Nov 18, 2020
"Joe
Biden Calls For ‘Immediate, Full And Transparent Investigation’
Into Jacob Blake Shooting," Forbes reports. "Obama Fraud Task Force Takes on the Big
Banks," Bloomberg
News proclaims.
"Democratic lawmakers call for vote on bill to study reparations,"
announces CNN.
It
seems that every time there’s a movement toward righting a
historical or current wrong, whether police violence, corporate
abuses, or climate. change, policymakers muster the same tepid
“solution”: initiate a committee, investigation, commission, study,
or, if they want to sound super militaristic and Serious a “task
force” to probe the issue. This type of rhetorical filler offers
elites the best of both worlds: Creating the appearance of
attentiveness and progressiveness without requiring any meaningful,
overt ideological commitments.
Tethered to explicit political objectives, calls for
investigations or studies can be a useful lobbying tool, but absent
this, they are more often than not a political trick, psychological
tools to compel activists and those outraged on social media to
take a break, because now the professionals are handling it. The
effect: the political equivalent of a five-day cooling off period,
wait the outrage out and channel activist energy into Get Out the
Vote fodder and superficial reform-ese that never truly upsets the
existing order.
On
this episode, we study the phenomenon of the liberal appeals for
bare-minimum interventions in times of political crisis, looking at
how vague and open-ended calls for studies, committees, task
forces, and commissions are designed to elevate the reputations of
spineless politicians while nullifying the social movements that
actually seek racial, economic, and climate justice.
Our
guest is Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for the
Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.