Thanks! A really excellent piece that sheds so much light on our current political and cultural dysfunction aka our Age of Performative Outrage.
I think you really hint at a larger truth in mentioning "the accrued symbolic power of the social groups of whom they have made themselves veritable totems."
How drenched in the symbolic is our post-religion yet deeply religious discourse? Are black people and their skin color not the ultimate American symbol, by which I mean doesn't every American brain fill in so many other meanings and descriptions with just one glance at black skin: for the Left, the eternally suffering victim, the literal incarnation of our evil ancestors; for the Right, the dark and menacing dangerous Other. (I've always felt that one of the many burdens we place on black Americans is that they have to be symbols as much as humans.)
And could any issue be more fraught with symbolism than Trans? A tiny sliver of the population that one side weaponizes in their eternal battle to deconstruct and demolish the backwards bigoted Old in favor of the Glorious Equal new, and which the other side fights to protect traditional mores and the sexual innocence of their children.
America has always been the land of aggressive entrepreneurs and of puritanical moralism, so it makes sense that the two would combine and thus create the modern beast known as the Activist, an aggressively puritanical moral entrepreneur, looking to do good and do well at the same time. This has always been part of our history (see the Progressive movement of 100 yrs ago), but it seems to have been supercharged by our suddenly moralistic oligarchy and by the decline of religion and the subsequent funneling of so much religious passion and energy (for better or worse) into politics.
Just as the poor will always be with us, so too will the aspiring saviors of the poor, always looking to save souls and corner the market on public morality.
Woodhouse, where have you been all my life? This guy is fantastic, he is so incisive and just plain right! I find Freddie DeB and Jessie S to be both earnest and brilliant but kinda muddle headed at least compared to this Woodhouse fella.
Those other fellas Freddie and Jessie - are beholden to something. They probably understand what Woodhouse has explained to us but don’t have the “resources” to speak about it. They are holding on to something, a belief system or an image of themselves or most likely they are conscious of their social standing and self-censor to avoid the blow back that a Woodhouse level of explication would cause. We are in big trouble, we are lost.
I have worked for about fifteen years in a state legislature. The thing I've noticed more and more is how differential to the activists the members have become. (Almost universally from the young progressive side).
From narrow obscure one house (going no where) bills to the big state budget, you'll constantly hear "and I want to thank the activists...".
I find this curiously amusing that during these debates the word activist (almost rarely in reference to a specific one) is held in such in universal high regard.
I remember complaining to a friends mother who was a lawyer, that I thought it was ridiculous that judges often punish those who try to defend themselves. Her response was "Well remember, all Judges are lawyers...".
I think a similar dynamic is play especially in the left where many of the new members don't work up the political system anymore, i.e county legislature to state. They are often coming from the activist sphere, think neighbor association group, environmental group etc.
More troubling is I've seen with my own eyes how the activist movement has be co-opted by the lobbyists. It can be cheaper and easier for those scumbags in suits to launder their desires through these while usually well meaning but otherwise clueless or corrupt outfits.
Unfortunately it seems to be working because to be a progressive is to religiously laud the noble activist.
I see this “well meaning” claim a lot and I utterly reject it. We all should.
It is true that non-profits and ‘NGO’s’ are staffed with many well meaning grunts who are either deceived or, understandably, need the pay check.
But please let’s not confer one ounce of dignity on this racket as whole. To speak plainly, the global non profit industrial complex is a sleazy front dealing in both the theft of community resources and the theft of the rightful democratic process.
Well meaning? No dude, the crafters of this system are human garbage.
Institutions exist to perpetuate themselves. Victory cannot be declared, nor can the issue at hand ever improve, lest the resource pipeline to the institution be reduced or removed.
Am i missing something? You seem on board with the idea government programs exist only to prolong problems (as a means to increase their funding). And yet, you advocate for more government, at every turn, to solve this nation's ills. How can this be?
Because that's not really a fair characterization of my position.
I don't believe that specifically *government* programs exist to prolong problems. I think that *any* bureaucratic apparatus will tend to fall into this pattern, whether private or public. In fact, the market provides even *more* of this perverse incentive (the homeless industrial complex in SF is made up of private non-profits which I regard as basically companies with a rent-seeking business model, the only difference being that they're tax exempt).
That said, it's fair to point out that government programs are *among* those bureaucratic organizations that exist to increase their funding. This is absolutely a concern of mine in addressing the homelessness problem, as it is in addressing any problem. If we were to set up Cal Psych, as I advocate, I have no doubt that it could eventually grow into a parasitical agency that justifies its own existence and its own budget by reproducing the problem. However, there are tools available to us in dealing with that problem in a public sector context that are not available to us with outsourced NGOs. For instance, we can mandate that an agency's funding depends upon its actually carrying out its mission. We can do that indirectly with city contractors, but with actual government agencies we can do so with the force of law. We can demand transparency that's unavailable to us with private non-profits, and elected representatives can directly hire and fire managers.
Those tools won't necessarily prevent the corruption of a government agency in the long run. But they can enable us to forestall it in a way we can't with the non-profit industrial complex. In the meantime, before the agency becomes useless, it can do some actual good in the world. And once it becomes just a hulking dinosaur that produces nothing but civil service jobs, then some future governor can come along and scrap it.
Isn't what you are defining as activists just lobbyists in jeans and tee shirts? At the end of the day our elected representatives are more responsive to the influence of activists/lobbyists than they are to their political constituency back home because they see an opportunity to get money/contributions and big number of voters. They also see lucrative employment down the road with these activist groups.
Lobbying is certainly one of the things activists do, but I don't see them as belonging to the same category as, say, a Lockheed Martin lobbyist, or even, necessarily, a Sierra Club lobbyist. Those lobbyists are more a part of the traditional, transactional mode of politics, and though they can corrupt the political process, they're entirely compatible with conventional interest-based bargaining. Activism is fundamentally different in that the goal is not making a deal with adversaries but in creating and amassing social power.
Another excellent piece and I believe completely on target.
I find myself thinking, as I often do when I read you or Glenn Greenwald or others like you, "Yes, that is exactly the problem. But how do we put a halt to this problem and pull ourselves back from the edge?" I know Step 1 is seeing it, and I know you are helping people to see it, but what is Step 2?
The short answer is I have no idea. But if I began advocating for a particular mode of action I would become an activist myself, and you'd need someone else to see through my bullshit. So I kind of think those who diagnose the problem shouldn't be those who contrive the solution (Marx got tripped up in my opinion by trying to do both).
The answer is fairly obvious to me: No tax exemptions for anybody, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the small non-profit do-gooders who want to help people. (Say "I want to help people" with the whiniest voice you can muster.) I had first-hand experience working as an underpaid attorney for a homeless help organization in San Francisco. I like to think that my colleagues and I were sincere but the bulk of the work was interview the client, check the box and refer them somewhere else. Then I found out that that the executive director was making $180,000 a year more than 20 years ago! In SF we're big on Poverty Pimps.
He got tripped up? Historically it seems like he was relatively successful. The activists he spawned were not successful implementing his ideology --diagnosis you seem to call it?-- but that wasn’t because of a violation of being both an activist and a theorist. It’s just that his theory is wrong and communism doesn’t work at scale.
And you think not being an activist you are immune to bullshit? Frankly, that sounds like bullshit.
And I think the line between theorist and activist can be quite blurry.
Thanks! A really excellent piece that sheds so much light on our current political and cultural dysfunction aka our Age of Performative Outrage.
I think you really hint at a larger truth in mentioning "the accrued symbolic power of the social groups of whom they have made themselves veritable totems."
How drenched in the symbolic is our post-religion yet deeply religious discourse? Are black people and their skin color not the ultimate American symbol, by which I mean doesn't every American brain fill in so many other meanings and descriptions with just one glance at black skin: for the Left, the eternally suffering victim, the literal incarnation of our evil ancestors; for the Right, the dark and menacing dangerous Other. (I've always felt that one of the many burdens we place on black Americans is that they have to be symbols as much as humans.)
And could any issue be more fraught with symbolism than Trans? A tiny sliver of the population that one side weaponizes in their eternal battle to deconstruct and demolish the backwards bigoted Old in favor of the Glorious Equal new, and which the other side fights to protect traditional mores and the sexual innocence of their children.
America has always been the land of aggressive entrepreneurs and of puritanical moralism, so it makes sense that the two would combine and thus create the modern beast known as the Activist, an aggressively puritanical moral entrepreneur, looking to do good and do well at the same time. This has always been part of our history (see the Progressive movement of 100 yrs ago), but it seems to have been supercharged by our suddenly moralistic oligarchy and by the decline of religion and the subsequent funneling of so much religious passion and energy (for better or worse) into politics.
Just as the poor will always be with us, so too will the aspiring saviors of the poor, always looking to save souls and corner the market on public morality.
Woodhouse, where have you been all my life? This guy is fantastic, he is so incisive and just plain right! I find Freddie DeB and Jessie S to be both earnest and brilliant but kinda muddle headed at least compared to this Woodhouse fella.
I want to expand on my previous comment.
Do you know what it is? I think I do.
Those other fellas Freddie and Jessie - are beholden to something. They probably understand what Woodhouse has explained to us but don’t have the “resources” to speak about it. They are holding on to something, a belief system or an image of themselves or most likely they are conscious of their social standing and self-censor to avoid the blow back that a Woodhouse level of explication would cause. We are in big trouble, we are lost.
I have worked for about fifteen years in a state legislature. The thing I've noticed more and more is how differential to the activists the members have become. (Almost universally from the young progressive side).
From narrow obscure one house (going no where) bills to the big state budget, you'll constantly hear "and I want to thank the activists...".
I find this curiously amusing that during these debates the word activist (almost rarely in reference to a specific one) is held in such in universal high regard.
I remember complaining to a friends mother who was a lawyer, that I thought it was ridiculous that judges often punish those who try to defend themselves. Her response was "Well remember, all Judges are lawyers...".
I think a similar dynamic is play especially in the left where many of the new members don't work up the political system anymore, i.e county legislature to state. They are often coming from the activist sphere, think neighbor association group, environmental group etc.
More troubling is I've seen with my own eyes how the activist movement has be co-opted by the lobbyists. It can be cheaper and easier for those scumbags in suits to launder their desires through these while usually well meaning but otherwise clueless or corrupt outfits.
Unfortunately it seems to be working because to be a progressive is to religiously laud the noble activist.
I see this “well meaning” claim a lot and I utterly reject it. We all should.
It is true that non-profits and ‘NGO’s’ are staffed with many well meaning grunts who are either deceived or, understandably, need the pay check.
But please let’s not confer one ounce of dignity on this racket as whole. To speak plainly, the global non profit industrial complex is a sleazy front dealing in both the theft of community resources and the theft of the rightful democratic process.
Well meaning? No dude, the crafters of this system are human garbage.
Institutions exist to perpetuate themselves. Victory cannot be declared, nor can the issue at hand ever improve, lest the resource pipeline to the institution be reduced or removed.
You only have to look at Stonewall’s business model to see activist capitalism at work.
Am i missing something? You seem on board with the idea government programs exist only to prolong problems (as a means to increase their funding). And yet, you advocate for more government, at every turn, to solve this nation's ills. How can this be?
Because that's not really a fair characterization of my position.
I don't believe that specifically *government* programs exist to prolong problems. I think that *any* bureaucratic apparatus will tend to fall into this pattern, whether private or public. In fact, the market provides even *more* of this perverse incentive (the homeless industrial complex in SF is made up of private non-profits which I regard as basically companies with a rent-seeking business model, the only difference being that they're tax exempt).
That said, it's fair to point out that government programs are *among* those bureaucratic organizations that exist to increase their funding. This is absolutely a concern of mine in addressing the homelessness problem, as it is in addressing any problem. If we were to set up Cal Psych, as I advocate, I have no doubt that it could eventually grow into a parasitical agency that justifies its own existence and its own budget by reproducing the problem. However, there are tools available to us in dealing with that problem in a public sector context that are not available to us with outsourced NGOs. For instance, we can mandate that an agency's funding depends upon its actually carrying out its mission. We can do that indirectly with city contractors, but with actual government agencies we can do so with the force of law. We can demand transparency that's unavailable to us with private non-profits, and elected representatives can directly hire and fire managers.
Those tools won't necessarily prevent the corruption of a government agency in the long run. But they can enable us to forestall it in a way we can't with the non-profit industrial complex. In the meantime, before the agency becomes useless, it can do some actual good in the world. And once it becomes just a hulking dinosaur that produces nothing but civil service jobs, then some future governor can come along and scrap it.
Isn't what you are defining as activists just lobbyists in jeans and tee shirts? At the end of the day our elected representatives are more responsive to the influence of activists/lobbyists than they are to their political constituency back home because they see an opportunity to get money/contributions and big number of voters. They also see lucrative employment down the road with these activist groups.
Lobbying is certainly one of the things activists do, but I don't see them as belonging to the same category as, say, a Lockheed Martin lobbyist, or even, necessarily, a Sierra Club lobbyist. Those lobbyists are more a part of the traditional, transactional mode of politics, and though they can corrupt the political process, they're entirely compatible with conventional interest-based bargaining. Activism is fundamentally different in that the goal is not making a deal with adversaries but in creating and amassing social power.
Another excellent piece and I believe completely on target.
I find myself thinking, as I often do when I read you or Glenn Greenwald or others like you, "Yes, that is exactly the problem. But how do we put a halt to this problem and pull ourselves back from the edge?" I know Step 1 is seeing it, and I know you are helping people to see it, but what is Step 2?
The short answer is I have no idea. But if I began advocating for a particular mode of action I would become an activist myself, and you'd need someone else to see through my bullshit. So I kind of think those who diagnose the problem shouldn't be those who contrive the solution (Marx got tripped up in my opinion by trying to do both).
The answer is fairly obvious to me: No tax exemptions for anybody, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the small non-profit do-gooders who want to help people. (Say "I want to help people" with the whiniest voice you can muster.) I had first-hand experience working as an underpaid attorney for a homeless help organization in San Francisco. I like to think that my colleagues and I were sincere but the bulk of the work was interview the client, check the box and refer them somewhere else. Then I found out that that the executive director was making $180,000 a year more than 20 years ago! In SF we're big on Poverty Pimps.
He got tripped up? Historically it seems like he was relatively successful. The activists he spawned were not successful implementing his ideology --diagnosis you seem to call it?-- but that wasn’t because of a violation of being both an activist and a theorist. It’s just that his theory is wrong and communism doesn’t work at scale.
And you think not being an activist you are immune to bullshit? Frankly, that sounds like bullshit.
And I think the line between theorist and activist can be quite blurry.
Fair enough.