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Russ Smith and Ellen Willis

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from: Ellen Willis

The Poverty of Electoral Politics

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 17, 1999, at 4:40 PM ET

A difference between you and me that transcends right vs. left is that you take electoral politics more seriously than I. Democrats vs. Republicans is a politics of small differences at this point. The country is basically being run by global corporations that, aside from their direct economic influence on who gets elected and what they do when they get elected (a large aside), control economic policy by essentially saying to politicians on all levels, federal, state, and local, give us fiscal austerity, low taxes, and less regulation or we a) will take our jobs elsewhere and b) won't lend you money. In general I prefer Democrats because they're not beholden to the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement, they're less likely to make totally Neanderthal court appointments, etc. But even on social issues, there's more convergence than not. Clinton is one of the more anti-civil-libertarian presidents in modern history. Both parties support the drug war and its attendant police-state apparatus--no-knock raids, forfeiture of property of people who haven't been convicted of anything, Draconian sentences, peeing on command as a requirement for getting or holding jobs, etc.--the latest thing is they want to inflict on Florida a genetically engineered fungus that's supposed to kill marijuana plants, although no one can guarantee it won't be an ecological disaster; these people are crazy! Both parties want to censor the media. The don't-ask, don't-tell approach to gays in the military has only encouraged sexual witch hunts. Then there's welfare reform, whose two basic assumptions are that endless work at wages too meager to live on is morally uplifting and that single mothers are causing all of society's problems.

The bottom line (probably not my best metaphor in this context) is the success of the corporate elite and free-market ideologues in pushing the "end of history" idea--that in a post-Communist world there is no alternative to our present economic and social system, like it or not. This is a colossal failure of imagination. It's true enough that it's very difficult right now to envision what that alternative might be. I certainly have no blueprints to offer. But there have always been people who argued that change is impossible, or unnecessary, or both, and they have always been wrong.

It seems to me that this idea that what is simply is, period, is paralyzing on a cultural as well as a political level. I didn't mean to imply that there is really a "counterculture" now, in the sense of any conscious collective opposition. You're right, there's nothing comparable to the cultural radicalism of the '60s and '70s. And certainly not much interest in politics--I think most people these days see politics as pretty trivial and irrelevant to their lives. What I see in, among other things, techno, is a countercultural impulse--an implicit desire for something different. (Am I sounding too much like Greil again?) Mostly, I don't see that young people have any sense that things can be different, so the desire stays under the surface. I think school massacres and teen-age girls killing their infants are ultimately about despair and fatalism. Keeping kids out of R-rated movies is not going to help. What did you think about the Columbine shooting and the public reaction? I'd be interested in your take.

OK, onto somewhat less grim terrain. Magazines. You have to understand that my standards for a really good magazine are still New York and Esquire in the '60s and Rolling Stone in the '70s. This is a recipe for total frustration on the contemporary magazine front. Never mind "favorite." What are the magazines I look forward to reading? First, I guess, would be Commentary, believe it or not--especially the letters section. Then Atlantic--I like to read the cover essays. I like Lingua Franca, but for whatever reason I let my subscription lapse. So I guess it comes down to the Nation, which provides much of my material for all my arguments with the mainstream left.

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819
from: Ellen Willis

The Poverty of Electoral Politics

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 17, 1999, at 4:40 PM ET
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Russ Smith is the editor in chief and owner of New York Press, the Manhattan weekly he founded in 1988. He writes the column "Mugger" for the paper. Ellen Willis directs the cultural journalism program at New York University. Her latest book, Don't Think, Smile! Notes on a Decade of Denial will be published this fall.
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