[Peace-discuss] Mean Streets (2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

David Johnson, Wayne Johnson, and I will devote this week's News from Neptune on 
UPTV (Friday 7pm-8pm cable channel 6) to a discussion of the evening's events.


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Why not come to defend the presumed beleaguered Paul Street? Even though 
> it looks like he can well take care of himself, his views. It sounds 
> from this piece that an interesting program here is shaping up.   --mkb
> 
> On Apr 26, 2009, at 1:25 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> [I'm sure the panel will agree.  --CGE]
>>
>>     Get Your Populist Rage On
>>     By Paul Street, Mar 30, 2009
>>
>> ...We need to situate the new administration in the world of power as 
>> it is, not the world of power as so many us wish it to be....
>>
>> ...A lot of us are starting to figure out that Status QuObama was 
>> hired by the corporate and military establishment to (among other 
>> things) put us all to sleep on the left. Its about time. Its like this 
>> guy Scott Horton said on Antiwar.com a few weeks back: "those who 
>> bought into the slogans ‘Hope' and ‘Change' last fall should have read 
>> the fine print. We were warned."
>>
>> ...The message from the new Washington regime and from the dominant 
>> corporate media that sold it to us is very clear. Our instructions are 
>> to calm down. Stand down. Chill out. Be cool. We are supposed to 
>> understand that our anger is dangerous and dysfunctional. Our 
>> "populist rage" is making things worse. If you want decent and 
>> democratic policies like single payer national health insurance, union 
>> organizing rights, public control of the financial system, the removal 
>> of Wall Street perpetrators, the prosecution of war crimes, the 
>> slashing of the bloated Pentagon budget, a real peace dividend......if 
>> you want all these things and are ready to fight for them beyond the 
>> supervision of your corporate and political masters, then you are a 
>> suitable case for psychiatric treatment .You are threat to civilized 
>> decency. You are too "emotional" and too "angry." You are not being 
>> "helpful." You need to be quiet so that the new supposedly 
>> non-ideological system-coordinators -- so that unmitigated corporate 
>> assholes like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner --- can "get 
>> things done."
>>
>> You are the Jack Nicholson character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's 
>> Nest. You need Nurse Ratchet to give you a tranquilizer and schedule 
>> you for a nice corporate-neoliberal Obama Lobotomy - an Obotomy.
>>
>> Just ask some of these know-it-all fake-progressive whipped-dog 
>> liberals around here in Iowa City. They'll lecture you to death about 
>> it, justifying their own stupidity and laziness and co-optation and 
>> cowardice along the way...
>>
>> Tell them to keep that power-worshipping bullshit over in the faculty 
>> lounge. Tell them you will not be tranquilized, mesmerized. and 
>> Obotomized. Tell them you are not cool with fauxBama's determination 
>> to sustain a $ 1 trillion dollar-a-year Pentagon budget that maintains 
>> more than 760 bases located across more than 130 countries, an empire 
>> that account for half the military spending in the world - all in the 
>> name of something they call "defense."
>>
>> ...Sorry, I am not kosher, I am not down, and I am not cool with the 
>> bipartisan Empire spending hundreds of billions of dollars on illegal 
>> wars of colonial invasion while more than 40 million Americans live in 
>> poverty and while tent cities containing thousands of homeless 
>> families are springing up across this country. I am not cool with "my" 
>> government funneling trillions of dollars to Wall Street while 50 
>> million Americans lack basic health coverage and while millions of 
>> disadvantaged U.S. citizens lack minimally adequate food, clothing, 
>> shelter, education, and social respect.
>>
>> ...I am not cool with historic handouts of taxpayer money from Bush 
>> and now from Status QuObama to financial tycoons and to so-called 
>> "defense" contractors while schools go under-funded, while millions 
>> more Americans are foreclosed and pushed into destitution and while 
>> workers and unions and the environment go under-protected....
>>
>> ...Don't let all these whipped-dog pseudo-liberal upper-middle-class 
>> Nurse Ratchet know-it-alls around here get you down. It's time to get 
>> your "populist rage" on ... You must connect your opposition to 
>> militarism to your struggle for social justice and economic equality. 
>> We don't have to choose between fighting the wars and fighting for 
>> economic justice. Empire and Inequality are two sides of the same coin 
>> of oppression at home and abroad.
>>
>> Fight the rich, not their wars.
>>
>> <http://www.zmag.org/blog/view/2946>
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>