In a world of purebred blogs, this one’s a mutt. It can and will be anything it wants, since it is the result of a thousand opinion-crossings and philosophies all at once.
As the author, I should say that I work for the Nader campaign and yes, I will use this blog to convince you to vote for him. I could say the tired line about just wanting you to be informed this election year and do whatever you think is right, but the truth is I have done my own research and think that voting for the two major-party candidates would be a truly devastating mistake (cue argument about Nader and Gore and devastating mistakes in three…two…one). That’s right, this year I am bucking the cowed non-profit-non-partisan model of persuading people (which requires even political feelings to be expressed in thoroughly non-political terms) and am saying that the consequences of not voting for radical reform are too real and too immoral to smother with niceties about rocking the vote (whichever one you want to rock!) and the civic responsibilities of making it out to the polls. I want you to vote for a certain person or give me damned good arguments about why you are voting for someone else.
That said, I will give you fair information. I will not try to mislead you. I welcome disagreement and discussion. My goal is reforming this country, not proclaiming allegiances to a certain candidate. I disagree with Nader on certain things, and I will say so.
But that isn’t the sole point of this blog. Philosophically, for example, I disagree with almost the entire institution of politics. Like I said, I am a mutt. I am here to say whatever I think needs saying, and I will travel from the philosophical–trying to to determine a grounds for the right kind of politics–to the radically ethical–exploring and exploding the assumptions of our current economic and political system–to the practical–what changes we should make and how.
In other words, I am not a wonk. I will not give you schmarmy, sniveling he-said-she-said accounts of life on the Hill. Nor will I engage you in some myopic conversation about strategy or the horse race or subject you to a cocktail party conversation that leaves utterly unquestioned the sickening but somehow-accepted bases for our economic and political theories–namely, inequality and greed. There is nothing I loathe more than to read a newspaper article about, say, a stock broker analyzing how ’smart’ this or that trading scheme is without ever mentioning that oh, yes, one thing: the whole theory depends utterly on harming other people.
The stock broker is my metaphor for strategy politics. I have no interest in strategy politics, and besides, that’s what the mainstream news is hawking, anyway. So I won’t be redundant. I am here to question the assumptions that underwrite our increasingly tactical tete-a-tetes. Because people aren’t saved by tactics or pundits. They are saved by people who speak in the language of the unconstricted throat.
That brings up my last point. Language. What I am after is the rhetorical revolution. I believe that changing the language structures of politics could change the whole system. I mean this on every level. I mean that we need to start using a language that makes demands on its listeners. I mean that using this kind of language would power more dramatic change than anything other move. I mean that people are as good as the language that makes demands on them. I mean that the current political language is anemic, constricted, and groundless. I mean that I reject the dichotomy between politics and prose, academics and activism. I mean that if we demanded a robust political and philosophical language, we could wage the transformative revolution rather than the merely circumstantial one. I mean that I refuse to accept the distinction between ‘doing’ politics and ‘thinking’ politics. Thinking politics is doing politics, and doing politics without thinking politics is merely ideology. I mean that without both a doing and thinking politics, even the most radical organizations will collapse in on themselves and become what they are fighting.
I mean, finally, that this blog will reflect the fact that I do not accept the current political discourse. For many people, it will probably be rangy: “Why is she talking about social security this moment and then the metaphysical grounds for politics the next? Why did she bring up religion? Why was she personal instead of guarded?”
Answer: I will range because, like I said, I believe that there is no possible way to achieve the world I want without exploding the accepted political discourse. Language creates possible worlds, and the language I hear does not create the world I hope is possible. I believe that the people who really changed the world were people who introduced a brave new language–a language that was, at the time of introduction, almost completely unassimilable.
I believe, last, that both the conservative and the progressive media have failed us. The conservatives have concocted an information climate the same temperature as our own selfishness. They can only take the conversation one step back: This is what exists; now who has a comment about it? The progressive media is almost more tragic. It has lost its ardor, slipping into ironic I-told-you-so’s instead of mourning the loss of possibility and offering a new world.
One thing this blog will be: earnest. I am trying to do nothing short of changing this world. I know: I am twenty-six and am supposed to be over that juvenilia–embarrassed of my own intentions. But I am not, and you shouldn’t be, either.
So let’s be earnest and begin.
