The Shallow Politics of America’s Concerned Intellectuals
Posted by John Rensenbrink on 06/19/08[This hard hitting article, published in Green Horizon Magazine this spring, has claimed the attention of the Utne Reader and stirred commentary on their website. Here is the entire article as published.]
For years I have been baffled by the disconnect between what American intellectuals say in their think tanks, journals, websites, books and articles about our national and planetary crisis and their tepid and shallow political stance when it comes to doing something about it.
The work of Lester Brown is instructive.
His latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (published by Earth Policy Institute) tells us that the eco-eco crisis gripping the planet is of epic proportions; and it offers pertinent remedies to alleviate the crisis and prepare the way for a healthy economy and ecology (eco-eco) for all peoples.
But the book ignores the telling question: how can these specific remedies be translated into actual governmental policies? What kind of political organization or party or coalition of forces is needed to make that happen?
He Misses the Number One Problem
He seems to assume that, somehow, someone will take up the proposed remedies and get them translated into policy. He misses the number one problem. He misses or chooses not to put up front the fact that we are saddled with a power structure that is either deaf; or immersed in bureaucracy; or so dominated by entrenched interests who benefit from the status quo that action on behalf of the remedies is squelched; or all of the above. In his book of 400 pages he devotes the equivalent of two pages to the question, “What Can You and I Do?” His answer is to read up on the problem, contact your representative, get others to go with you to meet with him or her, and lobby them. And write an op ed.
This is so “old”! It’s good things that people can do who themselves are caught up in conventional ways of being “political”. No hint here of the reality of power and the nature of the power structure we’re faced with. His skimpy two pages of advice are totally inadequate and out of proportion to the immensity of the crisis that he pictures for us in the other 398 pages of the book.
Lester Brown’s Institute has been sending gratis their impressive annual analyses and policy recommendations to all members of the U.S. Congress for twenty years. You can see how much impact that has made! Mike Gravel, former Senator, spoke out to Democratic candidates for president in early January. He said, “Congress could do a good job theoretically, but it can’t. Why? It’s owned lock, stock, and barrel by corporate America. So you think you’re going to become president and you’re going to say, ‘Let’s really straighten out corporate America.’ This is foolishness. It’s fantasy.”
One may demur and say that this is not Lester Brown’s problem. But it is! If he and so many others put these analyses and remedies out there and yet say not much of anything about the huge political barriers and what we can do about them, then what are they doing? Simply sighing into the wind? As Ralph Nader would say: are you just concerned, or are you really serious?
It is interesting that Lester Brown has more than a glimmer of consciousness about this for he does talk about “political will”. Yet, so many people are saying this, who like him make the analysis and offer the remedies. And yet where is the follow through – by them?
The Crisis and the Remedies
Before going further on this theme, I cast a quick look at what Lester Brown’s book says, and says so well, about the crisis and the remedies.
Two years ago, oil was $50 a barrel. In late 2007, it jumped to $90 a barrel and was reaching to the one hundred mark. U.S. corporations and government have continued to build distilleries to convert grain into fuel. The U.S. now has enough distilleries to convert one-fifth of its grain crop into fuel for cars. A disturbing – and wholly predictable – result is that corn prices have nearly doubled. So have wheat prices. And, of course, food prices are going up steadily (since, as Michael Pollan points out in Omnivore’s Dilemma, corn is a major ingredient in most of our foods).
The book declares that the backlog of unresolved problems grows. These include rapid population growth, spreading water shortages, shrinking forests, eroding and depleted soils, deteriorating grasslands, rising temperatures, and – ominously—weaker governments around the world that are breaking down under the mounting stress.
We are violating deadlines that we do not recognize
The book warns that we are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and we are violating deadlines that we do not recognize. These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.
The book identifies four overriding goals for public policy: climate stabilization, population stabilization, poverty eradication, and restoration of the earth’s ecosystems. These are absolutely pertinent and necessary.
The key policy initiative is to get the market to tell the environmental truth. The book proposes lowering income taxes and offsetting this with a carbon tax that will reflect the costs of climate disruption and air pollution. [This, incidentally has long been a foremost policy goal of the German Green Party and of many other Green Parties in the world, but the book ignores their stands.] The book proposes a worldwide carbon tax of $240 per ton to be phased in at the rate of $20 per year from 2008 to 2020 – it would be offset at every step of the way with a matching reduction in income taxes. This would discourage fossil fuel use and encourage investment in renewable sources of energy.
Dodging the Implications of Their Own Analyses
One might have thought that by this time Lester Brown would have “discovered” the Green Party, both here and in the other 75-plus countries of the world with a Green Party. But no such party exists in his circumscribed view of the political world. He touts warm blurbs such as this from Bill Clinton: “Lester Brown tells us how to build a more just world and save the planet . . . in practical, straightforward way. We should heed his advice.”
Presumably, Lester Brown must think that it is through the Democratic Party that help must come. This seems to be the default position of most of the self-styled progressive voices in the media and academe. And yet they know full well that the kind of action they know is needed to save the nation and the planet has not been forthcoming from the Democratic Party for decades. Nor has the latter’s abdication of responsibility changed in any way as we head into the 2008 presidential election. Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe wrote in late December, “The inconvenient truth of the 2008 election year is that climate change is still way down the dance card of most-talked-about topics. It’s ranked No. 12 among Democratic candidates, and No. l5 among Republicans. Out of 2,275 questions on the Sunday morning talk shows, the League of Conservation Voters counted only three on global warming.”
The Historic Example of Polish Intellectuals
I visited Poland often during the 80’s. I was seeking to understand and learn from the struggle of Solidarity with the entrenched Communist Party elite. The conversations with Polish intellectuals (I would call on them to discuss “economic reform”) had to be very guarded and I was careful not to reveal the names of the many people I interviewed for my book on Solidarity, published in 1988. My respect for them grew and grew. The intellectuals of Poland, a very large and influential portion of that country’s intelligentsia, goaded the ruling elite with analyses and they found many, often ingenious, ways to support the Solidarity political opposition. That example comes to mind with striking force as I see the lamentable failure of America’s intellectuals to do likewise.
The Money and the Power in the United States
Let’s remind ourselves once again of what we face politically in terms of money and power. It is not so different from what the Polish intellectuals faced in their confrontations with the Communist regime. As I write this, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office has issued a report on income distribution in the United States. In 2005, the last year for which the Budget Office has data, the total income of the 3 million Americans at the top (1% of the population) was roughly equal to the total income of the bottom 166 million Americans (out of a total U.S. population of 300 million). Put in terms of households, the total income of the top 1.1 million households was an astounding $1.8 trillion. Over the years, other studies consistently show that the top 1% of the population own and/or control over 50% of the nation’s wealth. It is also the case that the great bulk of all campaign contributions to candidates for office come from this same 1%. They also decide, through their ownership and control of the mass media, what the people hear and see—and what they don’t hear and see—about state, national, and international affairs.
Thus, it’s not only the mountains of money they have – not as such. It’s the political power and muscle this gives them to protect what they have and to maintain the social, economic, and political structures that produce these monstrous inequalities of wealth and political power – and that constitute a deadly war with nature and the planet. Small wonder that they can pull most of the rest of the population around by the nose.
But there are new political forces
Yet there are political forces in the U.S. body politic who are determined not to take it anymore. These forces go beyond the usual protest and “you’re pinching my toes” demonstrations of anger and distress. They are serious about directly contesting for political power – using the time honored ballot box as a means to this end – and, like Poland’s Solidarity—eschewing violence. The most durable of these forces is the Green Party – which makes sense given the centrality of green issues facing the body politic. And, in companion style with the Green Party, voices like Sam Smith’s Progressive Review help show the way to a serious and credible political alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans.
The question remains, why do so many eloquent voices, especially those like Lester Brown who see and proclaim the particular importance of ecological issues – why do they hang back, why do they not seize the opportunity the Green Party provides them. Indeed, why wouldn’t—why shouldn’t!—the entire intelligentsia, whether conservative, liberal, progressive, or socialist go full throttle in full support the Green Party? Vaclav Havel did it in the Czech Republic in the spring of 2006, giving the Green Party there a huge leg up.
The only person of similar stature to do that in the United States is Ralph Nader. But he has done it in a tentative and quixotic way. He ran for president on behalf of the Green Party in 1996, but at quarter speed. He ran full out in 2000, again on behalf of the Green Party and that helped a lot to build the party. But in 2004 he ran as an Independent parallel with Green party candidate David Cobb’s campaign—and both campaigns suffered. Nor has he joined the Green Party.
But at least he has done something. No other prominent member of America’s progressive community, going back 20 years, has come forward to arouse and rally the American public to build a strong, credible, political alternative to the corporate-tethered two major parties.
Cynthia McKinney Steps Up to the Plate
But hold! On Christmas Eve, 2007, I tuned in to Cynthia McKinney’s Yu Tube announcing her run for the U.S. Green Party’s nomination for President. It is a brilliantly crafted, beautifully delivered, convincingly argued, and courageous political speech. One of the best I have heard or seen for decades. Her stepping up to the plate to go to bat for the Green Party full out is the most hopeful sign so far for a possible change in the politics of prominent and influential leaders in this country.
McKinney’s action brings even more sharply into focus the really astounding failure of the U.S. intelligentsia to go into action in support of the Green Party. Their failure is exhibited week by week and month by month in The Nation; the Atlantic Monthly; In These Times; Earth Island Journal; The Progressive; Yes! Magazine; E Magazine; Utne’s Reader and hosts of other publications – plus thousands of websites.
They expostulate and call attention to all kinds of warts in the dominant political and economic system, and present to their readers many important things that can be done; and they celebrate what individuals and non-governmental organizations are doing to alleviate distress and/or point a way forward. And, by and large, they give aid and comfort to the Democratic Party political machine that at best simply goes along with the status quo and at worst fosters it. They make no move to stir up and back a political force that can change the world– they don’t even discuss in any serious way the things that are needed if a credible political force is to grow and develop in this and other countries
I just finished reading several articles in the Winter 2008 issue of Earth Island Journal. My eye caught a headline, “Green Parties”. I pounced on it. The article was about politics in the United Kingdom. It spoke of green ideas and proposals for policies in the Conservative Party, the Labor Party, and the Liberal Democratic Party. But not a word about the U.K.’s flourishing Green Party.
I try to understand such things, but my powers of understanding are severely taxed. Is the article saying that the three named parties are Green Parties? And, do interesting green ideas and policy proposals, done out of sheer fear of the real Green Party in the UK, convert these three status quo parties into Green Parties? The silence is not accidental and it is not excusable.
Or consider this example of what seems like deliberate silence in Yes! Magazine during this past year. The entire issue was devoted to ten leading examples of hopeful things happening in the world that should make us take heart and realize that all is not lost. One might have thought that the existence worldwide of over 75 Green Parties might, just might, be included in the ten. But not so. Indeed, there was a meticulous effort made, it seems, not to mention politics at all.
The examples could go on and on.
America’s intelligentsia is full of talk, talk, talk. But they look the other way when it comes to following through politically. Or they go along with a supine Democratic Party and wring their hands at its failure.
As I said. It’s astounding.
Is There, Nevertheless, a Way?
But maybe there is a way. It is a long shot. It isn’t easy by any means. But it is something that can be done, however improbable it may seem. It’s not a shortcut, it’s not a silver bullet. We must go right to the heart of the matter. Simply put, what we must do is this: WE MUST CONQUER POLITICS.
Conquer it? Yes!
Means four things:
- Politics must be owned by everyone.
- Politics must imitate good housekeeping.
- Politics must be rooted in the dialogue of persons.
- Politics must henceforth be rooted in a deep commitment to the earth on the order of Albert Gore’s admonition in his Nobel speech “to make peace with the planet.”
The earth is our home. If our species can begin now to truly believe this, that belief will be the animating force that requires politics to be owned by everyone; it makes politics a homely matter of good housekeeping; and it roots political decisions in the dialogue of persons.
Politics has been practiced by human beings in the last 8000 years (since the Neolithic revolution that ushered in settled agriculture) primarily in terms of top-down control, booty for a conniving and usually docile elite, and a combination of manipulation and force to keep the many in line. This has been true of the many agrarian civilizations that have come and gone and has been fine-tuned to the point of self-immolation in the three hundred years of industrial civilization.
Maybe we have reached the fullness of time, when it’s either total failure and catastrophic disarticulation of all that the species has attained hitherto, or a turn at last to the politics of earth sharing and earth-keeping.
John Rensenbrink
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John Rensenbrink is President of the Green Horizon Foundation, a blogger on their website and Editor of the hard copy of Green Horizon Magazine. John is a founding member of the United States Green Party. His books include, Against All Odds: the Green Transformation of American Politics (1999). He is Professor Emeritus of Government at Bowdoin College. He lives with his wife Carla on the banks of the Cathance River in Topsham, Maine.