unusualmusic_lj_archive

What am I doing here? by Paul Rosenberg

Obama Is Absolutely Right Obama is absolutely right that we stand at a time of historic possibility for fundamental change-if anything, he under-estimates how much this is so.

He is also absolutely right that he is the perfect figure to lead us in a new direction. He doesn't have a lot baggage, he is someone that young people can identify with, he is not deeply embedded in a Washington culture that is far removed from the real pulse of the country. But...

Obama Is Absolutely Wrong
Obama is absolutely wrong in his fundamental political analysis. The problem in America today is not a polarized political system in which Democrats and liberals are as equally to blame as Republicans and conservatives. The problem is a political system that's dominated by this sort of brain-dead political narrative. And the longer that Obama promulgates such brain-dead political narratives, the more he squanders his enormous potential.

This sort of brain-dead political narrative dominates our political system because it's highly beneficial to the right wing, which has positioned itself to have veto power over such things. It's not the ideal narrative for them. "Democrats are the source of all evil, and should be hunted down like dogs" is the ideal narrative for them.

But they will happily settle for a dominant narrative that says it is equally reasonable-and equally divisive-to say "Democrats are the source of all evil, and should be hunted down like dogs" or to say "no, we're not, we're just sorta stupid, is all."

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Will The Real Culture War Please Stand Up???
by: Paul Rosenberg

It's the grand premise of the Obama campaign that he can bring us together, slay the dragon of partisan divisiveness and end the culture wars which he lays at the feet of the Baby Boom generation. It's a nice, appealing narrative, in a way, it all turns on the question of what you mean by "culture war." The commonsense meaning of "culture war" over the past few decades is a war over social mores between hierarchical "traditional values" and the post-1950s emergence of egalitarian values, especially with respect to race and gender, more closely aligned with the traditional values at the core of our Constitution.

But there's a deeper meaning, which is clearly understood by rightwing culture warriors, and virtually unknown to everyone else. This meaning comes, ironically, from a leading Marxist theorist, the highly independent Italian leader, Antonio Gramsci, who described culture war as a struggle for ideological control of the broad range of institutions in society. And in this deeper sense, Obama's analysis is completely upside-down--the problem is not that both sides are equally to blame, but that only the right is actually fighting a coordinated culture war as Gramsci defined it. It's not a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight, it's a case of brining a plastic yogurt spoon to a nuclear war.

Gramsci was grappling with the question of why Marxist predictions had not come to pass, why the rise of working class power had not lead to a communist revolution, or even the dominance of socialist political parties. The reason, he believed, was that workers aspired to become their class enemy--they wanted to join the bourgeoisie, not destroy it, and the reason for that was the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, expressed through a whole range of political institutions.

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I intend to follow it up with some diaries that look at how the right has moved in on various different cultural institutions-possible examples include think tanks, the media, K-12 and higher education, churches, state governments, the courts and civil society institutions such as the Boy Scouts. I have one about the intrusion of "homeland security" on academia that's ready to go. I plan to do one or two others this weekend or next. Two other forms of follow-up are planned-first, more scrutiny of Barack Obama in light of this analysis and his failure to grasp what's going on, and second, a step back to discuss what the two sides are all about. Broadly conceived, I will characterize them as hierarchy, authority and coercion on the right, versus equality, autonomy, and voluntary cooperation on the left. These encompass a wide range of specific forms and culture expressions on both sides that have their differences with one another, but that all express similar fundamentals.

So what the hell is ACTUALLY going on?