Sarah Palin - The politically correctedness has gotta out now....

I will never get that 8:22 of my life back.

To be fair...you could probably have done the same thing to Obama supporters. :)  I know I hate being put on the spot and have a hard time thinking and speaking with a mic in my face too.

As Joe Bageant explains it in Deer Hunting with Jesus:

"It's going to be a tough fight for progressives. We are going to have to pick up this piece of road kill with our bare hands. We are going to have to explain everything about progressivism to the people at the Royal Lunch because their working-poor lives have always been successfully contained in cultural ghettos such as Winchester by a combination of God rhetoric, money, cronyism, and the corporate state. It will take a huge effort because they...in many respects accept it as their lot."

Yes, Michelle but these people consented to being interviewed on camera. The intelligent thing to do when you have nothing to say is to decline.

Robin Williams on  The View,thios morning when asked when he started drinking....

" In Alaska, when I was not at the ends of the earth, but I could see it from there".

Thanks for that, Doug. 

Michelle wrote:

To be fair...you could probably have done the same thing to Obama supporters. :)  I know I hate being put on the spot and have a hard time thinking and speaking with a mic in my face too.

Michelle, you're right. If you search at youtube under interview Obama supporters and variants (interviewing Obama voters, interviews with Obama supporters, etc.) you can find lots of similar videos. I prefer not to post links here, since a lot of this stuff is posted by right-wingers I don't want to advertise. But you could probably do the same thing with NDP supporters, etc., especially when you can take all your footage, edit out anything intelligent, and only include the stupid stuff.

Actually, I really hate this kind of "blame the voter" schtick. All of our politicians have made careers, indeed, an entire vocation, out of voting for sentiment and shadows rather than principle and policy. How an Obama supporter, who follows a campaign desgned entirely on platitudes of "hope" and "change," who put their liberty in the hands of a man rewarded for what he "might" do, can turn around and laugh at blue-collar caricatures that believe in "conservatism" and "realness" is hypocritical to say the least.

This is what democracy looks like. We've made sure of that.

So Catchfire, how do we achieve the engaged citizenry that is truly required in a democratic society?

Caissa, I'm a critic, not a policy maker. That's someone else's job. ;)

Obviously it's a big question. The big answer would be: end capitalism yesterday, but that gets us about as far as putting our hopes in "hope." Personally, while I do feel the effects of electoral politics, mostly because I work in a discipline habitually targeted by conservative ideology, I'm pretty cynical about its potential to enact real change. The places where I've seen real work done is always local action and community solidarity. So that's where I would start. Join a community garden, start a local restaurant or pub co-op, action for local homeless shelters and fight state violence locally. Sometimes your local MP can help with that, sure--but wtf is Michael Ignatieff or Peter MacKay going to do to change my life in the particulars? Although I've always been fortunate in that the places I live have always had a strong community spirit and a forceful tradition of local action: Plateau-Mont Royal in Montreal, Leith in Edinburgh and now Commercial Drive/Strathcona in Vancouver. I recognize that unionizing in this way is far more difficult in different areas of the same city. It's an uphill battle anyway, made far more difficult.

Re: Snert--maybe (prolly) your comment was in jest, but I think it's important to draw the distinction. I am a voter, but I am also a consumer, a reader and watcher of media, a worker, a family member, a friend, a subject. Like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes. So when I say "We," I'm talking about society--the ideologically-impelled force that navigates History. Voters are a particular kind of subject with a particular social function--the subject that votes is different from the subject (and other forces) that constitute society.

Perhaps you can identify someone in history, catchfire, who identified so closely with "the people" as you and Walt Whitman, the apologist for emerging capitalism in America, the original bourgeois "thinker" in that country. And what would you call ...say...Voltaire and the folks who followed in that "most perfect of all worlds" (Candide).

Karl Marx was an apologist for emerging capitalism, George. As was Voltaire, of course. While I don't really get your Candide  reference, I'm sure Voltaire would conclude that  "we must cultivate our garden." You know, in the plural.

I supsect your objection to my above post comes from some sort of personal, rather than philosophical dissonance, but I'll answer it anyway. I used "we" to implicate myself in the way society has come to represent itself. You remain content to withdraw from society and sully the "great misled." Fine. But it's difficult to build consensus and solidarity that way. I would actually like to see more of this kind of inclusion expressed by our politicians. On the contrary, I find the neo-liberal tendency is towards division and hierarchy. "I feel your pain," says Bill Clinton. But it's our pain, Bill. Because when injustice endures it infects us all.

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because I just know that even though I'm a relatively intelligent person, I could easily be caught by some enterprising videographer hemming and hawing too. :)

To me it's not so much that they hem or haw, or aren't instantly articulate. It's that even when they can't think of a single policy of Palin's, they're still ready to die for her.

And catchfire, there is nothing "personal" as in "personal dissonance" involved. Even old Mark Twain could be critical as hell of his society. He would not be caught dead quoting Leaves of Grass.

George Victor wrote:

The question was, catchfire, can you name someone who IDENTIFIED so closely with "the people" as to use the "we"?  I think not. They all used a critical mind. And now it's a tool of the politician.

Honestly, I don't really understand your objection to the statement of mine that you quoted. We seem to be changing focus, going from the above quote. But to answer your question, I guess you missed my allusion to this document earlier:

Quote:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Or, a variation:

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Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la Nation. Nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer d'autorité qui n'en émane expressément.

I don't see the distinction between "we" and a "critical mind." Perhaps you still adhere to the Great (White) Man theory, so that could explain your issue here. Of course we can only speak as individual subjects--many c-20 writers tried to beat this restriction through multiplicity: Joyce, Dos Passos, Grassic Gibbons, etc.; but their attempts always come back to an irreducible, inviolate subjectivity. When I think of writers and thinkers who tried to approach this problem dialectically--i.e. we are both subjects with individual intention and socially-mediated exigence--I think of Brecht, Pynchon, Sarah Kane, DeLillo, etc. But I also suspect that both modes of interpretation are symptoms of their (our) historical moment. You can validate the primacy of a "critical mind" (whatever that is...presumably it lies out of the "great misled's" reach) all you like, but it's a fantasy.

It looks like Obama will just be able to add 30,000,000 folks to the list of whose who can "afford" health care in  'Merica. And I think Snert has identified why he could not get the whole enchilada.

And while you quote the constitution, "critical" minds in the U.S. today (i.e. Susan Jacoby) explain the huge GAP in the average person's understanding of their political system today, the the framers of the constitution.

I just the other day used the "white man's burden" idea of Kipling's time, but, of course, it has nothing to do with how I view the unthinking, unread, uncritical, consumer/taxpayer today. These folks have been "created" by those who lead them into war in places around the world, waving their goddam flag and making pious sounds about "God and country". You have one strange idea of what drives our political economy, mate.

And of course the society of France and America before revolution (Voltaire's France) would not have compelled him or Thomas Jefferson to think in terms of "we", except as an idea of an idealized future.  As Jacoby points out, such ideals mean nothing for folks who refuse to (or cannot) read.

And among the folks of Winchester, Virginia, the supporters of Palin,As Joe Bageant explains it in Deer Hunting with Jesus:

"It's going to be a tough fight for progressives. We are going to have to pick up this piece of road kill with our bare hands. We are going to have to explain everything about progressivism to the people at the Royal Lunch because their working-poor lives have always been successfully contained in cultural ghettos such as Winchester by a combination of God rhetoric, money, cronyism, and the corporate state. It will take a huge effort because they...in many respects accept it as their lot."

Seems to me he explains the differences between Obama supporter and Palin quite well. To begin with, acceptance of the status quo seems a definite Palin propensity, as distinct from working for change.

I can't follow your thinking, George. You are bringing too many disparate writers into this conversation with no gesture towards cohesion. Are you suggesting that someone who makes a "critical appraisial of their society" can't conceive of solidarity? That anyone mentioned in this thread (except for me, of course) are simply derivations of Maggie Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society"? A very strange prospect. Honestly, I don't know what to conclude from your posts except expunge the first-person plural pronoun from the English language. I certainly take your point that the "hometown-ness" of someone like George Bush Jr and Sarah Palin is a smoke and mirrors show meant to project a class consciousness and commensality that has no basis in reality, but that strikes me as a perversion of 'we', not reason for its dismissal.

Or maybe you just don't like Walt Whitman. Fair enough, I guess.

You asked me to name writers, George. I did. That was when I was trying to take you seriously, but now this is getting stupid. Goebbels! I have no idea what you are talking about. You criticized me for using the word "we" (again, !) and now apparently I don't believe in engaging in critical analysis. What drift!

Here: I'll never use the word "we" again if you promise not to read it.

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I just want you to name me one so brain dead as to not engage in critical analysis of their society. You are not Maggie, for sure, but you are in thrall to the idea of society as a homogenous, non-stratified, mass of humanity, Rousseau's ideal of our beginning in a state of nature.

I think catchfire's reference to Whitman's "I contain multitudes" argues against this accusation.

As usa 99 said:

"Have you Palin haters seen the polls lately? Bad news for you. Palin is within 5-7 points of Obama in approval numbers. His numbers are in a free fall and her poll numbers are climbing. What does that mean for 2012 if she decides to run for Prez? You do the math. Should mean another historic election for the country..."

As U said:

"George, with respect, can't you get the flock out of here and try to talk about "the people" with a little more humility?"

"Humility"? Like you U? Say, I'll bet you believe that Joe Bageant is just putting on superior airs in his description of life in Winchester, Virginia. Looking down on folks around him. Not as sympathetic to their feelings and needs as their political idol, Sarah. That must be it. And that's why farmpunk said:

"I thought about putting up a discussion on the book but didn't think it would babble friendly."

Turns out, the language is babble "unfriendly", so much so that folks won't give Deer Hunting a gander. I will "flock out of here" U. I quite give up on your ever understanding the Sarah Palin phenom, which "we" all understand is transitory anyway.  Right?  Or is there light in the hills, beyond Jesus?

And as Bageant says in yesterday's blog (again describing Sarah country):

"When World War Two started 45% of Americans lived on farms or in farming based communities. Ten years after the war only 12% remained on farms, and not much later it dropped to six percent. And believe me, they did not all leave willingly.

"The result is that we are into our third generation of underclass whites -- around 60 million of them. At one point in the 1950s when unions were at their peak, a large portion of these people briefly constituted a legitimate working class. Since then they have been ground back down into a malleable disposable work force with no real contours, no vision, no philosophy or principles of labor, zero negotiation regarding the price of their labor, and no avenues for self determination as individuals or as a class.

"They are that great white unwashed that educated liberals just cannot get their heads around. Liberal audiences ask me,  "Why are so many working class Americans non-union or anti-union?" Sometimes I reply that if you kick a dog hard enough and often enough, the dog will do any goddamned thing you want, whether it is "in his interests" or not. If the dog doesn't bite that union organizer, the poor fucking beast doesn't get fed at all.

Educated urban liberals never seem to grasp that most Americans no longer have access to the levers of self-determination. But then, I never expect the bourgeoisie to understand the legions of industrial serfs outside the gates. Nor do they much bother to try. After all, they've "got theirs." Education, safe working conditions, negotiable wages, access to real culture if they choose, progeny who will more or less continue their class patterns, even if on a somewhat lesser scale. When they look around their affinity groups and communities, they see only people like themselves. "Naw, we're not elites," they conclude.

"But the sheer gravitational pull of 60 million people circling the drain is starting to draw these elites who do not know they are elites toward the drainpipe. So now we are seeing academic papers with titles such as "Does a white American underclass really exist?" Lemme see now, are there any clues? Well, about 49.1 million people, most of them white, went without food at various times in 2008 (USDA). This is called "food insecurity" in government and academic circles. I suppose the 3.1 million folks sleeping under bridges, in cars, in shelters and cardboard boxes are experiencing "housing insecurity." This includes the 1.4 million homeless children attending our public schools. I suggest they start by asking these people if there is a white underclass in America. You know, get it straight from the horse's mouth. You don't know if you don't ask. I mean, hell, these people might all be just hobo-ing for a lark!

Whatever the case, I read a slew of these studies in the course of writing the new book. My conclusion is that the academic elites can hustle a grant out of any damned question you can think up, then write 70,000 words that not only do not answer the question, but lay the groundwork for further research into other ways to not answer the question.