by Israel Defense Forces video — that their solders were attacked by passengers on a ship headed for Gaza with humanitarian aid, when they boarded the ship in what the Israelis concede were international waters.

And this pronouncement:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Shayetet 13 base in Atlit on Wednesday and praised the commandos who participated in the deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla on Monday for carrying out their mission, Army Radio reported.

"You carried out the mission and prevented the flotilla from reaching Gaza," Barak said. "We need to always remember that we aren't North America or Western Europe, we live in the Middle East, in a place where there is no mercy for the weak and there aren't second chances for those who don't defend themselves. You were fighting for your lives – I saw it, and I heard it from your commanders."

And, for that matter, this political manifesto — the National Security Strategy of 2002 — from the George W. Bush White House:

Defending our Nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government. Today, that task has changed dramatically. Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America. Now, shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technologies against us.

To defeat this threat we must make use of every tool in our arsenal — military power, better homeland defenses, law enforcement, intelligence, and vigorous efforts to cut off terrorist financing. The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration.

America will help nations that need our assistance in combating terror. And America will hold to account nations that are compromised by terror, including those who harbor terrorists — because the allies of terror are the enemies of civilization. The United States and countries cooperating with us must not allow the terrorists to develop new home bases. Together, we will seek to deny them sanctuary at every turn.

I could continue quoting such material indefinitely.

Today the world waits for the opportunity to assess Israel and America's response to the MV Rachel Corrie when it approaches Gaza. Will Israel dare to attack it? Will the United States support Israel no matter what it does? Will they collude in the commission of yet another war crime? Or, will they refuse play their parts in the confrontation that awaits them?

Whatever the path taken by the leaders of the two countries, we can be sure that they will have considered their interests in the matter.

Locked-in tight?

Writing for TalkLeft, BigTentDemocrat (hereafter BTD) claims that:

The Left Flank of American politics is always destined to "lose" in the conventional sense. The Left does not "win" elections.

Let me begin by recognizing that the statements quoted above are probably true. Surely they accurately depict the recent past in the United States. The evidence suggests as much:

• The New Deal is dead in spirit and dying in practice;
  
• the Great Society now provides "modern" America only with an exemplary case of political failure;
  
• organized labor remains ineffectual, all but dead as a movement and credible political power;
  
• the Republican Party tacked hard to the right after Gerald Ford's defeat by Jimmy Carter, thereby dragging the center of America's political culture along with it;
  
• the Democratic Leadership Council, the spiritual force in the Democratic Party today, made it a point to neutralize Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition he led, thus undermining the Party's leftwing while conforming to the hard right drift of the Republican Party;
  
• Bill Clinton, the echt New Democrat and proponent of triangulation, signed regressive legislation like: George H.W. Bush's North American Free Trade Agreement, The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and
  The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act;
  
• and, last but not least, a corporatist and imperialist operative like Barack Obama courted his Party's leftwing when campaigning for the presidency but then smoothly and remorselessly distanced himself from the Party's left political faction when it no longer served his ends, stacked his administration with Clinton-era insiders, quickly escalated the Afghanistan war, abandoned the rule of law and those who would affirm it by supporting past and future torture and illegal detentions, conducted secret negotiations with corporate health care interests, embraced a part of the Republican Party and its ideas while also threatening to put Social Security on the block (see this and this) after his pro-corporate health care initiative produced a law.
  

To my mind the record is clear enough, but it always bears repeating that the Democratic Party in no way opposes the Republican Party on key economic and security issues. At best, it provides the GOP with an electoral opponent committed to the status quo, not with an opposition party possessing a programmatic alternative to modern Republicanism. Together they form a political duopoly.

Given these facts, why would a sensible person consider BTD's belief false? Does the passage quoted above not capture the moment well? Is his belief not one of the most plausible judgments one may draw from observing the prejudices and workings, the prehistory and trajectory of the Obama administration? Are both parties not opposed to the emergence of a viable left politics? Sadly, the answers to the questions are obvious. There is, therefore, no reason to consider his claims false when every feature of the present moment affirms them while also suggesting that the future we will likely have will not differ from the past in a way that would favor the left.

The upshot: The left was and remains a marker of an alien and anti-American political culture.

Yet his belief, rooted deeply in America's political history as well as in contemporary experience, may serve, at best, as an obstruction to reform in the future. Why is this so?

A belief in an inevitable failure may become an obstruction because believing it true — which is to say, believing it to be a reflection of the world supported by evidence — provides a well-equipped platform for realizing a self-fulfilling prophecy. The circularity which marks a self-fulfilling prophecy issues from the fact that a belief is also an attitude, a biased attitude, toward the world. It is, in other words, a way of prejudging what exists and what could exist. It is, then, a constraint the imagination places on itself and thus, indirectly, on the world itself. It marks the improbable as irrelevant. Practically speaking, why should anyone seek the nearly impossible? Why suffer the mortification which irrelevance confers on those who embrace it? Why bear a stigma?

The left fails to win elections because it, along with everyone else, expects electoral losses. To expect a left victory entails appearing daft. The prejudgment becomes a fact in the world when many believe it and when the left fails to increase and mobilize its people. Leftists cannot win. They will not win because they fail to attract followers and they fail to attract followers because non-leftists believe they cannot win. Losing elections merely confirms that leftists are losers. Finally, they fail to attract followers because too few human beings would choose to be an alien and a loser.

Unfortunately, the practical failure of the left in the United States serves to undermine any threat it might pose to the party duopoly which dominates electoral politics in the country. Its electoral failure turns the duopoly into the only game worth playing for those who prefer to win.

I hope that it is obvious that I believe BTD's belief to express a constipated and crabbed sense of America's potential and thus of its possible futures. It is, to extend the point by restating it in slightly more concrete terms, an attitude which promotes empire abroad and dedemocratization and social ill-being at home.

That said, we must also remember that those conditions that would enable the left flank of American politics to modify Democratic Party political positions and actions, a goal which characterizes the hopes of the Party's left-wing, would also enable the broader left to form a third party meant to challenge the Democratic and Republican Parties at the polls. Both possibilities are important because a movement such as this would generate a credible threat with which the Democratic Party must contend. A party thus threatened would no longer have the security provided by a reliable base.

The crucial issue in this matter: Can most American citizens jettison a belief in the current iteration of the American Creed by embracing a stronger variant of Social Democracy than the kind of Social Democracy found in, say, The Great Society programs of the 1960s? This issue would affect the "inside the Democratic Party" and "outside the Democratic Party" paths to power. If this claim is true, as I believe it to be, then the left in the United States need not bloody its hands by participating in a party which affirms America's empire and the militarism which defines imperial governance.

Last modified on 4.12.2010 at 4:45 PM

Enforcing ‘civility’ in Pittsburgh

Nearly all is quiet today in Pittsburgh. Only the groaning over the most recent heartbreaking Steelers' loss breaks the silence.

The G-20 Summit concluded on Friday, so too the street clashes between the police and some of the G-20 protesters. The sirens now sound less frequently, and mirror the rhythms of violence and illness specific to the city, not the workings of the security-surveillance apparatus as it disciplines the burghers. The locals can be thankful Allegheny County's Long Range Acoustical Device can no longer be heard at all.

What remains of the G-20 for the Steel City?

For one thing, Western Pennsylvania's talk radio goons are working hard to keep the recent spectacle alive and present within the collective memory of the region. Their effort in this matter was to be expected. This is what they do, after all. They rouse the rabble by focusing on something disturbing or by creating a creating a disturbance when reality proves stingy in that regard. It is their job! They get a paycheck for it. Thus, it would be silly to expect them to say anything good about the anarchists who behaved so 'badly' last week, that is, who proved themselves willing to contend with the city's well-armed, well-fortified and militarized police forces while relying on the "weapons of the weak" available to them. In this they physically defied America's garrison state in the making. They refused to recognize the authority it claims for itself and implicitly appealed to the rights granted to them and to every American citizen by the Bill of Rights.

For another thing, the talk radio goons also want to defend the political repression that characterized the state's use of its policing powers in Pittsburgh. Why would these 'liberty loving' folk support the political use of the police? They seemingly did so because they despised the anarchists and everything for which the anarchists stand.

I believe this because the deeds, words and intentions of the anarchists made one thing clear to the goons: The anarchists belong to that social category — "the other" — which sits well beyond the fringe that separates the American from the non-American, the the friend from the enemy, the "one-of-us" from "one-of-them." The anarchists are "strangers" living among the 'real' Americans — living vicariously and illicitly among the 'producers. This, in any case, is the political space where the talk show goons and their followers want to place the anarchists and near to the place where, one suspects, the anarchists would place themselves.

While something like political peace has returned to the Steel City, looks can be deceiving.

Peacefulness does not imply civility! I say this because one crucial element of a modern civil society — the rule of law — had a bad time of it during the Summit. Events during the past week revealed once again that, in the United States today, the rule of law has given way, in part, to the rule by law. It has ceded ground to this kind of authoritarianism because the contest between the strong and the weak has become especially lopsided, to paraphrase Stephen Holmes (2003, 23). It is so lopsided that it is not even close to being a fair contest. Not everyone is subject to the law equally nor does every citizen participate equally in the creation and use of public power. This imbalance tends to make the law a technique of elite governance, not an expression of a democratically ordered, legally rational form of self-government. It transforms the law of a democracy into a repressive tool.

Thus, America's recent return to the imperial presidency, which it allegedly tamed when the Congress humiliated Richard Nixon and which surely looked dead after the Clinton impeachment. "Alas, the obituaries were premature," as Arthur Schlesinger observed in the latest edition (2004, ix) of his critical book on the problem.

How could the imperial presidency die when this is the America of, among other things, The Patriot Act, The Protect America Act, The John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, but also the America of preventative war, enhanced interrogation techniques or torture, extraordinary renditions, of an extensive prison system along with those laws that have made a prison system of this magnitude inevitable (e.g. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994). These legal mechanisms reveal that the United States has traded a generalizable concept of liberty for class-specific and therefore partial forms of security.

Barack Obama is only the latest executive charged with enforcing the prerogatives and operations of the neoliberal system. He has not often or effectively acted to reverse this trend towards governing the country through fear-mongering and its security-surveillance apparatus. Nor, most notably, has he worked to bring to justice America's torturers and those who authorized these illegal practices. The symbolic effect of Obama's act of omission is easy to discern. Despite the bombastic law and order sermons given by so many of America's political candidates since the 1960s, the Obama administration has already proved itself soft on crime when the criminals at issue sport white collars or khaki uniforms. The Obama administration thus prefers stability over rational legality. For some, crime pays.

Obama's discretion in this should surprise no one who has thought much about the matter. A law and order regime in the United States was always meant only for the "many" that lack self-discipline and the power needed to defend themselves; those few who sit atop the heap are mostly and thus effectively exempt from the limits set by the law when it is a matter of their meeting their system-consistent role obligations. Their effective restraints are few. They are deemed too big to fail and too powerful to bring to justice by those who also are too big and too powerful. Any threat to them and their power amounts to a system threat, and will thus not be tolerated by those charged with defending the system.

From the defense of the Bush administration's position on state secrets, habeas corpus, the Obama administration has already compiled a sorry record with respect to its handling of matters of right and justice. Should we be surprised, then, by the near state of siege or martial law that prevailed in Pittsburgh during the G-20 Summit? No. As a matter of fact, the situation on the ground in Pittsburgh during the Summit was not one of which Obama was at all ashamed. He seemed pleased by the fact that the G-20 protesters in Pittsburgh were not overly disruptive when compared to their predecessors. He did not comment on the police harassment of the Climate Convergence Project, the Seeds of Peace Collective and the use of the legal system to deny those who would protest the G-20 their rights to protest. He nevertheless treated Pittsburgh as though the city and its economy reflected the kind of world the G-20 wanted to promote.

Pittsburgh, in Obama's hands, was a Phoenix that rose from the post-industrial wasteland and achieved a regional renewal around the new economy. It counts as a neoliberal success story — a model city, as it were.

Ironically the Pittsburgh of the G-20 Summit was a neoliberal success story insofar as the American state could deploy its despotic powers to suppress a counter-public and its politics and this use of the state's powers is consistent with neoliberal dogma and practice.

The recent militarization of everyday life in Pittsburgh became apparent to me early on since I am a resident of the Western Pennsylvanian region and travel often enough to downtown Pittsburgh. By Wednesday (9.23), the security forces in the city had placed the David L. Lawrence Center within a 'secure' environment. They gave the Summit this kind of environment even though the protesters posed no significant physical threat to the conference participants or, for that matter, to the people of Pittsburgh. (Presumably, the security forces were also defending the Center and the Summit against a terrorist attack meant to eliminate the G-20 leaders, although it is unclear how effective this security would have been if it had to contend with a motivated and well-equipped terrorist group.) In other words, the state of siege seemingly was meant not to provide only for the physical security of the Summit participants but also to present a spectacle that represented to the world the power at their command and their comparative unaccountability to the pöbel. The messages this spectacle conveyed to the protesters in Pittsburgh, to the observers of the Summit and its environment as well as to those individuals who might choose to protest any future official event:

• Do not protest
  
• Do not speak you mind in public
  
• Do not act politically
  
• Do not act autonomously
  
• Do not threaten the system in any way
  

The American legal system actually colluded in the construction of this spectacle by authorizing the militarized police forces to act as they did. The repression observed in Pittsburgh was legal, more or less. The protesters had a legally secure opportunity to protest. Yet, the repression would be characterized best as an instance of rule by law. Had the rule of law prevailed during the Summit and with respect to the protesters, then the protesters would not have had to fight for every bit of public space they had wanted, whether legally or illegally. The protests, rather, would have been a part of the Summit, and would have been included in the Summit even if the Summit organizers had kept the protesters from entering the Convention Center. Their recognition and inclusion would have made present a faction of a global civil society that the Summit did not and even refused to include. Thus, the early appearance of a political wasteland in the city.

There is, I believe, no reason to expect a return to the rule of law in Pittsburgh or in any other part of the country. Rule by force, through fear and for the sake of elite security remain an implicit feature of the American political system. Political passivity is the goal, especially when that passivity is imposed on the left. But, a pacified society need not be a civil society. It can be a society intimidated by the use of force, rendered dumb by incomprehension and hopelessness and prone to believe that the powerful stand as the real master of its fate.

Hopelessness and Barack Obama

Dissident Voice first published this essay on 9.19.2009. The version given below is identical to the original save for fixes applied to a typo and grammatical mistake I had missed.

* * * * *

Denial is common occurrence among human beings. So also is paranoia. Whether directly or indirectly considered, both make an appearance in America's news reports every single day. For instance, 'authentic' Americans, believe reality is for sissies. Uncle Sam is no sissy, of course. He makes reality. So, why not "Drill baby drill…."

Still, it is also common to consider denial and paranoia irrational responses to the world. They earn this accurate characterization because the world mostly proves to be significantly stronger than the phantasies that would completely or partially replace it and because denial and paranoia reflect psychological positions and cultural objects that are a part of the world but which do not make the world as such. The human imagination is surely creative and often powerful; but it is far from being omnipotent. It can easily imagine beings of all sorts; it just cannot create being as it pleases. Consequently, there will always be a need of and a place for those committed to living in the world as they find it, who willingly reject the naïve metaphysics of the deeply frightened and the power-hungry. Similarly, the reality-challenged will often have the opportunity to learn that they were and are mistaken, that the Earth is neither flat, the center of the universe nor damnable matter, that it can never be made wholly subject to humanity's will and intentions. Whether the reality-challenged want to and can learn from their experience is another matter.

In other words, reasonable people reality test their imaginary constructions, and strive to tolerate the results produced by their testing. They take up this often frustrating chore because they wish to be free of illusions and in order to make a success of their projects, which any consistent refusal to recognize the world as a whole or in part would threaten with failure. Although the disconfirmation of dearly held truths can be considered an advance if not a practical advantage, it is, as most human beings know, one often painfully gained. Worse still is the possibility that the pain produced by the process of self-enlightenment might sometimes overwhelm the advantages gained in the end. Human beings tend to be pain-adverse. And they need not value truth for the sake of truth. They certainly may prefer comfort or security to truth. Thus the presence of so many who prefer their illusions to a disconfirming reality. They favor holding fast to their wishes even when they can never be satisfied; they prefer them to the experience of disappointment that often accompanies their partial satisfaction. They want to feel complete, whole, full. Yet, they rarely or even never find themselves satiated. For those who cannot tolerate dissatisfaction of any kind or degree, living in an imaginary world can compensate for the ambiguities and dissatisfactions to be found in the actual world. The imagination can 'prove' the lie contain within the wish by providing a devious kind of satisfaction. Naturally, such a life is often untenable and, paradoxically, painful. Madness is a probable consequence for those individuals who give themselves over to this form of life. An individual must draw from his or her strengths in order to tolerate the limits within the human condition that produce unavoidable dissatisfaction. All in all, therefore, it is unsurprising that the willingness to reality test one's wishes, phantasies, thoughts, etc. is thought to be sufficiently valuable that having it can be considered an essential feature of the "good life." By good life I do not mean a life lived beyond the imagination but, rather, one that draws from both the imagination and the world that surrounds that imagination. Furthermore, the complement to this point is also true: A lack of this willingness to test can be considered a privation for the one afflicted by it, and thus a feature of a "life lived poorly."

This kind of talk should sound familiar to most Americans who are known for the pride they derive from their pragmatic approach to life. Fact-mindedness and goal-directedness, dependence upon common sense and "a willingness to do what it takes to get things done" — these are essential components of the American creed and of pragmatism broadly considered. Verification of this point can be found not only in the writings of America's pragmatic philosophers (C.S. Pierce, W. James and J. Dewey) but also in the honor American culture bestows on its often famous inventor-industrialists (T. Edison, G. Westinghouse, A.G. Bell, etc.). Yet, the pragmatic ethos might receive its greatest and broadest endorsement from that iconic figure in American history, the freeholder farmer, who struggles with nature, society and self in order to live autonomously and productively. If America can be considered a civilization, it should be dubbed the "pragmatic civilization." Thus considered, the term "pragmatism" is merely a high-priced word that refers to what most Americans deem to be "good old common sense."

Given the place and strength of this ethos in American culture, along with the material successes the country has enjoyed throughout its history, it is surely ironic that Americans are now getting a concentrated dose of phantasy-challenging experience by an obstinate world. The irony here issues from the world's refusal to confirm the beliefs Americans commonly have about their country, especially their belief that the United States is unique or an exception to the norm, that it is indispensible, a dependable seer of the future, a just wielder of the sword, the winner of every war it fights and the true leader of humankind, or even that it is the best at those things at which it would want to be the best. Clearly, the pragmatic civilization has its myths. Some of the important ones date back to the first European settlers. As founded by those Puritans who would not have anything directly to do with the religious oppression they encountered in England, the first migrants to America held fast to the messianic conviction that the new world would be "the city upon the hill." They meant their trek to achieve a utopia and thereby to establish a public presence for righteousness. Having burdened themselves with an expectation of this kind, Protestant-Americans could judge their nation a success only if they could believe their way of life embodied God's will on Earth. As practicing Calvinists of one kind or another, Americans were disposed to equate worldly success with Godliness. Their achievements were signs as also were their failures. Their leaders had to be "natural aristocrats" whose wealth, honor and power served as rewards for and symbols of their virtue or, for the theistically inclined, their election. Armed with these beliefs, the settlers and their descendents tended to consider success self-legitimating. To be successful in America nearly entailed the rightful possession of those goods that expressed the presence of this success. America, to be sure, has made a great success of itself, a fact-supported normative judgment that helps to confirm the nation's grandiose identity. More ominously, social Darwinism, the Prosperity Gospel and American exceptionalism lurk within this kind of thinking, American imperialism and the Washington Consensus too. The City of God would often prove brutal in practice.

Currently, however, Americans may learn, if they wish, that their country:

• is a global empire which is now moving towards collapse;
  
• has a security-surveillance apparatus that is costly and oppressive, nearly useless but also a provocation to the rest of the world;
  
• drives its economic system with debt accumulation, mass consumption and weapons production, but also with a near-full employment economy ("the great American jobs machine"), each of which look unlikely to continue as they have in America's near-term future;
  
• is no longer the leader in the development and implementation of productive technology and consumer goods;
  
• will eventually or even soon lose its leadership position as the global lender of last resort and the provider of the world's hard currency;
  
• is shacked to home-grown political institutions that seem as receptive to rational reform as Brezhnev's Soviet Union proved to be in the 1980s.
  

Briefly put, Americans now have the opportunity to learn that their country is dispensable but dangerous, myopic, sterile and a foot-dragger!

They also may soon learn that it is no longer prosperous.

Obviously these points, if true, do not validate America's messianic conceit. Nor do they affirm the secular version of this self-conception, namely, that the United States is the capitalist democracy, the model which its competitors should emulate if they want to make a success of themselves. As a matter of fact, they render both vain and thus preposterous. The American dream is dying.

Although these criticisms are not commonplaces among Americans, they also are not propositions contained within an esoteric form of knowledge. Nor are they available only to an elect, an avant-garde or a privileged class. An exacting ritual does not guard their purity. The acolyte need not learn a special language before enlightenment sets in. Finally, they cannot be debunked by a dubious critique of their class origin or by pointing to the actual or imagined resentment of the critic who airs them in public. If a typical American wishes to learn of these things, he or she needs only to be literate and to pay attention to the world in general. The opportunities to acquire this knowledge are there to be had.

To be sure, attention-paying and reality-testing suppose a prior willingness and capacity to learn from one's experience and from others. It also requires a commitment to participate in reasonable discussion and to use evidence to settle matters that can be settled. Learning requires receptivity to the world, an open-minded attitude towards experience, reflection and change. It also means putting every relevant certainty into abeyance. Consequently, attention-paying and reality-testing entail a willingness to take a risk. With respect to the issues discussed here, this risk-taking gesture quickly leads to the asking of what most Americans would consider unsettling questions. These include: "Can America learn what it needs to learn?" and "If it learns these unavoidable truths, how will this knowledge sit with the average American once the members of this proud nation realize that America is neither innocent, grand nor more powerful than its competitors?" "How," in other words, "will Uncle Sam cope with being fallible, damnable and impermanent, with, that is, being merely human?" "Can he and his brood live without these myths?" "Can he successfully manage his second childhood?"

These are the local problems and questions the United States now confronts. If it and the world only had to confront them…. But it, like the world at large, also faces global problems and crises. The latter, unfortunately, are truly frightening. Managing and resolving them will prove difficult. They include:

• a growing global population, the existence of which will intensify;
  
• ecological crises like global warming;
  
• resource depletion crises (generated by a lack of adequate top soil, water, minerals, etc.) and thus the wars that will be fought over these increasingly scarce resources;
  
• massive food and water shortages.
  

Scarcity of the greatest sort looks to return to trouble every fraction of the world. War and famine, mass migration and death — these possibilities haunt the near-term future. I believe this because they compose a plausible future the causes and features of which do appear in the world today. We are watching, then, a global emergency while it gestates, the origin of which is due in great part to human practices and their limits. While it remains an open question whether or not this emergency will eventually define humanity's collective fate, its pre-history makes up a significant feature of the contemporary situation humanity must address if it wishes to thrive or even survive as a species. It and its components make evident the need for a political project meant to prevent the disaster.

It is not as though no one ever dares to mention these local and global issues. They have their place in public life, and are discussed by those individuals, movements and organizations most concerned with their consequences. Yet, discussion by the comparatively few individuals concerned with such issues does not seem to be enough to solve problems of this kind and magnitude. Small talk is insufficient because of the immense complexity and scope their solutions would have. Global problems demand what amount to global solutions. Therefore, the greater crisis they pose derives from something which lies beyond the existential threats they express, considerable as these may be. This something which lies beyond: These global crises have failed to provide the kind of motives Americans and humanity as a whole need if they want to address and resolve the threats as such. Stasis should prove to be self-defeating over the long-term.

Although concerned movements and an international public do exist, they mostly lack influence. They suffer this lack because the powerful remain unreceptive to and thus unmoved by the calamity in the making. Denial and paranoia make an appearance here.

Their appearance is unsurprising. Who among the powerful wants to grapple with disastrous possibilities like these? Who would confront the nihilism inherent within them? Or, the sense of powerlessness they evoke? Which member of the elite would choose to radically alter the world they govern in order to save it from the practices, institutions and knowledge from which they draw their power? Very few, it seems. The powerful tend to be masters of survival within the world they know. And it is because there are so few of these men and women that committing the world to creating sensible, peaceful and sustainable forms of life is not a high priority for those who make what amounts to a global agenda.

A prudent person would thus not expect the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh to produce a feasible program meant to avoid these disasters in the making by pursuing highly advantageous goods like sensible, peaceful and sustainable forms of life. Rather, the Summit, if it accomplishes anything, can be expected to work to stabilize the world system already in place, that is, to maintain by adjusting the system now heading towards a disaster. Their refusal to take responsibility for the world they lead, should it come to that, would be significant inasmuch as some of these threats carry speciescide as an effective possibility. The quality of the threat only intensifies the motive it places on the threatened once the threat becomes known as such. Power, of course, implies responsibility, for no one is obligated beyond what he or she can do, according to an ancient legal maxim, and the powerful can do — or prevent — much. Their powers stand as one limit condition that constricts humanity as a whole. Their actions are thus decisive in the short-term.

Over the long-term, on the other hand, the social origin of the solution is unimportant. This is because reform — decisive, systemic and therefore radical reform — ought to define humanity's project if the situation conforms to the gist of the description I offered above. To be radical, reform of this sort must be both feasible (the reformers first identify a problem and then a path meant to resolve the problem identified), adequate (the reforms can solve the problem they were meant to fix) and consistent with a generous concept of human well-being. Additionally, radical reform must intentionally address a global threat that is local in origin and consequence. It must be an inclusive project; it must have beneficial system effects. Yet, it must not end with a totalizing catastrophe founded on an abstract and impossible utopian idea.

It is interesting and somewhat surprising that some observers of the American political scene concluded the United States took a step towards contributing in to a reform project of this sort when it elected Barak Obama as its president last fall.

They may have concluded they could expect reform of this kind from the new president because he had earned his mandate by promising change and offering hope for the future. His political enemies also augmented the euphoria by warning the country about Obama's radical inclinations during the election season. It seems candidate Obama's promises did not sound empty to everyone who heard them. It helped a lot that he appeared able to meet these high expectations. He had credibility in their eyes. Obama is, after all, intelligent and articulate. More importantly, he seemed forthright and decent, at ease with the people he met and the policies he discussed. He was neither a wonk nor a baby-kisser. Although different in many ways from the stereotypical American, Obama had the common touch, for he made his own success as a child of relative poverty, of a mixed marriage and of divorce. Success surely was not given to him, nor the presidency. Candidate Obama became president by running a strong and ultimately successful campaign, one forced by the history of his country to overcome the racist and nativist biases deeply rooted in its culture. Obama is just another Frank Capra story. And, most importantly, he certainly did not strike anyone as being Bush or even Bush-like, which is to say that, he appeared a humane and competent replacement for The Decider puppet and his master.

His mere presence in the campaign thus encapsulated a diffuse hope that had been dormant among common folk. It suggested that progress was possible, that the would-be president could lead the country to better days if he were elected to the office. Obama, his supporters believed, truly could get "it" done, whether "it" referred to health care reform, ending Bush's senseless wars, putting a stop to torture, resolving the financial crisis, etc. He was a "regular fellow" who also radiated gravitas — a mixed-race Jimmy Stewart. Candidate Obama thus exuded the kind of charisma for which lesser politicians would trade their souls. Voting for him was an easy choice that many Americans gladly made. They wanted change — progress, actually.

Obama has held the presidency for less than a year. It is unfortunate that, so far, he and his administration have changed very little about the state and society they govern. Progress has been deferred yet again. In fact, the Obama regime has mostly held the course on policies that were proven failures (Bush's wars) and moral outrages (Bush's torture, detainment and secrecy policies) before he took office. He has stood by Wall Street and finance capital in general even while the bipartisan bailout program he supported encumbered Americans for generations. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the new administration quickly turned "transparency," an electoral buzzword meant to highlight the differences between Obama and Bush, into a cliché, mostly because of the obscurity it created when handling national security and financial matters. Word and deed, image and reality parted company not long after the election.

Obama's tenure has already imposed adverse consequences on the new president: The Obama administration has pursued policies and acted in such a way that it has undermined the basis on which candidate Obama built his case to hold the office of the president. His positive charisma erodes a bit every day. We can learn this just from the fact that Obama's approval rating is falling at a historically fast rate. The new president is thus acquiring the taint of illegitimacy.

In this regard Obama can be compared to some degree to George W. Bush, who, as we may recall, reached his popular peak as president immediately after 9.11 but who collapsed thereafter, should have been impeached and ought to be awaiting trial for the crimes he committed while responding to that catastrophe. It is no exaggeration to judge the second Bush presidency the epitome of an illegitimate American president. The Bush administration had earned this judgment for so many reasons and on so many levels that his recent escape to Texas along with the freedom he enjoys there damns the mainstream media and the Congresses who colluded in his deeds. Bush's very freedom screams the question: "How has he gotten away with so much?" While Obama is no Bush and his defenders may wish to explain his approval ratings by using the crises of the day as a shield for the new president, I believe the Obama administration has, just like its predecessor, advanced the corruption of America's political culture. This corruption is implied by the political and social paralysis it sponsors. This 'achievement' is no small potatoes given the all-encompassing criminality of the Bush regime that preceded it. Yet, the new president could not avoid this result when his administration opted to affirm so much of the status quo ante and accomplished this by following the triangulation playbook written by Bill Clinton and Dick Morris in the 1990s. Obama staked his personal credibility on this strategy. This is astonishing because Candidate Obama ran against the Bush record and against the man whose shadow now follows him as if it were his own. President Obama merely governs as if he were another one of Dubya's crisis managers. And, like his role model, Bill Clinton, Obama looks to be squandering the opportunities for reform history gave him. He wasted them because he was careless in the goals that his administration pursued. The goals, of course, were those taken from his predecessors, goals he would have jettisoned if he were prudent and a reformer.

What are some of the more immediate and dangerous consequences that can be attributed to Obama's political failures? Hopelessness is one, cynicism another, passivity a third. Each depends upon Obama's failure to conform to the realistic expectations the electorate had for his administration. Each sends distress signals: Reform has been defeated; the 'good guy' is a fake; we've been fooled again. And each reflects the floundering of a president who has wasted an opportune historical moment that may be collapsing as the days pass.

One can easily identify the Obama administration's most notable and, perhaps, most politically destructive failure so far. It can be found in the president's inability to lead the country in a determined effort to secure an obvious and feasible public good like single-payer health care. The episode is instructive. It forces the observer to look closely at the president and who he represents. It provides the lens through which to examine a flawed reformer.

The administration's performance during the health care debate has been that poor that it has even failed to push the inferior ideas now current in Congress past his political enemies on the right and far right. Obama has instead mostly ceded ground to his blatantly irrational critics on his right flank, much to the material and political detriment of those who voted for him in good faith last November. In this Obama committed one of the cardinal sins of politics: He allowed his political enemies (and what sensible person doubts that they are a disloyal opposition) and the opportunists in Congress (who mostly follow their paymaster's directions) to set the terms of the debate on a key issue. It is they who are defining the Obama presidency. By giving his opponents this kind of power, a gift that depended upon the triangulation gambit, Obama committed a second cardinal sin: He betrayed his supporters by publicly affirming the position of his enemies. Here, then, one can locate the sources of Obama's credibility problem, of his growing legitimation deficit. It can be summarized as: "President Obama has failed to assure America that he will deliver "change they can believe in."

Obama's election happened not too far in the past that it is in any way difficult to recall that it took the votes of the disenchanted to inflict a humiliating defeat on the McCain-Palin ticket and on the Republican Party as a whole. The Republican defeat was rightly construed as an event 'meant' to steer the country in another direction. Indeed, Obama's victory even suggested a repudiation of the Reagan Revolution along with the policies and myths that are essential features of that Revolution. Yet president Obama chose to preserve much of the thinking and practices of the despised Bush administration, the government he ran against, the program which attempted to complete the Reagan Revolution and secure the imperial presidency. It is because Obama made this choice that he placed himself somewhere to the right of the center position in the United States! (Naturally, his move to the right has failed to silence his red-baiting critics!) Why would he do this? Why would he betray his supporters?

One answer: His conservatism in office is attributable to the services he has already provided to the FIRE sector of the economy, which had spent so much to help him gain the presidency, and to the security-surveillance apparatus that sits within and besides the federal government, which no ambitious American politician would dare cross. These commitments are both significant and commonly found among American politicians. They point to the fact that Barack Obama is a system politician. By system politician I wish to refer to the president's commitment to America as he knows it but not to his real or supposed loyalty to the American constitution, the rule of law, democratic governance, economic justice, national and global system rationalization, etc. All things considered, Obama is committed to saving an evolved, mature, ossified but brittle system now in decline. It can be said, I believe, that Obama is at home in Bush's America, which is also the America given to us by Clinton, Reagan and Nixon. This is the America he wants to govern — to save. And, to give credit where credit is due, Obama might be the kind of political operator one would want to have as a president if the times were stable and plush. But, they are neither. It is because times are unstable and insecure that what counts the most is Obama's inability — or unwillingness — to rationally address the problems and crises enumerated above. The global crises especially are too pressing and dangerous to ignore. I say this because global warming is a public bad if anything is! It demands attention — immediate attention. It also demands a solution. It produces these demands because the mechanisms and processes generating the global warming event mostly reflect the workings of Mother Nature and cosmic time. They are not directly fixable. There will not be a magic bullet. They may even conclude with species suicide. Yet, it is shocking that credible efforts meant to address this crisis have yet to appear. It is as though the world wishes to passively await fate to make its presence known and then deliver its final judgment.

For Americans, this lack reflects poorly upon the president, the political entity that represents the sovereignty of the American people, the unity of this nation-state and a longer historical timeline which reaches beyond the founding to the English Revolution, the Magna Carta and the Roman Republic. When considered with respect to this grand horizon, what degree of confidence can one place in a president who cannot achieve a victory for a popular, sensible and much-needed program like single-payer health care? Not much, I would say, especially when one considers the healthcare reform debacle with respect to the significantly greater obstacles Obama would face if he were to take up the path of radical reform and global leadership.

In other words, I would say that Barack Obama's failure to master the healthcare issue emits a potent warning signal which should be heard by everyone who believes this president must deliver a lot more than mere health care reform. It strongly suggests that they should trust only in those powers they can generate on their own. For the reform-minded in the United States and elsewhere, Barack Obama should become the politician they will lead, not the president who leads them and, because he is the president of the United States, the world.

The upshot: America now stands before an impasse of its own making. Americans can neither restore the country to something akin to what it once was (the wealthy, secure superpower), turn it into the country it wishes to be (the authentic and blessed "city upon the hill") nor quickly make it into the country it would choose to be if it practiced a rational politics (a just democratic polity). The local struggle to achieve the third option (a just democratic polity) is the task given to those Americans critical of their country and its pathologies. It is a task of political enlightenment and system rationalization. A rational politics can only be a responsible politics, a politics open to the present and the future, which refuses to shirk lifting the burdens it needs to carry or learning the truths it must have within its grasp. As such and given the situation today, a just democratic polity in the United States would also be a society that would take up the burden of overcoming the problems and crises that now threaten the world. Such is the reality of the present that the United States cannot avoid this task. No one can. Denial and scapegoating are not options. Obama's America, insofar as we already know it, appears unwilling to take this path. It has refused to shoulder this burden, which is to say, it has chosen illusion and paralysis. The Obama way brings only hopelessness.

The Nader moment revisited

I once defined the Nader Moment as:

….something besides the personal electoral prospects of this particular candidate. The term does not refer to Nader's campaign per se. He may or may not win this fall. In fact, he will likely lose the election. Yet the moment reflects his political style in any case. It reflects the need for a reform program that serves just ends.

As I use it, the term has two features: On the one hand, the Nader Moment refers to a specific point in time, namely, to the situation Americans now confront; on the other, it refers to something which is becoming a chronic problem for the country, a problem which marks our present situation while pointing to a disturbing future. The future looks disturbing because it promises to be a time of global war and dictatorship, economic crisis and environmental catastrophe. This problem in general: The United States is pulling the world into this abyss. The problem stated specifically: The political culture which crystallized around the image of Ronald Reagan and the election of 1980 has been exposed as irrelevant, at best, by the crisis the country now faces. 'Crisis' is the relevant word to use here since America now appears to be confronting a historical turning point. It must choose between recycling old thinking and past practices and refusing the past by inventing a politics adequate to the moment. It must reject Reaganism, for the Reagan Revolution generates instability, tyranny and a lesser quality of life for much of the world. It leads to these things because it reflects the thinking and practices of neoliberalism and neoconservatism or, to put the matter less charitably, of 'market fundamentalism' and 'militarism.' Reagan's oft-stated goals were to get government off 'our' backs and to 'stand tall' within the world and against the Communists. A resurgent America would replace the timid colossus left in the wake of the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Stagflation crisis of the 1970s. But the Reagan administration set in motion processes which strongly implicate it in the crisis Americans now confront. The governments of Reagan's America have proven to be more intrusive, less transparent and more destructive than not. America neither stands tall nor resolutely for any principle but imperial self-aggrandizement. It is for this reason that market fundamentalism and militarism have little which is constructive to say about the current situation. Blind to the complexity of the world, deaf to the suffering of nearly every person on the planet, they provide no insight or practical guidance to those Americans who wish to live as good neighbors with the rest of humanity.

Briefly put, the Nader Moment points to a deeply rooted crisis — a crisis of America's institutions and political culture — and to the need to resolve the crisis in a way which provides just and long-term benefits to most Americans. It refers to a situation that demands an innovative, democratic and populist politics.

The term thus refers to the kind of politics Nader embodied as well as to the dire situation most Americans confront today. Although 2008 may have been Nader's moment, history recorded an Obama victory last November. To be sure, Barack Obama was the clear choice when compared to the McCain-Palin ticket. But comparing Obama to McCain should be unsatisfying to those individuals and groups who recognize the compelling need for a feasible and radical reformist politics in the United States. I feel comfortable making this claim because candidate Obama ran a campaign that promised hope and change to a massive collection of citizens that pined for both. Nevertheless, President Obama has delivered so far just more of the same malarkey. I suppose some may derive comfort from the fact that President Obama has made good on the common belief that he would be the lesser evil of the two major party candidates! Yet, even they must surely suspect that a world-befouling politics remains the order of the day in Obama's Washington. Chris Hedges addresses this very issue in a recent essay. He wrote:

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or "extraordinary rendition," restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d'etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

I cannot disagree with Hedges' judgment of Obama's performance so far. Obama has been a great disappointment even to someone like me who did not believe he would accomplish much as President. I do, however, differ with Hedges on one point: The Democratic Party has provided a slaughter bench for radical reform in America since the election of 1896! Even though this point may seem to be nitpicking on my part and surely when I make it within the current context, it is always useful to recall that the Democratic Party includes politicians above and beyond Franklin Roosevelt! The Party, along with its leaders and cadre, must also manage the constraints placed upon it by its place in the political system. The United States is an empire, the sole military superpower in the world today and a global economic hegemon. These facts are hardly trivial. Consequently, party-politicians are not free to do as they please when they hold office. Moreover, it can also be said that a Democrat need not be a Bourbon, a Dixiecrat, an urban machine politician or, for that matter, a Blue Dog to kill off a reform movement. He or she needs only to harbor great ambitions for him- or her-self and for the Party as a whole. The ambitious sort must also be inclined to take advantage of the opportunities which appear before them. They must pursue success. Yet, this peculiar end — success — imposes on the ambitious person a willingness to serve the goals of the system as they happen to find it. I believe this because conforming to the system as it exists provides the ambitious person with the only path he or she can take that can end with the prize they desire — personal success. The ambitious politician embodies, I would add, not hope, but more of the same. He or she thus stands before the electorate as a betrayal waiting to happen, no more so than the ambitious politician who promise reforms to any degree.

Behold —Barack Obama, President of the United States.

Jürgen Habermas addresses the crisis

In an interview given late last year to Die Zeit (a translation can be found here), the philosopher-social theorist Jürgen Habermas asserted:

Since 1989-90 it has become impossible to break out of the universe of capitalism; the only option is to civilize and tame the capitalist dynamic from within. Even during the post-war period, the Soviet Union was not a viable alternative for the majority of the Left in Western Europe. This was why in 1973 I wrote on legitimation problems "in" capitalism. These problems have again forced their way onto the agenda, with more or less urgency depending on the national context.

One quibble: It is false to claim, as Habermas does, that it is "impossible to break out of the universe of capitalism." I believe it false because capitalism as an inclusive world system can exist only if countries engage in global trade, if, that is, the local economies within this system can struggle to expand their reach within a global system of markets. If this claim were true, then even if one were to concede Habermas' point — that modern humanity is fated to participate within a capitalist economic form — it remains the case that this economic system necessarily produces and confronts internal and external limits which it will need to successfully manage if it is to survive intact. Petroleum depletion provides one such limit on global trade and on industrial production. Another obvious one: Global warming, the existence of which threatens to produce a species-wide catastrophe. Worse still is the strong possibility that these two limiting conditions, which humanity cannot simply deny or neglect, may eventually combine to pulverize global civilization altogether, leaving, at best, only small, residual pockets of humanity scattered across the world. Without a doubt these remnants would depend upon barter and, perhaps, commodity production as well; nevertheless, they would lack the material conditions (the material resources, including a hospitable planet) needed to expand beyond the boundaries of their individual locations. Small may or may not be beautiful, but it promises to be unavoidable.

Once they found themselves 'free' of the capitalist world economy, humanity's survivors could — and might even be forced by circumstances to — create and adopt a less destructive mode of production. The catastrophe will have thus liberated humanity from its global capitalistic fate.

To be sure, no sensible and humane being would consider a catastrophe of this magnitude a product of a rational decision which humanity could feasibly make. The ends do not justify the means. It is better for humanity to live within a capitalist world economic system than to perish altogether or nearly so. Nevertheless, "humanity" cannot "decide" anything at all, according to Luhmann (p. 105). At best, an elite could produce a decision, but even this choice would require a global political system to implement a decision of this scope. And, it is the very lack of an effective global political system that is the species-wide developmental deficit of the moment: As we know all too well, a global threat can emerge from the workings of the "invisible hand," so to speak. A technologically sophisticated, modern world economy generates threats of this kind as a matter of course. Yet a programmatic effort to manage the risks posed by this economy will likely require an effective global political system the existence of which seems as remote to us today as full communism. A global political system has long been Habermas' preferred solution.

It became clear to me during the 1990s that politics must build up its capacities for joint action at the supranational level if it is to catch up with the markets. There even seemed to be initial steps in this direction during the early part of the decade. George Bush the elder spoke in a programmatic way of a New World Order and seemed to want to make use of the long blocked — and ridiculed! — United Nations! There was initially a sharp increase in the number of humanitarian interventions enacted by the Security Council. The politically intended economic globalisation should have been followed by a system of global political coordination and a further legal codification of international relations. However, the initial ambivalent efforts lost momentum already under Clinton. The current crisis is making us aware of this deficiency again. Since the beginning of the modern era, the market and politics have had to be repeatedly balanced off against one another in order to preserve the network of relations of solidarity among the members of political communities. A tension between capitalism and democracy always remains, because the market and politics rest on conflicting principles. The flood of decentralsed individual choices unleashed within more complex networks also calls for regulations after the latest phase of globalisation; this is contingent on a corresponding extension of political procedures through which interests are generalised.

The call for a global political system indicates the deeper, more ominous emergency condition humanity now faces, namely: The second-order crisis which came into existence because human beings cannot order their affairs in such a way that their living and relating does not also produce an existential threat for the whole of life on the planet. Human beings seemingly cannot learn how to get along well with each other or how to live without also befouling their environment.

Change we can believe in….

The anti-Obama moment

This is the moment for radical reform, for reform that cuts to the quick, that alters a society or one of its parts. Reform of this kind has become timely because the powerful, productive and secure America which emerged directly after the Second World War no longer exits and resurrecting this "golden age" entity must be counted as an unrealistic project. I say this because the "real economy" is now in crisis; Wall Street and the Fed continue to debauch the dollar; numerous individual states must manage severe fiscal crises and these undoubtedly will damage their capacity to govern effectively and legitimately; many Americans and their families have been forced by circumstances to watch while their life savings dwindle away and their children struggle to make a place for themselves in a country in economic and social decline; the federal government is bankrupt but gives the security-surveillance apparatus an enormous amount of money which the spook apparatchiks then waste by undermining the country's democratic institutions and culture along with its international standing and its economic capabilities. The upshot: The American dream has finished its run and Americans must now face a difficult world with their fantasies exposed for what they are.

To be sure, reform could mean the restoration of past practice, which is to say, a return to constitutional and economic fundamentals. These reforms allegedly were part of what the Reagan Revolution was all about. Radical reform today, on the other hand, can only take the form of a "new beginning" for the country. As a moment marked by the novelty of the reforms which mark it, these reforms must include a rejection of the conservatism inherent within the American political culture and its political institutions. They would thus entail a principled rejection of America's historical record since 1968 and beyond.

Chris Bowers of Open Left addresses the need for reform, doing so in light of the nature of party politics in the United States. His topic: Health care reform and the obstructionist Democrats! Bowers writes:

Here is a message that progressive organizations and media outlets need to start sending to all Democratic party committees and members of Congress:

We are done attacking Republicans until you pass a public option for health care.

Until a public option is passed, I don't want to hear about the latest hate and idiocy spewing from Limbaugh, or Tancredo, or Palin, or Gingrich, or whoever. And to tell you the truth, I don't want to attack them for it, either. Because, right now, Republicans are not the obstacle to progressive governance. Instead, Democrats who refuse to support a public option are the obstacle [emphasis in the original].

Why would the Democratic Party refuse to meet this sensible and popular demand? Why would the Party of the People undermine this popular reform? Why would it embrace an increasingly impossible reality? William Greider provides an answer:

The Democratic Party ignores its left-liberal-progressive base with some regularity because it knows it can. Politicians understand they will suffer no consequences afterward. The galaxy of mediating organizations, including organized labor, that surrounds and supports the party may stomp and holler, but they do not attempt any retribution that might alter their relationship with power. Reform organizations will not withdraw their support, either money or rank-and-file voters. Nor will they seek to punish any of the wayward Democrats who regularly vote against them with opposition at the next election. The "white hat" reformers are Washington insiders themselves, with a seat at the table and influence on the substance of the party's agenda. They do not want to put their status at risk. Politicians know this from long experience. So do the reformers.

For the outsider who would be an insider — that is, for the reformers who want to become effective in the here and now, who want have more than a tiny bit of influence over the government in power, who wish to have direct access to that government, to instituted political power — access seemingly comes attached to a stringent and unavoidable quid pro quo: The reform-minded liberal can have and even enjoy their seat at the big table but he or she will occupy this seat only so long as he or she does not pose a practical threat to the Washington-Wall Street way of governing the world. Once these reformers become insiders, once they "make it big" and turn into recognized 'players' and thus members of the elite, these arrivistes will have thereby gained a stake in the system they wanted to reform. Having this stake in their hand means they will confront circumstances and pressures that will compel them to reproduce the system such as it is. It means, in other words, rejecting reforms which would disturb the already-powerful, the entrenched interests and institutions that are enduring features of the polity.

For the moment, therefore, party politics must be considered a dead end sensible reformers would wisely avoid. Radical reform must spring from civil society itself. Common Americans must want to reform their government and society, for these needed reforms will not be gifted to them by the elite.

Have the “culture wars” taken a violent turn?

Eyal Press, writing for The Nation, worries that a horrific version of this confrontation is emerging now that the Bush juggernaut has collapsed. He has good reason to worry, I would say. The signs of a reactionary backlash started to appear as soon as Barack Hussein Obama became a viable contender for the Presidency. Indeed, it was little over a year back that Hillary Clinton, currently Obama's Secretary of State, publicly mentioned that she would contest the remaining Democratic primaries even though she was unlikely to win the nomination because someone might assassinate Obama! The McCain-Palin ticket became infamous for taking the lower road.

Naturally the Tiller assassination that has recently marred the news provided Press with the occasion for his ruminations. The danger as he and others see it originates in something besides the atavistic beliefs typically held by America's reactionaries; the source of this danger must include the hopelessness some of America's reactionaries may now feel as they watch while their time in the national spotlight passes into oblivion. Their despair may be compounded by the features of their authoritarian temperament, a disposition which compels them to overestimate the power and thus the importance of political leaders like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. As it turns out, and much to the reactionaries' chagrin, the United States was and remains a far more moderate country on cultural and social issues than they. As a matter of fact, a strong majority of Americans prefer that abortion remains legal. Moreover, America's institutions are notoriously resistant to radical reform. For the reactionaries and their programs, and this includes their antiabortion project, neither fact augers well for the future. Thus their turn towards violent action, to terrorism and murder, to insurrection and succession, to an antipolitics that removes the space needed for compromises to emerge. A turn to violent action is a turn to the political dark side, one that would imitate the bloodshed seen during Clinton's terms in office if it comes to pass.

Why violence? Briefly put, America's reactionaries these days necessarily confront a world they cannot master or accept. Destruction of the other, of the despised, a hatred for the 'enemy' — these are just one way available to the defeated to compensate for the powerlessness they are now rediscovering. It goes without saying that a politics of this kind has little to do with democracy and reasonable deliberation save for the potential it has for destroying America's minimally democratic institutions. It is, rather, another instance when nihilism appears on the horizon as an active possibility, for, as Nietzsche points out (p. 35):

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaningless, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any "meaning" in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.

The Obama administration fears opposition

According to a New York Times report: "The Obama administration is increasingly concerned about a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress and the White House and could complicate President Obama's agenda." No one should be surprised that the White House publicly raised these concerns soon after Edward Liddy of AIG set Timothy Geithner straight on the pecking order which now governs the world (the prerogatives of rentier capital are superior to those of the tax-paying public and its institutions) and after a sizable part of America applauded Jim Cramer's humiliation at the hands of Jon Stewart. As a matter of fact, the financial elite and its abettors may have found the Cramer interview especially troubling, for as John Nichols of the Nation points out:

The Comedy Central host hit the nail on the head when he accused the CNBC host of pitching "snake oil as vitamin tonic."

That isn't the sort of talk bankers and brokers are used to hearing. It frightens them — not because it isn't true, but because the great mass of Americans aren't supposed to be let in on the secret.

Indeed, why would the "masters of the universe" wish to be exposed as mountebanks and grifters? They would not, of course, and presumably believe little or no good can come from the current political situation.

When considered together, the AIG bonus scandal and the Cramer incident point to what currently looks to be a budding legitimation deficit the Obama government must master or suffer the consequences due to its failure to master. What is a legitimation deficit? Simply put, the term refers to the inability of a polity to satisfy a common sense of what is just and natural. It reflects an experience that something has gone wrong and is thus unacceptable to those who suffer it. Given the existence of these experiences along with their systemic correlates, a legitimation deficit can motivate individuals and groups to withdraw their support from a government. Americans could learn about this first hand during George W. Bush's second term. But that is not the whole of it. More importantly, a legitimation deficit refers not only to a potential withdrawal of support from a sitting government; it also implies a possible lack of support for the systemic conditions which originally brought the deficit into being. Thus the now frequently made claim that the global economic crisis destroyed political-economic ideologies such as neoliberalism, Reaganomics, market fundamentalism, etc., ideologies which informed the policies and developmental tendencies responsible for the crisis. Much like Marxist-Leninism after 1989, these were "falsified" by 'reality,' so to speak. Briefly put, then, a legitimation deficit forewarns that a system crisis is in the making. It suggests the actual or possible presence of a dangerous political threat.

Naturally the Obama administration would view the potential for such popular outrage with great concern. And it should worry about an authentic backlash originating from below since the development of a critical, angry and growing counter-public could undermine the administration's plans to implement its program, which is to say, to better manage America's empire, to ensure a domestic and international stability that conforms to America's perceived interests and to take wealth from current and future American taxpayers and transfer it to Wall Street, the security apparatus and the defense industry. Furthermore, the template for this potential undermining work has already been forged, tested in the real world and proven successful. This happened directly before and after the first House vote on the outrageous Paulson bailout.

To be sure, candidate Obama supported this horrible bill even though he claimed then that the pending bailout would not provide a "blank check" to the recipients of the bailout money. Yet his 'qualified' support failed to reassure many Americans, and rightly so, as it turns out. Their response to the Paulson-Bush program: They inundated House members with calls, emails, letters, etc. that conveyed their disgust with the bailout as it then stood. The House initially responded to this unstructured but meaningful political communication by voting down the bailout bill! Briefly put, it can be said that an aroused citizenry willing to make its voice heard forced the House to pull hard on the legislative brake handle! This victory — and it was a victory for democracy and justice as well as for fiscal sanity and sound government — gains in significance when one considers the fact that the House is the national and elected body which has the deepest roots in America's civil society. It is due to these comparatively deeper roots that the electorate can hold the government accountable with less effort than it would need to expend on the Senate or on the executive and judicial branches. This specific House vote thus reflected the potential power of public opinion and democratically inspired collective action.

If one keeps in mind the fate of Paulson's insult and, more importantly, the swift decline of the Bush administration and the GOP in general since the 2004 presidential election, it becomes clear that President Obama and his political advisors cannot reasonably suggest that he was, is or will be unaware of what "the people" think about the crises of the day and those institutions responsible for their existence. Nor can the current administration complacently believe that they possess the political resources needed to finesse the crisis and an irate public. Barack Obama might be as charismatic as he seems; but charisma can take him only so far. He must eventually — soon! —make a gesture that addresses the economic crisis and the effects it is having on a now threatened citizenry. He must give America at least the appearance of a rational response to the crisis. This was the promise made known to everyone by the initial and collective response to the Paulson bailout and, more importantly, to the failures of the Bush regime. It is a promise that originated in the sense that the American way of life as most Americans know it will no longer exist.

I believe it would be prudent to believe that the presence of this populist promise also worries the remainder of America's national elite. They may worry simply because they can reasonably expect to find this once politically docile nation ungovernable and illegitimate, bankrupt and defenseless, jobless and hungry, fearful and bitter at the betrayals it has suffered at the hands of this selfsame elite. Put differently and succinctly, it can be said that the present moment includes a possible future defined by a destructive state-society clash. If it does, the economic crisis and the Obama government's response stand as just another marker on a path that may end with an American dictatorship. Clearly the Obama administration and others belonging to the elite are not the only groups that need to worry about the future.

Is a new populist movement emerging?

Frank Rich of the New York Times believes such a movement is now gestating. While mostly addressing Obama's recent Cabinet nominee debacles, Rich had this to say:

The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle's overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain's trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.'s bonus. It's even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president's best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn't get in front of the mounting public anger.

With respect to the President and his administration, it has surely become evident this past week that Obama's pressing political problems cannot be confined to the "bad apples" which surface from time to time. Rather, each mini-problem — or scandal — also points to a growing and public discourse about the country, one that expresses the belief that "our way of life" might cease to exist sometime soon.

A fear of this sort can be quite potent, as one would expect, especially when it is reinforced by evidence and collective agreement. In this instance it expresses the evidence-supported sense that the existential survival of the American people cannot be taken for granted and the sense that the future is known in some way (Americans expect to be worse off than they were in the recent past) but also uncertain in its particulars (will I and mine survive). When considered as such, this fear can and eventually may produce a significant political problem for any sitting federal government since it can, when prevalent and active, undermine the motivations individuals and groups need to respect and use if they are to participate as committed members of this society. In short, a legitimation crisis awaits America as just one of its possible futures originating in the developmental path now before the country. This kind of crisis reflects the existential threat of the moment.

Although this particular fear may seem fantastic with respect to a wealthy and powerful country like the United States, it has been just this kind of crisis that has recently troubled countries such as Iceland and Latvia, Greece and South Korea, as Naomi Kline points out. The United States need not be immune to an eruption of popular protest. Nor should it be considered safe from a disastrous instance of social disintegration. It has known both traumas before this moment. And together they might generate the kind of system collapse last seen when the Soviet Union imploded.

In any case, I would guess that the presence of popular contention would be the sort of events that could "maim" the Obama administration, as Rich puts it.

Yet, and to conclude, is "maim" the right word to use here? I ask because I wonder whether the Obama administration actually deserves the strong popular support he has had so far given his reluctance to tackle the real problems which vex the country. Given the Obama administration's centrist and co-habitationalist tendencies, we may surely wonder what America's "people" might do once the crisis deepens and both parties appear complicit in origin and course? What the present moment requires is a new social contract, one that includes a more equitable and rational distribution of the country's wealth and risks. This would be change in which many Americans can place their trust. But is this the path that Obama and his administration plan to take?