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Saturday, February 27, 2016

Fight Camille Paglia's Maureen Dowd Feminism

She's at it again. The media loves her act: Look at me, I'm a brillaint female scholar and feminist and my obesession in life is attacking other woman scholars and feminists. See I'm authentic and they're not.

Just recently she was up to her usual tricks-attacking Gloria Steinem. She loves playing this game of I'm the feminist who hates all other feminists who are so politically correct and clueless

In this primary she is doing what she lives to do: help the media sell the noxious idea that this is a post gender election and that Hillary has not been the victim or relentless misogony in so much of the coverage. She's hte only one who has to relase her transcripts or apologize for using private emails-as if most govenrment officials don't use prviate email

Don't get me wrong-Camille Paglia is a formidable writer. When you read her in more detail in her books I find that while I disagree with her more current point, her bigger picture argument has some merit.

http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Personae-Decadence-Nefertiti-Dickinson/dp/0679735798/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456573548&sr=8-1&keywords=camille+paglia

But if she's going to play the feminist who hates Hilary Clinton, then she's stepping into an arena where she has to be pushed back hard on.

"Fight the soulless juggernaut: Big money, machine politics and the real issue separating Sanders and Clinton."

Democrats face a stark choice: A money-mad, scandal-plagued establishment, or the potential of decency and change
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/25/fight_the_soulless_juggernaut_big_money_machine_politics_and_the_real_issue_separating_sanders_and_clinton/

It's this idea that Sanders is so 'decent' I have an issue with. I sometimes get the sense that his supporters are telling us he's the right choice because he's so much more morally superior than other politicians. That makes me nervous.

Is politics a vocation as Max Weber said? I mean would I fly a plane with a pilot with no experience-as Bernie has no relevant executive experience in Washington-because he's 'more decent' than pilots with actual training and experience?

I'm skeptical that we simply want to elect a Saint.

"Despite Bernie Sanders being tied with her for pledged delegates after last weekend’s Nevada caucuses, the media herd has anointed Hillary Clinton yet again as the inevitable Democratic nominee. Superdelegates, those undemocratic figureheads and goons of the party establishment, are by definition unpledged and fluid and should never be added to the official column of any candidate until the national convention. To do so is an amoral tactic of intimidation that affects momentum and gives backstage wheeling and dealing primacy over the will of the electorate. Why are the media so servilely complicit with Clinton-campaign propaganda and trickery?"

Look, in 2008 Hillary got more votes but Obama beat her in delegates. You could argue that was undemocratic but of course a Hillary hater like Paglia would never have said that then.

Why can't' the party have some influence over the process? In reality, a healthy party always wants to have this. The GOP is the dysfunctional party as they aren't able to do this, not the Dems.

But Paglia has the argument wrong, anyway. It's not just about the SDs. Just on pledged delegates, it's clear Bernie has no path to victory. After he goes down to hard defeat in all these Southern states, it will be 'Hey, hey, hey Bernie, goodbye.'

"Democrats face a stark choice this year. A vote for the scandal-plagued Hillary is a resounding ratification of business as usual–the corrupt marriage of big money and machine politics, practiced by the Clintons with the zest of Boss Tweed, the gluttonous czar of New York’s ruthless Tammany Hall in the 1870s. What you also get with Hillary is a confused hawkish interventionism that has already dangerously destabilized North Africa and the Mideast. This is someone who declared her candidacy on April 12, 2015 via an email and slick video and then dragged her feet on making a formal statement of her presidential policies and goals until her pollsters had slapped together a crib list of what would push the right buttons. This isn’t leadership; it’s pandering."

Whether or not you want to say the Clintons are Tammany Hall is one question.

Let's play Devil's Advocate however: what is so bad about Tammany Hall? Hasn't it gotten a raw deal?

I love President Obama, have voted for him twice and would vote for him two more times if I could.

But one weakness of him was his utter disdain for transactional politics. This poise of being mortified about a quid pro quo is a big part of what has left our politics so dysfunctional.

Obama was dead set against earmarks back in 2009 which would have made passage of his agenda much smoother. Then when earmarks finally were used it was the scandal of scandals: the Cornhusker Kickback.

But this is how you oil the wheels of government.

So Paglia is dead wrong. The Clintons aren't business as usual here in 2016, far from it. Obama repudiated Clintonism in terms of LBJ logrolling and not for the good of either the Democratic party or the nation at large.

Then the GOP came in on the Tea Party wave of 2010 and totally eliminated earmarks. No wonder Boehner was doomed to go down as the most ineffective House Speaker in modern times.

You could argue as Garry Wills did, that in many ways the reformers made things worse rather than better in their holy zeal to end machine politics. There is a case to be made for and against Tammany Hall style government.

"Tammany Hall was far more than a disinterested detached city government for several million poor, working-class New Yorkers. It was also a successful city government delivering municipal services, a social welfare agency assisting the immigrant poor and their children in adjusting to the new country, a political interest group giving working-class people at least a modest voice in an economic world increasingly dominated by rich corporations." --James S. Olson

"In essence: the machine politicos, for all their genuine resonance with their constituencies, saw the average voter as a creature of appetite; the scientific progressives, for all their hauteur, expected something better of the public and were prepared to work for it."

--James W. Mooney

http://www.amazon.com/Honest-Graft-George-Washington-Plunkitt/dp/1881089584/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456526047&sr=8-1&keywords=honest+graft

I would argue that the idea that it is wrong to treat voters as creatures of appetite is behind the zeal with which the Tea Party came out against ear marks and any kind of government social spending.
You could argue that this is the definition of the modern Republican party: 'For the good of your soul I don't mind if you starve.'
The gesture of giving homeless people a bible but no food to eat is classic of this 'reformist hauter.'

My point is that machine politics is what we could use more of. When you look at the shocking levels of dysfunction in recent years in Congress, it has been correlative with the shutting down of any sort of machine politics.
We now have a government full of people who think government itself is the root of all evil. This is our problem today. Maybe a return of Tammany Hall would be welcome.

For more on this, I'd recommend Garry Wills' "Nixon Agonistes."

http://www.amazon.com/Nixon-Agonistes-Crisis-Self-Made-Man/dp/B00E1OZUWE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1456574538&sr=8-2&keywords=garry+wills+nixon+agonistes

See pages 508-510 especially.
As Wills notes, a number of social scientists link urban discontent to the decline of city machines.

Sorry. What Democrats need in 2017 is not yet another Saint, but an actual flesh and blood politician who can get things done. 

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