Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Balance and Equivalence

I disdain the media's take on objectivity. Routinely I see, whether in serious or "humorous" news programs, the hurried attempt to find an equivalent episode following the criticism of one party or another. "Corporations and unions," "private and public," "both supporters and critics of the war," "employees and management..." Is there fault to be found in all of these places? Certainly there is.

Is it always the same? Is it always identical? Sometimes it may be or certainly appears to me. I find most of the party machinery of the United States to be analogous and have found their partisans to speak similarly. They play the same game, that's pretty evident. But I also see times when fault stands on its own, when criticism can be voiced without immediately faulting the other, which I feel maintains the duopoly as effectively as clearly one-sided propaganda.

See, I'm frustrated by what I've encountered among a lot of third-partiers and self-described independents when I criticize one side. Hungry to point out hypocrisy--and to be fair, there's plenty of it around--you can barely get in a heavy critique before someone steps in to remind that other people suck too.

In my personal experience, you can roll with that and play with it, reminding the partisan of the bastardy of those on his side, too. And an honest person must be prepared to look at the big picture and try to identify what is generalizable about an argument that takes on only one faction in the vast system. That said, I don't need to adopt some cable news outlet's idea of "fairness." "They're all a bunch of bastards" is objectively true, and ought to be understood at least on some level. My critique doesn't satisfy me, however, if it only stops there.

Not to go all leftwing on you, but I like some of what Debord said when comparing and contrasting the spectacles present in both pro-capitalist and Soviet blocs. He didn't need to equate them in order to tar them both, and that's where I hope to stand. Nuance and distinction can be found anywhere in order to obscure crimes and pardon the unforgivable, but the doctrine of equivalence brings about its errors as well.

8 comments:

  1. Point taken, to a degree. (I'm just going to pretend this is addressed to me even though it's probably not.) I don't advocate some ridiculous idea of balance akin to the self-congratulatory myths the media tells itself. I'm actually less interested in pointing out that so-and-so generic politician sucks than pointing out that there are other people who aren't propping up our system by voting for it, who are indeed victims of it, who are potential allies on many issues. Why alienate them? Because they don't have the same ideological background? A lonely road that would be. I mean maybe we should be used to it, being anarchists. But I'd rather find common ground wherever possible, whether on the left, right, or wherever.

    I think for whatever reason I may just be congenitally disposed to this sort of alliance, like what was hoped for by Rothbard and Oglesby in the 60s. And what antiwar.com is trying to do right now with comehomeamerica.us. Or maybe I just read too much Attack the System, with their emphasis on anarcho-pluralism.

    But I also see times when fault stands on its own, when criticism can be voiced without immediately faulting the other, which I feel maintains the duopoly as effectively as clearly one-sided propaganda.

    Examples? Beyond the obvious ones of first faulting the party in power.

    "They're all a bunch of bastards" is objectively true, and ought to be understood at least on some level. My critique doesn't satisfy me, however, if it only stops there.

    Me neither. It forms the basis of a systemic critique, which contains the following point (among others), that the output of the duopoly is not dependent on the input of the partisan actors involved.

    Anyway, I also wanted to say that I think you've been doing good writing in your blog so far.

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  2. Pretend away; recent discussions triggered the post, but this is a gripe I've had for years with people who definitely don't read this blog.

    Some would say it's a thin line between refusing to alienate others and appeasing them, but that's foolish purism. The fact is that you're right. We can ill afford to repulse people outright; some things deserve outrage, but most people (if not all) merit outreach and investigation, as I tried to say last week.

    As far as the first chunk you quoted, I was mostly referring obliquely to my own interactions, and this may be less a substantive argument than a matter of taste. I think you can say "Republican policy X is bad and will have effects Y" without someone immediately posting "Yeah, well it's not like Comrade Pelosi has any ideas." Both are objectively true, but the latter is stated as a response when it's not. Democratic malfeasance isn't an answer to Republican crimes. They both stand on their own as shitty, fucking awful things, even as they may be indicative of larger system function.

    Now, of course, when someone says "that's why we need to vote in more Democrats," that's when I pull out the "well you know they voted the same" or link them to Bill Clinton's support of Iraq and so on.

    And thank you for the encouragement. I'm trying my best to learn. I don't have any illusions of pulling a Locke and Demosthenes, but this has served for me to focus my thoughts.

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  3. Well damned done. I'm not really competent to refine my thoughts the way you do, so I'm at a bit of loss to explain my appreciation, but...worth the read.

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  4. Glad to hear it, Jack. Like I've said, if I offer any of you something in what I write, I consider it returning the favor.

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  5. I think you can say "Republican policy X is bad and will have effects Y" without someone immediately posting "Yeah, well it's not like Comrade Pelosi has any ideas." Both are objectively true, but the latter is stated as a response when it's not. Democratic malfeasance isn't an answer to Republican crimes.

    What is an example of this, a "Republican" policy or a "Democratic" policy? Apart from crimes committed straight out of the executive branch that happened to be occupied by a Republican or Democrat at that time (and even then are quickly ratified)? The parties have their platforms and stuff, sure, which are useful in providing the patina of democracy. But how is any policy in the history of ever anything other than a ruling class policy (i.e. larger system function)?

    This is where the waters get muddy, by saying one faction of the ruling class "wants" some policy outcome but the other faction doesn't because...why? They are bought and paid for by, if not the exact same, then at least overlapping and highly similar interests. And they both elect and support caucus leaders that make the "compromises" that sell the public down the river. They both end up tacitly supporting, if not through overt roll call vote, the outcomes. If they didn't they would be out in two seconds flat. This is part of how the duopoly functions, no?

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  6. Well, sponsors can disagree; captured unions may differ with (relatively) small business. This contender for monopoly may be vying for control with many competitors. Christianists may differ with plutocratic entities such as Disney over gay rights. Are these narrow splits mere window dressing or are they deeper? I don't know; the wealthy have tugged us back and forth for centuries.

    In any case, at least here, I don't care what the parties "want," per se. They do marginally different things that, in general, overlap, and sometimes the only disagreement is on how their supporters spin it in the world of spectacle.

    What I am saying is that I can criticize their actual actions and, in some cases, their rhetoric which itself can matter (as I argued in the "Ideas" post), without automatically invoking the other side and finding identical behaviors or motivations.

    To add a little more detail on how the rulers differ: Bush was supported by pragmatic and idealistic warlords, as I suspect Obama is. We may say that, like Nietzsche, that the war is the thing that justifies any cause for these motherfuckers. That may well be. But I do believe that, culturally speaking at least, their attempts to justify the war on, respectively, materialistic and rational goals and, then, ostensibly "humanitarian" and "enlightened" goals can each, in their turn, be argued against and ultimately refuted. I do not need to reduce it all to window-dressing, saying the justifications matter naught because the machinery remains the same. Maybe that runs the risk of buying into the spectacle, but the fact that large numbers of people believe in the philosophy that is probably only secondary to the wielding of power (from the rulers' perspective, anyway) means that I take the time to refute it.

    I've talked myself into a circle. I hope any of this makes sense; if not, bear with me, ask again, and I'll try to talk straight.

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  7. I agree with you that the justifications for war should be refuted, on basically the same grounds that you do: to dismantle the beliefs held throughout the population that are wrong (i.e. that military intervention can be humanitarian, that it doesn't cause greater suffering, that its primary beneficiaries aren't war profiteers, etc.). I do think there has been some success in this area over the past few decades, incidentally. Ideally, this forces the state to adopt ever more ridiculous rationales, which they do, which then in turn exposes the flimsy basis for our imperialism. It also forces the state to lie to an ever greater degree (e.g. "kinetic military action"), which is generally an indication that the public is not on board with what is going on.

    That said, I still think it's window dressing. Because having a smaller global military footprint would seriously harm various corporate interests, as well as political actors who benefit from the permanent warfare state. The party actors get filtered through the machinery; they must accept certain basic exceptionalist assumptions. Whether they are a neocon or a humanitarian interventionist who sincerely or otherwise believes in spreading democracy, or just a straight up jingo plunderer, does this really matter to say, Boeing or Raytheon or Halliburton or Blackwater? As long as you filter out the intervention skeptics and anti-imperialists, you can find some way to arrange a war or even just have one fall in your lap.

    I'm not sure what this has to do with the parties though really, especially since on the issue of militarism, there is the most profound overlap. I mean you have more Samantha Powers in the Democratic fold and more Paul Wolfowitzes in the Republican fold, but they're both making phony cases for war. The machinery of the system benefits greatly no matter which side is making the case.

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  8. I've probably chosen a shitty example. That said, let me say that most leaders of the crusades probably didn't believe the shit they were peddling, but Christianity still helps us understand why people would serve those campaigns.

    The frustrating part of this is also the tag-team style of leadership. The parties adopt roles based on position, so I don't really know if, for example, the Republicans would have opposed the nuclear arms treaty with Russia if they had been in power. We can always say that hypothetically (or from bitter experience) the other side would do the exact same thing, but we can, in the instant, critique the relative positions taken by this or that faction.

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