That, and the new political trend of youth here, bodes well for electoral politics - if we can wait that long. However, another factor is that another 30+% support particular policies/programs, such as 'public option' and 'single-payer' health insurance, plus 'get out of Iraq and Afghanistan'. Many of these folks are both truly independent and purposefully unideological.
The question then becomes, what happens within the 30+% when 'push comes to shove'. Can't answer that one - all that I can do is what I'm doing: proselytizing, working on accountability for elected officials in our state Democratic Party, trying to help to organize the progressives.
As to the "bigger crisis soon", I believe that explicitly. Won't be long before we find out how many of that 30+% are coming along with us. paul spencer
Perhaps you would like to comment on the comparison... notes from no w here
A large majority of the younger adults and near-adults do not share the prejudices of the folks a little older than myself - the prejudices that constituted conventional wisdom when I was young. It manifested itself in Obama's election demographics, for one instance.
And I repeat that it is unideological - unfortunately in my opinion. Part of the reason is that every political faction here is highly sectarian. Some folks talk about Christian fundamentalists as if they were monolithic - hardly the case. But it's the same with progressives here, as you note. All that I can say is that we're working on it.
I attended a conference in Portland this past weekend where there were around 8 break-out sessions every hour and a half. Rough guess, at least 500 people involved total. Better guess, a little more than half were younger than 30 years old.
On Saturday I had lunch with Laura Bonham of Progressive Democrats of America, a fellow Progressive Caucus member of the WA Democratic Party Central Committee, a local activist, and a local academic. Before lunch, we had been in a session concerned with coalition parameters, and the main discussion points at lunch were about accountability for Party-endorsed elected officials, growing the Progressive Caucus, and developing communication/cooperation among progressives. Will our conversation contribute to these goals? Actually, it might.
Weekend before, I attended our quarterly state meeting in Walla Walla. After a full Saturday of caucus meetings, committee meetings, and an afternoon plenary; 58 delegates (out of 160 registered for the Party events) stayed for an evening discussion/dinner at a local pub. (We were all amazed that such a large number stayed and participated.) It was a fully developed discussion, focused primarily on the accountability issue. One of the most encouraging aspects was the lack of disagreement - on the focus issue or the peripherals. In other words it seems that we're coalescing.
As to the '60s, I was counter-culture for about two years. I was only there due to profound anger and disgust with the prevailing culture's political manifestation. Other than that, it wasn't me, so to speak. That might sum up a fair amount of the decline of the counter-culture, alongside co-optation, as a social 'force'. paul spencer
If you have time, go to the WA Democratic Party web-site www.wa-democrats.org and skim our 2008 Platform. I think that you'll find it very - um - wholesome. paul spencer
It has always disappointed me that even progressives like Booman seem to accept that Democracy needs a two party system, and that the other party has to be the Republicans. But it doesn't have to be that way. They could be blown out of sight with the progressives becoming the opposition to centrist democrats.
It's partly a matter of education, money and organisation, but more crucially a mater of interests - a realisation that centrist democrats serve other interests and that politics is about organising to address your own. The Republicans are so far up their own asses on this that they could just end up going down a plug hole of history - a vaguely irrelevant and angry inchoate mass which losses all traction in the real world.
Obama has set something going. It will be interesting to see how far it runs... notes from no w here
As to the '60s, I was counter-culture for about two years. I was only there due to profound anger and disgust with the prevailing culture's political manifestation. Other than that, it wasn't me, so to speak. That might sum up a fair amount of the decline of the counter-culture, alongside co-optation, as a social 'force'.
it wasn't a pretty sight watching the counterculture 'do' politics, flaming egomaniacs like rubin and abbie hoffman, cheap shallow stunts, extremely immature, doomed to irrelevance. this was the norm, unfortunately.
serious, 'straight' pols like tom hayden did more for progressive causes than any number of freaks flagging away.
i say this in sadness, as we had the numbers going for us like no generation before or since.
they've got much better networking tools than back then, but between the old wharfrats living longer, and less youth to become stirred to activism, i don't really see the sixties ethos having made much of a dent in realpolitik, other than the environmental movement, which is still getting its ass kicked by the same old PTB.
because you can't fight serious evil with flippant vacancy, like you can't pay the taxi driver with the pentacle of solomon.
perhaps the only lasting legacy of the 60's was a yearning for meaning through hedonism, not a bad thing per se, but hardly the breakfast of political champions.
after the beaver world of the 50's, mcarthy trials, and the misery of the great depression still within living memory, the upsurge of joy and relative freedom to experiment definitely had a culturally novel dimension, but soon enough whatever balance between sanity and adventure that briefly existed was battered to pulp, bought off, commodified and eventually used to sell cars, or took a dark left turn down manson alley.
the innocence was refreshing for a while, the waste and spaciness decidedly less so.
politics was seen as too dirty to mingle with mostly.
i'd just as soon kids learned about alternative energy than politics at the end of the day, too many start pure in politics and end up tie-chewers.
politics is really all about energy anyway, though the connections are still largely occluded.
not for long though, now ET is here to save the day! ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
If they do, we can be sure another 30-40 years of hardcore republican class war will result. Wedge issues my friend... Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
