And The Rustbelt’s Truth-Teller Of The Year Award Goes To…
There is the image and then there is the reality of things. More often than not the two are in some opposition to each other. This is no more true than in the case of bourgeois politics. When I want the image of things I watch the NewsHour on PBS or, rarely, the Sunday morning network wanks. PBS has the attraction of being utterly conscious of setting the parameters of acceptable debate and of “agreed upon” history. Ken Burns being only the most arrant example. That acceptable debate is, of course, the liberal-conservative dichotomy (in the American sense of those terms). But PBS, contrary to some on the right, doesn’t do liberal well; it’s too culturally stodgy for a start. Their nostalgia shows about the 60s star the Kingsmen for god’s sake.
No, for the left of the acceptable dial I go over to the Huffington Post and wade through the TnA to watch clips of the Daily Show and read the night-terrors of liberals. I suggest that it says something pretty profound about the culture of the Late-Imperial United States when Arianna Huffington, a card-carrying member of the Beverly Hills elite, is passed off as someone who “speaks truth to power”. It’s hard for me to take someone seriously when I am constantly mistaking them for Zsa Zsa Gabor. Dawling.
The conflict between image and reality took on epic proportions during the last election cycle. Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the Presidency was followed every step of the way by wonks writing about the symbolism of the historic change represented by a black man, with a decidedly foreign sounding name no less, sauntering to the White House. But there was a lot more symbolism embodied in Obama than just that. Far from being the herald of a “post-racial” America, Obama represents an elaboration of racial politics, not its denial. Obama’s personal, and carefully presented, history is testimony to that. Isn’t it just as symbolic that the first black man to win the highest office in the land was not a descendant of slaves?
The packaging of candidate Obama as the harbinger of change was a very different proposition than presenting him as bringer of reform. Reform, aside from the necessary health care pledge (and we see how well that’s turned out), wasn’t promised by Obama. Why? Well, to start with Obama’s politics of triangulation are thoroughly “post-reform.” I think of him speaking in Denver, standing in front of those theater-prop Roman columns; his real promise was to the ruling class. “I will be a better steward of the system.” If you thought Obama was going to bring change rather than simply be a change than you weren’t listening.
Paul Street was listening. No other writer on the political scene has spilled more cyber ink trying to scrape away the bullshit that embodied Obama’s rise than Paul Street and it is to him that the Rustbelt bestows the highly coveted 2009 Teller-of-Truths Award.
Street has written for years on class, race and history, much of it with a focus on Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago. He is also an activist, and this activism informs all of his writing. Street first started analyzing the Obama phenomenon before the primaries opened (Why I’ve Focused on Obama) and his writings will, in the hope of this blog, be an invaluable chronicle of that period for historians and activists. Better than that, for us now, he continues to expose the class and imperial character of the present administration at a level that few writers today are achieving (Street on Obama’s Nobel Prize speech).
For many progressives, Paul seemed a stodgy leftist unwilling to accept the zeitgeist of the moment. A naysayer and a denier of the “seismic shift” represented by Obama in the American cultural landscape who challenged “progressives” and leftist hopes in Obama (See Obama And The Left). However, his understanding of racial politics was a lot more profound than his detractors (Street’s Because He’s Black). Other writers, even leftist writers, were blinded by a symbolism that Paul’s keen understanding of capitalism, the reality behind the apologue, allowed him to deconstruct. Read those angry liberals at the Huffington Post and then read Street (No Left Excuses For Obama); the gap is almost embarrassing. His quest for the truth, to expose the reality behind the image, seemed Quixotesque in those heady days of hope. With each passing day Street’s analysis is confirmed.
Street’s output puts most other writers to shame; not just in the volume but in depth as well. His articles are almost always thoroughly researched; every i dotted, t crossed and enough footnotes to send you off in a thousands different directions should you choose. He doesn’t just tell the truth; he names the facts, he names the system. Street starts with an understanding of capitalism and the role of bourgeois politics within it (Obama: Ruling Class Candidate).
When, in the depths of Obamania, and I felt like I lived in a different reality, it was Street’s articles that illuminated the moment and assured me that I wasn’t crazy for not “getting it.” Even while I do not always agree with Paul, and sometimes slightly more than a little, navigating the rise of Obama without the aid of his articles would have been so much the harder. It is because I occasionally disagreed with him and he was so clearly on the side I felt, but couldn’t fully articulate, that he’s been so valuable to me coming to terms with what has happened over the last years. What the symbolism of Obama represents and what it doesn’t, and more than that, the real role of the (as projected) New Face of the American Empire. He enriched, more than any other single writer, the whole discussion in the left around Obama.
If anyone has the right to hire a plane and fly an “I Told You So” banner it’s Paul Street, but he is too serious a writer for that. Paul Street continues to expose the truth, dispel the myths, analyze the symbolism and point another way forward. In a period that saw so much confusion we all owe Street a debt for speaking truth to power and telling it like it is.
The bath soaps and fruit basket normally awarded to winners of this prestigious accolade have been waived this year due to the recession. However, Paul can accept History’s Vindication at a time of his convenience.
Paul Street’s massive corpus can be accessed at Znet here.
December 21, 2009 at 8:32 PM
What a fantastic post. Street’s commentaries on Obama had entirely escaped my attention, so thank you.
December 21, 2009 at 8:38 PM
While I have also found Paul Street’s astute commentary to have been (and still be) a breath of fresh air when it comes to the Obama-mania that took in almost all of the petty-bourgeois “progressive” milleau lock, stock and barrel, Street was not alone.
Honrorable mention should go to Glenn Ford (not the star of “The Big Heat”), Mike Davis, Doug Henwood, Alexander Cockburn and Louis Proyect. Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney not only talked the talk, but took the lonely walk as well, by running against Obama.
And don’t forget to include yourself on that list. Of course, being Trots gave people like us a head-start. As for the “Progressives for Obama,” the biggest “I Told You So” won’t stop them from supporting the pro-war, pro-Wall Street and anti-national health care Democrats in the upcoming congressional elections…as the “lesser evil” to “fight the right.”
December 21, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Street’s a good choice. Too bad nobody listened to him. Brian Moore of the Socialist Party ran too.
December 22, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Street reminds me that I am not completely fucking insane. It’s funny cause my last post related to Paul Street as well.
The sad thing is that there are some reasonably intelligent people who were ardent Obama supporters, and yet they continue to get pissed when I forward them one of Street’s articles even now, after everything he’s written has come to pass….and then some.
“Paul can accept History’s Vindication at a time of his convenience.”
I am not religious, but I can only reply with a hearty “Amen”!
December 22, 2009 at 10:04 PM
Remember Robert Jensen and Ward Churchill writing after 9/11 when the whole country seemed to be insane? I felt the same way when I first read their stuff in the wake of that event that I did when I first read Street’s critique of Obama when the show was starting. “OK, let’s get on top of this thing, I’m not alone.” We had no illusions in the guy so we can’t feel disappointed. If folks who voted for Obama aren’t let down and disappointed by him then why did they vote for him?
December 22, 2009 at 9:18 PM
does Street have anything to propose or is it just one long rant?
December 22, 2009 at 9:35 PM
Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
James Baldwin
December 22, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Re: “If folks who voted for Obama aren’t let down and disappointed by him then why did they vote for him?”
There are probably thousands, if not, millions, of workers, especially Black workers, who indeed feel “let down and disappointed,” starting with those who used to have “good jobs” in the auto industry. There are also, probably, thousands of young activists, many new to what passes for “politics” in this country who feel the same way, even if they’re not feeling it the same way in their pocketbooks. Those are the people who the real left needs to reach before they become so disillusioned that they either move to the phony “populism” of the right or lose interest in politics altogether. Hopefully, we can do so within the struggles that will arise against the Obama regime and its wars overseas and austerity attacks at home the more they intensify in the next few years.
Then there are the professional rad-libs and “progressives” who have made a career out of supporting any and every Democrat and who use their influence within the various “movements” to get their audience to follow them into the Democratic party Roach Motel. Activists go in as radicals and they come out as “progressives.”
A good deal of these burned-out baby boomers and New Left leftovers long ago not only made their peace with capitalism but made a nice living within it as well. Now have a piece of the pie, no matter how small, to protect. In the case of, say, the editors of “The Nation,” it’s not such a small piece either. So it’s only natural that they would identify with a smug yuppie like Obama, whose flowery phrases makes seeing the USA as it is today appear the “best of all possible worlds” much easier than a Bush or a McCain would. Which is why they chose to call themselves “progressives” rather than “radicals” or “socialists” they way would have done in the sixties.
December 29, 2009 at 12:40 AM
Re: “does Street have anything to propose or is it just one long rant?”
Street ended a “rant” he gave at an anti-war rally recently held in Iowa City with the following “proposals.”
“What do we want? We want the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. We want a major slashing of the war budget and a new level of investment in jobs, health care, environmental healing, healthy food, education, social justice. We want a politics and policy that gets behind people and justice for the many, not profit for the Few and war and poverty for the rest. We want a peace dividend. We want an end to spiritual death. We want a democratic revolution that puts people and the common
good first, over profit and war. Fight the rich, not their wars.”
While Street calls for a “democratic” instead of a socialist revolution, it would appear to me that advocating “put(ting) people and the common good first, over profit and war” means pretty much the same thing.
December 29, 2009 at 5:24 AM
A rant is the least Obama deserves these days. I would submit that Street’s reason in going after the “progressive” charlatans with such vigour is to lay the basis for a genuine alternative to bourgeois politics. It’s hard to read it in any other way.
January 2, 2010 at 12:39 AM
http://socialistalternative.org/news/article13.php?id=1227
Street is also an actual activist which is more than you can say for many prominent left writers. He’s also non-sectarian and eager to cooperate with revolutionary socialists.