By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 15th, 2011 
On Friday, I intended to use some posts from the past to illuminate the political events of the week, but found myself writing about more private problems, about the human condition and my own incapacity in understanding it. Today, I return to more familiar terrain, thinking about the changing American political landscape.
Viewing the Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday, I was reminded why the 2012 election is so important. What the Republicans propose on the economy, on American identity and principles is strikingly different from President Obama’s promise and performance. Day to day, it has seemed that Obama is losing his focus. But I am convinced that he is accomplishing a lot and that the alternative is stark. In April, I presented my guide for judging his Presidency. I think it still applies.
Trying to figure out the stakes in an election requires understanding the issues, and judgment of Obama’s leadership and the Republican alternatives, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it requires an understanding of imagination. Governor Paul LePage of Maine gave clear expression of the right-wing imagination when he ordered the removal of murals celebrating labor at the Maine department of labor – not fair and balanced. These murals are not even particularly provocative. Images of the banned murals were presented in a post by Vince Carducci.
Cultural works that don’t depict a specific worldview offend the Tea Party imagination. And work that can’t be supported through the market, following Tea Party wisdom, is without real value. The cultural and market fundamentalism present a major civilizational challenge.
While this challenge must be met rationally, politics isn’t and shouldn’t be only about reason. Feelings, along with imagination, also are of telling import, as James Jasper explored in a post last Spring.
I feel strongly about the Tea Party, as the Tea Partiers feel strongly about their commitments. I know this is important. How the . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: The American Political Landscape
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 23rd, 2011
In my book, The Cynical Society, published in 1991, I had a simple project. I sought to show that along with the manipulation and cynicism of contemporary politics and political reporting, there was ongoing real principled democratic debate in American society. I criticized one dimensional accounts of American society that saw the debate between Ronald Reagan and his opponents, for example, as being about his personality and theirs, the interests he served and they served, and the manipulative strategies of both sides. They didn’t recognize that fundamental issues in American public life were being debated, specifically about the role of the state in our economy. I worried that people who didn’t like the prevailing order of things confused their cynicism with criticism, and in the process resigned from offering alternatives. My posts this week were extensions of that project to our present circumstances.
I attempted to illuminate the ways in which Barack Obama’s Presidency was and still is about fundamental change in my first post, and I tried to illuminate the terrain of principled political debate in my second post, additionally accounting for Obama’s position. America is a cynical society, but it is also a democratic one. A rosy colored view is naïve, while an exclusively dark one is enervating. I insist on understanding both dimensions.
But as the host of Deliberately Considered, I am learning and expanding my understanding. My two dimensional picture is limited and conceals some important matters, specifically the emotional dimension. We should keep in mind that we don’t only act on principle and reason and pursue our interests with strategies that are sometimes manipulative. We also act out and upon our emotions, as James Jasper explored in his posts a couple of weeks ago, and Gary Alan Fine has analyzed as well. Indeed Richard Dienst’s “bonds of debt,” that Vince Carducci reports on, are more emotional than rational, highlighting the connection between attachment, indebtedness and power, making it so . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: The Cynical Society and Beyond
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 2nd, 2011 
I probably got carried away describing President Obama’s Libya policy as a “self-limiting revolutionary solidarity approach.” I know I should be careful in applying my formative political experience to unrelated circumstances. False analogies are often foolish. They can even be dangerous. But, I drew upon my experience to express my admiration for the precision and cogency of Obama’s approach, concerned that many observers, especially my friends on the left, didn’t understand the significance of what the President is trying to accomplish. Things are very different now, and we should face these differences. But even so, the combination of realism and idealism, balancing insights into capacity and aspiration, reminded me of things past, from Gdansk, not Baghdad.
The President sought to highlight the humanitarian justification of our military involvement in Libya. He also emphasized that the involvement had to be limited. Surely, this had something to do with cold calculation about the overextension of the American military, but principle was also involved. For Libyans, Obama attempted to express support for the principle that it was for them and not for us to determine their future. And for Americans and for the rest of the world, Obama tried to make clear that in order for an international military effort to be truly international, it can’t have an American face. The U.S. not only cannot afford to be the world’s policeman. It should not be. If the world needs policing, then the world should do it, or more precisely a coalition of countries, not led by the United States. Yet what seemed clear to me was not clear to everyone, despite the President’s widely recognized eloquence. And this wasn’t only true on the left, as was demonstrated here by Gary Alan Fine in his post on Friday.
I agree with Felipe Pait’s reply to Fine’s post. I too think that Fine exaggerates. “From observing the fact that the Obama administration has cautiously decided to use limited military force in Libya to worrying about the danger of invading a dozen countries is a long jump,” Pait wrote.
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<p>Read more: <a href=") DC Week in Review: Libya and Emotional Politics
By James M. Jasper, March 30th, 2011 
As we reflect upon the dramatic political developments in North Africa and the Middle East, and as we anticipate a tough political battle in the United States about the budget and the role of government, James M. Jasper, a sociologist of social movements, emotions, and strategy, reminds us in this post and in another tomorrow that politics and public debate are not only reasoned. They also have an emotional side that must be critically understood. – Jeff
Emotions matter in politics. This is evident at home and abroad. In the last two years, we have seen American citizens shouting at their own Congressional representatives in town hall meetings, a hateful Jared Loughner attempt to assassinate his own representative, and a million Egyptians assemble in Tahrir Square and topple a repressive regime.This leads to a pressing question: What emotions matter and help mobilize political action?
A sense of threat and urgency, anger and indignation (which is morally tinged anger), sometimes a desire for revenge, and, on the positive side, hope that the dangers can be resisted – one of the most effective ways to pull these together is to find someone to blame. If there is no one to blame, collective mobilization lacks a focus. It is more likely to be the kind of cooperative endeavor we see after natural disasters: shock, but no politics. And the more concrete and vivid the perpetrators, as the case of Hosni Mubarak showed, the more focused and intense the outrage.
In such mobilization we see the “power of the negative”: negative emotions grab our attention more than positive ones. The events in Egypt and Libya suggest that the power of the negative is increased when hatred, rage, anger, and indignation are focused against one person. Most revolutionary coalitions are held together only by this outrage over the old ruler or regime. It is hard to question the mobilizing power of such feelings, whether the mobilization is for voting in elections or efforts at revolution.
But are there other ways to mobilize large numbers of people? In the US, Democrats’ electoral campaigns, and especially Obama’s, . . .
Read more: Emotions and Politics
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DC Week in Review: Libya and Emotional Politics