It's the middle of the night (where I am at least) which makes it a good time for ponderous, non-candidate, non-primary thoughts.  When I think about my frustrations with our government, our political system, our culture, I am often reminded of how much I hate the commercial media in the U.S.  

And I do.  Hate them, I mean.  Except when I don't, which isn't that often, but still nonetheless, is a set of circumstances that does, sometimes occur.  So, I hate the media, and there are lots of reasons why, and there are lots of diaries, and books, and university courses, and professional careers that have been carved out helping to explain to us what there is to hate about the media.  But even knowing all that, and having worked in that environment, I cannot help but be reminded of the times when the media have brought and continue to bring me moments of enlightenment.  Because the funny thing is, if I'm being truly honest, popular culture is responsible in many ways for my earliest political education.    

Especially a gilas girl...(?)   Oh my.  

This is not an easy bit of fluff to write.  The use and abuse of emotions in politics is not a minor matter to me. The various registers of emotions that politics engage goes beyond the two dimensional approach that political commentary forces us to occupy. My own emotions, though quite powerful, are not something I share easily with others.  My politics, as well, are something that I both think and feel to very great degrees.  They resonate in me: my politics and my emotions.  And often, they come together, though not generally in any kind of scenarios provided for by the conventional wisdom of US political culture.  
 

Of all the public holidays we note in this country, I'm probably the most susceptible to this one.  I've written a bit about this before, in a couple of different contexts.  This year I was dreading it, however. Its bad enough to have the King rhetoric rolled out in formulaic style by every unthinking politician for a yearly photo op, but the added plasticity of the election context was something I wasn't looking forward to. I even went so far as to try and sleep through it, but didn't quite make it without logging in here. [cough Glutton for Punishment cough] And so disturbing thoughts keep running around in my head.  Rather than be snide about them, I thought it more useful to actually face them, and see if something productive could be wrought from all this discomfort of mine.

My name is a gilas girl, and I am an American citizen.

Hi, a gilas girl.

The only other thing I know about these meetings, is that coffee's supposed to be free, if virtual.  But I have no guarantees about its quality.

As a rule, I stay out of the election/campaign discourse on dKos.  I am not a fan of the US election industry, and I do see dKos as an extension of that industry.  As proud as we are (and should be) of our democracy, our elections leave a lot to be desired, in my very outsider's opinion. This election, unfortunately, is no different, I fear.  

I've been tossing this recognition about in my head all evening and asking myself the requisite self-reflective questions: "Okay, agg, are you just being a contrarian?  Is this your cynical self emerging once again?"  The simple answer may be "yes", to both.  But I doubt, given my history of "publication" here at dKos, that those, alone would prompt me to compose a diary.  So there's something at work here that's bugging me, and that pushes me to think, not only aloud, but publically, and more specifically to do that public thinking here.  Something is rotten, not necessarily in Denmark, but certainly in Mythic America.  

Stream of consciousness has never been my forte: its literary heritage stands bold and frightening before me.  But these kinds of ritualized moments of pseudo-democracy irritate the crap out of me, & I can do little but maintain a constant dialogue to counter the obsequiessence of the media, the audacity of the President, the interplay of boldness and subtlety of the Democratic Party response and our own willingness to be snowed by empty ritual.  Lots of it pissed me off, but it began with a moment that did make me cry.  The acknowledgement of W that he stood for the first time to address "Madame Speaker", probably his greatest historical legacy in the end, did bring tears to my eyes.  I am not immune to these moments of political theatricality, as much as i would like to be.

I remember what it felt like to be ashamed of my President back in the 80's when Reagan was the cheif executive.  But those days seem glorious compared to the feeling of acknowledging US citizenship under an administration of George W. Bush.

There's more, though not necessarily linear, on the flip.

This is a recurring motif of mine.  Some of you may be familiar with its earlier incarnations, as a riff, even an oft repeated one.  The last day of the year, 2006, is an appropriate time, of course, for reflection.  And thus, I indulge, perhaps even overindulge, and bring a little too much of the personal into this political sphere.

After the break, a few reflective, even critically self-reflective thoughts at the dawning of this end of another year.  

*Update:* I've done something horribly wrong here, and didn't even see it until engaged in the threads and having looked back on other diaries about the Amish response. I haven't really highlighted what it is about the response that I find so noteworthy and so potentially radical to contemporary US culture. The assumption upon reading my diary is that I find the foregiveness dimension of the Amish community's action and response to be the key elements to focus on in reading Kohn's essay. This isn't it at all. More of this update appended to the end of the extended body...

Me, I always dreamed of being "Marshmallow Girl", the superherione who could envelop her enemies in such a feeling of sweetness and light that they gave up their evil pursuits and ambitions to follow her around for all of eternity, hoping to stay cocooned in all that sweetness...

Okay, I was young once, too, you know...

(With multiple apologies to the Beatles, both living and dead).

Like anyone who is of the left in the U.S., I'm consistently frustrated by discussions that invoke "the Left" Generally these discussions turn out to be more than meaningless.  Even at dKos I find them more frustrating than enlightening, though the community always manages to bring insight to this well-worn topic every time it comes up.    

Stop recommending diaries.

A two week experiment: don't recommend any diaries.  See what happens.

Last weekend I threw out a riff for a little analytic/intellectual improvisation, and the dKos jazzsters were true to form; a pretty amazing quintet came together around that riff and in a rather intimate setting an interesting little number emerged. Luckily in the world of Jazz there's no such thing as a repeat performance, so Armando won't have to chastise me for repeating diaries, but a recap of the themes for future listening/pondering pleasure seems well within the rules.  I'm offering this up for a couple of reasons: 1) to introduce the idea of improvisation with other thinkers and doers on riffs of interest importance and 2) `cuz I got chastised by some for keeping it in the diaries and that's been sitting rather uncomfortably with me this past week.  It's a quiet little nightspot, the dKos Improvisation House, and the intimacy is conducive to some powerful collaboration.  But maybe you know someone who might like to come along.

Last week's performances centered around a riff of radical self-reflection.  It began with a pretty basic point: (1) where (a), (b), and (c) weren't made explicit, but came out in the course of the discussion.  Strong support and harmonies were supplied by MAJeff, hono lulu, presto, MJB to really enrich the basic riff.   And Meteor Blades kept the mix of traditional and freeform in balance throughout.  

Along with the group performance, some powerful solos by MAJeff and presto took the performances to another level:  

And MAJeff and hono lulu left the club determined to continue the improv sessions with other riffs and artists.  

So, tune up your instruments and come inside from the cold. It is, unfortunately, a BYOB kind of place, 'til we get this off the ground.  Tonight I wanted to introduce the idea of public sphere politics for all of us to riff on.   More on the flip.

Most of us who have hung around here for any period of time have a riff or two that we weave into our posts. The more skilled jazzmen and women among us recreate those riffs anew with so much flair that we never tire of hearing them.  Others of us just plod along repetitively, with all the style (or lack thereof) of a Fox-News talking head.  My riff of late has been to talk up a politics of radical self-reflection not so much for individuals, but for all of us as members of our various overlapping collectives.

Today I was watching the mini-series King when it dawned on me that the centerpiece of King's moral politics was a reliance on radical self-reflection.  The point was to push the bulk of the US electorate to actually see the politics they defacto supported via their silence. This is most apparent in the scenes involving Bull Connor and the move to desegregate Birmingham. The moral politics of the Civil Rights Movement--of all of King's moral politics of non-violence, in fact--depend upon a population being shaken out of a state of complacency by being shown the evil that they had normally "taken for granted".  In order for that process to actually work a mechanism of self-reflection has to be activated somewhere in the collective consciousness.  The morality of that kind of social justice politics requires the will and the ability to radical self-reflection.

Privatized systems more generous to high earners.  Not surprising, but never really spoken aloud.  And WHO is it that the "low earners" actually are?  Those "special interests" that the netroots is working so hard to diminish as a source of influence on Democratic Party politics.  Yes, thank God the Democratic Party is growing up.    

So, in honor of the Democratic Senators who spoke up and out in rather eloquent fashion, here's what I'd like to see:

A State of the Democracy Address

Rationale after the flip.

This is the lead headline on the common dreams website today.

Kudos to all the Propagannon folks and the great, but very hard work they've done/are doing.

One of the most striking developments that emerges from the WSF (and other regional Social Forums) is the way it continues to foster hope in grassroots, democratic structures of politics, policies and decision-making, and among those who continue that work on an on-going basis. This, in and of itself, is no small achievement:

I'm struck by how necessary a step it is to "shove the United States upstage". This may well be the necessary but not sufficient counterbalance to that odd form of geo-political and cultural narcissism that the US populace, as a whole, suffers from.

More on the flip.