[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010

[John W.]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 9:33 PM, E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:



> It should be clear to those who look carefully that the Actual Tea Party
> movement is not a  contraption of the Republican Party.  Keep in mind that
> sign at the Chicago Tea Party --- "Republicans Suck Too!"
>
> Chomsky is significant inasmuch as he suggesting to the progressives that
> they pause just a moment from parroting the rhetoric of those who poke fun
> at the TP, and take a look at the grievances that drive the TP.
>


Good grief.  Haven't we had this conversation before, ad nauseam?  Duly
noted.  The Tea Partiers are a force to be reckoned with.  They have
grievances, a couple of them even legitimate.  Now what?  What does the
Great God Chomsky say?  What would Jesus do?  What would Diogenes do?




>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <
> galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 9:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010
>
>
> I think it would be a mistake to include either (a) there's nothing unique
> about
> the current political situation or (b) it's all because people are stupid.
> There certainly are parallels between anti-communism and anti-terrorism -
> but
> that's because they were both massive propaganda enterprises of the
> American
> ascendancy.
>
> Chomsky's comments have certainly been misinterpreted.  He makes two
> points,
> both correct it seems to me: (a) the grievances motivating the teaparty
> movement
> are real; and (b) the Left in this country has allowed the Right to offer
> (mad
> and dangerous) interpretations of those grievances.
>
> Simply ridiculing the teaparty movement - or dismissing it with contempt as
> simply low-class racism - is also mad and dangerous.  A flood of (quite
> legitimate) popular distress - dammed up by liberal indifference and denied
> a
> political spillway - will burst through in crazy and far more dangerous
> ways.
>
> Of course the tea party movement is not a working class uprising. The
> teapartiers are, in classical terms, mainly petty bourgeois - but with
> substantial appeal to the working class, as the Nazis were.  The crucial
> point
> about them is that, while they amount to about 18% of the population
> (according
> to a NYT survey), 48% of the population sympathize with their attitudes and
> beliefs (as compared with 44% for Obama).
>
> What the left should be doing is what it did in the 1930s, when there was
> also a
> very dangerous nativist movement, but it was countered by working class
> organizing - not contempt for the stupidity of the masses. --CGE
>
>
> On 5/12/10 6:19 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>
>> ... *Anti-Empire Report *May 12, 2010 William Blum www.killinghope.org
>>> <http://www.killinghope.org/> *Terminally-dumb people have always been
>>> with us of course. It can’t be that we’ve suddenly gone stupid.* ... If
>>> you shake your head and roll your eyes at the nonsense coming out of the
>>> Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin and other
>>> intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ... If you have
>>> thoughts of moving abroad after the latest silly lies and fantasies like
>>> “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama the antichrist” ... If you share Noam
>>> Chomsky’s feeling: "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime”
>>> ... keep in mind that the right wing has long been at least as stupid and
>>> as mean-spirited...
>>
>>

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