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Giving
Thanks for the Fight
I
have become a Change.gov addict. It is not, as some of my
grumpy “Obama’s not lefty enough for me” friends may suppose,
that I think the new administration is going to make everything
hunky-dory and that I’ve decided to be transformed into a
flag-worshipping cheerleader. He’s a politician, and one who
managed to get elected president of this country. Of course
he’s a mixed bag. The honeymoon will be short.
But allow me and my democracy-loving self a little more time
to revel in what one blogger recently called “Government 2.0.”
It’s one thing to send a letter or e-mail into the void and
maybe get a form letter back weeks later. It’s another to
have your opinion solicited before a policy is formulated,
and then to see a blog post the next day with a video of a
staffer responding to some of the comments that came in on
that topic.
Of course I am under no delusions that Barack Obama is personally
reading my opinion on his cabinet picks (too many Clintonites)
or green job policies (be sure to include retrofits, not just
new buildings; skip the nuclear power) or his AG candidate’s
record of supporting adult “obscenity” prosecutions (theocratic
and a waste of money).
I know this kind of feedback is only a small part of what
will have to happen over the next four years. To get anything
difficult done, even with a basically supportive administration,
we’re going to have to do the hard work same as always—the
organizing, arguing, coalition-building, fund-raising, and
protesting. But making it clear that feedback from constituents
is welcome and useful is a major symbolic gesture, one of
those “process matters” moves that gets nearly as many points
from me as heady promises like “I will further promote transit
by creating incentives for transit usage that are equal to
the current incentives for driving” (in a letter from the
candidate to a pro-transit organization).
It was also neat to see them blogging a few responses from
McCain voters to the promise in the victory speech to be “your
president too.”
Of course that was a nice rhetorical flourish: exactly the
kind of self-confident poise we’ve come to expect from the
unflappable Obama. The interesting thing is that it may be
more in-reach than it feels.
One of the best things I’ve read recently was an AlterNet
piece by Joshua Holland responding to claims by right-wing
pundits that, despite this election, America is really “still
a center-right nation.” Holland swiftly dispatches this with
a ream of survey data. He makes three main points: (1) Americans
do lean “right” on three things: God, guns, and sex. (2) Most
of them don’t actually know what “liberal” and “conservative”
mean in political terms; they just know that liberal is a
dirty word. Apparently one-third of us can’t actually identify
which party is supposed to be the conservative one. (3) For
the clincher, though, the article said if you leave out the
labels and ask questions about any other area of policy—the
environment, regulation of big business, government intervention
in the economy, etc.—lo and behold, we elected the right guy,
because Americans are (by significant margins) pretty darn
liberal. (This is why the hard-right operatives like to emphasize
God, guns, and sex. Or just name calling.)
This doesn’t mean we don’t have things to learn from the conservatives
and libertarians among us. Remember Scott Page, diversity
scholar from University of Michigan, who found that diverse
perspectives are more important to a successful problem-solving
team than even ability in the field. Obama and his “team of
rivals” are banking on it. I have a suspicion that, at the
grassroots level, this may go better if liberals can make
the transition out of a defensive “I can’t believe we’re in
the minority but it seems we are” mode.
I realize that, in some ways, I’m not there yet. I’m argumentative
when my buttons are pushed. I can still get pretty riled up
just by hearing a second-hand account of someone buying the
line that blames the mortgage crisis on ACORN, the low-income
people’s advocacy organization that was among dozens of groups
trying to sound the alarm on predatory lending practices long
before Wall Street even decided to launch its disastrous orgy
based on them. (See what I mean?) That’s not all bad. Some
things are worth getting riled over, but that should be saved
for the people who spread the lies, not the people who just
heard and repeated them. And it certainly doesn’t mean that
I can’t find common ground with people who voted differently
than I did. This is a theme I’ve repeated before, in times
when progressives were much more embattled; it stays true,
but is perhaps even more important now.
So, heading into Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the hope
of a new administration, for the opportunity to argue with
an administration that is at least willing to make a nominal
show of caring, and for the opportunity to start building
individual bridges afresh, finding ways to have conversations
with people about the things that matter: getting through
the economic hard times, transitioning into a society that
stresses lower consumption yet a higher quality of life, and
doing it together.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
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