Last night, Zoey The Dog, had to go to the animal emergency room, and we spent a good part of last night (till about 10:30 pm), with her before leaving her for an overnight observation. She has stayed overnight, and, later in the night, the dog doc called to say she may be okay this morning, and was stabilizing. Zoey The Dog is nearing her 17th birthday, which is pretty amazing for a bijon-poodle who has had, much like her Dad (um, me! LOL), heart issues--though she has also always had a glass stomach, and limited in what she could eat. Anyway, I was not planning to watch the breathless, DC-oriented speculation on television or radio while partial results came in last night. I figured I would see this morning where and how things stand. Contrary to what I lately thought, but not initially thought, I guess there are still a lot of absentee ballots to count--mostly the ballots dropped off before Election Day, and sometimes weeks before Election Day. Nonetheless, Democratic Party voters may wish to read David Sirota's six takeaways this morning, and see if some may get past their cognitive dissonance--particularly his insight, which I have consistently had, that there is no "NeverTrump Republican" constituency other than the illusion created on corporate owned television and radio.
Still, at this moment, I have thought deeply about one of my avatars, Michael Harrington. In Harrington's last book, "Socialism: Past and Future," meaning not then then-1989 present (it was published after Harrington's relatively early death from cancer in 1989), Harrington said, as economic globalization would continue into the 21st Century, and as capitalists continued to establish oligarchies to operate within that global economy, leaving more and more workers and peasants behind, he had hope the vast majority of left-out people would finally recognize socialist ideals, with democratic-republican processes applied to economics, were the only way to hold humanity together. He didn't go in for pop-culture references, but he saw much more of a Star Trek future than a Star Wars future.
However, as I sit in front of the computer this morning, all I can say this morning to Michael is "Too bad, Michael. In the US, and much of Great Britain, white people of a certain age and up, and 20%, or even in some places 30%, of blacks and Hispanics, would rather hate on each other, and make political decisions based upon cultural fears and prejudices, than move forward in harmonious humanity."
In his book, Harrington expressly recognized his hope for a socialist aesthetic, an ideal, was not inexorable or bound to happen. He foresaw people could well continue to behave as they were already behaving in the United States during the last decade of his life, which was the Reagan Era. Harrington, in his last chapter of that posthumously-published book, hoped a good portion of the economic and educational elite would embrace a "visionary gradualism," a concept he first began to speak of in different terms, such as living with theological "uncertainties," in his most sadly ignored book, "The Politics at God's Funeral" (1983). Harrington was acutely aware the project he proposed was precarious, and I think Harrington hoped the highly educated, particularly those who economically succeeded, would see beyond short-term self-interest. So far, the results are in, too, and the answer is: Nope. Not a chance for such enlightenment.
As I peruse the book this morning, I am reminded how Harrington (like me, sometimes, as The Daughter recently reminded me) was also probably more of a cultural conservative-to-moderate, like his friend, the sociologist, Daniel Bell, though not as culturally conservative as was Bell. I don't think Harrington could anticipate how the Internet would create a knowledge revolution that predominates and accelerates cultural wars, and overwhelm political discussions that focus on the economy--what Adam Smith and Karl Marx would both call a "political-economy." I don't think Harrington wanted to emotionally face the very viable possibility the 1870s financier/railroad baron, Jay Gould, may have apocryphally expressed, when Gould, confronted by railroad workers' leaders threatening a general strike, said he did not worry about general strikes and workers holding together across races, ethnicities, and the like. Gould was said to have told the workers' representatives:
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other.
Yes, I believe Gould could well have said that, and, more ominously, done that. Our nation's modern broadcast corporate media has certainly defined "politics" as "culture," where even wearing certain clothes is as important to us, and often, more important to us, than union law reform, climate change policies, and single payer health security. We are continually led to vote based upon our personal hates and fears because we are told we should have no sense love and hope can ever win out. It is why I hate--yeah, ironic, cue Tom Lehrer--when Boomers and Oldsters shame our children and grandchildren for wanting to vote for their best hopes and dreams, and tell them to vote for corrupt corporatists in the Senator Payne mode, such as Biden and the Clintons, or, in recent years, identity grifters such as Mayor Pete or Kamala Harris, and that classic technocratic, self-actualizer, Elizabeth Warren.
Perhaps, in a Harringtonian mode, I retain hope in a Biden victory after the absentee ballots are fully counted. I retain a hope the US Supreme Court, with the new Handmaiden of Reaction on the Court, are not in a position to take away those votes for Biden. However, I am sure glad I never wasted any of my limited money on those senate races in places such as Kentucky or Texas. I may have given $25 to Jamie Harrison in South Carolina, but that was it. I never bought into those polls they would send by email and text, as the reliable state polling data I saw had both of them losing. In my defense for that possible $25 contribution to Harrison, real polling data had Harrison much closer to Dame Lindsey, though still losing, while I never saw a reliable poll that had Trump-Democrat grifter, Amy McGrath, closer than 9 points down to John C. Calhoun, er, I mean, Mitch McConnell.
So, let's keep our spirits up at least a bit as we wait for the absentees to be counted.
