Seeking Progressive Social Change

In 1981, Ronald Reagan proclaimed “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” bringing the modern conservative movement into the mainstream, marking an end to the New Deal concept that public works - i.e., “the people” can be employed to smooth the edges of capitalism’s sharper sides. A generation later and you’ve got to marvel at the way market-driven, laissez-faire strategies dominate public policy. Few among the mainstream even question the approach. For that, you’ve got to give those conservatives some credit. They’ve been fabulously successful.

Until now. More and more you read about the crisis facing the movement, the trouble for conservative think tanks, and the poor Republican chances in 2008, while conservatives search for strategies to recapture the American mindset. What you don’t see - yet - in the commercial media is the reason conservatives are scrambling in the first place: The fanatical attempt to shove every social policy within a free market framework has failed.

Sometimes, the message stops resonating because the philosophy stinks.

Case in point: The NY Times had a good read a few weeks back called “Conservative Thinkers Think Again” analyzing how the intellectual right struggles to articulate “solutions to emerging problems like energy, the environment and immigration” within a conservative ideology. What’s missing is the point that these desperate social problems exist as a direct result of the market-driven, hands-off conservative policies of the last twenty-five years.

I mean, c’mon already. Not mentioned in that Times article are other problems, like the shift in wealth to the top percent, the wild gulf between super-rich and everyone else, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, out-of-reach college costs, suffocating personal and family debt, the destruction of our downtowns, black box outsourced voting, and on. In fact it’s hard to find a modern problem that you can’t connect back to the corporatization of our society and its priority of profit over people that so defines the last twenty-five years.

Listen, I am not saying that free market solutions are wrong, always, end of discussion. The point is that no single ideology fits every situation. That’s fanaticism, and it’s as dangerous on the right as on the left. A more moderate approach - call it the “Progressive Middle” would choose appropriate strategies to address particular social challenges according to the most reasonable method. Need new technologies to solve a worldwide energy crisis? Free market innovation through competition (albeit backed by government incentives) might be just the thing. Need to provide every sick person with affordable, effective health care? A government-run Single Payer system is the way to go.

My argument is that there’s a balance somewhere between “all free market, all the time” and a Soviet Five Year Plan. Talk to your friends in Europe and you’ll see that life can be financially stable for a majority, provide an effective social safety net for those who need it, and allow people to live satisfying lives. (And you get to take four-week vacations in the summer, imagine that.) Yeah, I know, the taxes, the taxes. Most likely there are lot fewer millionaires in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Italy, etc. But I know there’s a lot more contentment, less stress and more leisure time than the US, AND there’s excellent social services, reliable public transportation, and a high quality of life overall. Is it utopia? Well, no. But can we learn a thing or two? You bet.

I’m not addressing in this post the hypocritical side of the modern conservative movement which - in practice, if not theory - has been one of the greatest bait and switches in history, a philosophy that says “small government” is fine when it involves working or poor or middle class folks, but a whole different thing when it involves military or corporate pockets. Instead, I’ll just quote Howard Zinn:

The good news is that words like Zinn’s are finding an audience among the mainstream, finally. It seems that the insanity of our corporate American dystopia here in 2008 is starting to become recognized, understood, and rejected (that happens a lot during really bad economic times.) But it’s probably what’s behind Obama’s charge (even as he tacks to the right) and it’s what’s been driving the Netroots movement as well.

Fingers crossed, but as we start the new century it’s possible that new ideas will find footing. Worth hoping for, anyway.

I was a writing teacher for a few years in the early 90s, and was lucky enough to land a history gig a few days before one semester’s start. This would mean a lot fewer blue books to grade - a plus - but little time to “prepare” a class that would run from Columbus to the day before yesterday. And I only had three days.

I got to thinking about this when I stumbled onto the July 4th Special: Readings From Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States” over at Democracy Now. Because that semester, A People’s History of the United States saved me. It was my constant reference that year and became required reading for every subsequent semester I taught.

This is a book designed to get you to sit up and pay attention, right from page one, where there’s the kind of thing to make a reactionary swoon:

I hear it now: Shouts of “revisionist history” across the web. Well, was Columbus a saint? For many years kids were taught an expurgated Columbus story, that he discovered America, that he was a brilliant navigator, and a hero. Was that the truth? Or the quote above?

How about both.

History - just like our every day lives - is not a collection of neatly cleaved stories out of a TV sitcom. Human experience is rich, and complex, and full of contradictions. Those we call heroes one day can break your heart the next.

When it comes to people - and what’s history if not a story about people? - nothing’s ever simple. This is what grown-ups understand, and why a lot of thoughtful folks these days reject commercial infotainment and the mainstream press as written for a childlike audience with childlike simplicity. What’s that kind of approach to current events get you? Eight years of a social and political disaster called the Bush Administration, for one. So just like a healthy democracy requires an enlightened electorate to make socially responsible decisions about where we’re headed, social history requires an honest, self-critical understanding of where we came from. Otherwise we’ll just keeping barreling on to the next catastrophe.

So it’s important to reject the term “revisionist history” outright because it makes the assumption that everything is already known and there can be no new ideas. But that’s ridiculous. We don’t reject new technology as “revisionist technology”. When ice is found on other planets we don’t call it “revisionist science”. We’re constantly making new discoveries, whether in a test tube or in the library. “Revisionist” history is a claim for reactionaries to resist new ideas which might - heaven forbid - lead to social change.

That’s what makes Zinn’s book such an important contribution to our collective understanding of the past. It’s OK to be proud of our past and to be happy with the personal freedoms we have. Lincoln WAS a great leader, if you ask me. Washington WAS a fine first president. I’m very pleased to live in a country where I can write this very post without fear of incarceration, for instance. But we didn’t get these freedoms out of the establishment’s generosity. It took a lot of pushing and shoving - much of it ugly - to attain most of what we take for granted now. It’s going to take the same watchfulness to make sure they stick around, too.

Zinn’s book wasn’t the first to make these points but his book is the most readable and engaging one I know and thus its success. In fact it’s a page-turner, a must read for anyone who wants a fuller, more honest view about where we came from and where we’re headed. It’s one of the most important book I’ve ever read. It may be for you too.

Stumbled across this video while kicking around the Web this morning. Comes by way of American Humanity, a blog devoted to exposing anti-immigrant sentiment (and a good read, by the way - nicely done!)

So check this video out, called “Stinky Mexican immigrants are taking over America!”

Give me a title like that and I’m set to blast this thing as another immature, anti-immigrant, fascistic (let’s be honest) rant against poor people. Lo and behold, it’s an entertaining and thoughtful presentation that exposes many of the anti-immigration myths floating out there amid the mainstream conventional wisdom.

Imagine that! A young-ish American expressing their own reasonable anti-establishment thoughts and doing so with intelligence and wit. Was it really only a few years ago the whole country rushed to war behind a cowboy president, cheering a “dead or alive” foreign policy? Now here we are a few years later and a more and more we’re seeing people thinking for themselves again, questioning the status quo.

What is this, the 1960’s? Well, no. The 60’s didn’t have social media to spread the word from the bottom up. This is pretty cool. It’s not perfect, I guess. But I’ll take this kind of change.

You hear a lot about how “this generation” is soaked in commercial entertainment and chasing after one self-gratification to another (well, actually you might hear a lot about that on this blog). But then again, here’s this wonderful netroots movement of people who both deeply care and are deeply engaged. It’s a good sign of the times. What can one say except “bring ‘em on”.

So there I am, standing in line at the post office, watching the ubiquitous television silently running through the standard montage of daily disasters. Homes falling into rivers, people being mugged on security cameras, twenty car pileups on the highway, and on.

Just another day among my fellow citizens in the public square. And I ask you: Is this information we need to help us build fulfilled lives? Does it better our democracy?

No. It’s cheap entertainment. And since it comes by way of other people’s misery, (hurricanes, floods, unsolvable dilemmas), it’s entertainment at another’s expense, and for cable news profits.

That, dear readers, is called exploitation.

About a year back I had to go to the local cable TV store, the place where you exchange a busted remote or set-top box. And there they were: Three TVs tuned to Lifetime, keeping the folk well sedated during the wait, I suppose. They were running some sappy “romance” movie, and a woman was being raped and beaten while we stood there watching.

It was the most surreal event you can imagine - not just because a woman was being sexually abused before our eyes, but that most people yawned and scratched themselves as if nothing was wrong with it.

Why is it OK that people are raped, pillaged and beaten across 500 channels all day long and it’s OK with us? What’s happened to our sense of perspective? And why must we - and our kids - be subjected to this junk at public spaces? More and more you run into television intruding onto our public world. My bank’s got them, the doctor’s office uses them, even the diner I used to like put them up. We don’t eat meals in my house with the television on; why would I go to a restaurant to sit dumbly in front of one there?

This is one of those political arguments that transcends party. Right-wing, left-wing, we ought to all feel outrage over the excesses of commercial entertainment and its intrusion into our private lives. (And if you want some warm and fuzzies check out Mr. Obama’s eloquence on media and kids here.) That’s why I also love organizations like White Dot, in the UK, a country which frankly is miles ahead of the US in terms of recognizing the negative impact of media on our lives. You can even choose a “media-free” car on the London-Heathrow train. Imagine that.

I think the awareness in the US is starting to jell. Although - sadly - the website for TVTurnoff appears to have gone dark, the Center for Screen Time Awareness seems to have picked up the slack. (If anyone has information on either of these sites, please let me know.) Many people I know profess embarrassment at watching TV, a welcomed sign-of-the-times. Still, the next time you enter a public space and there’s a TV blaring away, just zap the thing with your TV-B-Gone. And help bring a little more peace into the world.