"Dangerous"

[balantz]

"Dangerous"

by: David Sirota

http://www.openleft.com/

Sun Feb 15, 2009 at 23:12



Last week, Nate Silver said "now is not the time" for any movements - progressive or otherwise - to pressure the government on economic policy, and demanded that progressives defer to "expert opinion" (a euphemism for "Establishment-approved opinion"). This line of thinking has been so prevalent among the elite political class for so long, that it could accurately brand an entire faction of officeholders - for instance, the "Now Is Not the Time" Democrats who rubber stamped the Patriot Act and the Iraq War because they said "now is not the time to question the president."

After Nate issued his edict to progressives, I and a few others challenged his premise, saying history teaches that now is exactly the time for movements to pressure the government. And, like a lot of self-described "experts" who don't like having their Mt. Olympus orders questioned, Nate has responded with a bit of a temper tantrum - but one that lets us explore some pretty important questions. Specifically, tonight he has written a new post calling himself a "rational progressive" and denigrating everyone he disagrees with as "radical progressives" - and in classic Bush construction, you're either with Nate or you're a "radical" and a "Marxist" (his words) who is a mortal threat to America.

Before delving further, let me just praise Nate for accurately identifying a few of the different strands and tactics of progressivism (though his attempt to depict a multi-faceted, grassroots movement through a binary prism is oversimplistic to the point of distortion). In fact, when I spent a day with Barack Obama back in 2006, the then-Illinois senator made a very smart distinction between "reformers" and "revolutionaries" that tracked the outlines of some of what Nate wrote tonight. But what Obama didn't do (likely because he's both too smart to do it and probably doesn't believe in it) and what Nate did do is use the same kind of dishonest framing the right has used for a better part of a generation, in hopes of marginalizing and ridiculing his critics.

For example, Nate says he is "rational" but people he disagrees with are supposedly "radical" - as if anyone more radical than him can't be "rational." He says "rational" progressives are interested in "ideas" and "reason" while "radicals" are interested in "wills" - and the implication is that "radicals" are know-nothings uninterested in "ideas" or "reason." Nate is an "optimist" and says we're "pessimists." Oh, and of course there's the oldest of old canards: Nate's "rational" colleagues "see ideology as malleable" (ie. they are "pragmatic") while "radical" progressives are rigid "Marxists." Basically, you get the point: Nate loves his country and the rest of us know-nothing fools hate America.

- snip -

...what is notable is Nate's McCarthyist accusation that those who seek transformative change are "dangerous."

As you'll see, at the end of Nate's post, he cites two random blog posts (that are, by the way, verifiably true) as proof that I - and progressives he thinks are too "radical" - pose a "danger" to the United States (interestingly, Booman made a similar claim a few days ago as well).

If American history teaches anything, it is that the "dangerous" epithet is the last and most banal refuge of those who seek to preserve the status quo. From Joe McCarthy slandering progressives as dangerous communists to George W. Bush saying anti-war activists were dangerous terrorist sympathizers, Estasblishmentarians have been painting their foes as threats to the nation for decades.

- snip -

Let's remember that the FBI, for instance, called Martin Luther King "the most dangerous man in America" and a dishonest demagogue as he was pushing - and ultimately passing - transformative civil rights laws. Let's remember that labor union activists in the 1930s and protestors against the Vietnam War were all called the same thing in their time.

- snip -

The stimulus bill was as close to an ironclad political inevitability as any bill that has come before Congress in a long time. The economy is tanking, a mandate election just happened, and the bill had a huge amount of momentum behind it. But the next set of bills - EFCA, universal health care, bankruptcy reform, financial regulation, and initiatives dealing with climate change - are not inevitable. They are even more politically divisive than the stimulus, and you can bet that everyone pushing anything truly transformative is going to be called "demagogic," "dangerous" and far worse.

So when that happens, don't say you weren't warned by Nate Silver or by me, and also - don't feel bad, feel honored. To be called a danger to the Establishment is to be told we are making the right people scared - it is to be told that those in power are genuinely scared that we're going to succeed in our efforts to change things.

Indeed, change actually is dangerous to the status quo - and so we shouldn't expect that status quo to do anything other than tell us it thinks we're "dangerous." We are a danger to the Establishment - which is exactly why we're the opposite of dangerous to the country at large, and exactly why when our opponents tell us we're "dangerous," we should respond as Maverick did to Iceman: immediately, affirmatively and proudly.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Now more than ever

is the time to challenge the obviously flawed "status quo" that got us here. I mean, if you had a dentist who consistently drilled the wrong tooth, how many times would you go back to that dentist?

FDR didn't wait. His ideas worked out pretty nicely, I think.

Now, more than ever.

Change.

[Demeter]

2. NOW Before It's Too Late!

[chill_wind]

3. K & R. n/t

[truedelphi]

4. Who the heck is Nate Silver? And why should he tell progressives

To bug off?

And isn't it the experts, some of whom now surround Obama, the people who created the finanical mess?