Elliptic Blog

The Urban Archipelago

From the editors of The Stranger in Seattle:

The Urban Archipelago

I am not in agreement with significant portions of their manifesto and a lot of it is chock-full of excessive rhetorical flourishes -- but it certainly feeds that part of my soul that is a bit pissed off.

Excerpts:

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.

These, of course, are broad strokes. We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them. In this case, the fight is largely spiritual; it consists of embracing the reality that urban life and urban values are the only sustainable response to the modern age of holy war, environmental degradation, and global conflict. More important, it consists of rejecting the impulse to apologize for living in a society that prizes values like liberalism, pluralism, education, and facts. It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

| Robert J. Vanderbei's Electoral Map Variations |

Will the 2004 Presidential Debates have any impact?

It is stunning to me how easy it is to convince a significant number of U.S. citizens that George W. Bush's following traits:

• Cursory and inarticulate understanding of issues
• Simplistic presentation of "good" vs. "evil"
• Continual shifting of purported justifications for pre-emptive war
• Disengagement from global cooperation

are actually examples of:

• Humble and folksy character
• Strength and determination to combat threats
• "Multi-pronged" strategy toward Iraq
• Placement of national security above weaker, global diplomacy

While, at the same time, convincing them that some of John Kerry's vital strengths:

• Thorough and articulate understanding of issues
• Recognition of complexity
• Ability to alter one's views when new information warrants it
• Desire to incorporate global alliances into decision-making

are actually examples of:

• Paralyzing indecisiveness
• Inability to be forceful when confronting threats
• Flip-Flopping
• Allowing U.S. policy to be dictated by foreign influences

This is why, despite Kerry's clear superiority in debates and policy discussions, I am pessimistic about the ultimate impact of these high-visibility outings. This dynamic reminds me of several instances in "office politics" where reasoned and well-spoken analyses get trumped by a need to be efficient and a misunderstanding of the analyses. It seems that just as many corporate organizations need to flatten and simplify decision-making for the sake of efficiency, the electorate is also opting for that model.

Why is a large portion of the electorate swayed toward interpreting simplicity as forcefulness? Complexity as indecisiveness? Global dialogue as weakness? Obviously there is no quick answer, but I am certain that this kind of behavior is reinforced and nurtured by:

• A simple and patriotic approach to civics and U.S history in our educational system
• An insistence to study political science as if it were a type of marketing
• Mainstream media choosing to be a conduit for spin rather than also adopting an analytic approach
• An endorsement of simple analysis as folksy and a condemnation of complex analysis as elitist

This is why I have serious doubts that the debates will have a significant impact on opinion -- unless, of course, some major cosmetic gaffe occurs.

| Political Marketing in EllipticBlog |
| Alternative Political Parties in EllipticBlog |
| FactCheck.org - Annenberg Political Fact Check |
| "More spinned against than spinners" - The Guardian |
| "Tsunami" - Columbia Journalism Review |

Alternative Political Parties

After a screening of "The Corporation," someone approached me asking to sign a petition to include Green Party candidates in the Pennsylvania ballot this November. The Green Party candidates would include three state offices and their presidential candidate. I signed the petition.

A great friend of mine expressed his disappointment at my choice and even though we have not had a chance to discuss it, I wanted to solidify my thoughts. So you, dear reader, get to endure the initial rough draft.

The groundwork:

1. I will vote for John Kerry this November.
2. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.
3. I despise what the George W. Bush administration has wrought.
4. I believe that an increased plurality of parties and options on our ballots is, for the most part, a good thing in the long-run
5. Ralph Nader is not the presidential candidate for the Green Party this election.

View 1:

Allowing alternative parties to have a presence in the ballot is tantamount to allowing the possibility of votes moving away from John Kerry and Democrat candidates. This shift in votes presents the clear and present danger of tipping an important state toward George W. Bush and toward Republican candidates for other offices.

There has been no wider chasm, in my lifetime, between voting for the Democratic and Republican parties. The infestation of certain policies and views into government agencies and courts has had and will have an impact on government policy for years to come.

Because of this, it is wiser to put aside more theoretical views endorsing an increased plurality of parties in the long-term and choose the more pragmatic, immediate need of supporting the party that has the best chance of dislodging the present, despicable administration. A stronger formulation: it is irresponsible to make it easier for the present administration to rule another four years and continue placing their policies into our government agencies and courts.

See, for instance, The Nader Factor: a site founded by "a group of Democratic strategists" dedicated to winning over "Nader Democrats," according to the Washington Post.

View 2:

A central tenet of democratic principles includes providing access to as many government options as supported by a society. In order for an option to be viable in a democratic process, it is acceptable to require a minimal threshold of support to be met for such an option to be available to the entire populace (thus the petition signing drives).

If non-traditional parties ask for support to be considered an option during an election, authentic adherence to democratic (little "d") principles should lead one to, at the very least, consider whether that party's platform should be available for evaluation and selection during an election. Choosing to support a party's access to a ballot should not be confused, obviously, with choosing that party during an election.

Even if the presence of those parties creates the possibility of eroding support for the party one supports, principled adherence to democratic principles should lead one to risk that possibility. After all, one should support giving voice to sectors of the populace and the minimal threshold has been met.

The presence of these options should make the political discourse richer -- traditional parties are now pressured to evaluate the positions of those additional parties and choose to incorporate them or offer their own explanations of why and how they differ from those views. The electorate receives an improved spectrum of discourse. Well, one would hope!

My view:

Of course, there are more than those two views and you are welcome to add subtleties and variations I chose to omit. My view is very close to View 2.

I wrestle with View 1 all the time and I do have retrospective regrets for having chosen Nader in 2000. However, this particular case is different. The distinction is between allowing options on the ballot and choosing the option in the ballot that weakens the party that has the best chance to remove George W. Bush.

Is endorsing more theoretical, foundational democratic principles a naive, dangerous position given the contrast between Democrats and Republicans in 2004? I do not think it is naive, but it is dangerous. But this danger is inherent to any system where you allow the populace to decide what people and principles will guide a society.

If the presence of these parties in the ballot results in a GWB victory, I will feel awful. But I will not target the alternative parties as the source of the catastrophe. I will look first at the failure of the Democratic party to appeal to this growing dissatisfaction in the populace and I will look at the electorate's poor judgment. However, I will not regret allowing the options to exercise this judgment to be present in the ballots.

Political Pragmatism:

Some may say that an adherence to abstract and vague "foundational democratic principles" have to be put on hold when the effects of such adherence will have a pivotal impact on whether we will have a better, more humane and sensitive party in power. The pragmatic pull is a strong one and it has swayed me to vote for Kerry.

This pragmatic pull, however, does not sway me when it comes to ballot accessibility by legitimate parties that are trying to meet the threshold lawfully.

Tough cases?:

Case 1: Well, given your principles, would you sign a petition asking for ballot access to the Nazi Party of the U.S.A.?

No. The difference lies in the fact that such parties have platforms that run counter to fundamental democratic and human right principles. There is no contradiction in not choosing to support their presence in a ballot. If they manage to meet the required threshold for presence in ballots, then I worry about the kinds of people in my society.

Perhaps this tough case is a bit of a straw man -- it will get more difficult with less extreme cases that are despicable yet where it is not immediately evident that they violate fundamental democratic and human right principles. Can anyone think of less extreme cases?

Case 2: Some reports have suggested that activists from some alternative political parties have been presenting their petitions as voter registration drives, covering up the language in the petition that makes it clear that it is a petition to give the party presence in state ballots.

| Dems challenging Nader's bid in Pa. |

Despicable behavior that must trigger investigations to determine whether this is party sanctioned behavior or horrible tactics by foot soldiers. If true, either way, those parties should be sanctioned. Though I must admit that I am undecided whether the sanctions should include something as severe as removal of the party from the ballots. Without a doubt, the fraudulent signature should not count toward that end.

-----

If you have other tough cases, please feel free to set them out. There may be tougher ones I have not thought of.

So, given that I have often told people that I am an "apolitical" being and that a central tenet of Elliptic Blog is to pursue "economy of oral or written expression," I seem to have run counter to those statements. I guess I have changed.

Thanks for enduring this.

| Public Agenda |
| League of Women Voter's Democracy.net |
| CNN's "The Issues" - for what that's worth |

Skyscrapers, Thesaurus and GWB

Alright, alright...

...I should be more diligent with my posting. In the meantime, here are some fresh links to some noteworthy places:

The Skyscraper Museum's Web Projects: Includes Flash interfaces mapping the Manhattan skyline and its transformations through time.

Visual Thesaurus: hours and hours of fun with language. A trial version of ThinkMap's spidery thesaurus.

Whitehouse.org: Just go and visit.

More writing and less link listings in the future, I promise (or is that, "threaten").

Blogs and Sites

Some blogs and sites of note:

• Noam Chomsky's newly-begun blog: Turning the Tide.
• D. Keith Robinson's Asterisk*: a blog about web design and architecture.
• Adbusters' site: with a fun Flash guide to the media landscape.
• Donald Rumsfeld video at MoveOn.org.

Political Marketing

Reading Chomsky recently has solidifed some half-formed, dormant thoughts I've had about my experience with the political science curriculum during my college years. To give you some short-and-sweet background: I began as a pre-law / political science major (back in 1988), took a few Constitutional Law courses and realized that I was more interested in the philosophical underpinnings of laws. This led to some philosophy courses and onward to graduate school in philosophy.

In retrospect, it seems that what was stressed in many of my political science courses and readings was not a critical analysis of systems of governance but, rather, a pragmatic understanding of how to use the political systems in place in order to propel certain agendas. So, for example, instead of questioning the theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of certain Supreme Court decisions, we spent time understanding the backdoor maneuverings of interest groups, politicians and judges on the path toward a certain decision. We also spend time understanding (with an undercurrent of appreciation) how existing institutional structures were exploited and manipulated to shield public exposure of how decisions come to be made.

In essence, we learned how to operate politically within frameworks rather than discussing the merits of pre-existing frameworks. If this trend is true across our educational institutions, it is no wonder, then, that discussions of "politics" in this country have focused primarily on the methods frameworks are used rather than a sustained, critical analysis of the frameworks.

I know this is a bit anecdotal, but I often see analysts on television networks or in print evaluate the merits of political figures based on how effective they are in using systems in place to get ahead. Discussion tends to focus on whether political figures are succesful at fundraising, at disseminating the correct spin on issues or at making tactical moves that will promote his/her political survival. In other words, appreciation and merit are often tied to their marketing choices. More time and resources are spent discussing whether political figures are effective marketers rather than discussing foundational questions about the U.S. political system.

I grew up in Mexico in the 70s and 80s. What I remember most vividly about the political environment in that country was the robust critical analysis of issues and the ever-present voice of a myriad of parties: socialist, communist, catholic, agrarian, etc. When issues were discussed, the philosophical merits of the matter at hand were of primary importance while political marketing techniques were exposed as warnings to the public. Each political party was given 30 minutes or an hour, on radio and television to broadcast freely. Things have changed since then, Mexican politics are approaching the United States model.

I suppose that teaching effective political marketing has become essential since anyone with political ambition needs to play the game to get their agenda in play. Those that may have an authentic interest in questioning existing frameworks may just have to play the game in order to get something done -- well, maybe not Nader.

| Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting |
| Univ. of Mich. Course: Politics and the Media -- see notes for Sept. 22, 2003 in particular (PDFs) |