Christmas was always a pretty cool time of year, growing up. Best part was always the gathering at my grandparent's home, my immediate family, my grandparents and my aunt and uncle (usually with at least a cameo by the priest who baptised me - for those who were at Fish&Sam's wedding, he was the chap what sang).
Sitting around that great front room, talking and smiling, hearing my grandfather hold forth and tell corny jokes, settling back on the gold couch that the Todman Street irregulars knew so well.
Sitting at the big table for dinner and filling my plate with roast potatoes slathered in gravy. (Mum: Morgan, eat some meat! Grandma: Oh, let him have what he wants.) (My Xmas meal was roast potatoes and only roast potatoes for most of my life, actually. I was well into my teens before I started adding bits of meat or vegies to the plate.)
Sitting in the car, in the dark, driving back home at the end of the evening, looking out the window into the darkness, filled up and complete and never wanting to actually get home. Better that moment last forever.
Also: Castle Greyskull. Best. Xmas Present. Evar.
The Christmas lights came on in Edinburgh tonight at 5.45pm. The ferris wheel started to turn. The German Market opened its gates. Princes St Gardens was transformed. Less than a month until Christmas.
Christmas is the single biggest event in our cultural life. As it rolls around, you’re either caught up in it or – much harder - you’re avoiding it. While still a spiritual/religious occasion, Christmas’ cultural importance is largely secular, crossing as many cultural divisions as possible.
The secular meaning of Christmas is an uplifting one: it is a time of goodwill and generosity. It’s pretty hard to fault these principles. The world could do with a lot more goodwill and generosity. Of course, Christmas as enacted in Western culture often falls short of this.
In fact, our biggest cultural event is also our most compromised and unsatisfying. There are enormous problems with many aspects of Christmas: the massive consumerism that underlies the occasion is a very obvious example.
So do something about it.
Fix Christmas.
(Now here’s the breathtaking revelation. I bet it is so startlingly clever no-one reading this has ever thought it before!)
Christmas isn’t something mandated by the world outside your door. There are no Christmas police checking up on your adherence to evil Capitalist principles. Christmas – here’s the kicker! – is something you and your family can do your way.
Okay, so it isn’t a huge revelation. Most people have had these thoughts before. Well, start turning thought into deed. Have a conscious Christmas, one that celebrates the values you cherish and denies the values you don’t. Why not now?
Here’s my request of you all, then: this Christmas, think about how to fix next Christmas.
Over on Musical, Cal talks about a bunch of ways to do Christmas differently. Check them out. We’ve timed our posts to appear together for a reason, folks.
Over here, I’d love to hear from people who’ve already adapted Christmas to suit. Tell people what you/you and your family/you and your friends have done to make Christmas a time of year you savor. Let this comments section be a big ideas bucket.
After all, our biggest cultural festival should be a good time, shouldn't it?
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This, of course, ties in to the greater goals of the progressive movement that I've been rabbiting on about the last few weeks. We want everyone to be more aware of the cultural forces acting on us, and the hidden paths we are constantly skipping past unawares.
You and your family, or whoever you celebrate with – your Christmas is one small thing. But: journeys, single steps, think global act local, etc etc etc. In other words, it matters. Actually, it more than matters - it’s the whole point.
Matt's comments on the previous post.
I'm not gonna reply yet. Because I'm well busy at the mo. But it's great stuff. Go read.
Matt, with lovely wife and little ones, is in India. There's lots more fascinating stuff on their own site, too.
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Also, if you haven't read my livejournal lately, you aren't yet in the know about Santa Rhymez. You should correct this immediately.
The Progressive movement stared into the abyss two weeks ago.
On November 3 the United States of America had a chance to correct its course, the first chance since things began to go out of control.
But the United States of America re-elected the Bush Administration.
In that moment, the struggle changed. You can see it all over the internet, all over the opinion media, all over the grassroots networks. If you look, if you read, if you listen you can see it happening. This is how it begins.
The election has become a symbol of what we face.
We are using the symbol to transform ourselves. The progressive movement is changing. It is realising that it must do what it hates to do: it must go to war.
A war of justice, for their culture is built on exploitation.
A war of truth, for their culture is built on deceit.
And a war of survival, for they want to wipe our culture from existence.
There is no room to negotiate - what would we negotiate away? Our belief in social justice? Our belief in the vulnerability of the environment? Our belief in human rights? We are past the point of negotiation: this is a war.
This is a culture war. We have fought these before, and we have won. We will win this time as well. Their culture must be shattered.
It will not shatter itself.
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Allow me to deflate my own rhetoric here. I know I'm speechifying. There's a lot of it going around - it's a sign of how things are changing, right now. Anyway, I'll step down from the rhetoric.
Getting real: we're all ordinary people with lives and commitments and responsibilities and nuanced understandings of how the world works. The question I ask in the title remains: where now? What can we do?
You tell me. Put a message in the comments, or a link to suggestions elsewhere you found useful. (Lurkers especially welcome - I know you're out there.) This blog is one tiny bit of a very big network. But it's part of that network. Lets see what we come up with.
Listening to 'Dazed & Confused', the first track on Marxman's second album 'Time Capsule', delivered into my hands by the illustrious Malcolm Craig mere weeks after I mentioned I was searching for it. I had been on the hunt for seven years and it took him two weeks. Blimey.
Damn it's a good track. Oisin made it available on the internet a few years ago so I've got the mp3s, but it was taken down sometime in the last nine months - there might still be copies floating around the P2Psphere if anyone's into it.
Malcolm tells me Marxman - a militant Irish Marxist hip-hop group - once played on Top of the Pops, to the confusion of the audience. Heh.
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Will there ever be, in the modern era, a leader with as complicated and compromised a position as Yasser Arafat? For every honour he rightly bears, there's a crime; for every achievement there's a failure.
Maybe not - but every political leader is compromised. That's the conundrum of political leadership. Arafat is exceptional only in the extremity of his achievements and his crimes, not in the fact of their dual existence.
Of course, opinions differ as to whether his achievements outweigh his crimes, or vice versa. This is as it should be for so complicated a figure.
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Finally took Brad's box of books to the post office to ship to NZ.
*looks at overland shipping bill*
*looks at growing pile of morgue books to one day be shipped to NZ*
*feels nervous*
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Anyone interested in the interface of tech and media, and the possibilities of new forms currently unfolding, will probably already be reading Warren Ellis' writing on the subject.
If you're not already, and you want a glimpse of the future, go read. The man is essential. He's currently writing a fascinating series on 'mind gangsterism' that is bringing together a dozen strands of technological innovation and sewing them together. I've linked to his livejournal, which he's winding up soon, but that's where the action is right now.
Despite (or, perhaps, because of) his likely future of being bounced out of the UK for 6 months or longer, Leon's Godhood remains secure. There's a bunch of new testimonials and some more teachings.
For those who haven't yet welcomed Leon into your life - well, there's never going to be a better time than now.
Dec 4, Glasgow
It ain't quite Public Enemy, but it's damn close. I mention Public Enemy because bloody Siobhann who was a delightful dinner guest tonight saw the PE when they played here last year. Dammit. I missed them. Then they played in Glasgow months later and I missed that too. Grrr.
But: I'ma gona to the Beastie Boys!
I really need some sleep. Good night everybody.
(I only just realised Siobhann's blog is Cankerous not Cantankerous)
(Also: Sesame Street - 35 years old! Happy birthday Sesame Street.)
Just back from a gig by NZ heeeeroes Pitch Black.
Now eating toast. Mmmm. Toast. With Vegemite. Mmm. Toast with vegemite.
Ahhhh.
Reminded of last time I saw Pitch Black play - at the legendary gig Freefall in, what was it, '97? Where PB shared the stage with the Nomad, Salmonella Dub, Roots Foundation Sound System and of course the one and only Jet Jaguar. I remember it as the single best dance-music experience I've ever had. I pretty much danced non-stop from the first beat to the last - I wasn't drinking in those days, so I didn't need to take a break for, well, anything, and I was there alone so I had no-one to answer to but the music. Damn good.
Bloody hell, the site is still up.
Toast finished now. Er. It's nearly 3am. I have to get up in 4 hours. That's me, devil-may-care wild party animal that I am! Now, where did I put my slippers? Zzzzz
I don't see any reason to believe BushCo stole the election.
Yet.
I do see reason to interrogate the shit out of the whole electoral process.
And for those Repubs who are bugged by the cries of 'fraud!' - all I can say is - that's what you get for having such an amateurish electoral system.
Seriously. The left's been pointing at the voting systems for two years now. To do nothing about it? Stupid.
I just thought of a new way of categorising voters:
* think USA best country in the world at pretty much everything: voted Bush
* don't: voted Kerry
This post is devoted to me congratulating myself on being the rockingest man in Myplaceville.
So. I finally got my hands on a copy of Signs & Portents issue 15, which contains 9 pages of Morgtastic goodness in the form of Breakdown Control, an article for the OGL Horror roleplaying game.
Sweet.
Someone I've never heard of says "I love this article and would rate it as one of the best to come out of S&P yet."
Sweet.
And Perhaps The Most Brilliantest Game Designer Dude In The World said of my pride and joy Providence Summer:
"I remember that and really liked it. :)"
Sweet.
See? Rockingest. Right here.
You know what?
Self-congratulation feels kinda good.
Stuff I've been doing:
* running a wildly fun roleplaying thingy for Halloween. Steve and Brian and I put it together and recruited 8 lucky souls to the cause. It were creepy and funny and involving and a success! Huzzah. We're currently looking at re-spining it to make it even better the next time we run it, which should be soon...
* eating meals at Monster Mash. Yum. Monster Mash.
* seeing movies. Like The Corporation (groove) and AVP (er).
* reading stuff. Like, finally, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. By co-incidence, Apocalypse Now was on TV here the night before I finished it. Choice. Also: Michael King's Penguin History of NZ, again, and Rory Stewart's the Places In Between.
* buying stuff. I've been a bit of a retail fiend this past week. All comfort buying, I think. Stupid books! I don't need more books! Gah.
* eating vegetables. Yum. Vegetables.
* writing lyrics for a hip-hop remix of 'Mull of Kintyre'. No, I can't share them, I've deleted them. Even as an exercise in deliberate badness they were too awful. And we shall never speak of this again.
The global progressive movement is not the US Democratic Party.
The US Democratic Party is not the global progressive movement.
The extent to which these two are getting mixed up in discourse concerns me.
An interest in the Dems is important for those on the left. We want them to be strong, and smart. We want them to field electable candidates. Faced with a choice between them and the Republicans, we want the Dems to win in any contest you'd care to name.
But the Dems are not the progressive movement.
We should care about the Dems, try and make them strong, because at this point in time they are the best hope the world has for redirecting the US. But first we need to look to ourselves.
We need to expand the progressive movement. We need to make it larger, more robust, more certain. We need more people aware and involved. We need to find the common ground that its many elements share and articulate clearly what we want.
We need the movement to become an undeniable and major political constituency.
The Democratic party will not become a party of the left again with political reality as it is now. Every political indicator says that all it can do is keep colonizing further rightward. To call for them to move left is to ask them to reduce their share of voter support - a futile call. In a game like this one, with players like these, principles are negotiable.
We cannot shift the Dems to the left from within. We need to expand the progressive movement in the real world. We need to bring more people around to our understanding and our values.
We need to grow into a constituency that will swing elections.
We aren't there yet, but we're growing. Look back just a few short years to Seattle and the WTO protests. Since that time we have grown beyond any expectation. Our literature, our arguments, our information, are spreading everywhere. In parts of Europe we are mighty. It will be the same everywhere, in time. Even in the US. The US will not be easy to crack - it is in fact our greatest challenge because of its singular command over the heavily-mediated reality of its citizens and its skill in exercising this command - but it too will fall. In time.
It is inescapable. We in the progressive movement understand the true, long-range cost of our current global system. We have exposed the exploitation and unsustainability on which this system stands. The lies of our opponents will not survive against our truth. The cog-blindness of those who do not understand us will not survive against our truth.
This isn't a political struggle of two equivalent poles offering different models for political decision-making and resource-distribution. This is the survival struggle of a system that is breaking the world and its peoples. The system will change, perhaps piece by hard-won piece, perhaps in massive revolution, but it will change, because as it is it cannot last.
The only question is how long it will take for us to win, and whether it will then be too late to repair the damage already done.
We are right. And that is our strength. That is what will help us grow. As we grow, our political strength increases. As our political strength increases, the political landscape will begin to change. Our task isn't to make the Bush-supporter down the street love the Dems - it is to make her see the truth about international exploitation, environmental degradation, the deceiving myths of the system's controllers.
The failure of the Democratic party in the US is not the failure of the global progressive movement. It is a sign that there is more work for us to do.
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In the last entry, Matt interrogates the use of the term 'Progressive'.
"Progressive is a fairly bad word, in my opinion, to call anything because Progression is defined in terms of the goal. I could be a totally and extremely right wing and call myself progressive because I am moving towards a political goal."
The word 'progressive' is an umbrella term. I'm not sure of its provenance but it's a recent coinage. It is used for the wide range of groups and ideologies that support the notion that 'another world is possible'. It is a positive phrasing - one of the noxious memes of the current global system is equating itself with progress, and progress with the greater good. Movements that oppose unfettered globalised capitalism are thus de facto tarred as luddite, backward and working against the greater good out of fear or intellectual failure.
The 'progressive' label stakes different ground, challenging the notion that corporate primacy is the end of history. It is a positive framing, rife with meaning, and a significant and useful term that cannot be as easily undermined as, say, the word 'liberal' has been.
It isn't a satisfactory term. All the concerns Matt has are legitimate ones. At some point in the future, what is now known as the progressive movement will have to divorce itself from that term, and that divorce may well be difficult and even costly. Nonetheless, at this stage in the political struggle, it is the best name we have.
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There will be some non-election stuff soon, I promise. I'm not even thinking about the election 24/7 any more, and that's got to count for something, right?
(I take as read that the US election, and US domestic politics, are a critical concern for anyone interested in the global progressive cause.)
The Republicans and their supporters are already reframing the narrative of this election. In every speech, every talking point, every blog post, the election is being portrayed as an overwhelming vindication of the Bush administration, and a victory that demonstrates what America really wants - and, more profoundly, who Americans really are.
This narrative must be challenged.
The Republican narrative portrays the result as a landslide for Bush.
The truth is that the result was close. It is incredible how soon we forget the long hours waiting on the Ohio results. This was not a landslide victory - the margin of decision was small. More people voted for Bush than in any previous election - but also, more people voted against Bush than against any previous candidate. The mobilization of opposition to Bush is the important factor here.
The Republican narrative portrays the result as a massive rejection of the left.
Many on the left have taken up this same line - that the US, the world's largest democracy, has rejected the progressive project. The truth is, more people voted for the candidate of the left than in any previous US election.
The Republican narrative holds that the President has a clear mandate.
Bush has a clear majority of support in the US, but not an overwhelming majority. He also has a very large minority of entrenched opposition - the largest that any previous President has had to deal with. Claims to a clear mandate are complicated by this situation, which is as far as I know unprecedented in US politics.
The Republican narrative holds that the Democrats were naive to expect the youth vote to make a difference.
The truth is that the youth vote did make a difference, just not as large as was hoped. The youth vote was up - but so was every other demographic. The Democrats were wise in supporting and driving this effort, although it turns out that they, and I, hoped for more than was realistic.
The Republican narrative conceals the efforts they made to bring out the vote.
The story is told as if the American people of their own accord rose up to stand up for what is right. The truth is that the Republicans have used their network to get their issues and their message into every evangelical Church in the country and, crucially, to get more people voting. This isn't the whole story, but the extent of this massive, hidden mobilisation is the biggest single revelation of the election.
So - with this in mind, what must we do?
We must recognize that this was just one clash in what will be a long struggle. In that context, there is much to be pleased with.
We must challenge any attempt to reframe the narrative of this election in the ways described above. If the above narrative takes hold, that makes the progressive movement's task all the harder. Not impossible - not by any means - but harder. And it's hard enough already.
but I'm not going to say it here and now. My thoughts have been turning on the implications of what this defeat means, both positive and negative. More importantly, on what has been revealed about the tasks facing the progressive movement. Also, kvetching about how I got it so very very wrong.
I, among many others, have been saying that the US is in a culture war for the last two years. The battle lines have just been crystallized. There are two Americas. There is a massive gulf between them. One has a relatively slight population advantage. Both are entrenched and deeply convinced of the rightness of their position.
This is the beginning of something, not the end of it.
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Cal and I went to see a movie tonight. "Bride and Prejudice" was silly and fun with just enough sting to be a legitimate P&P adaptation. It was very entertaining watching Shortie alumni Martin Henderson doing his best to smoulder as Will Darcy.
I still haven't seen Aliens Vs Predator. Anyone who knows my history with Those Movies will recognise this as the achievement that it is. Still, I'm clearly going to lose my will to resist in the next week or so.
Everyone in Edinburgh was chatty and talkative; I had conversations with four strangers. I didn't overhear a single conversation that wasn't about that subject.
Strange times.
There have been all kinds of other things going on in my life and in the world.
But all I can think about is the US election.
The very first polls close at midnight UK time, and the big swing state polls don't close until three or four a.m. I am still considering staying up all night.
I think I'll just get up real early. That's the ticket.
I'm not nervous about the winner. I'm confident it's Kerry.
I'm nervous about the popular vote. I'm nervous about how much traction the Republican legal dogs will have to force the country through an unpleasant pit-fight in the aftermath. I'm nervous that somehow or other Bush and his sickening puppeteers will find a way to walk away with their heads held high.
I don't just want them to lose - I want them and their entire mad project to be humiliated.
Cross fingers.
Be warned: this is quite long and it is basically me thinking out loud about political stuff.
I just watched a Channel 4 documentary, "The Dirty Race For The White House". Peter Oborne concluded that democracy in the US has gone horribly awry.
His structure was drawn from the Gettysburg address, where Lincoln spoke of "government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
Instead of government of the people, the US Presidency is determined by small voting blocs that live in the right swing state. Appeasing these small groups is of crucial importance, so government serves their interests disproportionately.
Instead of government by the people, the election is corrupted by nominally independent organizations that do the dirty campaigning so the candidates don't have to.
Instead of government for the people, the election has little connection to the plight of the poor, particularly minority groups.
It wasn't a well-made argument, but it was compelling nonetheless for many individual moments of insight. I was uncomfortable, however, with the angle Oborne took on the 527 groups - independent organisations with a political message. The Republican example was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group attacking Kerry's military credentials. I never looked too hard into the Swift Boat Vets or their claims, because sources I find reliable have exposed the group as a dishonest political tool spreading misinformation. Like Oborne, I see this group as a sign of how far democracy has gone astray in the US.
Then, however, Oborne turned his attention to MoveOn. MoveOn is a large network promoting grassroots activism for the general left-wing cause. It was founded during the Clinton Presidency to provide a response to the incessant, desperate hounding of President Clinton over allegations of sexual transgression. (Hence the name: "can we please move on to more important things now?") In 2004, they operate transparently with millions of online members working together to support the Democratic party.
Oborne's case against MoveOn was: they receive a lot of funding from the Democrat elite; and they produce sophisticated, manipulative attack ads so Kerry and Edwards can stay aloof from the dirty work of politics.
I think it's somewhat disingenuous of Oborne to paint MoveOn and Swift Boat vets for truth as equivalent examples. To my eyes, the groups are very different.
Thinking further, though, I started wondering whether the differences are really so large after all. Which led in turn to a bigger question: how can we evaluate the different voices in an electoral campaign?
Clearly, context is important. When the political parties speak, we hear their message with full context. They are electioneering; they are trying to say their guy is great, the other guy is terrible, and they have a certain amount of leeway to do it. Neither side will ever do justice to their opponent; when we listen to these messages, we keep this in mind.
(Not that we are as good as evaluating this stuff as we think we are, by and large; but I’ll leave that aside for now and assume we’re all good rational logical folk.)
Other groups that add their messages to the noise of an election come without that clear context. How much will they be bending the truth? What will they be omitting in their message? If they’re outright lying, who will challenge them, and how do we judge the challenger?
I approve of the principle of anyone with something to say being able to stand up and say it. Obvious imbalances will result, of course. If access to media is governed by wealth (and it is), and those who have wealth tend to support conservative political strands (and they do), then the independent voices in any election will be biased towards the conservative side.
(Kiwi readers will happily call to mind all the occasions the Business Roundtable has pushed media campaigns against left-wing initiatives such as proportional representation and promoting such shibboleths as the 'brain drain' as a way of undermining the left-wing government.)
These imbalances are inevitable given the way access to media is channelled, but they are worth putting up with for the greater principle.
The real problem in the US is that any “independent” voice will be seized on for its utility to partisan politics. True independence isn’t really possible for any group with a political stance – if an organisation supports a political position, the party of that position will find a way to deliver support back to them.
Republicans recognise the value the Swift Vets and support them; Democrats recognise the value of MoveOn and support it. Does this hurt democracy? Where is the line? And are the SwiftVets and MoveOn two points on the same continuum, or are they different entities entirely?
I feel they are different categories, as much as categorisation is ever possible in the real world: one is legitimate and the other is illegitimate.
But I can’t come up with the basis of the categorisation. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour trying. It just isn’t coming. Everything I try, I can quickly falsify. Even the notion of ‘truth’ as a barometer is tricky – is the outright dishonesty of the Swift Boat Vets really so different from the lies-of-omission used by both Democrats and Republicans? Is it really so far from the emotions-not-facts school of political campaigning? Is there such a difference between old men saying Kerry’s a liar and sinister music playing over judiciously-edited clips of Dick Cheney being scary?
Perhaps the true test of legitimacy for any independent group with a political message is simply this: the extent to which citizens can inform themselves about the group. If this is the case – and I’m starting to think it is – then that lays yet another burden on the voting citizen. The urgency of educating people in comprehending the media seems more and more essential every moment.
Consider it. The test of legitimacy for an independent group is its transparency.
And the test of legitimacy for a political party is the extent to which it empowers its citizens to serve as its watchmen.
