View 534 September 1 - 7, 2008 (original) (raw)
Friday, September 5, 2008
Will someone please correct me if I am wrong? Is not a community organizer a person who teaches others how to be victims and get on the dole or otherwise claim public benefits? Is not his clientele the people most of us wish would organize to strike and withhold their services to the community including taking welfare? And was not much of that potential clientele affected by the Welfare Reform Act?
I don't mean to be overly harsh. I grew up in an era in which it was considered shameful to go on the dole, and anyone you would invite into your house would have to be thoroughly disabled before taking public money. People who truly ought to have applied for welfare did not do so because of the deep shame of it all. The notion that a person might be paid -- and I am still unclear as to who pays community organizers -- to go out and talk people into going on the dole -- is a bit bizarre to me. In my time such people were called precinct workers, and their goal was to get you to join their party, vote for them as precinct captain, and vote for the candidates they designated -- and to do that by getting you public money if possible, a political favor if need be.
Have things changed in Chicago so that Obama was doing something different from that? I know his supporters are indignant over the disdain with which "community organizer" seems to be held. Is their indignation justified? What I find on line seems to confirm my impression of what Obama did; but I certainly haven't spent a lot of time looking for it.
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1430: Went to bed a bit after midnight last night, using the new sleeping pills I got from the oncologist. Temapzam, whatever that is. I haven't googled it yet. The main thing is IT WORKED. I woke about 7:30 with no recollection of waking previously even to go to the bathroom, stretched and went back to sleep, woke at 0930 feeling like getting up, not sleepy, and ready to go to work. Niven called and wanted to come over so I read the paper, dressed, and Niven and I walked to the salad joint (Good Earth restaurant down on Ventura) about a mile and a half away.
We pretty well came up with the outline for our next big book; at least what will go in the proposal. I find that I think better when talking or writing than just sitting and thinking -- at least when I am talking to Niven. So it's like Hammer: I am doing most of the plotting and a good part of the characters, I generally do the dialogue if there are more than two people in the scene, and Niven provides the magic. He has promised to top the surfer scene in Lucifer's Hammer. That means a sure best seller.
In other words, I'm baack!, and Niven and I are BAACK! Which probably means a bit more short shrift for this day book, but I'll try to keep it up, and I contend I have the best letters section on the web; and that I'll keep up because I get a lot out of it myself. I get scenes, thoughts, ideas... Anyway I'll keep up the mail section, and I'll do an essay a week here, but I don't promise more.
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I have a number of letters on community organizing, about half in defense, and about half in ridicule. The best is from Monty and I'll lead off the discussion with that over in mail.
My problem is this: de Tocqueville rightly pointed out that one great thing about America was that "the associations" -- community volunteer groups -- did most of the social services performed in the Old World by government, and did so without building bureaucracies or aristocracies or taxes. As Monty and others point out, in some communities there isn't the gumption to form associations, and someone must organize these people if they have nothing.
But as we replace the associations with government we get further and further from what made America both different and great; and the fact remains that most -- absent contradictory evidence I'd say nearly all -- modern community organizers do not get people to go do something for themselves but rather get them to work together to get someone else to do something for them. At some level the community organizer is indistinguishable from the ward heeler -- and in some cities that may be all to the good. There were good things to be said about Tammany Hall, and Boss Flynn's book "YOU'RE THE BOSS" used to be (and in my judgment still ought to be) required reading for first year political science students. (It's clear I know more about New York ward politics than Chicago's.)
Niven and I at lunch were in agreement that we wish there were more community organizers who would form Welfare Recipients' Leagues to go on strike and withhold their services from the community at large, but that's whimsy, not rational discussion. Whimsy or not, there's something to that: communities do develop leaders from within and sometimes that can lead to "associations." Of course those associations can trigger ambiguous emotions: see Dickens, and the Artful Dodger, and Fagin at least as played by Alec Guinness, and Nancy the moll (movie version not so much the original in the novel); but there is also Bill Sikes about whom nothing good can be said at all. Letting communities develop leaders may well make heroes of Bill Sikes -- or Jesse Jackson. But they may also bring up Malcolm X, And Bill Cosby.
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Then there are radio talk show artists John and Ken, both lapsed Catholics so far as I can tell, who seem to share Obama's view of the religious as clinging in despair to their guns and churches. Their contempt for Palin comes from her speaking in her church to ask for prayers for some of her projects including the gas pipeline.
Uh -- haven't churches from Catholic Cathedrals on down to Four Square Assemblies prayed for rain from the beginning of this Republic? Am I incorrect in recalling that Washington invoked the guidance of Divine Providence? Thorough rationalists may be certain that such prayers will do no good, but by the same logic how can they do harm? Unless one is an unconscious worshipper of some entity offended by prayers to God? I can understand the logic that doing nothing but praying without doing any work toward one's goal is not likely to be useful (on any logic including most theologians), but surely that is not what she was doing?
Yet the contempt that these radio commentators heap on this woman is profound; this from a pair who claim to be populists. I not only find that interesting, but I suspect they will not much care for the reaction from their listeners. I would not think that contempt for religious beliefs goes with their populism; but perhaps I misunderstand commuter Los Angeles, which is basically their audience.
Regarding Palin, whatever one's view of this remarkable woman, contempt does not seem particularly appropriate. Fear, perhaps, for those opposed to her ticket; for she has probably managed what I thought impossible, to unite the country club wing of the Republicans to the conservative base. There's some fire among the party workers now, and the Republicans may be able to get a ground game going. For those not familiar with the term, the "ground game" consists of getting those whom you know will vote for you actually to go to the polls and DO THAT. There have been few elections in the US, and no elections that were anywhere near close, in which more than enough people stayed home than would be needed to have reversed the election result. Moreover, in most cases there were enough who did not vote who would have voted for the loser had they bothered to vote. Professional campaign managers, of which I was one, make certain they have experts working to organize the precincts and get the volunteers set to know how those in the precinct will vote; go to the polls in the afternoon and make a list of potential good voters who have not voted; and go bug the hell out of those people until they do vote. I used to tell my precinct workers "Offer to drive them. Offer to babysit, either at their house or in the polling place. Let them smoke in your car if you have to. Walk with them to the polls, But get that X on the ticket!"
The ground game cannot be won without volunteers. The democrats use union workers and particularly paid union officials (including teacher's union officials, many of whom do not have classroom duties and can easily get a day off) to solicit volunteers or actually do precinct work. Republicans have to use real volunteer volunteers, which makes it even more important that the ground game campaign be run by professionals with some experience at the job of organizing volunteers. Of those potential volunteers, the evangelicals and social conservatives have traditionally supplied the Republican shock troops; they turned out for Reagan. Newt understood how to talk to them, and get them activated. The country club Republicans have always held those people in contempt and only talk to them when they have to, and then usually talk down to them; as a result they have been fading out over the years, until the Republicans started losing elections. It was pretty clear that until Palin, they would sit this one out; they might go vote for McCain but they sure wouldn't go bug their neighbors to do so.
Now I think they will. A remarkable woman, who has changed the nature of this election.
Maybe God does look out for fools, drunks, and the United States of America as Bismarck once observed. I suppose repeating that will generate contemptuous mail I'll have to read (but not answer; if my answer to such isn't already pretty obvious, it's unlikely that the mail comes from a reader). For the record, I believe in both Reason and Religion and where the two conflict it is likely -- but not certain -- that Religion has been unreasonable. Eppur si muove!
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