Any Socialism Cannot Go Around, But Must Go Through, this Precept

Like a three-hole-puncher. We need to help bind this kind of thinking up.

Racial Propositions (excerpt) - Daniel Martinez HoSang - University of California Press

In case you were wondering, this's what I've been thinking about lately as Advisor B and I hustle towards finally a-finishing our Tea Party papier. In addition to writing the best book about the larger cultural and racial stakes of the ludicrous initiative process that I have been able to glom, Hosang's also translated the "invisibility" of the hegemonic political subjectivity du jour into something goddamned see-able :

Political whiteness describes a political subjectivity rooted in white racial identity, a gaze on politics constituted by whiteness. This concept draws from and extends both George Lipsitz's observations about the "possessive investment in whiteness" and Cheryl Harris's critical account of "whiteness as property." Whiteness, Lipsitz argues is "possessed" both literally in the form of material rewards and resources afforded to those recognized as white as well as figuratively through the "psychological wages" of status and social recognition detailed by W.{ths}E.{ths}B. DuBois. Harris similarly describes a "valorization of whiteness as treasured property," recognized by the law and enforced by the state, which produces a "settled expectation" that its beneficiaries will face no "undue" obstacles in claiming its rewards. Whiteness, she explains, "is simultaneously an aspect of identity and a property interest, it is something that can be both experienced and deployed as a resource."

The concept of political whiteness describes how these norms, "settled expectations," and "investments" shape the interpretation of political interests, the boundaries of political communities, and the sources of power for many political actors who understand themselves as white. It does not simply describe the interests or politics of "white people," which after all are necessarily varied. It instead concerns the process by which some political claims and interests come to be defined as white. James Baldwin described an "American delusion" fostered by whiteness that leads people to believe "not only that their brothers all are white but that the whites are all their brothers."Like whiteness in general, political whiteness is a subjectivity that constantly disavows its own presence and insists on its own innocence. It operates instead as a kind of absent referent, hailing and interpolating particular subjects through various affective appeals witnessed in claims to protect "our rights," "our jobs," "our homes," "our kids," "our streets," and even "our state" that never mention race but are addressed to racialized subjects.Political whiteness is, in one sense, a widely studied phenomenon. Scholars and observers have long sought to explain the relationship between white racial identity and political behavior and action. In most accounts, however, white racial identity is viewed as fully realized and defined, constructed outside of the field of politics. Conflicts like ballot measures merely express its preordained interests. This account, by contrast, does not view political whiteness as a fixed, a priori identity that simply becomes expressed through political conflicts. Carmichael and Hamilton's argument certainly holds true: there are deep "traditions" of racism embedded in diverse institutions and structures that shape the contours and trajectory of white political identity at any given moment. But white political identity is hardly static; it also becomes transformed and renewed through struggles such as ballot initiative campaigns.

The Hegemonic Character of Political Whiteness
Political whiteness bears two characteristics that are central to all hegemonic formations. First, as cultural studies scholar Raymond Williams explains, "the hegemonic has to be seen as more than the simple transmission of an (unchanging) dominance. On the contrary, any hegemonic process must be especially alert and responsive to the alternatives and opposition which question and threaten its dominance" because a "lived hegemony is always a process." It must be "renewed, recreated, defended, and modified" as it is "continually resisted, limited, altered, [and] challenged by pressures not all its own."California's racialized ballot measures reveal precisely such a process at work. Taken together, they demonstrate the contested formation of political whiteness, a gaze on politics that is characterized by both continuity and change. Rather than viewing these ballot measures as primarily concerning the rights of various racialized minorities, we can understand them instead as contests over the political authority and "settled expectations" of whiteness itself.A central assertion of this book is that the political forces that opposed civil rights and racial justice policies are the ones that have best understood the malleable nature of political whiteness, and have constantly tested the ways they could adapt and incorporate new ideas, values, and experiences. Their opponents, by contrast, rarely attempted to challenge political whiteness as a fundamental identification, treating it instead as an inexorable force of political life.Williams's second point about hegemonic formations concerns the question of opposition. By definition, ballot initiatives are viewed as contests between opposing political projects, which presumably do not share similar ideas, commitments, or values. But Williams argues that the very power of hegemonic formations derives from their capacity to shape the terms on which they are opposed: "nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic: that the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture."

Horn of Chasepack(s) -- Then and Now

Romney Praises Tea Partiers At Values Voter Summit - Hotline On Call
Huck's win - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com
Ah, these two little-bitty anecdotes are nice gestures in the direction of the inevitable. Be it sooner, later, or whenever: the blithely anti-government, anti-politics, anti-politician Tea Party movement is going to be pressured back into a) electoral politics, b) candidate-based activism and, c) the (impossible) necessity of sullying themselves with the businesses of governing and government.

The WWE wing of the GOP? - Ben Smith - POLITICO.com
Linda McMahon Has Some Talent Working For Her - The Atlantic Politics Channel
No, seriously, Linda McMahon -- WWE co-founder, spouse of the ever-annoying Vince McMahon -- is entering the Republican primary to dance with (ultimate chasepack legend) Chris Dodd. See below for a true, true, too-true summation of McMahon's prospects that amounts ever-so-pleasantly to a textbook example of damning-with-faint-praise:

"At some level it's not a surprise that someone with a lot of money who is bored in her job would run," said Roy Occhiogrosso, a veteran Democratic strategist and Dodd supporter. "It certainly lends itself to all kinds of interesting metaphors."

A Question?

Is "health insurance reform" failing because the plan "is too complex" or "doesn't make sense"?!

According to Robert Reich, FDR once summed up his unwilligness to pursue national healthcare as part of the New Deal by saying, "I just cannot explain it." Reich believes that (some of) the problems Dems have faced arise as the consequence of the existing plan lacking simple, self-evident entitlements and reforms as well as effective moral/psychological frames for these entitlements and reforms.

My question is, what does this insight actually illuminate? Aren't the institutional (but also individual, emotional) responses against health insurance reform - let alone the tinkering with the foundational architecture of the public/private division of labor in our political economy - pretty much inevitable in our liberal (-capitalist) democracy?

Isn't it a truism of US democracy that the politics of public/private are rife in all of our great debates, but that these politics always end up weirdly refracted through, translated by and spoken in caricature-ish, moralistic terms of nation, race, identity and catastrophe? Wouldn't that happen regardless of whether or not the President's health insurance plan was less than 140 characters?

ALL THIS (and more) Happened Horn

Works Cited:
Rick Perlstein -- Birthers, Health Care Hecklers and the Rise of Right-Wing Rage - washingtonpost.com

Sam Tanenhaus on the Death of Conservatism | Newsweek National News | Newsweek.com

9/7/2009, Portland Tax Referral Tea Party

Re: the Unemployment "good news."

From Doug Henwood, a most trusted reporter on the US economy, whose weekly radio program and whose Left Business Observer are tent-poles buttressing my shoddy, B- theory-tarp.

While the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 point to 9.4%, the first decline since April 2008, it looks like a lot of people have given up the job search as hopeless, meaning they’re no longer counted as officially unemployed. And the ranks of the unemployed are increasingly dominated by people who’ve been jobless for half a year or more—people whose prospects for re-employment in the future are usually quite damaged by these long spells outside the labor force.

So while there are some signs that the recession is drawing to a close—an impression confirmed by the drop in first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week—the job market is still awful, and the recovery that’s likely to follow the end of the recession sometime later this year will almost certainly be very weak and not very joyful. The U.S. economy has some serious structural problems that aren’t even being discussed, much less addressed.

But I guess it's hard to find time to discuss "serious structural problems" amidst all of this latent xenophobe-qua-deficit-hawk Tea Partying? Between this and the Diana from OR vid [see below]. I feel like our political culture has less depth than, say, an average NFL Films presentation from the late 1960s.

We The People Stimulus Package

I am particularly interested in those individuals who decide it's time to put on the historical garb. This is about as close to a set of Tea Party 'first principles' as I've so far found.

"If you decide to do nothing again, then buy a gun. You'll need it."

Tea Party Placards

The following slogans and screeds appeared in placard form during my ethnographic travels into le Right yesterday:

• My President Would Be Legal
• President Obama, Show Us Your Birth Certificate
• Revivetherevolution.com
• Suicide By Stimulus
• Stop Borrowing/Start Budget-Cutting
• Terminate Expanding Authority
• Taxation Erodes American (dream)
• Heil Hope
• Billions for the Bankers/Debts for the People
• Stop Raiding Our Piggy Bank
• Let Capitalism Work
• Less Government = Freedom
• Flat Tax 10%! Make It Do!
  
• Somalia Pirates = US Congress
• FairTax.org
• Comrade Obama
  
• Wake Up America, Before Your Liberty is Gone
• The Problem with Socialism is Eventually You Run Out of Other People's Money
• Democracy is Slowly Being Eroded
  
• We Hate Porky Little Amendments
  
• No Nanny State: Leave Us Home in Our Sovereign State of Jefferson
  
• More Common Sense/Less $ and Cents
• Obama: the Next Chavez
• No Taxation Without Representation
• My Tax Dollars Go To Illegal Aliens
  
• Punish Success/Reward Failure: What's Up With That?
  
• Taking Everyone's Assets
• NO to Socialism
• Tired, Enraged American
  
• Free Markets Not Freeloaders!
  
• If You're Not Outraged/You're Not Paying Taxes
  
• Freedom Is Not Just Another Word
• Abortion Kills Children
  
• Our Government Stole My Paycheck
  
• Separation of Powers, Buckos: Big God/Small Government
• Expensive Health Care: Michelle Obama made $350k for sitting on her a$$
• Obama, You of All People Should Know that Pork Defiles
• Ron Paul for President

What, you need a chaser? This knocked 'em dead in Medford.