One doesn't need to harbour politically left-wing tendencies to appreciate the value of being presented with a true clear choice. There is no real political choice in the USA now. The "choice" is between sugar-coated corporatism/militarism or corporatism/militarism au naturel.
Sugar-coated Democrats will not allow such emotionally unintelligent talking points as we heard this week from Rep. Todd Akin with regard to rape victims. I guess that's comforting in the short-term, on a topic that's important but certainly not the whole picture. In the bigger picture the two-headed corporate political reptile we now encounter in the USA will act in unison, in effect if not in words. Lesser-evilism, journalists call it, but few of them do little to combat it.
A true choice, if a two-party system is all the USA can manage as seems to be the case, would be between an amalgam of the two present major parties (the right), and a real left-leaning party offering something very different. A party of that kind isn't visible on even the farthest horizon. Several seminal parties with possibilites do exist, but are blocked at every turn by the US electoral system, The Powers That Be, and not least the media, from doing damage to the status quo.
The American left suffered a kiss of death during the anti-communist purge led by Joe McCarthy in the 1940s/50s. Other democratic nations didn't suffer similar events. The purge terminally weakened the US labour movement - that had to be part of its purpose, of course, as well as removing the militant element of the left-wing.
Before the left could spring fully back to life, triple assassinations in the 1960s, of President J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, dealt an intimidating effect on a re-emerging left. After effect of those tragedies remains to this day, i.e. an expectation that left-wing activists risk being shot/killed by (fill in the blank) if they ruffle too many of the wrong sorts of feathers.
The unpalatable reality of the ridiculously unbalanced US class system and rampant corporatism are, today, accepted as the norm. There is no serious effort to address a powerful mass hypnosis effect delivered by corporate-owned mainstream media. Anything unfriendly to the corporations or detrimental to either Democrat or Republican talking points is routinely ignored or smothered beneath a hail of derision. The populace's tendency to cling to whatever talking points their chosen "team" dishes up means that people have become frozen in their stances.
Hope of change seems remote.
Yet it is said that the flapping of a butterfly's wing can create a hurricane across an ocean. Change will come - change is a constant, along with (as my Dad used to say) "death and rent-day". The question is: when?
I believe that change will come but will remain hidden, undetected for a while. Carl Sandburg uses a lovely description, in his wee poem Fog he wrote the line : "on little cat feet". That's how change will come, on little cat feet, silently, lightly.... it could be here waiting, right now, as I type....
Sugar-coated Democrats will not allow such emotionally unintelligent talking points as we heard this week from Rep. Todd Akin with regard to rape victims. I guess that's comforting in the short-term, on a topic that's important but certainly not the whole picture. In the bigger picture the two-headed corporate political reptile we now encounter in the USA will act in unison, in effect if not in words. Lesser-evilism, journalists call it, but few of them do little to combat it.
A true choice, if a two-party system is all the USA can manage as seems to be the case, would be between an amalgam of the two present major parties (the right), and a real left-leaning party offering something very different. A party of that kind isn't visible on even the farthest horizon. Several seminal parties with possibilites do exist, but are blocked at every turn by the US electoral system, The Powers That Be, and not least the media, from doing damage to the status quo.
The American left suffered a kiss of death during the anti-communist purge led by Joe McCarthy in the 1940s/50s. Other democratic nations didn't suffer similar events. The purge terminally weakened the US labour movement - that had to be part of its purpose, of course, as well as removing the militant element of the left-wing.
Before the left could spring fully back to life, triple assassinations in the 1960s, of President J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, dealt an intimidating effect on a re-emerging left. After effect of those tragedies remains to this day, i.e. an expectation that left-wing activists risk being shot/killed by (fill in the blank) if they ruffle too many of the wrong sorts of feathers.
The unpalatable reality of the ridiculously unbalanced US class system and rampant corporatism are, today, accepted as the norm. There is no serious effort to address a powerful mass hypnosis effect delivered by corporate-owned mainstream media. Anything unfriendly to the corporations or detrimental to either Democrat or Republican talking points is routinely ignored or smothered beneath a hail of derision. The populace's tendency to cling to whatever talking points their chosen "team" dishes up means that people have become frozen in their stances.
Hope of change seems remote.
Yet it is said that the flapping of a butterfly's wing can create a hurricane across an ocean. Change will come - change is a constant, along with (as my Dad used to say) "death and rent-day". The question is: when?
I believe that change will come but will remain hidden, undetected for a while. Carl Sandburg uses a lovely description, in his wee poem Fog he wrote the line : "on little cat feet". That's how change will come, on little cat feet, silently, lightly.... it could be here waiting, right now, as I type....
6 comments:
You are right, that is the situation today, Left is Lost due both to its own terrific basic errors of perspective and lack of strategy - they confused a moment only of good wind with the whole journey in the misty raging waters of the Ocean - and due to the **definitive** and irreversable, non-reversable “access to power” by the Corporate world...
They took definitively the “keys” of the System and gained up to now consensus, consensus that **continues unabated even in the Bigger Crisis from the Thirdies**, and this never happened before...
So there is something substantial missing...
But now “... permit me then, in lieu the more commonplace subriquet...” (“V for Vendetta”) to put some “informative” links here hoping they may interesting and useful for some:
“Bernie Madoff [Calisto Tanzi] – The Ponzi Scheme And Capitalism”
http://www.myspace.com/noamchomsky_fandiscussion/blog/520498649
“The Great Whore” - “How The Bank System Functions”
http://www.myspace.com/noamchomsky_fandiscussion/blog/518606217
“That Is Capitalism, Baby, That You Like It Or Not”
http://www.myspace.com/noamchomsky_fandiscussion/blog/518599836
Chomp ~~ Hi there! Thank you for stopping by and commenting.
Yes, the Left is well and truly lost - for now. But as the poet Edmund Spenser once wrote
“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
Our Lost Left WILL be found again -
once enough people begin to realise exactly what has been lost while they slept - or trembled.
Thank you for the links - I've skimmed through them and will return later to read more. It's good to see someone who thinks along similar lines to myself.
:-)
It's perhaps time for a Constitution Party to displace both of them.
James Higham ~~ There is a party of that name - small one, I think.
Sounds like a do-over of the Republicans though. What we need is (as in Monty P.) "something completely different".
Ah, how I love your optimism - even if I don't completely share it. Change may well come, but if so we must give it every chance. For those opposed to right-wing capitalism not to vote in the forthcoming election (or, indeed, future forthcoming elections) is to steal the chance that change might have. While Obama and Co are not exactly champions of the left, their situation makes it far more difficult to push through legislation their opponents would pass easily. To allow Romney and Co access to the White House simply because Obama is not keeping his promises to the electorate would be a serious mistake. 'Change' needs all the help she can get, and the only 'change' with Romney/Ryan as president would undoubtedly be for the worse.
RJ Adams ~~ Yes, RJ - I've had the same lecture from the husband - several times. Sorry, but I will not cast my vote for someone who sends drones to kill innocents, on the off-chance it might hit the odd "enemy" of the USA. If the USA would get right out of places where it isn't wanted and has no cause to be there, there'd be less "ememies".
I will not vote for Obama, or Romney.
If there's a third choice on the ballot in OK (looking unlikely) possibly Gary Johnson, I'll vote that way, otherwise leave the Prez space blank and vote Dem for local posts.
My vote here, in any case, RJ, is meaningless. In the 2008 election not one single district had Obama winning (only state in the union where that happened). Whatever I do the Republicans will win Oklahoma. Fact of life.
The change I mentioned isn't imminent, though it might be waiting quietly in the wings for more people to wake up to the travesty that US electoral laws are. It'll take maybe a generation or a couple more election cycles to make itself felt.
I will not vote for Barack Obama, but not just because he didn't do what he promised - I will not vote for a murderer, of either party - period.
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