There's been a lot of people in the liberal blogosphere calling for the impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney recently, people who had declined to do so until recent political events (namely the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence).
Bloggers of a more radical bent have been calling for impeachment for years while those same liberal folks claimed that impeachment wasn't necessary or politically viable, while, in some cases, attacking the radical bloggers for being crazy or alarmist. Bloggers of an even more radical bent just sighed and went back to work, or ignored the whole farce altogether.
Just sayin'.
Second, I think that most of the liberal folks who are calling for impeachment are having problems seeing the big picture (a phrase I do hate, yes). The current system, insofar as it ever worked like it's supposed to (hell, even like it 'worked' from WWII-1992), is no longer working in the same fashion. We are even farther from the abstract ideal of a "democratic republic" or a "democracy" than we were before the middle of Clinton's term, when the nascent Conservative Movement really started frothing at the mouth.
There are lots of structural issues that are impeding impeachment (one of the large ones being that many people actually think we live in a democracy). If things were working like they do in high school government classes, the current President might not have made it into office in the first place, and certainly wouldn't have stayed in office past 2004.
More acute observers are aware that the fight is actually over 'maintaining the system' (and they say this like the system is worth keeping!), but I'm not sure even they realize how much things have changed, or how much things (even pre-Bush) don't match the abstract ideals many Americans hold about the United States.
Maybe this whole sad episode will radicalize some of them - it, along with the emergence of blogging and the Internet, sure has brought a bunch of new folks into politics - but I wonder about what they will learn from all of this. Will they learn about systems of oppression? Will they learn about structural power and the ugly side of U.S. history? Will they learn about the reasons Democrats went along with so much of this crap for a long time (and it's not just the people, people - it's the system), reasons like the two-party system and the need for campaign finance reform? Will they learn about the downside of capitalism instead of learning about the downside of Republican governance?
Will the learning people do - those that even bother, that is; I'm thinking mostly the recent upsurge in Democratic Party activists and "engaged citizens" - will their learning be about the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and how to wage a partisan political war, or will it involve challenging their assumptions about America? Will it involve doing some internal work and becoming different people?
Will it involve more than outrage?
Saturday, July 21, 2007
My Two Cents
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1 comments:
It seems like the progressive movement would benefit from doing a logical framework/appreciative inquiry exercise. Take stock of where we are, envision a desired future, elaborate the activities/tasks that, based on our assumptions, would get us closer to that desired future (while improving the lot of all in the here and now), design an implementation strategy, and revise along the way. In other words, if they see impeachment as an end in and of itself, they are suffering from a short-sighted social movement planning. That's why if I'm paying attention to party politics at all, it's local green party actions. Like in Vermont - they call for impeachment as a pretext for implementing activities related to the 10 Social Justice values of the Green Party. That's one big issue in the US - a party doesn't establish their platform and then evaluate itself on how much progress it made on the platform 3-5 years on. Instead, we have presidents who set their "agendas" and oblige the rest of the party to follow.
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