Both in reference to Obama and as a general observation, David Bromwich gets to the heart of the matter:
[Obama's] aversion to strife was plain from his conduct in the primaries and the general-election campaign. But the degree of avoidance we have seen could never have been predicted. Obama's training, one recalls, was in the community-reform methods of Saul Alinsky; and yet he seems to have adapted the relevant ideas in foreshortened form. The Alinsky process of reform, as Jeffrey Stout has pointed out, goes from powerlessness to power in several stages. There is, first, the public recognition of powerlessness; then the airing of injustices, by legitimate polarization and active protest; then proposals of concrete reform; and only at last, power-sharing and reconciliation.
The strange thing about Obama is that he seems to suppose a community can pass directly from the sense of real injustice to a full reconciliation between the powerful and the powerless, without any of the unpleasant intervening collisions. This is a choice of emphasis that suits his temperament.
Reconciliation, however, can't be genuine or lasting without some polarization, a careful (not generalized) exposure of injustices, and a fight that feels like a fight. In the absence of these, reconciliation dwindles into a rhetorical device; it leads to short-term salvation formulae and a renewal of discontents. The same objection applies to Obama's wholly rhetorical notion that he can overcome the illegal actions of the Bush-Cheney administration by pardoning lower-echelon executors and "facing the future."
This longing for premature reconciliation was the central reason for the failure of reconstruction after the American Civil War. Reconciliation is always the ultimate goal, but not at the price of turning a blind eye to injustice or in accepting as true delusional thinking. Some things are worth fighting for, and it is delusional to think that those who unjustly possess more than their fair share of wealth and power can be reasonably persuaded to give some of it up.
We're in a situation now where, since Reagan, Americans have allowed certain groups within the country to take more than their fair share, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Now that they have it, they are not simply going to say, "My Bad. Sure we can work this out." History teaches us that the more threatened the powerful feel, the more violent they become in the defense of what they have. And my take is that it's going to get worse. We ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to the violent defense of entrenched interests.
But Bromwich's point, and mine, is that when you are confronted with an implacable foe, a foe bent on winning no matter what the cost, you have to accept that no matter how much you would prefer to avoid it, you have to take on the fight. You have to summon up a commitment to winning as strong as that of the foe, and you have to be smarter and more creative because you cannot use the foe's unethical tactics. And we have the advantage of allowing their desperation to work against them.
They are motivated by fear, and their fear gives them energy and focus, but fear, as I've often said, makes us stupid. It clouds our thinking and narrows our perception so that we can only focus on the limited goal of surviving or withstanding the threat. People like Obama and progressives in general need to find ways to turn the fear-soaked thinking of the right and their corporate puppeteers to their advantage. They need to find strategies that are clear in their objectives–and bi-partisanship is not an objective; it's absurd at this point to think it is–and they have to maintain a poise and coolness in the execution of that strategy.
After observing Obama's presidential campaign, I thought he understood this. I thought he exhibited a toughness, shrewdness, and a poise that enabled him to out-think and outmaneuver his opponents. But I just haven't seen that shrewdenss in his first six months. He's being played, and I think it's because he doesn't seem to understand that he's in a fight. As Bromwich says earlier in his post Obama seems to see himself as a "moderator of a national discussion" rather than as a general storming a beach head. The sooner that he figures out that he has a very nasty fight on his hand, the better for us all.
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