"It's A Wonder Tall Trees Ain't Layin' Down"

 Let me start by saying I like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; at least I like what I know about her from reports like this:

More recently, a former Trump campaign adviser, Steve Cortes, went online to mock Ocasio-Cortez’s boyfriend, Riley Roberts, for his sandalled feet, prompting her to fire back, “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos.”

I admire her politics.  I still hold firmly (but, I think, realistically) to my insistence that only the most radical politics ("the first of all shall be last of all and servant of all") would achieve the goals most sentient beings aspire to, and that to follow them would finally create the "shining city on the hill" (why a city?  Never mind, move on!) we're all supposed to be enamored of.  But, as I say, I'm realistic; which is to say, I no longer suffer the hubris of youth:

Honestly, it is a shit show. It’s scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing. Some folks perhaps get used to it, or desensitized to the many different things that may be broken, but there is so much reliance on this idea that there are adults in the room, and, in some respect, there are. But sometimes to be in a room with some of the most powerful people in the country and see the ways that they make decisions—sometimes they’re just susceptible to groupthink, susceptible to self-delusion. 

It's not youth per se I'm criticizing.  Most of my seminary class left with their degrees and the confidence that they had the training and the insight and the wisdom to bring light to the benighted masses and to at least instill in their congregations the true meaning of the gospels.  I remember hearing about one member of the class (technically not "my" class, since it was a three year program, but I took four years so I could be a student pastor and actually provide my family with off-campus housing (a parsonage) and a meager income (something slightly better than grocery store clerking, which was my other option).  Anyway, I remember it vaguely now because he wasn't someone I entered seminary with, but a year behind me (our class was quite close, and I rather missed them all when they graduated and I didn't).  He was a very "anal" type, quite insistent on, for example, knowing all the reading assignments in a class the moment the semester started, all due dates for assignments, topics of the papers, etc.  Word came back to me after we graduated together that he went to his first church and told them exactly how things would be done under his pastorate.  Perhaps I should explain that pastoring a church at the best of time is like herding cats, when the cats are at least bobcat in size, and some are tigers.  You do it much more by suasion and suggestion and cajoling than by tyranny.  Stories abound of "Herr Pastor" in my denomination (deep German roots), a figure you never crossed or disagreed with.  That was more fiction than history, but in any case those days are long gone in any church, even the ones with priests (I can't speak for the Catholics, but I've seen Episcopal priests tossed out of their priesthood entirely so a church could expand its related school.  Money talks.)  People in groups, in short, are susceptible to groupthink and self-delusion and all manner of obstacles to doing this the way any one person wants them done.

This is not news.

But then I went to seminary and was exposed to sociology (not as a final word but as a useful discipline with insights to offer), and AOC did not.  There are advantages to being over-educated, if you take them.  Well that and I entered seminary when AOC was 4 years old, making her only 3 years older than my daughter.  You can't learn that much about group dynamics and leadership either in school (where I spent most of my years until graduating seminary) or as a waitress.  I don't fault her.  I just see the errors in her thinking, and wish I could correct them, however slightly.

But here's where I go to the Politico story that led me to the New Yorker interview.  It's regarding the same passage, about the "shitshow" in D.C.

AOC opens the window to an answer when she says what she witnesses in Congress is, “scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is that it never stops being scandalizing.” Whoa — what has she seen? Perhaps lawmakers taking bribes, or trading votes for drugs on the House floor?

No, actually, she’s describing the way many of her fellow Democrats were willing to separate passage of infrastructure legislation as opposed to linking this with the more far-reaching proposals in Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan. She and other progressives wanted to keep them linked and insist on passage of everything. They lost the argument and, by their lights, were proven right. A $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed — “important,” but “much smaller” than the real needs — and, so far, nothing else. She scoffed at how Biden believed “he could talk with [Sen. Joe] Manchin and bring him along.”

Perhaps it is a bit deflating when AOC promises scandalous revelations but instead talks about differences over political strategy and legislative tactics. But she is on to something important — a basic divide in the mentality of Democrats.

Yes, "scandal" to a journalist means something cheap, tawdry, and easily reduced to a sound-bite.  "Bribes on the House floor!" "Drugs traded to buy votes!" AOC didn't misuse the term; but it does sound like she's gone to Washington and found out there isn't even a Jimmy Stewart/Mr. Smith there.  Is this, though, a "basic divide in the mentality of Democrats"? 

"I don't belong to an organized political party.  I'm a Democrat."  That line was attributed to Will Rogers, though I can't now find that he ever said it.  But it's a good joke, because it has so much truth in it.  At one time the Democrats encompassed Strom Thurmond as well as LBJ.  There have always been liberal California Democrats alongside conservative Southern ones.  It's the GOP that's always been the party of one ideology, with a spectrum that ran the gamut from moss-bound to white supremacist crazy.  Basic divide in the mentality of Democrats?  Honestly, that phrase contains less meaning than AOC's use of the word "scandal."

Mind you, AOC is a savvy observer of American politics, even if she does trade in the "fightful-tale-of-the-moment" narratives:

What’s going to bring us to that point? You hear talk now about our being on the brink of civil war—that’s the latest phrase in a series of books that have come out. What will happen to bring us to that degraded point?

Well, I think it has started, but it’s not beyond hope. We’re never beyond hope. But we’ve already seen the opening salvos of this, where you have a very targeted, specific attack on the right to vote across the United States, particularly in areas where Republican power is threatened by changing electorates and demographics. You have white-nationalist, reactionary politics starting to grow into a critical mass. What we have is the continued sophisticated takeover of our democratic systems in order to turn them into undemocratic systems, all in order to overturn results that a party in power may not like.

The concern is that we will look like what other nation?

I think we will look like ourselves. I think we will return to Jim Crow. I think that’s what we risk.

It's only from my perspective of having 34 years on her that I would temper that with questioning the use of the term "return."  I don't think we've yet left Jim Crow.  We need to; and the risk is we'll fail again.  It's an almost Sisyphean task, changing a culture.  America has a national culture, and it is deeply rooted in racism, a racism we insisted upon from the moment Columbus landed and decided the natives would make good slaves because, lesser people, right?  We've carefully nurtured that evil since 1492, and still even the mention of it, or giving it a start date for the slave trade (1619) is more than many whites can bear to this day.  But we have to change that culture.  Auden gave up on his prophetic (by which I mean fundamentally insightful) observation that "We must love one another, or die."  He called it a "damned lie" because "we are going to die, anyway."  But there are ways to die that are not physical, and if that's too radical an assertion for a materialistic culture and age, then so be it.

But you really don’t have to look much further than our own history, because what we have, I think, is a uniquely complex path that we have walked. And the question that we’re really facing is: Was the last fifty to sixty years after the Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had with a multiracial democracy that we will then decide was inconvenient for those in power? And we will revert to what we had before, which, by the way, wasn’t just Jim Crow but also the extraordinary economic oppression as well?

I've seen it argued recently that 50 years is a short span of time in the arc of the universe, as Dr. King called it; and yet giant strides were made in those 50 years.  Made, but not accomplished.  Nothing, you eventually learn, is ever accomplished.  I thought it was virtually the end of history (so to speak) when we "accomplished" the task of putting human beings on the moon.  The whole world (virtually; and without the internet!) stopped to watch Neil Armstrong take his short step that was a giant leap.  But that was 53 years ago, and who thinks about it now?  Now we praise man-child billionaires who stand on the shoulders of giants and the massive efforts of the federal government to shoot rockets into orbital space, and no further, and earn the adulation of credulous cable news announcers too young to have been alive when Armstrong placed that first foot print on non-earthly ground.  What was accomplished is not accomplished for long.  The civil rights movement wasn't "accomplished" because we abolished segregated bathrooms and lunch counters.  The VRA is gutted.  Brown v. Board is more honored in the breach than in the keeping.  We all pay lip service to equality, but few of us really want to see it in action, at least if we benefit from the status quo.  And trust me, Jim Crow AND the "extraordinary economic oppression" are still alive and well in Texas. I'm qute sure the same can be said for many states in the union, if not all of them.

But neither will we effect any change on that by being scandalized by how the sausage gets made, in Washington or in Austin, Texas.  Or, for that matter, in Albany, New York.  I read Maggie Haberman's tweets.  It sounds like the new Hizzoner in NYC is involved in as much of a shitshow as ever D.C. inveigled.  And the school board in San Francisco?  Fuggedaboutit!

My first encounter with political commentary, at least that I remember now, was Mark Twain complaining about the inability of Congress to function.  It's impossible to slip a piece of paper between Twain's complaints and this more contemporary version:

When you are asked questions about whether or not Nancy Pelosi should stay as Speaker, when you’re asked questions about the rather advanced ages of Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and Chuck Schumer, does it make a difference? You’re saying it’s structural. It’s not generational.

It’s both. The reason we have this generational situation that we do is also, in part, due to our structures. The generational aspect of things is absolutely pertinent to the kind of decision-making. There is this world view, this appeal, of a time passed that I think sometimes guides decision-making. President Biden thought that he could talk with Manchin like an old pal and bring him along. And, frankly, that was what the White House’s strategy was, in terms of what they communicated to us. That’s how they tried to sell passage of not even half a loaf but a tenth of the loaf. It was “We promise we’ll be able to bring them along.” There is this idea that this is just a temporary thing and we’ll get back to that. But I grew up my entire life in this mess. There’s no nostalgia for a time when Washington worked in my life.

Is it healthy or not for the Democratic Party for Nancy Pelosi to remain in place as the Speaker, as leader of the Democratic caucus in the House?

It’s really all about a specific moment that we’re in. We are in such a delicate moment of the day-to-day, particularly with the threats to our democracy. I believe that, at the end of the day, there’s going to be a generational change in our leadership. That is just a simple fact. Now, when that particular moment happens? I think it’s a larger question of conditions and circumstance.

You don’t want to go near this one.

It’s a tough question. It’s not even just a question of the Speaker. It’s a question of our caucus. I wish the Democratic Party had more stones. I wish our party was capable of truly supporting bold leadership that can address root causes.

I hear Millenials yelling at Boomers, and Gen X'ers yelling at Boomers and Millenials, in that passage. I also hear Boomers yelling at their parents, when we were all younger than 30.  I'm not sure where it got us to yell that things would be so much better if these "old people" would just get out of the way.  I do remember the enthusiasm for giving 18 year olds the vote, because then things would change, boy, you just wait! 

Yeah, not so much. And earlier, AOC did say, about Senators Manchin and Sinema:

There are some things that are outside of the President’s control, and there’s very little one can say about that, with Joe Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema. But I think there are some things within the President’s control, and his hesitancy around them has contributed to a situation that isn’t as optimal.

Her solution then (a few minutes back!) was to exert more executive power over forgiving student loans (the President can do that?  Given the recent rulings of the Supreme Court, I'd look twice at that legal analysis.)  Here, a few minutes later, it's all-or-nothing, ¡Vive la revolucion! Or something.  Maybe it's the danger of talking too long and answering the same question, in different versions, too many times.  Still, I give her a lot of credit for doing what she does:

The response to the Met Gala was positive in your community? How did you feel it?

Yeah. Because sometimes you just need to give a little Bronx jeer to the rich and to the spectacle. You need to puncture the façade. My community and my family—we’re postal workers, my uncle is a maintenance man, my mom’s a domestic worker. Sometimes you just need to have that moment.

It is a bizarre psychological experience to live specifically now in 2022. We’re not even talking about a culture of celebrity. We’re talking about a culture of commodification of human beings, from the bottom all the way to the top. And there’s absolutely a bizarre psychological experience of this that also plays into these decisions. For example, like what happened in responding to these bizarre things, like about my boyfriend’s feet. I’ve felt for a long time that we need to talk about the bizarre psychological impulses underpinning the right wing.

It’s not “politically correct” to be able to talk about these things, but they are so clearly having an obvious impact on not just our public discourse but the concentration of power. We have to talk about patriarchy, racism, capitalism, but you’re not going to have those conversations by using those words. You have to have those conversations by really responding in uplifting moments. I don’t really care if other people understand it. Sometimes what seems to some folks a moment that’s gauche or something, I often do it with the intention of exposing cultural or psychological undercurrents that people don’t want to talk about. Which, by the way, is why I think sometimes people read these moments as gauche or low-class or whatever they may be. And sometimes how I feel is, if I’m just going to be this, like, commodified avatar thing, then I’m going to play with it, like a toy.

It’s a rough thing to deal with.

Yeah. It’s awful.

It is awful; and we do need to have these conversations, especially without the words like "racism" and "patriarchy" and even "capitalism." You have to have those conversations by really responding in uplifting moments," is absolutely right; and believe me, it's also damned hard to do.  This is also very insightful:

When people start engaging individually enough, it starts to amount to something bigger. We have a culture of immediate gratification where if you do something and it doesn’t pay off right away we think it’s pointless.

But, if more people start to truly cherish and value the engagement and the work in their own back yard, it will precipitate much larger change. And the thing about people’s movements is that the opposite is very top-down. When you have folks with a profound amount of money, power, influence, and they really want to make something happen, they start with media. You look at these right-wing organizations, they create YouTube channels. They create their podcast stars. They have Fox News as their own personal ideological television outlet.

Legitimate change in favor of public opinion is the opposite. It takes a lot of mass-public-building engagement, unrecognized work until it gets to the point that it is so big that to ignore it threatens the legitimacy of mass-media outlets, institutions of power, etc. It has to get so big that it is unignorable, in order for these positions up top to respond. And so people get very discouraged here. 

But it's basically the "Dial 'F' For Frankenstein" model of analysis.  Arthur Clarke's story posited a future when enough telephones (!) were connected that a "critical mass" of connections would imitate the neurons in a human brain and consciousness would arise, an artificial one, because that's how human consciousness works, right?  It's really just a reductio ad absurdum, except in reverse and borrowing a completely inapplicable term from atomic physics as a metaphor that sounds more scientific than "tipping point" (although even that is not a pop-sci term, with the same basis in reasoning, or, actually, not reasoning).  The idea that sufficient "critical mass" of organizers would do the same thing in some "organic way," is similar magical thinking.  Obama disabused himself of it in Chicago, although he traded on the fantasy in his first election campaing.  It's a reading of the civil rights movement that ignores the fact Dr. King was an ordained minister, and that he was chosen to lead the movement by a group of people from black churches across several states.  People who themselves reached a consensus on what needed to be done, and how it needed to be lead (it could not be leaderless!) by having meetings of the very kind AOC decries suffering through in D.C.  Even people in churches who want to solve a problem don't all agree on what the solution is.  Often, they can't even agree on what the problem is.

Dese are de conditions dat prevail.

I must admit I started this post because of this quote from the Politico article:

Rather than whining, AOC told Remnick she fantasizes “all the time” about getting out of electoral politics and acting on her values in more meaningful ways. “The day to day of my job is frustrating,” she says, adding, “I ate shit when I was a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress.”

Welcome to reality, I thought.  Then I read it in context; the full quote:

Going forward, what do you think is the optimal role for you to play?

With the Climate Justice Alliance, some communities here at home say that they don’t talk about leadership, they talk about being leaderful. And I think that people’s movements, especially in the United States, are leaderful. And we’re getting more people every day. The untold story is actually the momentum of what is happening on the ground. You have Starbucks that just unionized its first shops in Buffalo. I went up there to visit them. Sure, I went over there to support a mayoral election which didn’t ultimately pan out, but also to support a lot of what was going on. I would argue that if it wasn’t for that mayoral election and the amount of intensity and organizing and hope and attention, a lot of these workers who were organizing may have given up.

There is no movement, there is no effort, there is no unionizing, there is no fight for the vote, there is no resistance to draconian abortion laws, if people think that the future is baked in and nothing is possible and that we’re doomed. Even on climate—or especially on climate. And so the day-to-day of my day job is frustrating. So is everyone else’s. I ate shit when I was a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress. It’s called a job, you know?

So, yes, I deal with the wheeling and dealing and whatever it is, that insider stuff, and I advance amendments that some people would criticize as too little, etc. I also advance big things that people say are unrealistic and naïve. Work is like that. It is always the great fear when it comes to work or pursuing anything. You want to write something, and, in your head, it’s this big, beautiful Nobel Prize-winning concept. And then you are humbled by the words that you actually put on paper.

And that is the work of movement. That is the work of organizing. That is the work of elections. That is the work of legislation. That is the work of theory, of concepts, you know? And that is what it means to be in the arena. 

It's right there, in the second paragraph.  She didn't stop with "I eat shit as a member of Congress."  She continued:  "It's called a job, you know?"  Which alone separates her from the MTG's of Congress, who really do believe their way should prevail and it's only the presence of radical evil which frustrates them.  I would add that, not only should you be humbled by the words you actually put on paper (yes, many of mine sound like "big, beautiful Nobel-prize winning concept[s]" even after I type them.  Until the next morning when I wonder what I was drinking the night before (usually nothing more than one last cup of coffee)), you should be humbled by the fact you get anything done, that half any of your ideas reach the point of some kind of fruition. 

The mass of us, even of those of us who actually try, seldom get that far.  Such is the human condition.

I would still advise you be in the arena as an LBJ, marshalling the forces of Congress; or an MLK, marshalling the forces of the people who called you to their leadership.  Be Saul, not David nor Samuel.  Better yet, be Jeremiah, or Amos.  Leaderly, on second thought, is not such a bad idea.  Dr. King was more "leaderly" than many acknowledge.  The example of the Judges in Israel is a good one; especially since some of them were women, too.