The Decade Is Still With Us: Look To The Future, Not The Past
By Danny Schechter
Schechter's ZSpace Page: Dec 29, 2009
As 2010 Bids Adieu, Our Challenge Lies Ahead Not Behind
Lets drop all the decade hype. I know we tend to structure history in ten
year swallows: The 60's, the 70's, the 80's etc. It is all so neat and so
clean but, alas, not quite true.
The decade that began with the new millennium, doesn't really end until the
end of 2010, and that's not this year, even though we may want it too.
History doesn't self-package itself to fit a Greatest Hits song compilation.
The 1950's with its anti-communist craziness and nuclear arms race started
after the war, in the l940's and didn't end until Eisenhower's famous
warning about the military industrial complex which is still with us all
these years later. It was Ike who legitimated tricky Dick Nixon whose ride
was just beginning. Tricky was devious but also an environmentalist and
smarter than we gave him credit for.
The 60's as an era of drugs, sex and rock and roll didn't get going until
mid decade as the Vietnam War's impact drove a whole generation into
opposition. The 60's stayed with us, sparked by FM rock radio, until Nixon
imploded and the war ended in l975.
Soon punk and disco brought on the Me generation and led us to Jimmy
Carter's "malaise" and then to the rise of Ronny Raygun. When the left
splintered, the right organized, putting in place a network of think tanks
to take over. The conservatives drove the 80's until Clinton's centrism
snuffed the spirit of the sixties in a 90's even as it appeared to be
embracing it. It's the Economy Stupid led to deregulation and the crisis we
are now coping with.
That led us to the neo-con resistance and the stolen election of 2000,
stolen by aggressive GOP tactics and Democratic inertia. With the help of
various turncoats and media assets-like Fox and talk radio-they renergized
their movement by adopting 60's tactics while waging a culture war against
60's values.
Al Gore, now seen as an agent of climate change, blew the election and in
the process blew up the power and personage of a political chameleon/wannabe
messiah named Joseph Lieberman, a civil right activist turned sleazy
opportunist and health care reform killer. He's still with us, like gum on
your shoe, more obnoxious than ever, as a new year begins.
Barack Obama's election seemed an anomaly, but clearly it was disgust with
his predecessor that drove him from obscurity to the presidency. Obama's
"outside-inside" strategy inspired millions of new voters. But once in
Office, the office took over, co-opting his populist inclinations and
burying his grass roots movement in a miasma of paralyzing pragmatic
centrism rationalized as the politics of the possible. Supporters became
recipients of emails, not potential activists.
Obama realized that the Bush era had not ended in the bureaucracies or in
the media and halls of Congress. To undercut its lingering impact, he
embraced some of its tough-guy national security boilerplate. He got along
with Pentagon power by going along. Compromise began to become his mantra.
Miniscule reforms were presented as great victories. Withdrawal from Iraq
was delayed as was the closing of GITMO.
Had he become a Bush 2? Many think so. Was he selling out or buying in? ,
Ross Douthat argues in the Times that Obama is a knee-jerk liberal who
believes in working within institutions for change. According to Douthat,
reports Naked Capitalism, "that makes him...an odd bird who seems a
Machiavellian willing to cut any deal juxtaposed with the soaring rhetoric
of fairly ideological big government liberalism." The problem with
institutions is that they rarely change without exposes or outside pressure.
It was not that the he owed anything to "the left," once his radical
preacher Rev Wright and one time buddy Bill Ayers had became albatrosses. He
was now trying to appear non-partisan and non-ideological, but progressives
read into his victory much more than was ever possible to achieve, much more
than even he pledged. He took the liberals for granted with lip service, not
major policy shifts.
As the blogosphere blathered and the unions splintered, there was very
little leverage or organizing underway to reach out to his campaign
activists. As the right built people power, the left built polemics. As his
opponents-those that hated him and denied his legitimacy--- seized the
initiative, the Obamacrats moved into defensive bunkers keeping up
appearances, one step forward, two back.
Once he realized that the most "powerful man in the world," only had the
power to propose while Congress disposes; once he realized that the right
not only would not play bi-partisan games and that the GOP had been taken
over by the bully boys; once he realized that they would intimate their own
to enforce "discipline;" once he realized that they would not even accept
the legitimacy of his election or citizenship; once he realized that to
survive he needed to embrace the Pentagon's logic and the dictates of the
Wall Street donors who had backed him....
Once he realized he was virtually alone in the Big House (yes, it is a
metaphor, too, for a prison), the die was cast. He was captured with a
chorus of naysayers on the right and left. He was trapped by the logic of
his choices and the limits of his vision.
Which is not to say he was ever a man of the left. He told us that he would
escalate the Afghan war during the campaign. He showed us where he stood on
the economic collapse with his appointees like Summers, Geithner et.al. To
fight off the right, he needed the center and the media on his side. He is
by nature cautious and cunning, moving step by step, winning some, losing a
lot. He knows that he can't pitch a perfect game. He's a perception manager,
not a street fighter. For many he is a big disappointment. For others, the
question is 'did you expect Che Guevara?'
The challenge now is not to walk down memory lane but to strategize about
building the future in an imperfect world. What lessons can we learn and
apply? How can progressives reenergize an outside-in strategy, how can
they/we start framing issues, building a base and then mobilizing it. Will
there be a return to the streets or more co-optation by the illusions of
power in the streets? Think about the choices. What are you going to do?
News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org His new book is THE
CRIME OF OUR TIME on the financial crisis as a crime story. Comments to
dissector@mediachannell.org
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
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