Whether it's the Democrats, OEN or Moveon.org, wherever progressives congregate, the elitists seize the leadership and water down the issues, shut down any effective protest, and sell out at the first opportunity.
As Paul Street writes in his article:
Five Key Lessons Beyond the Gnashing of Radical Teeth
"What Exists of a Popular Left..."
As John Judis argued in the centrist journal The New Republic last February, "here is not a popular left movement that is agitating for him to go well beyond where he would even ideally like to go. Sure," Judis wrote, "there are leftwing intellectuals like Paul Krugman beating the drums for nationalizing the banks and for a $1 trillion-plus stimulus. But I am not referring to intellectuals, but to movements that stir up trouble among voters and get people really angry. Instead, what exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket." By Judis' analysis, the U.S. labor movement and groups like "Moveon.Org" repeat the same "mistake that political groups often make: subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the party and its leading politician." [28]
"Obama Has Whipped Them, But Good"
Consistent with Judis' critique, Moveon.Org's new Executive Director Justin Ruben responded last February to Obama's highly qualified and deceptive Iraq "withdrawal" plans by telling the New York Times that "activists are willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt." Sounding like a docile house pet instead of a serious progressive activist, Ruben said that "people have confidence that the president is committed to ending the war" because "this is what he promised" (New York Times, February 26, 2009).
So what's a critical thinker to do?? It seems the establishment is poised to even use our dissatisfaction against us, as an excuse for ever more repression and control. Street continues:
These five "teachable moments" for the Left will not be worth a hill of progressive beans unless and until popular forces develop considerably more capacity and willingness than they are currently exhibiting to educate and organize for meaningful social and political change from the left and from the bottom up. More than merely meaningless, moreover, that disenchantment could actually become quite dangerous in the absence of such development. Popular resentment abhors a vacuum. Disconnected from the deceptive hope-phoria of "Obamalust," and furthered by deepening, capitalism-imposed economic dislocation, the "pissed-off" sense of popular "malaise and alienation" in which Henwood found ironic hope last year could easily feed a dodgy right-populist (proto-fascistic) rebellion against supposed Obamaist "socialism" ....
They do it for clicks and eyeballs. They do it to make a buck. They do it because they are short-sighted businessperps... incapable of looking beyond their next 90-day 10k report.
ReplyDeleteThey do it because they have no vision... they do it because they have no dream. Just as Rumkowski was TOTALLY INCAPABLE of understanding that it was far more important to the Nazis to kill them all than any cost-benefit analysis... he had no "ideology" other than saving his own ass... "survival" ... day-to-day "pragmatic" realpolitik.
I can't say whether "ideology" or "ideologues" are "good" or "bad." But I DO know that when "pragmatists" come up against "ideologues," they generally lose. Ideologues have the advantage of believing in something bigger than their own self... therefore they are able to sacrifice their own genetic package... incomprehensible to the "pragmatists."
But maybe the Nazis thought they were "pragmatists" as well. Hitler turned the Germans into a nation of finks, snitches and ass-kissers. Look who "flags" comments. Look at the "reasons" they supply for doing so... all to get their noses that much deeper into their boss' arse.
The REAL DEAL is this: the die-off is coming at us like a runaway train with a billion watt headlight: http://dieoff.org/ . Getting clicks and eyeballs to save your own genetic package when mega-death approaches is either meta-stupid or meta-evil.
Which is it? Does it matter?
No it doesn't matter, nor does the bleak world outlook at the moment. Count on unintended consequences, a little synergy and the natural high that comes from leaving them in the dust and hanging out with like-minded people
ReplyDeleteMeaningful change only happens when the change is radical (the best example continues to be Galileo's assertion that the earth revolves around the sun, a radical idea in 1610-though it originated with Copernicus in his book of 1543). So the agenda of the establishment is simply to alienate any and all radicals, and the establishment stays safe in the status quo. Oen was no doubt "encouraged" to divest of its radicals and rewarded accordingly.
ReplyDeletethey had to divest themselves of radical elements in order that they could attain the "moderate" seal of approval. Interestingly, this is the same seal of approval they stamp on Palestinians who accept their place within the occupied territories... those that resist, they are "extremists" and must be dealt with.
ReplyDeleteHow many times has Rob used the term "extremist views" when talking about people like us?
since you mention Naomi Klein, in the Shock Doctrine, she talks about how in Chile under Pinochet, and other fascist/corporatist "experiments", they wormed through the repressed society the idea that resistance was a form of sickness; a mental illness that needed to be removed before recovery of the whole could begin.
ReplyDeleteI think we are seeing the signs of this same tactic. They need to be sure our "illness" doesn't infect others so they marginalize us, moving our ideas further and further out to the fringes (or "edge" as Rob now calls it).
It is in fact brilliant in it's simplicity and efficiency.
Perhaps one of the most difficult:
ReplyDeleteLESSON # 2: WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
"Meanwhile millions of unemployed and evicted poor and working class Americans have sunk further into destitution. Billions of dollars that could be spent on meeting their needs have been invested instead in propping up wealthy financial parasites sustaining capitalist empire abroad.
This is not exactly what the Left founders of socialism had in mind with their concept of right state intervention. Karl Marx saw a socialist society as one that transcended class divisions to put people before profits through democratic economic planning to meet broad human needs and serve the common good. That's what most modern socialists advocate today.
"One can debate the meaning of the term ‘socialism,'" the leading left libertarian-socialist Noam Chomsky wrote more than a decade ago, "but if it means anything, it means control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions, whether in capitalist enterprises or an absolutist state." [19]
Even during the "cold war," most USAns could not tell the difference between "...socialism, communism and rheumatism." And do you think there will be any effort to study Islam? Especially "radical" or "extremist" (there are those markers again) Islam?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
...which explains the post-911 absurdity of "...why do 'they' hate us?" I was often asked this. The usual response: first let me ask you two questions- 1. who is "they" and 2. how much time do you have?