[Peace-discuss] P.S.

[C. G. Estabrook]

[1] As you know, the terms Left and Right as political shorthand began in the 
French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the king was still the head of state, 
and the "the party of movement" sat on the (stage) left side of the room, "the 
party of order" on the right.  Thus metaphorically the further left you go, the 
more democratic you become; the further right, the more authoritarian. (That 
would mean of course that Lenin was a right-wing Marxist, in contrast to 
left-wing Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg.)

Chomsky is on the left because he doesn't share your contempt for the majority, 
as his piece indicates. Limbaugh, an apologist for power, specifically the power 
of money, is surely on the right.  And of course he has people who agree with 
him, some of whom are quite conscious of what he's doing.

If you count the number of people enlightened by Chomsky's writings - or even 
the crowds that show up for his talks - I think you could say that he's 
organized quite a large number, as has Limbaugh.  What Chomsky argues in this 
piece is that we shouldn't leave the people you despise to be organized by Limbaugh.

[2] There's a war on, and the government for which we are responsible in this 
formal democracy is killing people halfway around the world, in spite of Obama's 
covering sin with smooth names.  One way to end the war is to cut off funds for 
it, and we should be urging our Congressional representatives to do that. We 
should take notice when we're successful; we certainly shouldn't vote for a 
party that continues the war just because we like what they say on other issues. 
  This is the important issue, literally a matter of life and death.

But as you say, foreign and domestic issues are inseparable. Most of what you 
said was agreement with most of what Chomsky said; no further comment from me 
seemed necessary.

[3] Glad you're reading Zinn.  We should be talking about what lessons we can 
draw from the 1930s-40s. Chomsky thinks that the collapse of the Bretton Woods 
system (the international economic order set up at the end of WWII) was more 
important for world politics than the fall of the Soviet Union.  --CGE


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:17 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> [1] The writer of "what the authentic Left says" indubitably deserves the
> title, and he has a few friends who agree with him.
> 
> 
> Ah, so Noam Chomsky it is, huh?  Rush Limbaugh has a few friends who agree
> with him also, and doubtless consider him the voice of the "authentic Right".
> Your point?  I'm sure you have one here someplace.
> 
> So how many citizens has Noam Chomsky actually organized in his long and 
> illustrious career?  Oh, wait....he's an "intellectual", right?  Hahahaha!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [2] Rep. Tim Johnson makes far more sense to me on at least one issue than
> his faux-left Democratic opponent. He says he was wrong to vote for war in 
> Afghanistan and Iraq - and so is voting no on more money for war in the
> Middle East. David Gill has not made such a pledge.
> 
> Yes, we know, Carl.  Your One Note Samba here.  Yet Chomsky was speaking
> mostly of domestic issues - though I concede that the two are inseparable.
> In any event, you ignored 98% of what I said...which is what you always do.
> But it doesn't really matter, does it?
> 
> 
> 
> [3] Your picture of FDR - and worse, the lesson you draw from it - needs
> work.
> 
> So you say.
> 
> 
> 
> Take a look at the late Howard Zinn's account in A People's History of the 
> United States and tell us how you disagree with it.  --CGE
> 
> It's on my list of books to read, Carl.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John W. wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:08 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I take it that, unlike David, you don't agree with "what the authentic Left
> says," below?  --CGE
> 
> 
> Christ, Carl.  First of all, there's no such thing as "the authentic Left";
> it's a figment of your febrile imagination. And of course I agree in part and
> disagree in part.
> 
> 1) Poor people and lower middle class people have legitimate grievances.  Not
>  ALL of the grievances they inarticulately try to express, or borrow from
> Limbaugh and Beck, are even remotely legitimate. One could write a veritable 
> BOOK on this statement:  "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."   But the
> economic grievances generally are, and of course they affect black and white,
>  male and female, Christian and atheist, all of whom work hard and are "doing
>  everything they're supposed to do".
> 
> 2) One could also write a veritable BOOK on the following statement: "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." 
> Suffice it to say here that everything ascribed to Rush Limbaugh before the 
> hyphen is correct, and everything after the hyphen is false.
> 
> 3) The following is also true with a couple of caveats: "...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."  The caveats are these:
> (a) a few gifts DO come down from above, but generally not political
> progress, which is what we're talking about here; and (b) even with all of
> this struggle, you don't really "do a lot".  You do a little, incrementally,
> and then you're knocked back and you have to repeat the process over and over
>  again. 4) It's true that the crazy, oversimplified answers the tea baggers
> get from Beck and Limbaugh make sense to them, and that the "left" has no
> answers for them.  YOU have no answers for them that would make sense to
> them, Carl.  Rep. Tim Johnson makes far more sense to them than you do or
> ever will.  And it's largely because the folks we're talking about -
> relatively poor, largely uneducated, weighed down by literally hundreds of
> years of stereotypical thinking and prejudices of all kinds - are simply
> incapable of comprehending a relatively complex, nuanced, historically
> contextualized world view.  As I've said before, I spent the first
> forty-three years of my life with people like the Tea Baggers, and I still
> try to dialogue with them, and they don't get it and they're never going to
> get it.  I should qualify that:  a great many black folks get it, but white
> folks are utterly clueless.
> 
> 5) What is needed in America right now is precisely the opposite of
> "organizing the masses".  What is needed is a President like FDR was -
> someone left-leaning with a comprehensive plan and moral courage, who is
> willing to risk political "suicide" and the scorn of the very people he's
> trying to help in order to do the right thing for America, let the quips fall
>  where they may.   A President who isn't afraid to pack the Supreme Court if
> necessary.  The reality is that almost EVERYONE would bitch and moan and call
>  him a traitor and worse, but 30 or 40 years from now they'd wonder how they
> ever got along without Medicare For All and regulation of financial
> institutions and a "progressive" income tax system and so on.
> 
> 6) And then a new generation would be born who was quite ignorant of the
> lessons of history, and the whole cycle would begin all over again....
> 
> ....ad infinitum....
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John W. wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 8:04 PM, unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net 
> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net 
> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net>> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net 
> <mailto:unionyes at ameritech.net> <mailto: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


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