Politics as Human Focused and Reality Focused

When we humans "do" politics we focus on other humans rather than extra-human considerations. I suggest that we do so at our own peril. Politics as we now do it can be called inter-politics, that is between humans in the context of their societies. This leads us to suppose that the important issues lie between human beings rather than between human beings and the context in which their species exists.

Barack Obama, despite strong campaign appeals to progressives to accept his "vision", has created a cabinet composed mainly of Clintonite retreads. Despite all the hype, he has time and again rejected the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which was the wing that gave him so much support during the election. I ask why this profound shift after being elected?

In what follows I may be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt.

Let us assume that what we have witnessed, including giving the prominence of the inaugural prayer to Rick Warren, is Obama's effort to "bridge" the gap between left and right, that is between two human groups. Notably, Bill Clinton tried this with his Democratic Leadership Council, which pandered to the Religious Right and to corporate domination of the economy. It did this with what we now know as disastrous consequences. It is no consolation to see Obama go to the same people to facilitate his "bridging" act. In both these cases I suggest we are looking at people-driven politics rather than reality-driven. Clinton and Obama have looked to the political middle for what is needed.

Reality does not necessarily lie at the middle. The real world requires large scale addressing of issues mankind has never had to face before, e.g. global warming, massive over population and critical environmental degradation. It is, in my estimation, the primary job of the politician to bring these kinds of issues to center stage so that they can be addressed in the terms they require while there is still time to do so democratically. Continuing neglect will necessitate dictatorship as in China's mandated family size with its horrific impact on female babies. It should be noted that the Republicans have not sought to build bridges, rather they have reveled in playing hardball, including shutting down the federal government under Newt Gingrich and creating an imperial presidency under G. W. Bush. They have thereby moved the "center' further and further to the right to the point that we face incipient fascism. This method of doing politics references only the political power of groups of people and focuses on the ways to manipulate people rather than on the problems the people face. I suggest this is a fruitless way to go about politics in the desperate times we face. Among other things it is too easily controlled by ideologies and people's perfidies and bigotries.

The politics of reality, on the other hand, can bring people together based upon the common threats they face. This is most notable in wartime, when desperate circumstances override ideological differences.

The progressive mission should be a fundamentally reality-driven politics presenting the real world as humanity faces it and articulating clearly and forcefully the consequences for humanity if it disregards the necessary.

In a politics of reality human population would rise to a major focus of political concern. One may ask how this issue can be made politically viable when major religions oppose methods for dealing with it. The politics of this reality require an Al Gore of population growth to make clear what the consequences for humanity will inevitably be. For example, as Gore showed the before and after of glacier melt, we need to show the before and after of population growth, the massive suburban sprawl since the end of World War II , a major source of global warming, the food riots in India and Africa and the massive congestion of our cities. It must make clear that advocates of population growth are enemies of mankind.

Another reality that needs to be faced is the fact that the job will be decreasingly available as a means of distributing the gross annual product. As automation, computerization and robotization increasingly set in, jobs will increasingly disappear. We are seeing some of these consequences in a United Sates economy built on finance, not manufacturing and in social disruptions like the youth rioting in Athens specifically because there are no jobs. What, if anything, will replace the job as a means for distributing the wealth generated by society's productivity? This is not to mention the job's psychological and social function of establishing personal significance, an even more profound victim of automation. My father was proud of the fact that he never went on the "dole" during the Great Depression although he sometimes made less than WPA paid. Until society creates the moral equivalent of the job, increasing numbers of citizens will be psychologically and socially on the dole.

In brief, the issue of Right and Left should be replaced by the issue of Fantasy, either religious or economic, and the Real as our planet presents it to us.

Bob Newhard