Symbolism-happy slackers are dragging the Ds down a rathole, says a Seattle grad student named Patrick, who I've exchanged e-mails with, and who has a Live Journal page you might want to keep an eye on. In an age when rebellion has become commoditized and the personal over-politicized, Democrats too often don't organize; they buy the latest Al Franken book instead, Patrick writes.

Here's more from his post, "The Rebel Sell."

We rebel by buying Eminem CDs and Hot Topic vinyl pants with a small naval ship's worth of metal dangling from them, dying our hair blue and shelling out money for concerts. Our rebellion isolates us from family, friends, community, work, religion, life itself - leaving us alone and vulnerable. Not free. It's a form of infantilism - we don't want to grow up, so you see the sad spectacles of balding hipsters and graying punks, forever acting out an idealized version of high school where they may forever exclude the unhip and uncool.

...So we buy. We buy as a substitute for political action. We think that buying organic vegetables from the local co-op has the same effect as writing your congressman.

Or we do silly things like protest with signs. Or vote for Dennis Kucinich. Or any of a host of other things that are utterly meaningless and ineffectual in the real world.

We've traded effective politics for a kind of New Age-y politics of the personal. The personal is not political. This was the ultimate sin of the 1960s - the Man didn't care about you doing acid and running around in tye-dye. The Man was all too happy to sell you your Volkswagen bus and Doors records.

.....Here, I think, is the key as to how Republicans have won elections. While liberals have started turning in on themselves, Republicans have done the dirty, boring, unglamorous work of mobilizing get-out-the-vote drives, of writing letters, of signing petitions, of electing people to school boards. Democrats, while starting to wise up in some places, simply don't do these things to the same degree. It's more typical of Democrats to buy the newest Al Franken book than to organize.

Grrrrr.

Maybe this is what we need - a politics of happiness. Are you happier now than you were 4 years ago? If not, what are you going to do about it? We talk about dark, looming forces - the System, the Establishment, the Man, the Religious Right, whatever - that lurk beyond the horizon, making futile any action but symbolic assaults to assert one's individuality. But maybe these forces aren't what they seem. Maybe they're made up of people like you and me.

Maybe, then, it's our responsibility to do the hard and unglamorous work. Engage much as people used to engage. Work. If those forces aren't invulnerable, then it's our responsibility to engage them. We no longer have the luxury, the excuse of powerlessness.

'Cause this fake rebellion's getting real old, real fast.

Bob Shrum and Terry McAuliffe, MoveOn.org, and the entire Seattle "peace and justice" community: you need some face time with this guy.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 10, 2005 09:41 AM

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