Thoughts for the Brain - bespoke reality

Every moral philosophy presupposes a sociology, so said Alasdair MacIntyre. I’ve never read him but there’s no doubt this is true. In order to appraise anything in our society you have to understand what this society is and what point you are appraising it from. Even if you don’t accept the results of Marx’s study of political economy you have to accept he was on the right track.

We are lucky in Britain. Even at this eleventh hour we still have politics and public life constructed around the class point of view. There has been some talk about whether the recent presidential elections signal a return to reality in American public life; this is an example. The American ruling class has successfully prevented public life so far from forming on a class basis. This has not just involved fraud but an awful lot of force. Pre-World War Two class struggle was exceptionally bloody.

No ruling class is ever able to completely insulate itself. Despite the fantasies encouraged by skyscrapers, gated communities and industrial peonage that survives even today, 40 years after the Civil Rights movement, the American ruling class continues to ideologically organise the classes below it. America is a country where the right-wing mobilises, over issues such as tax and land values, against desegregation, reproductive rights, LGBT equality and immigration… and this is before we get into the true conspiracist fringe, and the pro-war rallies, yes, pro-war rallies, rallies for the powerful while they’re still in power, get a brain morans.

So often America has been described as undergoing a French Revolution in reverse, where the sans-culottes restore the ancient regime. The Republicans are like Jacobins in the negative sense, fanatics devoted to hammering reality into the shape of ideology. Remove any objective basis from politics and it will be dominated by lurid fantasies: Obama is a Muslim, general relativity is a liberal plot, gays caused Hurricane Sandy... one could go on. The sense of relief, not just with the presidential election, is understandable. Maybe the tide has turned. But we are dealing with the Democrats, who are perfectly happy not to capitalise on the current liberal shift in America.

We must beware of what the current Tory onslaught releases. We have no end of free-market fanatics, there are oil enriched climate change deniers in the cabinet, anti-abortionists on the benches, an ‘anti-wind farm agenda’ of all things in the Tory party and creationism in Gove’s ‘free’ schools. Part of the ruling class strategy of austerity is the struggle to remove class from the political equation. In this sense Blue Labour is prescient, though it shows the party admitting defeat before the battle has even really been engaged. The Labour party dare not appeal to its base to support the things it was founded to achieve.

We must head all this off before it comes to pass. Class must stay central to public life.

Thoughts for the Brain - Obamarama

Very well then I contradict myself. My abiding fear that wimpy, liberal America would be too enervated to stave off a Zomney Apocalypse proved unfounded. The turn out was enough and Obama won, which is about the best ‘realistic’ result we could have hoped for. There is still no significant party to the left of the Democrats, save for the Green Party, and I don’t know how they’ve done (or how much to the left of the Dems they actually are). One of these would really change the picture, and that's actual realism.

But what does the result mean? Politically it’s business as usual, albeit mildly more polite, erudite and consensual. Then again it was always going to be. If we’re talking about demographics, look at this, the results of the 2000 election. This was the last hurrah for Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It was a political strategy that sought to undo civil rights movement gains and cement Republican hegemony. Inner cities were left to decay, while suburbs were allowed to flourish. The working class, especially in the northern industrial cities, was subject to socio-economic torture.

Net migration since the 1970s within the United States has been north east to south west (people go where the jobs are, it makes sense - an example, here's a detailed map of 2008 movements based on IRS figures). The Democratic base is on the move while the Republican base is shuffling off the mortal coil. Hence Bill O’Reilly’s anxious observation, that the white establishment is now a minority. Why such anxiety, Bill, do minorities have a hard time of it in the Land of the Free?

We’re not done though. A determined social democratic party that understood its base (leaving aside how many of these things have ever actually existed) would have tailored their tactics to these facts, delivering reforms that strengthen their base, in other words actively overturning the effects Southern Strategy, re-segregation, deindustrialisation and urban decay. The Democrats are not that party and they never will be. From Gary Younge's piece in today's Graun:

The people who delivered him a second term on Tuesday night – the young, black and brown – are those who were least likely to have benefited from his first. His greatest cheer for the night was when he reprised a version of the speech that made him famous when he introduced John Kerry at the Democratic convention in 2004. 

"I believe we can keep the promise of our founders," he said. "The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try." 

That is what people voted for. The trouble is that while Obama has the eloquence to articulate those aspirations he has, for the most part, not had the courage to fight for them or the strategic ability to deliver them.

This is what the Republicans rely on.

News and spews...

Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke has been found in Western Sahara. Tut, the lengths some people went to avoid the Olympics. But the Sahara, in August; are you sure about that? Here’s the Wikipedia page on Western Sahara:. By all accounts it’s a vast, bleak area. It is a disputed territory, part of an ongoing struggle between The Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a government in exile. There was a war from 1975 (following the end of Spanish rule) until 1991. A ceasefire was brokered on the agreement Morocco would organise a referendum on independence. Such a referendum has failed to materialise. There was a protest movement in 2010-11, a far-western echo of the Arab Spring.

Less than a sixth of the population thinks the coalition government will last until 2015. Either that’s wishful thinking (and not necessarily left-wing wishful thinking – there are many, far too many people out there who don’t think this government is right-wing enough, hurting the working class enough) or it’s a political misunderstanding.

All three mainstream parties are committed to Thatcherite principles of government. They are committed to these principles against the population and against any democratic formal or informal process if needs be. Disputes about boundary changes or social housing schemes mean nothing next to the fact that the Liberal Democrats will be annihilated at the next general election while the Tories are unlikely to win a majority of seats. They will use as much time as possible to rig the terms of national politics for as long as possible.

Koranon cilaria ozu mahok! Hard line Republican Paul Ryan accidentally hailed by Mitt-for-Brains Romney as “the next president of the United States” is considered by conservatives to be the ideal candidate, including by squeaky clean, mentally competent, octogenarian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

Laugh, but if in January next year he’s Romney’s organ grinder he’ll be the second most powerful man in the world, a man who opposes healthcare, welfare support, pay equality legislation and abortion even after rape… and a fine mahok to you all.

News and Spews

I've not really got into the meat of this matter. It's hard to summon up much forensic outrage when you know the party of government is basically the political wing of the City of London. You associate Tories with corruption the same way you associate puppies with soiled rugs. Why shouldn't it extend to the (heavily subsidised) armed wing of the bourgeoisie

But I love this: Liam Fox apologises but denies any wrongdoing. In which case what is he apologising for? It's part of the modern art of lying and swindling; only apologise for trivial things or abstract ideas (like the impression of wrongdoing) and, if in doubt, play the good-faith card. I told you this in good faith. I came out with a pile of transparent nonsense and believed it at the time. It was real for me then, why can't it be real for you now?

Elsewhere, self-styled Hugo Chávez has condemned the "horrible repression" of anti-Wall Street styled protesters and self-styled described a US Republican presidential self candidate as "self crazy" for his criticism of Cuba and Venezuela.

Although still convalescing from self-styled cancer surgery in June followed by four rounds of chemotherapy, the 57-year-old Venezuelan president is quickly self returning to his self-styled tough self rhetoric and styled strong views.

Really? What's wrong with calling Mitt Romney crazy?

Around the world: newspaper hacks breathe a sigh of relief as the nascent and inexplicable rebellion against global capitalism finds its first articulate and photogenic spokesperson. Give it time and perhaps Camilla Vallejo will become the self-styled Camilla Vallejo. Still it beats the dark, deadly and possibly muslamic rebellion in the Middle East.

But something like that could never happen here... oh, hang on.

Giggles

Republican presidential hopeful Michelle Bachman is opposed to the HPV vaccine (not to mention the Soviet Union).

These people run the world, folks.

Me, myself, I don't know what she's so worried about, vaccines don't exist. No, they're magic serums. Vaccination doesn't occur because it is the interaction of amino acids, proteins, genetics and, ultimately, the descent of species through billions of years of natural selection, and that didn't happen folks, and there's no evidence it ever did!

Now stick your fingers in your ears and yell "lalalalalalala" until the rapture comes.