On the Noble Oxpecker

Journals of Hope, Zionism, and formal Democracy in the Wisconsin State Assembly

Disclaimer: The following journal entries appear unedited to preserve their authentic, real-time reactions to the momentous and existential events described. The author’s views, as expressed here, are reflective only of the time and the place from which they spring; further, more conclusive analysis is beyond the scope of this piece, which is meant merely as a record, and to provoke thought, from the tactical to the strategic to the philosophical.

“It is not at the center, not from within the organization, that the saint can cure our regimented insanity; it is only from the periphery. If he makes himself a part of the machine, in which the collective madness is incarnated, one or the other of two things is bound to happen. Either he remains himself, in which case the machine will use him as long as it can and, when he becomes unusable, reject or destroy him. Or he will be transformed into the likeness of the mechanism with and against which he works, and in this case we shall see Holy Inquisitions and alliances with any tyrant prepared to guarantee ecclesiastical privileges”

-Aldous Huxley, from Ape and Essence

The date is August 2nd, in the year of our lord 2024, and campaign staff and volunteers of a Wisconsin State Assembly race are engaged in political advertising, commonly known as propaganda, on the city of Milwaukee’s reddit page in order to increase the chances that their Democratic Socialist candidate will prevail in the upcoming election. It would appear that they are encouraging one another to “upvote” their posts attacking the candidate’s opponent, who, in fairness, is a stooge and a fool. 

For context, the ex-DSA Representative Ryan Clancy, a social-democrat from Wisconsin’s 19th District, has broad popularity and is as effective a legislator as could possibly be expected, given a Republican-controlled legislature and a regional Democratic Party volkgeist the character of which is distinctly petty-bourgeois, viz. he is not effective. Because of his inefficacy, he is more mosquito in the ear than thorn in the side of the Establishment, and probably would have been tolerated in his advocacy for the working class and poor had said Establishment not the specific intolerance it does, namely a virulent and mindless anti-Arab racism, for which Zionism is the cover. Clancy spoke up for Palestinians, and powerful Jewish politicos decided, despite his incumbency and broad popularity (among those who know he exists) to run a candidate against him on their Democratic ticket. The rest of the local Democrat establishment fell in line, and issued broadsides in the media attacking his character. In this, the home stretch of the campaign, things look alternately sunny and bleak, as hope and despair take turns grasping onto todays’ data-points. 

Back to the reddit post, the sweeping, near-universal influence of which is beyond doubt or question: one comment struck this author as capturing the reality of the moment better than the cheering sections duking it out in that thread. The commenter says: “Love the mudslinging in this race. What does the state assembly do again?” 

The state assembly does nothing, of course. 

One might take a longer view, and say that it functions as the minor leagues for the two major political parties, and that, with long and undistinguished enough service, a representative may be called up into the majors where decisions of consequence might be influenced. Another view may stare deeply at the legislative body, and, hypnotized, draw forth from this trance a conclusion that the myriad complexities and interrelations are of significant consequence. Such is the effect of too narrow a focus: the individual trees become foreground, and one cannot see that the forest is on fire. Like saying the word “milk” over and over, with enough focus and repetition a subject becomes meaningless and silly; at least this is how it seems to this author; the DSA folks, and the Establishment Dems keep saying “milk”, or “democracy” or whatever, and appear not to suffer from any startling revelations about their activity. Milk milk milk milk milk; democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy. Considered from yet another angle, one might squint and see a platform for the advocacy and advancement of worthy and valuable fringe opinions, a petri-dish for the growth of a healthy political culture. When already engaged in any behavior, man will justify his involvement: this is the function of the brain, which evolved after the stomach. Speaking of the stomach, so turned, we now turn to it.

The legislature is a jobs program for legislators; it feeds them and their families. Representatives of the various industries view it as the prehensile apparatus between them and the general public. From here, however, legislators might be profitably conceived of as akin to the birds on a rhino’s back.

Incidentally, the birds which hang out on the backs of rhinos are called oxpeckers, and while they do hiss to warn the beast of danger, they also drink its blood. Like the oxpecker, politicians’ relationships to the rhino capital are not entirely or simply symbiotic; neither are they purely parasitic. The same might be said for their relationship to the voting public; their relationship to the non-voting public, which in local elections is the huge majority, is different. Within this analogy, the non-voting public is the wild grass filling the rhino’s stomach, enriching its blood for the enterprising oxpecker. Should the bird think to itself “I’m the champion of the common blade of grass”, or should the grass-blades themselves look admiringly at it, this would change nothing. It does not matter how the semi-symbiote, para-parasite legislator sees himself; it does not alter the function he performs.

Within political subcultures, both at the center and at what I lovingly and self-consciously identify as the lunatic fringe, a commonly shared trait is the ability to delude oneself and ones’ comrades. A universal inability to see things clearly, and the use of hope as a dopamine-delivery mechanism further tie together the politically-involved; from every direction, they launch crusades against reality, feeling themselves noble. 

Your author is certainly not immune from this character defect; it is rather the case that occasionally, a detox from hope seems just the thing; having cleansed the system, one dives back in. It is like the ‘tolerance-break’ a heavy pot-smoker takes so as to make the next high cheaper and more effective. 

At a fundraising event for Rep. Clancy, this author intended to give money to the candidate, funding the undemocratic process of buying local elections through the use of mailed literature, cynically aimed at the uncommitted and unaware. In conversation with another hope-addict, this was brought up: “I’m going to give Ryan some money”, I said. My interlocutor, though a fellow dreamer, must have gone some time without a fix. He said “Why? You should give me money. I’m broke.” No immediate, automatic response came to mind; he was right. While Clancy runs for state assembly, this man is running for his light bill, for his sons’ food, for the landlords’ rent, and, so, for his life. The election of one social-democrat, out of 99 landlords, capitalists and professional corporate news-watchers makes no difference except that those in his orbit get their hit of unreality. The argument can obviously be made that his election would signal to other, more timid or less established social-democrats that they, too, can become elected officials. Eventually, enough water molecules would be replaced so as to effect a sea-change, and we’d all sing hosannas, glorying in the halcyon delights of our new Eden. The reader is asked to forgive the sarcasm. Such reasoning as ‘don’t stop hammering at the stone, for you might stop just a hammer-stroke short of breaking it’ seems suspiciously religious. Sisyphus would not appreciate being told that, this time, he’d surmount the hill. Instead, it seems more appropriate to take notice of the function of the maintenance of a group of hammering political workers, and rolling stones and stoners.  

Like advertising, the function these groups serve is to generate attention  and excitement through dishonesty, which can be monetized. They further serve to legitimize fundamentally illegitimate bodies and positions, and, by doing so, to obscure the actual relations of power in their localities. 

——

It is now the 5th of August, and more context has emerged regarding the fundraiser mentioned.

It has been rumored that the aforementioned Assemblyman, Clancy, fighting for his political life, was approached by state Sen. Chris Larson, who told Clancy not to cash the cheque Larson had written until Clancy endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the upcoming presidential race. Clancy dutifully did so, goes the rumor.

Clancy may defend this apparent decision to kiss the ring by saying that national politics are not his responsibility as a state legislator, and that his involvement in a group of ‘Progressives for Harris’ and other actions are merely the price of admission into the arena in which he can attempt reforms. This would be highly ironic, given that his critics have said the same of his stand on foreign affairs. 

The fundraiser itself was made up of the bourgeois Arab community; $20,000 were alleged to have been donated, mostly by wealthy doctors. Your author had an exchange with Clancy, who defended himself, after the news came, and later with a staffer of his. I shared with them both the quote which adorns the top of this article.

It has emerged that more working-class Palestinian organizers were distraught by the news. 

More information must be gathered, and more time to analyze the situation will be needed before a proper response can be suggested. When these conditions are met, should it emerge that Clancy took the money, and took a position in exchange, what first comes to mind is that this would be rather par for the course, given his own position in the class structure. Professional politicians seem to me  petty-bourgeois. As such, they ought not to be trusted overmuch; at risk of falling back down into the working class, and squeezed by the haute bourgeois, the side this class has traditionally picked when under pressure has been that of big money, unsurprisingly. 

Clancy has himself owned more than one business in the past. One wonders how the familiarity he must have acquired with the M-C-M circuit has shaped his thinking, and his instincts.

Ought it to matter to us whether or not a state assemblyman endorses the simultaneously laughable and lamentable Harris? Given the impossibility of his larger agenda being enacted, his prime worth to his constituents is in his principles and their vocalization, and in his commitment to the (mostly rhetorical) defense of people’s movements. Seeing that he has been budged on these by fear of losing his position, I’d say evidence begins to show that it does, in fact, matter. 

A few more thoughts on Sen. Larson: A ‘progressive’, Larson embodies the type of political figure most responsible for the obstruction of a left agenda. An opportunist and a career politician, he will wheel and deal, horse-trade, and think first and foremost of his long-term political survival and advancement within the machine. ‘This far and no further’ is what he represents to the nominal, self-styled left. He is the ‘New York Times’ of politicians, and this is no exaggeration or compliment. 

Harris is an empty vessel, a description to which I suspect she has aspired since deciding to enter Democratic politics. Her actual record, of aiding criminal banks after they crashed the economy, of jailing non-violent drug users in service of mass incarceration and prison labor, and of prosecuting a genocide as the number 2 in the Biden-Harris administration, while holding the portfolio for the southern border, is, unsurprisingly, not the focus of her campaign. 

Kamala Harris, about whom George Galloway asked if she were “so stupid she thinks Sinai is the plural of sinus”, can be most charitably described as inane, but here, more than charity, we are interested in clarity. It seems clear that, if she ever had any principles, they died a grateful death long ago; she is the very definition of an opportunist. See her full reversals on policy positions she espoused during the 2020 presidential primary, such as support for Medicare for All, a ban on fracking, mandatory gun buybacks, and the redirection of funding from police departments to social services. Incidentally, these are her only articulated policy positions as of press time.

Pending a fuller investigation of the media of the internet and smartphone age, and the ways it shapes and constricts our thinking, discourse, and action, it will have to suffice to remark, by way of explanation for the phenomenon of Kamala, the Kamalomenon, if you will, that people love to project; that, having thrown the epithet ‘fascist’ at the republicans so long, the Dems are suspect; and that, while the class of people of whom the voting base is comprised undoubtedly deserve what they vote for, the rest of us do not.

The person of the president seems to matter less than it used to in determining the direction of the policies of the state, and even of the executive branch, as is being made obvious by the lame-duck Biden having been tossed off the ticket for being mentally unfit, remaining in office, and apparently not being the one making the decisions which are taking this country to war with Iran in defense of Israel’s genocide. Incidentally, I recently remarked to a Palestinian organizer that it seems, astonishingly, necessary, to go back to all of our speeches and writings from the last 10 months, and edit any reference to ‘Biden” or the “Biden Administration” and replace these with “The Biden-Harris Administration”.

As a related aside, it is worth zooming out and mentioning that there are at least three things which our ruling class and their politicians are engaged in which grant us undeniable moral license to kill them: 1: In the face of the catastrophic collapse of our ecosystem brought upon by the profligate burning of fossil fuels, they have increased fracking, as 2: geo-strategic concerns take precedence over little things like the survival of the species, so they seek war with the two largest nuclear armed states on the planet, excepting their own, and 3. they are funding and arming the most barbaric racially-motivated mass killing since Twain wrote about King Leopold’s Congo, to which I refer advisedly. We zoom out so as to provide the context in which people yet find time to care about local government, and also to delude themselves into both thinking that long-term, progressive reforms are achievable; are possible through our current system; and would be enough. As those who support these electoral efforts are legitimating a ludicrous political system dripping with blood, their addiction to hope is more dangerous to the health of the species than would be an addiction to opium, to which I suggest they switch for all of our benefit. Politics, it seems, has become one of those ‘sighs of the oppressed creature’.

Hope, and its market value, can be juxtaposed with truth, and its social value, in determining what trends are likelier to take hold, given what we know of our fellow humans, and how they act around the people from whom they derive their identities. It may be in fact more accurate to state that in determining political trends, the market value of hope has a proportional and inverse relationship to the social value of truth. Currently, hope is through the roof; so hopeful are we that we are joyful, so we are told; our truth is now socially worthless as a consequence.

—-

The date is now 14th August. 

Clancy won his primary challenge with 54% of the vote, in a race with a combined $133,000 spent on the two campaigns. One wonders how many light bills could have been paid, how many air conditioning units to soothe humid Milwaukee nights, with that money, which was thrown between two camps of the professional-managerial class in food-fight style over, essentially, vanity. The hosannas ringing out from the wealthy Bay View neighborhood, where Clancy lives, echo hollow throughout the state, where this victory means little to the young men you see in mismatched shoes in the rural areas capital has abandoned, or in ski masks in the inner city of Milwaukee.

What does the state legislature do, again? 

The legislature, it may be pointed out, in its official capacity, and by the definitions of those who do not look under rocks for the worms which move them, makes laws. The lower house of the state legislature is responsible for passing the state’s budget, and for introducing legislation which, after a labyrinthine path through recondite regulations, and with the approval of majorities of paid-for politicians, becomes the law of the land. Most legislators are professional-managerial class or business owners, and most legislation is written by lobbyists and lawyers representing one or another of the large industries which control the state. Voter turnout in the more exciting local elections reaches upwards of 20% of eligible voters, many of them retirees. This knowledge comes first-hand, having run a local campaign. It becomes clear early on that one will be sweet-talking the elderly for votes over the course of the whole trail. A quote from H.G. Wells political novel The New Machiavelli occurs: “electioneering shatters convictions and enfeebles the mind”.

I had some - it is difficult to admit it - hope in Mr. Clancy. He began his career in public service (and he has been one of the few examples of politicians for whom that is an accurate term) in the Peace Corps; went to Iraq in 2003 - to deliver toys to children, not to kill them; and has visited the Gaza Strip. Though a business owner, and therefore petty-bourgeois, this resume helped one overlook what the position you has in the social structure does to your motivations, how it conditions ones consciousness, to use the jargon. Hoping against hope, and reason, I yet hoped, that I could find some of that in the legislation Clancy passed at the local County Board supportive of tenants facing eviction; that the rest of the local ruling structure is owned by landlords was a burning forest in the background of our flowering tree. His support for Palestinians, in the face of the wrath of institutional Zionism, and its regional incarnations also made me badly desire hope, until he flinched, and threw his support to Ms. Harris. 

But our idols are already silhouettes in the twilight. Though a socialist, I would prefer social-democracy to the rapacious capitalism we have now; heck, I would prefer the Soviet revanche which the Marxist-Leninists are selling. But this country, whose contributions to human achievement include the fat homeless person, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and 12-year old Pakistani girls who are now afraid of clear skies, is hardly fertile ground for social democracy. Its working people are, generally but nearly universally, systematically miseducated and socialized into a nihilistic selfishness and a consumer identity, atomized in cubicles, cars, and personal media and emotional environments feeding them whatever poison advertisers and institutions condition them to prefer. Their institutions are run by a similar type, but one parochialized by greater privilege, and so are totally unaccountable to them; this includes their governments. It includes, in fact, even the people’s champ oxpecker Clancy, if you’re Palestinian, and just want a continuous, dedicated voice. 

Institutions, ruled by inertia and ignorance, generation after generation replenished with more and more vigorous incompetence, ought to be ignored in their entirety by anyone who’s motivation to political action is the aid and succor of other people. It is an infidel opinion, but it comes from a place of sobriety. 

A job in politics is highly gratifying to the ego, and physically quite easy work. One way to justify involvement in electoral campaigns is to take as motivation that through your work you might win for another an easy gig, which is a mercy many deserve. This is how your author sees it, though the reader may draw their own conclusions about how much they’d like to labor for another’s leisure, especially in the name of egalitarian politics. Clancy remains District 19 Oxpecker; we blades of grass wave, and are eaten; and nothing, as (still) President Joe Biden promised, has fundamentally changed.