Doug Kahn Wants To Share Some Thoughts On Rick Perlstein And Occupy Wall Street

I rarely read a book, put it down and immediately read it again. If you follow DWT you probably know that's exactly what I did with Rick Perlstein's masterful Nixonland... which has been with me to Bali, Mali, Morocco, Thailand, Spain, Albania, Italy, Mexico and half a dozen other countries. This week everyone is talking about Rick's post at Crooks and Liars about OccupyWallStreet. It's like pulling teeth to get Doug to write a post most of the time, but he sure jumped on this one fast!

Some Thoughts on Rick Perlstein

-by Doug Kahn

Apparently, I completely disagree with Perlstein. His argument is illogical, he makes use of personal attacks on the occupiers, and his conclusion is not only unsupported but also insupportable. 

His piece takes the form of a logical argument: Here are the facts, 1 through 4, and the conclusion to be drawn, 5. It's an argument about practical politics, how to make legislators vote in favor of economic justice, which all of us, including the occupiers, are in favor of.  

First, I don't like his use of dismissive language when referring to occupiers, including his ultimate paragraph: 

Change, Occupiers, or die. Scare politicians. Systematically. Do politics-- even if it means the messy [word missing here: job? work?] of forming coalitions with the nasty organizations "that got us into this mess in the first place." Human beings got us into this mess in the first place. And no one is saying we shouldn't be working with them. Or if you are, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

(I sometimes have a hard time recognizing sarcasm; when he uses the phrase 'your revolution,' he's insulting them, isn't he?) If we want to have a rational discussion regarding OWS, then sarcasm, scorn, snark, whatever you want to call it, has no place in it. Adding an implied 'you idiots' to the end of sentences makes the impression (on me, anyway) that Perlstein needs to use logical fallacies to carry his argument. (See Argumentum ad Hominem.)

This sentence:  

Do politics-- even if it means the messy [job? work?] of forming coalitions with the nasty organizations "that got us into this mess in the first place."

What's the specific source of the quotation, other than Perlstein's imagined paraphrase of the collective opinion of people occupying? It echoes (not word for word) his earlier unattributed "part of the system that got us into this problem in the first place." Neither is credible as a quotation from OWS, so I'm reading them without the quotation marks.
 
He implies that OWS occupiers avoid the work, cooperation and coalition, because they're too 'messy'; in other words, the occupiers are excessively fastidious persons who can't tolerate contradiction or dissent. (My experience of the Phoenix and Los Angeles general assemblies, and the food kitchens and sanitary facilities, left me with a differing opinion.) He also implies they believe MoveOn et al to be 'nasty' organizations, a belief that would be a clearly irrational motivation, if it could truly be attributed to the occupiers.
 
Do Politics
 
Don't just occupy, "do politics," concludes Perlstein. He believes that just occupying is not, therefore, doing politics. I say it is.  

Perlstein uses 'politics' and 'political' in several forms, none of them well-defined. But if we can agree that politics consists of 'social relations involving authority or power', then occupying public space in defiance of authority is "doing politics."
 
I say it's the kind of "doing politics" that's making what we all call Very Serious People pay attention to what Perlstein and other progressives have been saying for years.
 
Perlstein Point 1.
 
He recognizes the long-term physical occupation in his first sentence, then disparages its significance; he uses "brilliance" and "awesome" to describe occupations, then reveals that his usage is sarcastic. 

The Occupy movement's brilliance at sustaining a physical presence in public space is awesome-- and if sustaining a physical presence in public space is your goal, well, then we can be very, very happy. 

The gratuitous "well" and the repetition of "very" is conclusive. He goes on to equate "sustaining a physical presence" with "sustaining the bureaucracy" (of OWS and the other groups, I guess) instead of "advancing the goals for which the bureaucracy exists."
 
He says that "Occupiers have traveled a ways towards this danger" because the Occupy Chicago website has a "Time Occupied" ticker. Nonsense. The original occupation of any of the sites was a direct confrontation of authority, of legal and physical force. This is nothing to be disparaged or minimized. Every additional hour is a fresh challenge to the people driving this country towards an increasingly inhumane future. 

Defiance of authority is what has drawn everyone's attention to the issue of economic justice. That's what civil disobedience is: you commit a crime in order to bring attention to much more serious crimes, crimes that government is committing in our names.
 
I'm sure that many, if not most, of the occupiers have personal stories of dashed expectations for jobs, of paying off huge student loans, health care denied, rights violated. But if they have the same feelings I do, and I suspect they do, then anger over the big broken promise is the abiding influence that may sustain them in continuing to give up personal comforts and risk physical confrontation with authority. 

What promise? The promise that when I tell someone I'm an American, I can point to the humane accomplishments of American society, and that whatever our state of evolution is, we're going to better ourselves daily, yearly, and make the world a better place for other human beings. This is a narrative that's taught from an early age. Looking at America over the past 30 years, I'd say that "authority" has been on a mission to create greater and greater inequality, and now claims it to be the best way of helping people in need. I'm really angry about that. 
 
Perlstein Point 2.  

Many Occupiers, especially young ones, have come to define themselves by their refusal to [be] identified with any larger organizational force that can conceivably be conceptualized as "part of the system that got us into this problem in the first place."

 
He paints them as believers in "the anarchist notion of building a new world in the shell of the old." He talks about their "angry refusal" to identify as "left-wing," their refusal to engage in "traditional politics." (Known as setting up a straw man.) He offers as evidence that Occupy Chicago has been refusing to "directly negotiate" with the city of Chicago, instead inviting city officials "to sign up for their two minutes of speaking time at the General Assembly".  
Beautiful! How much more clearly can one say "I deny, and defy, your moral and civil authority?" 

Perlstein Point 3. 

The Occupiers can point with justifiable pride at two kinds of awesome political victories. The first involves what I write about above: success at keeping and holding public space.

 
He has examples: Albany (NY) police refused to arrest occupiers, and the L.A. City Council voted to support Occupy L.A. There's nothing to see here. When you defy authority and occupy public space continuously, day and night, there are only two possible responses from authority: forcible eviction or inaction.
 
Perlstein Point 4. 

The second victory is more subtle: it involves the shifting rhetoric and action of politicians both locally and nationally away from the austerity bullshit that defined politics through spring and summer.

 
There's nothing subtle about it: they occupied Wall Street in order to bring attention to economic justice, and succeeded. People paid attention. We can all see this happened, and that these occupiers made it happen. Not alone: it doesn't happen without the intellectual and political work of MoveOn (among numerous others just as important), and Perlstein, and the Progressive Caucus in the House, and the progressive blogosphere, and you, dear reader. But Perlstein claims that "many Occupiers" have reached the conclusion "that their ideology is working-- that the moral force of their refusal to engage in 'politics as usual' is making change happen." They're naive, in other words.
 
I think not. You occupy when you feel that standing in someone's space, as socially unacceptable as that may be, is what you have to do, in order to be heard. This is something I appreciate about the occupiers; they've decided to lean on the people in charge, they're doing it to help people who need help, and to help me and other Americans be better people, together. That seems a grown-up thing to do. 

Perlstein Point 5.
 
He sets up the straw man: "many Occupiers" believe "that the moral force of their refusal to engage in 'politics as usual' is making change happen." Instead, politicians know the occupiers better than they know themselves: "They understand people willing to undergo hardship-- certainly people willing to make the awesome commitment to keep and hold public space-- as people with the motivation to influence voters around them."
 
The logic of the sentence asserts that the progressive influence of the occupiers depends upon their ability to "keep and hold public space"-- the very opposite of his attitude in his Point 1, sarcasm directed at the occupiers  "sustaining a presence in public space."

All this adds up to a conclusion that should be frightening to those most committed to the notion of the Occupy movement as radically removed from traditional politics, who are actively working to keep it as pristinely removed from traditional politics as possible-- who say, in short, that the movement shouldn't have anything to do with politics or politicians. The conclusion, simply, is this: once politicians figure out that this is what is going on-- that as a matter of principle the most dedicated Occupiers won't be working to make the most traditional of political threats: do what we want or lose your job-- the political change will simply stop happening. Politicians will have been given a reason to ignore the movement-- even if it doubles or triples in size. It will have become about as political as a rave.

 
Whatever Perlstein and others think occupiers are actively working to do, they're certainly not thinking "that the movement shouldn't have anything to do with politics or politicians." Because they are politicians, and their actions have everything to do with politics. I don't know what he means, exactly, by "traditional politics," if it doesn't include actions that groups of people have used in the past to influence policy, and also elections. The Bonus Army. Supply your own examples. 

Perlstein's conclusion is that "the most dedicated Occupiers won't be working to make the most traditional of political threats: do what we want or lose your job." Politicians will ignore the movement. ". . . [T]he political change will simply stop happening." If the occupiers don't take my advice. Or Perlstein's advice, or whatever. I think this will turn out to be wrong, and in any case is a fantastic overreach. 

Next? Don't know. 
I presume that occupiers believe they've made a difference and have concluded that sustaining their influence by staying on is the most important thing they can accomplish. It's certainly the only thing they can promise to do themselves.
 
What I can do is figure how I can help to keep the national discussion on issues of fundamental fairness and society's expression of humanity. I'm sure I'll be doing that in the context of the progressive groups I participate in. I don't expect occupiers will do that, and it doesn't disappoint me. If they can somehow hang on through the winter months, it's worth every ounce of energy and intellect they have.