alright. this is my approach: no matter who you are, if you're out there saying that obama is expanding the power and scope of state power - continuously, enthusiastically, and with regard to every possible subject-matter - then i am going to nod along enthusiastically. if you start spouting racism etc, then i am going to condemn you. but i am not going to condemn you for criticizing obama's programs, or his truthfulness, etc, on the grounds that only a racist could condemn obama, or on the notion that if we peeled back the subconscious layers we would find racism, or on the grounds that you come from south carolina. i'm not reading minds; i'm reading signs.

know what? i agree with glenn beck just so far and on just those matters where i agree with him. if he thinks that the national debt will swallow the economy or something, then i say: good point. if it's some conspiracy crap or whatever, then i'm not there. i don't have to love the whole idea of the obama admin to distance myself from glenn beck, and all things considered i so far am basically liking the form of the right-wing backlash: the libertarian tone is precisely right. many conservatives have been improved and sharpened by the obama administration. this is the only moment in american politics that i can recal - with the exception of ronnie's 1980 campaign - where anti-statism actually seems to be a viable stance (and it's quite a bit more radical at the moment than it was in ronnie's time). this is the best development in american politics in a long while, in my view.

i do think that for a certain segment of the pop, obama arrived as an avatar of the future, an embodiment of the dream etc etc, and any criticism is intolerable or evil. this entails a complete loss of critical leverage on the american state. i still endorse the american traditions of protest and suspicion of government power. and the racism charge is getting way too easy and indiscriminate: not that americans aren't racists, but that it's an attempt not even to deal with criticism.

Comments

[Frederick]

. . . but that it's an attempt not even to deal with criticism.

Well there is the problem. Beyond a few segments little in the way of criticism has been offered. All anyone hears are Glenn Beck's teabaggers. It'd be nice for a change if this were simply a debate about the size and roll of Government.

But that hasn't happened on a significant scale yet.

[el serracho]

here they are, in all of their glory

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42406957@N04/sets/72157622225596987/

[BDR]

You know, for a certain segment of the pop, Obama arrived as an avatar of the future, an embodiment of the nightmare etc etc, and any praise for Obama is intolerable and evil.

Both sides can call me back when Obama stops spending trillions blowing up Afghan wedding parties.

[Andrew Dobbs]

I agree with you on the inanity of accusing all Obama protestors of racism. To be honest, it's non-falsifiable. There's no way to prove that they *aren't* racists, and no way to quantify how much of this is racism, and how much a response to state expansion or whatever. It is clearly there, but I very much agree that trotting it out against the protestors is a way of avoiding debate. It is like saying all anti-war protestors hate America--some of them do, but it is just empty rhetoric to say that.

Still, as much as I hate the state, I also hate the capitalist system of production and feel a great affinity with socialist heroes of the past. The hysterical slanders of socialism these people keep shouting about insult some of the bravest, wisest and sanest people in our history. From Oscar Wilde to Bayard Rustin to Helen Keller to Rosa Luxembourg to Emma Goldman and on and on and on, if you lived in most of the last 150 years or so and believed in expanding human freedom and ending the most evil oppressions, there is a significant chance that you were a socialist. Being against state socialism or the state is wonderful, but when you blanket all socialists as evil and the idea of challenging capitalism whatsoever as unthinkable, you are just as bad as the liberal douchebags who see a state solution to every problem. They aren't worse, but they are certainly no better. I choose to despise all of their politics.

I also find myself agreeing with Glenn Beck at times, on the very points you mention. But he is a profound reactionary, and I am an anarchist because it is the most honest and noble revolutionary philosophy, in my opinion. I don't necessarily dig the idea of splitting up sides (I have friends of all persuasions, and judge individuals on their character, not their party... with obvious exceptions for Nazis, etc.), but if he is going to noisily advocate for an entrenchment of the capitalist system, for American chauvinism, for conspiracy theories and whatnot, I must consider him my opponent at best and more likely my enemy.

Finally, I think that the "libertarianism" of this movement is overstated and more rhetorical than it is practical. By this I mean it is of the "anti-government" variety, not "anti-state." They are nationalists: their nativism, isolationism and noisy (and noisome) patriotism are all about defending "national sovereignty," that is, the will of the state (as I read Rousseau's def. of sovereignty). I am an anarchist in part because I reject the notion that national borders have any real meaning. I think I have more in common with a working person in say Iran than either of us would have with politicians in our respective countries. These people are all about defending the status quo which divides people based on imaginary lines drawn by state powers to delineate their gangland turfs. They don't want the state challenging their various priveleges, they worship the Constitution (which is nothing more than the sovereign state power in our country--it is a perverse form of statism they express), they despise internationalism and are fighting to preserve and extend the power of capital. All of this is hardly "libertarian" in the classic and most meaningful sense of being "against the state."

I want to close this too long comment by reiterating that I have no use for liberal insulters of these people, and I do in fact agree with them on some important things--gun control for one, bailout nonsense also, etc. But to say that seeing thousands of people marching on Washington to insult my comrades, support my enemies and dress up their statism in the garb of liberty makes somebody happy demands a response. These people are fucked, and they scare the bejesus out of me.

[mr.fun]

"So while it is true that your average Joe Teabagger suffers from hilarious white-trash racial myopia, and that is something that we can all laugh about, for there is nothing more hilarious and mockable on this good green earth than the incoherent whiteguy rage that has for so long propagated within our unacknowledged middling orders, the notion that these people are uniquely blinkered and hypocritical in their protest is perfectly false."

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/09/wont-hurt-bit.html

[mr.fun]

here's another one:

"It’s comforting to imagine that violence and paranoia belong only to the far left and right, and that we can protect ourselves from their effects by quarantining the extremists and vigilantly expelling anyone who seems to be bringing their ideas into the mainstream. But the center has its own varieties of violence and paranoia. And it’s far more dangerous than anyone on the fringe, even the armed fringe, will ever be."

http://www.theagitator.com/2009/09/15/the-faux-panic-over-right-wing-violence/

[mr.fun]

and another:

"it's not so much that the "average Joe Teabagger suffers from hilarious white-trash racial myopia" and the average Jane Hopeandchanger suffers from ironical hipster elitist myopia, but that they are in thrall to the opinions they receive through the spirit box.

they are unthinking, yet engaged. (in the political process.) so there is a sort of consistency in it. quite spectacular really."

they are unthinking, yet engaged. chew on that.

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/09/wont-hurt-bit.html?showComment=1252946650704#c7616604140552928504