Spring Cleaning

I have been cleaning my place on and off today, doing this bit and then that bit and stopping to take a break. The floor is mostly swept, the empty bottles and cans and cardboard cases are in the recycling bins and the car, I have wiped off the counter, and moved the table to the center of the "kitchen" to minimize the future buildup of crud on the floor. All the dirty clothes are off the floor and in the hamper and pair of plastic bags stacked on top of it. Dust mites prowl the floor, the last remnants of my sweeping. The sink of full of dishes I need to get around to washing. The bathroom floor still needs to be swept. The floor could probably use a washing, but I can't find the mop, if I even have one (I have a bucket). The shelves still need dusting, and my books are disorganized. The mail and papers on the dresser need to be gone through. The fridge should probably be cleaned, the laundry done somehow, the bottles and cans in my car taken to be redeemed, if Hy-Vee isn't underwater. I should make dinner.

I have decided to stay on here for another year. I could rarely care less about my job, and really wish I had something that paid more. But this apartment is starting to feel like home; it's my place, and I am loathe to leave it. I feel like whatever I came out here to accomplish I still haven't done, am just starting to do in fact, and I need another year to do whatever that is. I just can't imagine up and moving somewhere else in the next two months, Christ, at the end of next month. I feel a little bad about this. I would like to be closer to family and friends, I would like to feel rooted. Probably less than a mile from my house, right now, there are people laying down sandbags together, and I am not joining them. But I feel rooted here, to this room, and so I will stay, I suppose. If I up and left, I feel like I would lose my train of thought. Besides, I am not really hurting for money, living as close to minimum wage as I am. I make rent, and still manage to save some money, sometimes. I bank account is actually going up. I don't really mind all that much not having any toys, really, as long as I have my computer (I might have to buy a new one at some point, but not that soon).

A while back, I had the idea of making a post stating the intention of making at least one post a day. I decided against it. I had come to the realization that, as I have a nature that is spitefully contrary to all voiced intentions, any declaration I made I would immediately go about subverting, so best not to say anything actually. However, I am not even safe from my own mind, so this idea was immediately followed by a long dearth of posting, and a long dearth of writing in general. So, so much for playing it safe.

So now I just gotta say "fuck it." Before, I would try to hold things in, pace myself. make a post, and not make another one until the next day (when I would invariably forget to post). Now I say, I shall start just posting about any goddamn thing that comes into my head. It doesn't matter. I have been holding writing, of one form or another, as some kind of scary task, as a dragon that I fear facing. Some sacrosanct activity that must be entered like some meditative state. Well, I used to approach drumming the same way, and I now I just pick up my sticks and start fucking around. And my playing is better than it ever was then. So I just got to stop worrying about anything and just do it.

It is spring cleaning, and I need to get the old ideas out.

Fuck yeah, we're better

America: still more awesome than other countries.

In case anyone is wondering

I'm fine. Even though I am close to the river, I live in a pretty high hill. I still have power, obviously. My route to work is flooded, but I found another route which is just as fast, amazingly. It seems a lot of people took an hour getting to work. I haven't actually seen the floods. Most of the roads are blocked off. I could go out to look, but there is no where to go. Most of the roads around the city are packed; traffic is really slow.

Yesterday, My landlady went on vacation. Lucky timing, eh?

I have been commenting

I comment I posted elsewhere that i wanted to preserve in it's entirety:

Yeah, I kind of started to fly off the handles there. I actually kept going, but realized about was about to start raging against the machine, so I chopped off the last bit and posted that.

Now, about our form of government. We have a democratic republic, not a republic or a democracy. This means that the people democratically, and for whatever reasons, selects it's leaders. (Yeah, I know, heavy handed, but bear with me for a moment.) This means that the best we can do isn't to "make elected officials aware of our concerns," it's to get rid of the ones who aren't responsive, and install ones who are. The power, ultimately, rests with the people, and elected officials are the conduit through which that power is channeled. (It would be hard to have the country run by 300 million votes on every single issue).

Now, within this system, there is some leeway in terms of how this process is run, which I think basically boils down to the state of a country's political culture. The government can be run in a more democratic manner, or a more republican manner. And it is up to the people. We can elect officials on the basis of how closely they represent the popular will (democratic), or we can elect them on the basis of them being smarter than the public, and able to make decisions that are superior to those of the people (republican).

I, obviously, generally favor the former viewpoint. Not totally, of course. I see the utility of elected people with a firmer grounding in law and economics than I possess, and people who are whip smart. In fact, I think that much of Obama's support at present stems from the idea of the philosopher-king. We don't all agree with him on everything, but he seems uniquely suited for dealing with this huge mess from the last eight years, so we aim to give him the shot. But despite this, one thing I find shocking, and shocking that others have not really picked up how shocking it is, is the degree to which he personally emphasizes how political change should be the product of the people's will, and that it is his job to facilitate that will being expressed. Community Organizer. Project Vote. Change from the bottom up. Almost all of the man's political career has been devoted to getting people to realize that the government is theirs, if they would just think to reach out and take it. Of course, no one seems to notice this, and focus on the hero worship instead. (I think you can basically sum up Obama's political career with the scene in Life of Brian where Brian is speaking to the mob outside his window.)

I digress. Anyways, One of the arguments you seem to be making, obliquely, for a more republican culture in electing officials, is that "'the "people' are no more guaranteed to be right than any other group." Well, yes, true. The people can be wrong or right. The elite can also be wrong or right. But if the elite are wrong, then there is really no reason to have them around. And a lot of the time the reason the people are wrong is because the elite are lying to them. I guess I see the elite as redundant. They either lead us right or lead us astray, but either way having them makes us less free. All things being equal, I prefer to be free. And I don't think it's equal, I think the people are generally, except when lied to, right.

And I don't think your LBJ example really works either. People were not as far forward as LBJ. Because of Civil Rights, right? It lost the south of a generation. But LBJ didn't run for reelection because of Civil Rights. It was Vietnam. Take out Vietnam, and LBJ would have coasted to reelection, becoming the the 2nd longest serving president in history. He probably would have gotten his face on some money in the bargain. He may have lost the south, but what he did became vastly popular. I just fail to see how LBJ's liberal accomplishments were far out of the mainstream. I see them as a legitimate response to mood of the country that, even if more forward than the mood of the country at that moment, were on the right track. At the most is was an example of a president acting as slightly out of step with public opinion in a good way. And sometimes presidents act step with public opinion and do really bad things. It's a wash.

Oh, and my bit about the libertarians. What I meant was, if the people are not the source of political action, but elites are, then the government is a separate entity. It is not them, and should be treated as such. Distrusted, feared. However, if the people are the source of political action, than the government is nothing more that expression of the people's will. It is collective action. A communist endeavor, if you will: the product of efforts of investing in the community. Thus there is no really need to fear the government, or shouldn't be. The government is us. (Well, we still might fear it, I find myself quite frightening sometimes, to say nothing of my neighbors.)

This is nice. Keep it coming.

WVW: Theory of Social Change

(I have decided to write a series of posts elucidating my world view. As this is a bunch of vaguely related concepts and ideas, not necessarily in any specific order, but more strands of a whole, I have decided to call it my World View Web. Today, I tackle my Theory of Social Change.)

I don't consider myself a Democrat. I don't identify that way. When I fill out voter registration forms, I always end up putting independent. Not that I don't invariably end up voting for the Democrat. I do. It's just, my politics are so divergent from the Democratic positions, that pretending to be one of them would seem ... dishonest, somehow. At the end of the day, in the statistics, I should just not be counted among their number. I need to in that small way register my divergence, even if for all purposes (thought not intents) I am a Democrat.

My politics vibrate between the poles of democratic socialism and anarcho-communism. i am not to the left of the left, but to the left of the left of the left. I am out there, an extreme outliers. Now, to say I am somewhere between a democratic socialist and an anarcho-communist is not to say that the policies that I should be enacted now at this moment are those policies. It is to say that I think that these policies, these systems, would be those that reflect a true and just society. I don't think society, as it stands now, has the structure or cultural opinions necessary for such systems to work. Before those systems would be viable, people would have to come around to my way of thinking about a variety of issues.

Needless to say, I think that my opinions are correct, and that the nature of the culture at large is based on erroneous assumptions. If I'm wrong, however, well, I am wrong, and since I support the endpoint policies that I do based on my other opinions, which is where my true fealty lies, then I have no problem changing my political opinions if or when my views are proved wrong. My fealty is to Truth, not ideology.

But in the meantime, those are the positions I take.

And here is where we get to my Theory of Social Change. Since my opinions are so far outside the mainstream, I don't think it is possible for my ideas to just be argued for on the political stage. I may argue for them on my own, but I accept that there is no place for them yet in the mainstream.

Yet.

As far as I see it, socio-political change needs to occur at a gradual rate. It needs to move through stages, like on a staircase. Sometimes, We falter and walk back a couple of steps, like we have after WWII. Sometimes we take the stairs two at a time, like during the new deal. However, if you try to just jump up the entire staircase, and it's a big staircase, you will fall flat on your face, probably somewhere around midway, and spend a while falling down. Like Soviet Russia. Or the French Revolution.

So social change needs to be gradual, to a degree. America is just not ready for socialism. The world just isn't ready for anarchy.

So what do you do if you think that those should be the actual endpoints for society? Well, obviously, make sure we walk up the steps! As quickly and as safely as possible. Perhaps even taking two at a time sometimes.

This means, the real goal for anyone who agrees with socialist or anarchist views is voting green or burning down buildings or rioting. That is sowing seeds that simply will not grow, my friends! No, it is working to push the conversation as far to the left as possible, doing whatever at the moment will lead to the conversation moving as fast as possible.

If this view is accepted, then the correct topic of debate concerning politics, not just for socialists and anarchists, but for anyone to the left of the mainstream, anyone who could qualify as being mocked by the Judean People's Front, is what tactics will lead to the advancement of left-wing goals, and at the fastest rate.

Well? What is it?