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

[C. G. Estabrook]

You're certainly right about the corporate media, and the author of that "Left 
response" would agree with you.  In fact he wrote an important book on the 
subject a generation ago:

    Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988),
    by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

Those remarks were from an interview that appeared in the IWW journal 
"Industrial Worker," December 2009 (106:10, p. 6):  "Worker Occupations And The 
Future Of Radical Labor: An Exclusive Interview With Noam Chomsky," by Diane 
Krauthamer (Copyright 2009 Industrial Workers of the World).

It's the voice of an authentic left, which is why it's so hated by liberals. 
(See Michael Berube's new book.)  --CGE


unionyes wrote:
> 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.