[Fwd: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Evangelical Rebellion by Chris Hedges]

[C. G. Estabrook]

I realize I said this wrong.  The antepenultimate and penultimate lines 
below should read, "...Clinton and Bush have killed millions in order
successfully to maintain US hegemony over ME energy resources.  And
Clinton-Obama-Edwards-Romney-Giuliani-McCain will do the same."

Cockburn's point is that Huckabee and Paul might just become "genuinely 
interesting candidates" (altho' far from his ideal), to the dismay of 
the Republican establishment.  "The great dread of American political 
establishments down the decades has been that a wild man will suddenly 
sneak past all obstructions cunningly devised to repel uncomfortable 
surprises and upset the apple cart."

In fact, the Republican establishment should be as able to contain H & P 
as the Democratic establishment has been to contain Gravel and Kucinich, 
effectively excluded from the primaries now and serving at best as
examples of Marcuse's "repressive tolerance."  --CGE

================================================

...The Left that Cockburn has in mind is the sad American version, 
synonymous with liberals, and represented by, say, the Nation magazine 
(and, indeed, Chris Hedges).

The American version is of course only a simulacrum of a Left as the
term has been used for two centuries, because it's abandoned the Left's
defining characteristic, attention to class struggle.

The Left in the US has been reduced to a matter of thinking the right
thoughts and using the right language (what used to be called "identity
politics," until it became the norm).  It's all a matter of symbolic
analysis, in Robert Reich's term: you can't diss Darwin or believe in
resurrection, altho' it's a bit hard to see what those terms have to do
with politics.  (In fact, I think the latter does, but probably not in
Evangelicalism, which seems to me a relatively simple material heresy.)

American politics have to be bumped over into the symbolic arena because
there's no real contestation over policy.  The presidential campaign
means very little because all the "serious" candidates (Republican and
Democrat) support the same policy -- on the war, health care, the
economy, etc.  It doesn't matter which of the actual candidates is
elected because policy is doubly insulated from politics -- the policy
is not under debate and political discussion is about irrelevancies (cf.
Darwin).

Americans (outside of the ideological institutions -- universities and
the media) recognize this and conclude correctly that the presidential
campaign has little or nothing to do with them.  It's a game played by
those designated -- show-business for ugly people.   As a result, the
actual policies of both parties -- essentially two business parties --
are substantially to the right of the views of most Americans.  (E.g.,
80% of Americans say big business has too much influence in the USG.)

Alex I think would buy most of this, and it's in that context that he
discusses Huckabee (and Paul).  Remember he started as a political
reporter and is here simply assessing the chances of candidates, without
the moralistic fury against a Baptist minister who dares to run. (A fury
incidentally not shown to M. L. King, another Baptist minister.) He
considers the possibility, over against the monoglot media, that
Huckabee could be a "genuinely interesting candidate," even a "wild man"
terrifying the political establishment like Bryan (a rather admirable
figure although "another implacable foe of Darwin") or Wallace
(certainly less admirable).

Surveying the US presidents from Reagan to Bush, can you seriously doubt
that "any imbecile could be head of state" (or government)? But the
problem is not that they're stupid -- in some ways they aren't -- but
that they do vicious things.

I don't agree that "lack of experience and knowledge about the rest of
the world is one of the principal problems right now in American
government."  Liberal critics of the Vietnam War used to say that the US
had stupidly blundered into a situation there (a "quagmire") that it
didn't understand.  There was no blunder -- it was just hard for US
Liberals in their naivety to believe that that people they went to
school with would kill 3-4 million people to teach the Third World a
lesson.  But they did (successfully), just as Clinton and Bush have
killed millions in order successfully to maintain US hegemony over ME
energy resources.  And Clinton-Obama-Edwards-Romney-Giuliani-Huckabee
will do the same. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme *pose*...

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