On The Question Of the 2010 Elections And Civil War –A Very Short Note

Markin comment:

Chalk it up to my recent reading of Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery for being on the scent of the civil war theme, okay. A couple of days ago I placed William Butler Yeats’ somewhat flowery and mystical Meditation In The Time Of Civil War as an entry in this space with a short commentary that the political air, in the wake of the 2010 elections in America had, at first bloom, that sense of foreboding that I felt in reading Foner’s book as the American Civil War hit Lincoln right in the face and that I also believe Yeats was feeling in the period of the Irish Civil War of the 1920s.

Needless to say, in the age of the Internet, or maybe just in the age of the cantankerousness of some of my political co-workers that little seemingly off-hand comment could not just settle into cyberspace oblivion. In any case they were “worried” that I had gone off the political deep end in my somewhat simply analogy and unspecified talk of civil war. And I have to agree, at least to the point that the civil war analogy might be overblown. But hear me out as I try to quickly run out one train of thought on the question.

Of course the history of American election cycles has produced all kinds of “waves” (the current favored media term of usage for these quick mood swings by the electorate that shows up, or doesn’t). The 2010 elections can be taken, and at some level should be taken, as just an extreme example of that voter fickleness and quirkiness and just move on. However, when one looks at some of the underlying data, and as importantly, the anecdotal evidence that is beginning to accumulate that drumbeat that has been getting increasingly louder over the past couple of years (even before Obama’s election) by the Tea Party elements and right-wing yahoos in pursuit of their central slogan “We want to take our country back,” should give those of us of the left cause for pause. The case for this Tea-ish phenomenon as a racial backlash has already been fairly well made. More importantly, this election was an in-your-face victory by the “haves”, mainly the rich and well-off but also refracted through the working class, or that part of the working class that is still working.

Now all of this can add up to a tempest in a tea pot (to carry on with the tea-ish symbolism) and the addition of a few million jobs fast could break the populist back of such a movement. But that is not likely, not soon anyway according to those who claim to know. And have a vested interest in knowing. That is the point where I am starting to smell just the faintest whiff of gun powder in the air. To put it in American civil war terms, since I am, seemingly, under the spell of that event I think that we are right now in a period somewhere analogous to the period just after the ugly and ultimately futile Compromise of 1850 where the two sided were feeling each other out and both sides, and I mean both sides, were unhappy with that compromise. Moreover, the more far-sighted on both sides knew where things were heading. And that is what we of the extra-parliamentary left should be doing, paying very close attention to which way the winds are shifting. And organizing, organizing like crazy around our central slogan of fighting for a workers party that fights for a workers government.

The Anti-Intellectual Forebears Of The Tea Party Movement- “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”- From The Pen Of Professor Richard Hofstadter- A Book Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Professor Richard Hofstadter.

Book Review

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1969

As Professor Hofstadter’s book most dramatically points out plebeian, and patrician, anti-intellectualism has a long pedigree in the United States. This trend goes back to the foundation colonies and their Puritan theocratic social organization premised as they were more on religious obedience than critical thinking. Thus, this latest wave of anti-intellectualism, at least the publicly visible and in your face 24/7/365 anti-intellectualism, highlighted by Tea Party ideology, climate change anti-scientism, exotic “medical” remedies, and a turning away from defense of the public square and scholarly research has many forebears. And, oh yes, add in the rising belief in angels, witches, goblins, gremlins and other dark night phenomena more reminiscent of the 15th century than the 21st. This latest wave of hard-bitten anti-intellectualism, as it has taken form over the past several years, drew me into a re-reading of the good professor’s work published almost half a century ago to see what his take was on those roots. And to see if there was anything new under the sun since that time.

Of course 1964, the time of this book, was a watershed period, just that period when public optimism has not soured as a result of the John Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson/Richard Nixon Vietnam nightmare and the remnant reaction (read countercultural reaction by those who sought a “newer world”) that set off the current long wave of anti-intellectualism. Although the United States had just prior to this time gone, in the McCarthy, Nixon, and know-nothing friends red scare nightmare, through a short wave anti-intellectual period, this Hofstadter moment was one still driven by belief in the possibilities that science was our friend and that intellectuals could be trusted to not sell us out, whatever there was to sell out, and to whom.

Professor Hofstadter spends plenty of time on this period reflecting on the Adlai Stevenson campaign as the epitome of the rejection of “egghead” leadership and of the the “victory” of plebeian virtues of one Dwight David Eisenhower. Also reflected during this period are the various plebeian and patrician moves to isolate intellectuals after their heyday in the early years of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. So this part of his analysis has some common features with today’s anti-intellectualist movements. Also the various anti-intellectualist segments of society that were predominant during most of the 20th century: businessmen more interested in profits than arcadia (except to pick brains to increase profits); farmers more interested in harvests than non-farm public policy; those reformers (of a sort now familiar) who wanted to limit public education, low and high, to essentially vocational pursuits; and, of course, politicians, low and high, who rode the various waves of these movements.

Although many of the social groups that the professor highlighted still retain their anti-intellectual bent today I believe that the dramatic rise of the expert since the 1960s, and the media’s dependence on this element is something that might have surprised the professor. It is the one area that seems to me runs counter to the know-nothingness pull of American society in general. That said, the strength of this work, an academic work after all, and an intellectual historian’s academic work, are the parts dealing with the early roots the Puritan, and later, the post-American revolutionary plebeian democratic roots of the United States. He draws his line of continuity straight though that very clear trend to his time.

And one half century later, I believe, the professor would be able to continue to draw that line. That said, on this re-reading of the book, frankly, the professor's writing style, and some of the datedness of the material referenced, made this a less exciting read than when I stayed up quite a few nights until late to read every page it is the best source to start from when tracing the anti-intellectual current in American life. A current that appears is to be with us for a while. Again.

From The "Renegade Eye" Blog-"Republicrats Target Social Security"

Click on the headline to link to the above article via the Renegade Eye blog.

After The Tea Party-Us- The 2010 Midterm Congressional Elections- We Desperately Need To Fight For A Workers Party That Fights For A Workers Government-A Short Note

Markin comment:

In the aftermath of the 2008 presidential elections I, half-jokingly, ran a slogan- “After Obama-Us.” The serious part of that slogan was that once the illusions in the ephemeral “Obama the Charma” whirlwind swirl wore off and leftists, progressive and working people, who should have known better, sobered up then politically our day, the day of those who fight for our communist future, would come. Obviously, given the equally ephemeral capacity of the left to seriously take advantage of those Obamian disillusionments in the immediate situation, there was also fantastic quality, the half-joking part, to that exercise.

What is serious today in the aftermath of the 2010 election is the rise of the tea party movement and its ability electorally, in the short haul, to suck up the political air. Air that by all that is rational in modern class society torn every which way by the contradictions of capitalism should be ours. But, as one of the most general laws of political discourse foretells- politics abhors a vacuum. Thus, for today at least, and if the exit poll numbers are right and there is no reason to doubt their tenor if not their accuracy, there is a substantial working class component to the tea party movement. Not for the first time, given no real reason to seek help from the minuscule left that has the program but not the foot soldiers to bring dramatic social change, working people have sought their “salvation” elsewhere.

Today then I do not want to speak of those who have middle class professional jobs and who support the tea party movement between trips to Europe. Today I do not want to speak of my fellow AARP seniors who on the one hand benefit from the current social and health programs but rail against government hand-outs. Today I don not want to speak of those who, rich or just niggardly, who do not want to pay their taxes, frankly any taxes if you listen carefully to their cant. Those, for the most part are not “our people.”

No, today, I want to direct my attention, and yours, to the need, the desperate need, to break those elements of the working class enamored of this tea-ish movement to the fight for a workers party that fights for a workers government. Immediately the fight to get jobs, the fight to stop foreclosures, the fight for free quality health care and about seventy-three other fights that I have detailed elsewhere. That is the real point of today’s headline- "After the tea party, us." Otherwise it’s just back to the other party of capitalist, the Democrats. Been there, done that. More, later.