Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

looking for something in the archives of the old blog. i’m thinking i’d like to eventually teach a course for the workers justice center we are getting off the ground here. i want to call the class: your employer hates you. i knew i had used that phrase before, so i looked it up and found it, but not quite what i recalled. anyway, posting for your amusement.

Originally posted 2007-01-30 20:50:21
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Americans are fucked up when it comes to politics: we want to be nice and get along. We want to pretend that there are no differences that really matter and when there are differences we want to pretend they are intractable — so intractable that we can avoid any real engagement with the consequences of our ideas and the actions we pursue based on those ideas. . . .

politics is reduced to: “La La La Li. How about them Mets, huh?”

You know something, if it really matters to you, then it really matters to you. There’s no shame in that. Politics is fundamentally about drawing lines in the sand. The idea that you can paint yourself as someone who is above all that drawing lines in the sand shit … That IS drawing a line in the sand. That IS saying, “You’re either with me or against me.”

But when we forget that, we end up with the fucking lame ass that is Barack Obama these days. He’s a uniter, not a divider. Well, how far does that get anyone? Hmmmm? Further rightward swings.

You know something, you either give a shit about making the world a better place — or you don’t.

How’s that line in the sand, hmmmm?

You either deal with the fact that, when you call for tolerance of the variety of ISMS out there, then you are promoting an ISM as THE standard by which everyone else should be found wanting — or not. And you should be aware that you are bringing the full force of common sense judgment on people who don’t conform: oooooo! not tolerant. Bad, bad dog. No biscuit for you!

Identity political powerlessness has its advantages, eh? It allows you to bring the full force of social judgment against someone and not be responsible for it.

In all my years studying community, one thing that was guaranteed to ensure that communities fell apart or were barely held together bundles of explosives that went boom when someone simply thought “spark,” was this asinine notion that, somehow, political life was not fundamentally agonistic, that somehow community was all gooey and warm and everyone felt validated and no one’s view was any different from anyone else’s.

And yet.

There are people out there who want to eat you for lunch — politically speaking. Economically speaking, too: your employer hates you. If you worked for me as your employer, then you can bet that I would not deny that statement. I, as employer, exist in fundamental opposition to you, as worker. Deal. You want to “get along” with that?

There are neocons out there who just don’t give a shit. Why do you think they are on about Iran? They don’t want to build the Republican Party, so don’t *blink* *blink* when they appear to be doing all they can to flush the Republican Party down the loo. They could not care less if the Republicans self-immolate, just as log as they and their neocon views remain in power. These guys are romantics in their vision of power, not the neo-realists they claim they are.

There are others out there who will fight tooth and nail for their ideology — one fundamentally opposed to women’s liberation — who don’t care about you and want to see you dead where “you” is the feminist that you are.

Take feminism — please! There are some feminisms out there that are my enemy. That’s all there is to it. The approach is fundamentally about goals that are not my goals and never will be. They may be feminists, but they are not my friends, not my buddies, and not my chums. I don’t respect them for their views, though I may respect them for many other things. When it comes to their views, their views are the enemy. They are what I struggle against. They advocate something that wants to choke me, that wants to crush me. They may not want to do this — not on a conscious-level. They may even like me. They may even think that their views are what it takes to liberate women — *all* women.

And yet, their ideas are in fundamental opposition to the things I fight for. I’m supposed to “get along” with that?

They may think I’m all fucked up with commie noise and feel patronizing toward those ideas. Oh, silly Queer Dewd. Always on about the commie bullshit.

Oh yes, feeling’s mutual sisters!

(But don’t talk about that, you know? It’s not A.M.E.R.I.C.A.N.)

There is no shame being willing to name the enemy. Because in fact there are enemies. Some feminists feel my views are the enemy, no doubt. I don’t begrudge them that, but I’ll still argue that they are wrong. I will still argue that these ideas do not advance the goals I think are what we need for women to have better lives — *all* women.

Does the racist feminism we saw over the summer advance you and the goals you think feminism should be about? If you don’t find that issue threatening, the racism in feminist thought and practice, could it possibly be because . . . it just doesn’t affect you — or so you think? And that maybe you’re part of the fucking problem?

It’s easy to nod your head and say, “Let’s get along. The hardest part is swallowing my pride. The hardest part is realizing that, uh, my optimism was shattered”

Sister, if that was hard, then gosh, try having your fucking being wiped out by your so-called sisters. Not because you held the wrong ideas, but because of your damn skin color — something you can’t change, something you’ve been told for years now is something feminists just don’t do!

Does that version of feminism out there that is bizarrely incapable of conceptualizing class, uh, make your blood boil?

Well, what am I talking about? 95% of the time, feminists are advocating views that are all about destroying my life. And yet they think they are perfectly nice people and I’m the one who’s fucked up. That feminist may even be my reader — in fact probably is 95% of my reader base, eh?

I mean, 95% of feminist blogs, including those of you reading this right now, are advocating things and advancing ideas that destroy my life and those of people I love.

Maybe I’m just in a super cranky mood, but I say it matters if you’re called out for “not being a feminist” if you’re a racist fucking twit. I don’t think it matters half as much if you’re called out for “not being a feminist” if you like high heels. [1]

Some things are worth fighting for.

You want me to “just get along” with ideas that are my enemy? Hell no mother fuckers — and you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

* Divergentizing with all your nucking futz feminist asses — because if I’m going to be ‘internally riven’, then I’m going to go with it. My next post may just diverge yet again, so hold on to the panic bars! :)

** P.S. spot the moralizing copula in there? This is not a test! Do try this at home! ha ha!

*** No, I had no idea that Amanda had taken the position with the Edwards campaign. I’ve been too busy to read around terribly much. Somebody could be bombing the crap out of the US right now and I wouldn’t know about it unless it came up in a job interview. The post was a response to a couple of things. First, I was reading a debate over SEIU’s latest bullshit in the health care/insurance wars. At one point, someone brought up something I think is utterly true about US politics: our complete and utter lack of fight, a lack born of this bullshit fear of controversy, this desire to turn political differences into nothing OR to turn them into differences that are so intractable that it’s all about “being nice” to anti-abortionists, racists, trans bigots, etc. — especially if they are on “your” side. *spit* You aren’t supposed to, you know, bring it up.

And then I read Renegade Evolution’s proposal re: the sex wars. A lot of me agreed and a lot of me disagreed — vehemently! Because it’s not just the sex wars, for me. The sex wars are connected to race and class and other things that matter. I could sit down one fine day and write reams, explaining how it’s all connected — at least for me.

I think there are differences that make a difference. I think there are things worth fighting for. I think it’s great that people want to read both Twisty and RenEv, as kactus says. But don’t make it my problem if you feel uncomfortable with what I write, when it comes smack up against Twisty and even when it comes smack up against what you believe.

So?

Why is anyone surprised by that?

There are differences that make a difference. You bet your sweet bippy that I think your views are the enemy if those views are racist or cross some line in the sand that I typically pretty clearly draw around this joint. That doesn’t mean I don’t change my mind. But you know what? I’ve probably got 15 years on most people reading this blog. Sometimes 20. I been to this goat ropin’ many times and have had my ideas tested and changed and complete upended over and over and over — in debate and in practical political struggles.

I’ll argue with you. Give it right back to me. If you’ve got an argument, I’ll bet you that I’ll listen and may even change my mind. BfP changed my mind about blogging. I could list for you dozens of examples where my mind’s been changed on other issues.

But make no mistake: when people expect me to change my mind, they are being just as stubborn about the issue, even when the issue is “let’s be tolerant and get along.” I’m tired of that noise being passed off as, somehow, neutral and not a position, not a line in the sand. It is a position.

Well, gotta fly. That last addendum might not be coherent. Deal, because I got a long week ahead of me.

This is the SEIU thing that drove me batty. May not make sense, but some backgrounder in case any of you are following SEIU’s position on universal health care:

[A friend deeply involved in single-payer agitation writes in answer to my question about what SEIU is up to...]

I think the people who you’re talking to are either drinking Andy Stern’s koolaid, lying to themselves, lying to you or some combination of the three. SEIU has been actively involved in undercutting single-payer activism since before Stern took over. After he became president, he cut the deal with Kaiser, which put them directly in bed with the corporate health care industry, and they’ve fought against single-payer, or any other form of real national health care, everywhere ever since. And all this crap about how we can incrementally reform our way to social democracy with corporate partnerships has the stench of Bernstein and more cynical strains of class collaborationism all over it (to which the smart, Ivy League union staffers respond that that was then, this is now, and produce charts to show how the transition is going to come about if we can just increase “union density” a couple of percentage points by the next election and get a few more Dems elected). The pageantry of mobilization — the carefully orchestrated Potemkin demos featuring spirited crowds of black and brown workers in purple jackets and t-shirts is a perfume over that stench. This is exactly what I’ve been saying about Stern all along. I used to think that his model of the union is One Big Company Union; in the last couple of years I’ve decided that it’s more One Big Collective Human Resource Dept. It’s telling that Stern/SEIU remain the darlings of the left; it’s a measure of the left’s dilettantishness, insularity and stupidity; the pathology of identity politics; and the Yuppieization of that wing of the labor movement. A few years ago I was struck to come away from a meeting with a young union official thinking that she reminded me of a combination of Alexandra Kollontai and an Ivy League-trained corporate lawyer. This is a longer conversation but one I’d love to have. Have you seen Steve Early’s review of Stern’s book?