Needed in our political discourse: More anger

Once again, we are hearing calls for  a toning down of political discourse in the US.  This summer, the trigger was the “March to Restore Sanity” called by Jon Stewart.  This week, it is the tragic events in Arizona.  The notion is the same, and it was wrong then, and it is wrong now.  Calls for turning down the volume are coming from both the center and the left, encouraging the conflation of those two categories, as so often occurs in the US.  The main difference is that the center makes perfunctory gestures to disavow ‘extremes on both sides’ while to their left the focus is more explicitly on the hatred spewing from the right.  In practice, they are quite similar, since Centrists can hardly find anyone on the left who produces convincingly vitriolic material.  Although these calls have many people agitated (impassioned in their calls for passionless discourse), I’m not very clear on what the end game is.  People like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are not much more amenable to reason than Jared Loughner.  Paul Krugman says they should be shunned, but his audience, for the most part, already does shun them. (Krugman himself is frequently described as vitriolic  by many on the right.  As Jack Bratich pointed out about conspiracy theories, trying to say, ‘I’m not vitriolic, you are’ usually turns into an exercise in futility).  The Republican leadership is not substantially better.  Perhaps the centrist leadership of the Democratic party should abandon any hope of working with them,  but explaining why they are doing so would almost certainly mean dipping into the sort of language that is supposed to be avoided.  And this is the problem.  If you try to avoid forceful language, you tie your hands, an undesirable position to enter political fights.  Obama’s dreary legacy is testament to the intellectuality of this mentality.   Let’s all work together, he announces, and starts making one concession after another to prove he is reasonable to Republicans who have not the least interest in working with him.

Or lets consider another line of argument.  The right always yells that practically any effort to raise taxes or otherwise redistribute resources is ‘class war’ rhetoric. On the left, including among many liberals, it has often been said in the last thirty years that there is in fact a class war in the US–except it is a one way war, with the wealthy beating up on the poor and working class (and lately, the middle class as well).  It is worth asking, if this is the case, what sort of language and tactics are needed to actually win this class war?  Won’t we need to vilify our enemies?  Or is the hope that, having identified this class war, that the side that is winning will call it off?  Simply to describe the problems facing American society–mass incarceration, a ruined economy, a sprawling, murderous, useless empire–requires language that is not likely to be evaluated as ‘civil’ or ‘reasonable’.  A few weeks ago, Joseph Stiglitz, who more or less represents the extreme left of what can sometimes be published in the mainstream media, said that it was a serious error to not prosecute any bankers in the wake of the financial crisis.  As far as I can tell, he did not get much heat for these comments, mostly because it is practically inconceivable that they will be acted upon.  One can only imagine what Centrists would call him if there was an actual movement to prosecute people like Larry Summers and  Jamie Dimon, rather than invite them to give council to the president.

Attempts to appear reasonable deeply betray many people’s experience of the current state of things, and leave an opening for the right to channel that anger.  Claiming that they are unreasonable while those in power do nothing much to alleviate the crisis only further legitimates them.  So instead of less anger, let us resolve to put forth analysis that is as truthful, focused and angry as the moment requires.  And realize that the Centrists calling for calm are not even remotely our allies in this venture.

Posted by Steve Sherman on Jan 12 2011. Filed under News Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry