Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to
challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class,
and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade
Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal
health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk
stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them.
The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although
it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the
will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
It's a point I've been making for some time: the problem with the USA is not the right, but the so-called "left." It has no balls, no real conviction. It's empty posturing and cheap moral outrage. It's standing with anti-war placards. It's voting for the "lesser of two evils." It's that fat buffoon Michael More and his admirers. You could shoot all the scumbag liberals -- with their hypocrisy, posturing, and impotent bleeding hearts -- and it would not make the USA any worse than what it is today (in fact, it might make it better as at least there would be more intellectual honesty).
An essay at dissidentvoice on matters at least tangentially related to the original post:
ReplyDeletehttp://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/winters-of-discontent-from-seattle-to-copenhagen/
QUOTE My concern is that in the US, a lot of what has happened in the ten years since Seattle is an accelerated version of what has been happening for a lot longer: the professionalization of dissent. We may now have the best educated, most tech-savvy, most grant-worthy, best-staffed progressive movement in the world. But that and three bucks will buy you a coffee at Starbucks, as the saying goes. If you have a situation where the comfortable are directing the struggle far more than the afflicted, then you have a pretty toothless movement.
Only organizing based on a urgent sense of necessity ever enables real social progress. Only people who have become convinced that it is not possible for them to do otherwise will participate fully, for the long term.UNQUOTE
If you honestly believe liberals are useless, why are you spending any time on them? I know this may sound like a snotty response, but I mean the question seriously.
ReplyDeleteI've known activists who spend all kinds of time trying to understand the mechanisms that lead to ruling class mentality. To me, that's also a misplaced use of time and effort.
As for the "professionalization" of dissent, an excellent book analyzing this phenomenon is called "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded; Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex" by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. I bought my copy at Mayday Books!
http://www.southendpress.org/2006/items/87662
Because liberals are an obstacle to real change. "Activists" maybe stoke their egos and obtain some camaraderie from the mostly irrelevant activities they engage in -- but that's about it. These so-called left-wingers need to ask what will bring about real change. Passing around leaflets and standing mutely with placards won't create change. Without a violent and revolutionary left, the powers-that be -- finance capital, the military-industrial complex -- will just keep pressing ahead. They meet no concerted line of resistance. If and when they meet that line of resistance, battle will be joined. My wager would be that even when that line of resistance does materialise, it will come from spontaneous public resistance rather than liberals or "activists."
ReplyDeleteAcross a spectrum of issues -- health care, war, tax policy -- is anything changing? I can't see it. The American "left" is simply an irrelevance. As Zizek is fond of pointing out these days, the problem is not the right -- which is doing what one would exprect it to do -- but an impotent, spineless and rudderless left.
Right now, liberals 'lead' the US progressive movement.
ReplyDeleteTo defeat liberalism, I do not think it is possible until masses of people start moving.
However, my fear is 'that' will not happen.
Maybe you're right. But history would seem to suggest that when there is a critical mass of people sufficiently desperate and with nothing to lose, then a mere spark can ignite them into confrontational action. For what it's worth, I expect riots and demonstrations in 2010. For the ruling class an increasingly ungovernable nation must be one of the anxieties it entertains.
ReplyDelete