| 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.
===================
Japanese Culture: A Primer
for Newcombers
http://www.thejapanfaq.com/FAQ-Primer.html
======================
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.
=================
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.
====================
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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