Not Your Sweetie

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=171696&mesg_id=174463&page=
m berst  (1000+ posts) Fri Dec-17-04 10:00 PM
Response to Original message
109. perpetrator or victim? a different view
Is Bev Harris a perpetrator or a victim? I think that she is both, and I want to tie this into my earlier posts about the haves and have-nots as well as the damage that the Reagan administration did to our society.
One side says she is out there on her lonesome fighting heroically for us and we should cut her some slack. She is under pressure and attacks and we need to stand by her.
The other side says that she is a grandstanding fraud only interested in herself and has taken advantage of her supporters. There is no excuse for her irresponsible behavior.
I think that there is truth in both positions, and that both miss the important truth. There is a very powerful lesson that we can take from this situation, one that will allow everyone to win - or at least not take a hideous loss -including Bev.
Bev is grandstanding and taking advantage of her supporters, but not maliciously necessarily, and before we cast aspersions on her it might be wise to see the context within which she is operating. Is she a have or a have-not in my outline of the two world views in the other post, and how does that shed light on the arguments about her.
Bev has bought into the great Reagan myth of self-actualization - as so many of us have - and she is striving to be one of the "haves" and so make a difference in life. Not financially rich necessarily, but one with status and influence. Much of her failure recently may have more to do with her using a bad model for her activities than it does with any evil intent on her part. In the Reagan model, each individual can become all that they can be and so gain status, wealth and success. This ethic led many people down a path of greed and money, while others went down a path of applying this model to various political and social causes, and the thinking has also permeated the Democratic party. The problem arises when the inevitable clash comes between an approach to life that is self-centered and attempting to use that approach to advance causes that are community oriented and supported.
Bev is a have-not striving to be a have, and so gets a lot of sympathy from others who are have-nots. She is Cinderella at the ball, a lone fighter against tremendous odds, the mouse that roared. She didn't so much manipulate people into thinking this, because it is probably how she sees herself, there is some truth in it, and plenty of people are desperate for it to be true and will foster and promote the myth for her.
Bev's rumored sloppy bookkeeping and poor financial accountability leads me to believe that money is not her goal, so the charges of her being a con artist are probably false. If she were interested primarily in feathering her own nest, she would have made sure that no hint of impropriety skipped into public view.
Bev seems to be interested in being the "star" - the celebrity of the election fraud issue - yes, but that doesn't mean that this is her prime motivation, either, or she wouldn't make so many sloppy mistakes with her image.
Bev is trapped in the Reagan mythology and in that way a victim. Reagan changed people's thinking from community to individual, from team to cog, and this was somewhat under the radar. "If you believe you can achieve" self-realization and individual initiative were translated in left wing circles as "personal beliefs" and "life style alternatives" and "making the right choices" and "being the change you want to see." While the supposed goals are different then those who took Reagan's green light on selfishness as an invitation to pursue greed, the underlying premises are the same.
I can well imagine Bev justifying how she has gone about things, and before we throw her to the wolves we might want to consider all of the ways in which we are making the same mistakes. One can take a look at how to approach the election fraud situation and come to the conclusion that fame - celebrity hood - and status and finances are needed before anyone can have any impact on society or even get attention. So flamboyance and the cultivation of an image are tools to help get the job done. Then she might think in the very Reagan era terms of "what you believe you can achieve" and other semi-mystical beliefs and formulas for succeeding in any endeavor.
Yet we watch her seemingly working against herself. Why is this? I would say that she is making the same understandable mistake that so many of us make. The Reagan formula for how to live your life and achieve things will not work for social causes because the goal and the means contradict each other.
Let's compare the career of the current President of the United States with the career of Bev Harris. These two extreme examples illustrate the point very well. How is it that no matter how badly George Bush screws up he wins and no matter how hard Bev tries she loses? I think it is because the Reagan approach to life only works when it is used in the interests of greed and selfishness. When someone with a self-actualization background such as Bev tries to apply these "winning strategies" to a community cause it sets up a dissonance that eventually will either turn the movement into a co-opted hand maiden to the powers-that-be - as some say the entire Democratic party has become - or will shake and rattle the organization to pieces.
Now this is not to defend Bev's lapses and errors in judgment, nor to say that there may not be some personality flaws involved. It also not to dismiss those who have been hurt by her behavior.
Many on the left are not pursuing wealth, but yet they have embraced the Reagan philosophy. They are pursuing status or security and congratulate themselves on their cleverness or superiority as measured by what they do for themselves, not what they are doing for others or for the society. Even doing "good things" is primarily so that they can tell themselves that they have rounded out their personalities and is entirely disconnected from any actual results their do-gooding may be having on the root causes of the problems. Sooner or later the beneficiaries of the do-gooding are resented, and we have Democrats talking about people as "stupid" or defective or doing arm chair analysis of people's mental health.
Or, some on the left take Bev's approach and use the same tactics that the Religious Right, and multi-level marketing businesses, and other types of hucksterism have used - building a cult of personality, creating a "buzz," encouraging hero-worshiping loyal "true believers," and playing into people's fantasies of being the underdog or being persecuted.
The great lesson here is that the Reagan philosophy of self-centeredness in its many permutations has expanded into all areas of our society and into our thinking, and it does not workfor achieving community goals. It can only lead to selfishness, greed and destruction.
As Democrats, we once started with the notion that we as a society can rise no higher than the least among us. Now, the have-nots don't count for most Democrats.
All of the failures, all of the problems, the arguments, the divisions in the Democratic party can be solved by one simple thing. Reject the entire package of celebrity, wealth and status as the model for everything. Focus on the needs of the least among us first, and always, and build from that solid foundation. Then watch all of the problems start being resolved as if by a miracle.