I don't want to start one of those ghastly "failure of the Left" threads, but I want to throw something out there. And that is, the Left has nothing to offer to people whose political concerns revolve around protecting their status.
People who complain about "big government", but vote for Military Keynesians and Corporate Millenarians aren't interested in any kind of democratic control of capital. That's the last thing they want. Look at what they do. They're sending bagmen to the federal government and those bagmen do their jobs, with a vengeance. The rank and file is hanging on to its status in capitalism's race to the bottom. Without extravagant corporate entitlements and federal contracts, they're sunk and they know it.
When the Left talks about material security and economic justice, they're adding "relative to whom and not at my expense", not relative to what they have in an absolute sense. They despise and mistrust their petty nobility and its plans, and rightly so, but they have no problem with the concept of petty nobility itself. A true left wing program would mean complete upheaval in their world.
Comments (8)
So you'd rather have Sarah Palin as President!?!?
Posted by marcus | August 30, 2010 12:19 AM
Posted on August 30, 2010 00:19
Well said, Marcus. Change "big government" to "hope and change" as needed.
Posted by Al Schumann | August 30, 2010 6:57 AM
Posted on August 30, 2010 06:57
Yawn. Yet another defender of crackpot realist "either or" heard from. Poor Marcus. Seriously, though, Marcus, having heard this line for over three decades now, the varying Bogeys being Connoly, and Wallace, and Reagan, than Bush, and Dole, Bush Two, and now Palin, I'm wondering why you guys can't figure out another schtick, or at least one which doesn't involves working with low key war criminals and financial sector hacks like Clinton, Gore, Obama, etc. At the very least, it seems to me, you might want to just get very basic, don Sara Palin masks, and jump out from behind bushes to scare passersby. Because, believe it or not, that's all your politics amount to. Save it for those who spook easier. You won't find very many of them here.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | August 30, 2010 4:01 PM
Posted on August 30, 2010 16:01
I am stocking up on booze and earplugs for 2012 as we speak.
Posted by Rose | August 30, 2010 4:17 PM
Posted on August 30, 2010 16:17
Isn't this just another way of observing that the left is tiny?
Meanwhile, it's always true that conservative politics is inherently easier, isn't it, even without considering it's backed by power and wealth? People know what they have, even when it's a raft of turds, and like a familiar story. I'd even go so far as to entertain the idea that we're wired to prefer the status quo over a leap, and probably for good, if occasionally unfortunate and even dangerous, reasons.
Given the power and media dominance of our overclass in this country, it's probably a miracle we have any resistance at all.
Posted by Michael Dawson | August 30, 2010 4:54 PM
Posted on August 30, 2010 16:54
MH, judging from the extravagant punctuation, I think Marcus was being sarcastic and tossing me a reminder.
Rose, I'm thinking that's a good idea. SMBIVA stands solidly behind the drink early, plug often program.
MD, yes, and your speculation on the wiring sounds reasonable to me. Any radical tendency that really means it is going to be tiny until it develops its own welfare/well-being program.
Posted by Al Schumann | August 30, 2010 5:11 PM
Posted on August 30, 2010 17:11
Silly me.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | August 30, 2010 5:54 PM
Posted on August 30, 2010 17:54
"it's probably a miracle we have any resistance at all."
but thank Clio
she needs us resisters now and again
to keep the drama interesting
so we wait here off stage
preparing for our entrance
the cue may not come
it's maybe becket all the way thru .....
at least in our time.... of course
Posted by op | August 31, 2010 8:17 AM
Posted on August 31, 2010 08:17