Policies not Personalities

We really should stop looking for a messiah. Part of the reason why our societies look the way they do is because we keep on voting for personalities and not policies. We want to believe that we are voting for a transformative figure and are always disappointed when confronted by their humanity. Despite this, we will continue to project our hopes and desires on political figures.

I think of this as the other week journalist, author, actor, news presenter and all around celebrity, Yair Lapid decided to launch his political career, soon to start his own political party. This was followed by the announcement that Noam Shalit, father of freed IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, will be running in primaries for a seat in the Knesset with the labor party. Special men both, come to solve the special problems of Israel, to save Israeli democracy with their special insights. I don’t know whether to scream or barf at the idea of wasting another entire election cycle on the cult of personality. I just get angry at thought of these guys proving Shalom Hanoch right when he sang, “the public is dumb therefore the public will pay”.

The reason for my opposition to all these new celebrity players in the political game is because they don’t bring anything of value. I do not understand the popularity of either Lapid or Shalit when we know nothing of their political ideas. We have no indication as to their ability to garner political power or their ability to use it to achieve results.

I am not opposed to charisma in politics as long as it is married to a clear, definable ideology. Power for the sake of power is tyranny. A beautiful ideology divorced from the ability to deal with the day to day mud wrestling that is politics is a kind of masturbation. It will never lead to the birth of anything new. To believe things will be improved by having a specific individual in power is to buy into the cult of personality. It cheapens our part in a democracy, as Howard Zinn so aptly described:

All those histories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crises everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions.

The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves. But from time to time, Americans reject that idea and rebel.

And still we pine for our Ben-Gurions, Churchills, Kennedys, Begins, Reagans and Rabins; hoping that these new personalities will return us to these false memories of certainty and purpose. When will we reject and rebel and snatch the reins of power out of the hands of those that have been abusing it?

Michael Kordova, Social Media Manager and Online Spokesman for the Israeli Green Movement asks on facebook: “Will the Green Movement wise up and become part of the protest movement? I ask and who answers? Do we posses only ready made solutions or also the leadership that will take these ideas to the people?”  

Ideological parties in Israel, especially when they are socially left leaning, tend to shy away from political ambition in preference for beautiful, untainted ideas. It is not enough to know what needs to be done. In order to get elected you have to convince enough people that you have a burning ambition to see those ideas implemented. Voters understand that the political process crushes most initiatives and ideas; that if there is not a driving passion behind them, working to sell them, ensure their implementation, then they will go the way of the Dodo.

When we shy away from enthusiastically promoting our agenda because it reminds us of other ideological movements that we abhor, then we abandon the political field to them. I prefer parties to be strongly ideological, even if I am strongly opposed to them, as at least it makes the political discourse clear. It actually provides a choice between opposing ideas and not opposing personalities. Most of the parties in the very wide middle are nothing more than a collection of opportunists, celebrities and whores, each seeking to promote their private political ambitions, using whatever ideas are in vogue to get to the top. They are nothing but seat warmers in parliament, to be used by the ruling elite to perpetuate the status quo.

I prefer trying to answer Michael’s question rather than pondering if Lapid or Shalit are the newest messiah.

Worth Your Time, volume 2

This week with some of my favorite preachy people:

1. Naomi Klein tells us it's the end of the world unless...

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

2. Matt Taibbi details exactly how small and petty the 1% have become in their hysterical responses...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/uc-davis-pepper-spray-incident-reveals-weakness-up-top-20111122

3. Chris Hedges, probably the preachiest of them all, in a piece about his arrest outside of Goldman Sachs...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/finding_freedom_in_handcuffs_20111107/

4. Arundathi Roy talks about imagining alternatives to capitalism...

http://www.truth-out.org/arundhati-roy-people-who-created-crisis-will-not-be-ones-come-solution/1322765555

5. Tom Tomorrow in a brief guide to class conflict in America...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/05/1041572/-Class-conflict

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Practical Occupation

Last month protesters from OWS along with community organizers broke into a home in East New York that had stood empty since being foreclosed in 2008 and turned it over to a woman and her family who had been homeless for the last 10 years. In similar actions in Columbus, Atlanta, San Francisco and Southgate, foreclosed, empty houses are being occupied by Occupy and turned over to those without homes. Evictions, sometimes as soon as 2 months after failing to make a mortgage payment, are being resisted by large crowds making it impossible for police to force people out of their homes. Through this action, OWS is putting its money where its mouth is by highlighting poor communities and how they have been affected by our economic system. It is also exposing some of the central questions we should be considering if we want to rethink how we run our societies.

In order for the movement to grow the coming year it is essential that it proves its relevance in helping to solve problems. The true relevance of OWS in starting a new conversation on how we want to see the future of our societies can only be maintained by not restricting ourselves to pointing out what is wrong but by proposing alternatives and implementing them where possible. Only by testing our ideas can we ascertain if they work. We have nothing to fear from the messy process of trial and error.

The focus on repossessed homes exposes one of the central differences between capitalism and socialism, between private property and community property, between the right of the individual and the right of the community. The question is what is of greater value, the right of an individual to buy an apartment building and leave it empty, for whatever reason, or the right of 20 families to housing at the expense of the individual?

A city belongs to all its inhabitants. When you buy a plot of land in a city that has been zoned for dwellings, do you have the right to not develop that land? The permits and deeds give you the right to make a profit from developing an apartment building that will serve a number of families, it does not give you a right to not build that building.

Finding the correct balance between the rights of individuals as opposed to the rights of a collectives is tough. Within reason, there is much to be said for the concept of private property. It is not difficult to find examples where the tyranny of the masses, or those claiming to speak for the masses, has trampled the rights of individuals. That this can and does happen in collectivist societies should not be used as an excuse to prevent criticism of the opposite extreme.

We are witnessing a tyranny by individuals who have amassed enough wealth and political power to trample the rights and interest of the many in order to serve the privileged few. Besides highlighting these perversions, we need to make sure we spend enough time thinking about how we break these power structures without merely replacing them with equally unbalanced and perverse structures and then to act. The housing crisis, at the heart of the current economic meltdown, is the perfect testing ground to try and rethink the balance between these rights in very practical terms.

Civil Obedience

"......... Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."

Maintaining Indignation

Having spent the last couple of weeks with family visiting for the holidays and entertaining my kids on their winter break, I have felt markedly less angry at the outrages of our plutocracy. This is a good thing, to be reminded how easy it is to go through life oblivious of how the very few are running us into the ground. I was reminded of what Jamie Kilstein from Citizen Radio said, about living in a progressive bubble when you are mainly tuned in to other progressives and their independent media.

I’m still amazed and often at a loss for words when I have to explain what OWS is all about. What they want. Why they are so upset. Why they don’t just get a job. When you think about it, with the reality tv, unbridled consumerism, the cheap, processed crap we keep on stuffing our faces with on top of the usual day to day struggles, it’s no surprise that relatively few that manage to maintain their indignation.

And maintain our indignation we must! They told us we were a spoiled bunch of bored rich kids in New York, while they continued to repossess people’s homes without even holding the deed to the properties. They told us we were a bunch of sushi eating liberals in Tel Aviv while privatizing public lands. They called us lazy, welfare addicts in Athens while pushing austerity on the poor and debt relief on the rich. They call us terrorists in Damascus, when they have already killed more than 5,000 of us.

This will be our challenge in the coming year, to remind everyone why it is unacceptable to cause economic collapse and not be held accountable; why it is unacceptable to make housing, education and a decent wage inaccessible to many while the few take an ever growing share of the GDP; that to continue to expect the current system to supply different results is the definition of insanity.

And if that didn't piss you off, watch some of this, it worked for me...