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

[C. G. Estabrook]

I would have thought that you'd have embraced Bill Blum's position, John =
"People are stupid, and we've heard it all before."


On 5/12/10 9:51 PM, John W. wrote:
>
> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 9:33 PM, E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag
> <mailto: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
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> To: "Brussel Morton K."
> <mkbrussel at comcast.net <mailto:mkbrussel at comcast.net>> Cc: "Peace-discuss
> Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto: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/> <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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