[Peace-discuss] P.S.

[John W.]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:48 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:


> [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.


Organized them to accomplish what specific goals, exactly?




>   What Chomsky argues in this piece is that we shouldn't leave the people
> you despise to be organized by Limbaugh.
>

Just for the record, Carl, I don't "despise" the fellahin.  I just
mingled so much sweat and blood with 'em over so many years that I
understand 'em, and I don't desire their company all that often.  Like you,
I care deeply that they have as much justice and equality of opportunity as
this world allows.  Unlike you, I actually know how they think.




> [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.
>
When you acknowledge agreement, your points of disagreement become more
palatable somehow.



> [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
>
And what does Zinn think?




> 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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