[Peace-discuss] Jokers to the right, maybe, but where are the clowns?

[unionyes]

Carl,

Who wrote that Left response ?

It was VERY accurate !

The only criticism of it I have is that, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the rest 
have the full access of the corporate media and the financial backing of 
BILLIONS of dollars by the Right-wing neo-con foundations and think tanks.

The closest we come is Democracy Now and Free Speech T.V., and that is still 
only reaching 1 % or less of the American people.

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Jokers to the right, maybe, but where are the 
clowns?


>I wish the Dems felt uncomfortable for the right reason - guilt for 
>consciously betraying the people who elected them: (1) money for military 
>thugs and contractors and death for the Middle East; (2) bonuses for Wall 
>Street and unemployment for Main Street; and (3) profits for insurance 
>companies and no health care even to the standard of other industrialized 
>countries.  It's a sorry record - it's going exactly in the wrong 
>direction - and it's no wonder that people are rejecting them at the polls. 
>There'll be more of that in the fall.
>
> And who is the Left that the Tea-partiers are supposed to make 
> uncomfortable or fearful? Here's what the authentic Left says:
>
> First of all, don't believe anything you hear from power systems. So if 
> Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they're doing 
> this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, 
> which it often is. You have to rely on yourself and your associates --  
> gifts don't come from above; you're going to win them, or you won't have 
> them, and you win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious 
> analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot. 
> So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. 
> It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not 
> the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk 
> radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot 
> and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of 
> the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, 
> you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that 
> these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done 
> everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm 
> male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to 
> do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 
> years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have 
> worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's 
> nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to 
> know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals 
> who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and 
> they don't care about you -- they just want to give everything away to 
> illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
>
> Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, 
> but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are 
> the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are 
> historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough 
> to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was 
> appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy 
> answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them 
> anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].
>
> I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, 
> "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established 
> over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an 
> answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an 
> internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, 
> and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very 
> self-confident, and they have an answer to everything -- a crazy answer, 
> but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be 
> done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real 
> grievances and give them a sensible answer...
>
> Amen.  --CGE
>
>
> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> On the subject of the Tea Party and its racial overtones, see
>>
>> http://www.truthout.org/white-racial-resentment-bubbles-under-surface-tea-party-movement56709
>>
>>
>> One commenter of this article asks:
>>
>> /Is there much difference between the Tea Party and the John Birch 
>> Society?
>> There's nothing new here. It's rural versus urban.... I remember it all 
>> from
>> growing up in rural Michigan in the 1950's. Southern? I don't think so. 
>> It's
>> too easy to brand white southerners as the only racists in America. 
>> Remember,
>> Timothy McVey was from Michigan. The Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan 
>> was
>> from a neighboring Michigan town in the 1960's. This is the racist fringe 
>> of
>> Libertarianism./ / / I wonder how Carl et al. feel about joining  the 
>> chorus
>> of Tea Party guests and advocates like Tom Tancredo, Glenn Beck, and 
>> Sarah
>> Palin, all notable at their convention in Nashville? Carl and people like
>> Cockburn seem to relish them, since they clearly make the Dems and the 
>> Left
>> uncomfortable and/or fearful.
>>
>> --mkb
>>
>>
>> On Feb 6, 2010, at 4:18 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>> Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right! Here I am stuck in the
>>> middle with you.
>>>
>>> Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you, and I'm wondering what it is I 
>>> should
>>> do. Its so hard to keep this smile from my face. Losing control yeah I'm
>>> all over the place.
>>>
>>> [The Tea party movement - a crazy quilt of new growth forest, weeds, and
>>> Astroturf - is growing up outside the limits of allowable debate policed 
>>> by
>>> the Republicans and Democrats, causing them some anxiety. They know the
>>> interests they defend have less and less support among Americans.
>>>
>>> But where is the escape from those limits on the left?
>>>
>>> As all recent presidents have, Obama advertised to his masters - 
>>> American
>>> elites - in the Mendacity of Hope that he could successfully occlude the
>>> contradiction between the goals of that small group and the mass of
>>> Americans ("Bring us together again!") and his principal - perhaps his 
>>> only
>>> - success so far has been the co-option of the anti-war movement.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the Tea-partiers will gives an example - and maybe even the 
>>> moxie -
>>> to get it together again.]
>>>
>>>
>>> Republicans seek 'Tea Party' allies
>>>
>>>
>>> The Tea Party political movement in the United States has been gaining 
>>> momentum since early last year by appealing to conservative Americans 
>>> who
>>> want lower taxes and smaller government.
>>>
>>> Thousands of people are attending the first Tea Party convention in 
>>> Nashville, Tennessee. And its something the Republican Party has taken a
>>> keen interest in.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/201026182135711755.html
>>>
>
>
> -- 
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss 


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.