Moments of Illumination
The Tea Parties and Alinskyism are becoming increasingly linked in commentary on the the Tea Party phenomenon, as we see in this remark by a TP organizer who is irked at the attempts by the Republican Party to co-opt what he views as an autonomous movement:
"If journalists actually did their job, did some journalism and reporting, and talked to local organizers, they’d see that this is a grassroots movement," said Brendan Steinhauser of FreedomWorks . . ." We’re applying Saul Alinsky’s 'Rules for Radicals' here," said Steinhauser. "We’re using methods that the Left has used, and that other movements have used, all the way back to the Civil Rights movement. First of all there has to be a real grievance, and that’s what Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King had. That’s what we have..."
On February 4, one of the NPR morning shows did a joint radio interview with another TP organizer and a professor from Fordham. (Sorry, I can't find a link or better citation.) The latter apparently regards himself as an Alinskyite. He was pleased as punch that Alinsky and the Tea Parties were being conflated, though his interaction with the TP guy did not go well. The professor argued that the Tea Parties and the Alinsky Left did want the same thing: "a place at the table" of power, independent of party affiliation or elected office.
This greatly clarified for me what the Alinsky Method is supposed to achieve. The great difficulty of the Marxist Left in the United States has always been its inability to win ordinary elections in contests where its identity is known. The purpose of small groups of Alinsky Method activists is to bring focused pressure to bear on public officials on particular issues, thereby dispensing with the need to win election, or even to become a political opposition in the conventional sense.
In a way, the Method uses disintermediation to solve the problem of political blockage. However, the people who work like this are being literally irresponsible: they take no responsibility for how their agenda will affect the integrity of the institutions they subvert into implementing it. It's also more than a little naive. It posits a Control Room, orders from which will always be obeyed no matter who occupies it; the Method is just a way of gaining access by fast-talking the guards. It views government as a resource that can be mined, but with no consideration of whether the resource is depletable.
On the whole, I think this characterization is a little unfair to most Tea Partiers. Many of them do have systemic solutions to the nation's problems. They tend to be crank solutions, frankly, but even a crank solution is better than the "Not my Problem" that a true Alinskyite will reply at a town meeting when asked how some budget-busting proposal he advocates will be paid for.
The Alinsky Method might more fairly be said to be a feature of Up-Market Republicanism. George W. Bush in office was more of a Alinskyite than Barack Obama has proven to be, at least so far. Up-Market Republicans cut taxes in the middle of a world war and refused to even consider what the effects of perpetual low-skill immigration might have on the labor market. They had their agenda; its systemic effects were not their problem.
* * *
Of course war will be abolished, and in the middle term rather than the long: two generations rather than three. But what comes after, you ask?
The United States plans to unveil later this decade a new conventional "Prompt Global Strike" (C-PGS) system. It will enable the US to instantly carry out a massive conventional attack anywhere in the world in an hour or less.... Gates wrote. "The Taliban were dispatched within three months; Saddam [Hussein]'s regime was toppled in three weeks. A button can be pushed in Nevada, and seconds later a pickup truck will explode in Mosul. A bomb dropped from the sky can destroy a targeted house while leaving the one next to it intact."..."It's an emerging realization. I don't think the Chinese have fully come to grips with it," said Dr Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the Washington DC-based New America Foundation. "At some level, the Chinese see the US as investing in precision conventional munitions and have made their own parallel investments. But the more interesting question - 'Could conventional forces hold at risk China's nuclear forces?' - is something that seems to be just settling in."
A world without conventional war or the threat of nuclear retaliation does mean a world without deliberate mass destruction. That is real progress. It is not, however, necessarily peace: the flipside of a world without public war is likely to be a world of private vendetta. Perhaps this is just another instance of disintermediation.
Dune looks a little less ridiculous, except of course for the abolition of the people's beloved robots.
* * *
The somersault of the global economy over the next ten years goes beyond the implosion of China. At any rate, so we may judge from William Pesek's assertion that the Biggest Bubble in History Is Growing Every Day:
China's currency reserves grew by more than the gross domestic product of Norway in 2009. Its $2.4 trillion of reserves is a bubble all its own, one growing before our eyes with nary a peep out of those searching for the next big one.
The reserve bubble is actually an Asia-wide phenomenon. And we should stop viewing this monetary arms race as a source of strength. Here are three reasons why it's fast becoming a bigger liability than policy makers say publicly.
One, it¹s a massive and growing pyramid scheme.[dispensing with the other two, we note] China's huge arsenal of reserves is increasing its global influence. The trouble is, China is trapped in an arrangement of its own making. As China and other Asian nations buy more and more U.S. Treasuries, it becomes harder to unload them without causing huge capital losses. And so they keep adding to them. ... Like all pyramid schemes, there's no easy end in sight and things could end badly. If the dollar collapses, panicked selling by central banks looking to limit losses would shake global markets more than the U.S. credit crisis has... Asia has been holding down currencies to support exports for more than a decade. It's silly to ignore the side effects of that strategy for the region's economies.
This suggests a fairly near-term future in which global trade is diminished, not be trade barriers, but by simple lack of demand. Actually, the demand has not been there for a while, but it was simulated by currency manipulation. The US may run a trade surplus again, but as in the 1930s, the surplus will be on a greatly diminished volume.
What could set off the collapse? Another Alinsky Republican tax cut, perhaps, but I suspect it will be something else.
* * *
This fills me with more dread than any killer robot:
"[The lunar astronauts] were told to jettison things that weren't important. So they start[ed] tossing stuff," said Beth O'Leary, an assistant professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University and a leader in the emerging field of space heritage and archaeology. "They were essentially told, 'Here's eight minutes, create an archaeology site.' "
There are countless places on Earth that have been awarded protection to preserve their historic or cultural importance. The moon has none. But that may be about to change.
California is poised to become the first state to register the items at Tranquility Base as an official State Historical Resource...
No.
Eco Fascism must be confined to Earth, as must its evil twin, the Heritage Racket. Otherwise, the solar system will be as off-limits as Antarctica.
