[Peace-discuss] P.S.

Sat Feb 6 21:08:52 CST 2010

I take it that, unlike David, you don't agree with "what the authentic Left
says," below?  --CGE

John W. wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:04 PM, unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net 
> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On a positive note of where and how to focus on " Tea-baggers " are economic
> issues that effect them and their families directly and goes beyond the "
> cultural " identity politics of ; guns, abortion, gays, etc..
> 
> David J.
> 
> 
> I don't see how, Dave.  Tea baggers are neo-conservative.  They want "less
> taxes" and "smaller government", and have no clue that the government
> actually grows larger during so-called conservative administrations.  They
> seem unable to escape from their own identity politics, and unable to grasp
> the notion of the "common good" if it impinges even slightly on their
> precious "liberties".  I may agree with a Tea bagger that America has
> problems, chief among them economic, but a Tea bagger and I would never in a
> million years agree on solutions to the problem.   I've certainly tried to
> dialogue with them.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> To: "Brussel Morton K."
> <mkbrussel at comcast.net <mailto:mkbrussel at comcast.net>> Cc: "Peace-discuss
> List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> <mailto: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

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