[Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally

[C. G. Estabrook]

Pauli's line is good, but yours isn't.  You should at least suggest what you 
think is wrong with David's accurate and informed analysis.

The liberalism condemned by Hedges and Green elides the difference between 
liberalism and the left.  The distinction as it became common 40 years ago 
depends on the attitude to capitalism (= another protean term, but standing now 
for the present economic arrangement).  In consistent usage, the Left opposes 
capitalism, while Liberalism supports it, while saying that it wants to 
ameliorate its more destructive effects.  (That itself is probably an 
inescapable contradiction.) The two positions can sometimes look alike on 
specific practical issues but the fundamental contradiction between them is what 
both authors point out.


On 11/1/10 11:27 AM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> As Wolfgang Pauli once said: This is not even wrong.
>
>
> On Nov 1, 2010, at 10:57 AM, David Green wrote:
>
>> This article will be posted tomorrow on ZNet:
>>
>> *November 2nd: The End of "Progressivism"?*
>>
>> David Green
>>
>> Whatever its hopes and illusions, the American left has been (predictably, in 
>> my view) marginalized--in fact, demonized--in the age of Obama. There are 
>> sensible explanations in terms of the capitalist moment, the media, and the 
>> cynical nature of the Obama deception itself. Nevertheless, at some 
>> fundamental level it wouldn’t hurt for serious leftists to look in the mirror 
>> and address the development of an informed leftist discourse and terminology 
>> that makes some consistent sense in terms of history, ideology, principles, 
>> enemies, and proposals. Whatever the diverse and global philosophical 
>> heritage of popular movements for social justice, we could aspire to a 
>> discourse specific to the American left, reflecting its unique history and 
>> tribulations in relation to the most ruthlessly capitalistic and militaristic 
>> country in history, facilitated by dis-organized and racialized labor, as 
>> well as by the professional-managerial class.
>>
>>
>> But the conventional, pervasive, careless, and mindless use of the label 
>> “progressive” to describe those who claim to be to the left of the Obama 
>> Administration and the Democratic Party in no way contributes to such an 
>> effort, and instead has for the past two years and longer shaped a slippery, 
>> evasive, disingenuous, self-serving, and faux-leftist discourse that 
>> functions to avoid fundamental issues of class struggle, war, and the 
>> incorrigibility of two-party politics.
>>
>>
>> The failure of “progressivism,” such as it currently is, partly reflects 
>> confusion about the history of the Progressive Era, ignorance of the 
>> historiography about that era, and the putative principles of the current 
>> movement in relation to the largely sordid genealogy of the ideology. It is 
>> remarkable that those who now claim to represent the left seem to be unable 
>> or unwilling to consider that the discourse of “progress” has most often been 
>> employed by elitist ideologues in order to promote capitalist “creative 
>> destruction” and technological innovation (government-funded or otherwise) 
>> instead of social justice, obviously to the long-term benefit of corporations 
>> and the ownership class, and to the detriment and ongoing immiseration of the 
>> working classes.
>>
>>
>> The Progressive Era (1890-1920) included the administrations of Theodore 
>> Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. During that Era, regulatory power was 
>> consolidated at the federal level, mainly to the benefit of corporate power, 
>> stability, and the accumulation of wealth. Thus the 1960s revisionist 
>> historian James Weinstein described an era of “corporate liberalism.” The 
>> dominant ideology of this period was defined by the founders of/The New 
>> Republic/, including Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann; they were organic 
>> social theorists, elitists, and technocrats who defined “progress” in 
>> managerial, administrative, and orderly terms, not in terms of social 
>> struggle and social justice. They responded in some ways to genuine popular 
>> movements, but they also feared them and loathed them; the result was most 
>> often the pacification and co-optation of such movements, including the labor 
>> movement. Weinstein’s analysis was consistent with the seminal revisionist 
>> work of Gabriel Kolko and many others; Kolko described the result of the 
>> Progressive Era as the triumph of “political capitalism.”
>>
>>
>> The Progressive Era featured a Progressive Party that was co-opted by 
>> Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party in the complicated election of 1912. 
>> Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette, upstaged by Roosevelt, later ran a much more 
>> authentically populist and leftist campaign for president in 1924, also under 
>> the banner of the Progressive Party; his resounding defeat also signaled the 
>> demise of that party at the national level. The journal he founded in 
>> 1909,/The Progressive,/has for over a century promoted views, including those 
>> of Howard Zinn, that bear little relation to the “progress” of the 
>> Progressive Era, which of course also included Wilson’s entrance into World 
>> War I.
>>
>>
>> Those who currently describe themselves as progressives, or those who 
>> routinely employ the term in their description of ideological differences 
>> between Obama and his “base,” display little understanding of these 
>> historical problems of the American left, and thus become subject to similar 
>> pitfalls.
>>
>>
>> Thus the term “progressive” is currently a disingenuously “non-ideological” 
>> ideological placeholder, a vague and posturing term of connotation and 
>> convenience—ironically appropriate in the Age of Obama. It shuns socialist 
>> ideology for programmatic instrumentalism, even if their programs (pubic 
>> option, etc.) have never become so much as a glimmer in the eye of Obama. For 
>> the past two years, progressivism has consisted of a futile programmatic 
>> agenda without either an organization or a movement, and certainly without 
>> consistent principles, especially in relation to our wars.
>>
>>
>> As a result, current progressivism is increasingly defined by what it 
>> claims—implicitly or explicitly—not to be. It signifies not-radical in its 
>> failure to clearly name and address class struggle and warfare, not-socialist 
>> in its technocratic, elitist reformism, and not-antiwar in its willingness to 
>> place our imperial adventures on the back burner. Most of all, progressives 
>> are not-left in their dogged support for Democratic Party candidates. That is 
>> to say, progressives—like their worst historical antecedents—are not serious 
>> about democracy, and contemptuous of the people.
>>
>>
>> Not-left progressives nevertheless try to appeal to those “idealists” whom 
>> they perceive to be further to their left, in terms of two-party pragmatism 
>> and lesser-evilism. The “good Obama” is still thought to have a potentially 
>> “progressive” (i.e., liberal reformist) bone in his body, and the Democratic 
>> Party is claimed to oppose those who are assumed to be much worse than 
>> corporatists and militarists: racist Tea Partiers, religious fundamentalists, 
>> and mindless critics of “big government.” There seems to be no awareness of 
>> the historical “irony” that the principled (and populist) William Jennings 
>> Bryan resigned as Secretary of State upon the U.S. entrance into World War I, 
>> and later represented religious “creationists” in Tennessee.
>>
>>
>> When progressives finish defining themselves in terms of what they are not, 
>> it remains clear what they are: creatures of the corporate, two-party system. 
>> At their worst, progressives resort to explaining the “failures” of the 
>> pro-corporate Obama administration with words such as “weakness,” 
>> “stupidity,” “cowardice,” and “betrayal.” They claim, disingenuously, that 
>> Obama is a stranger to them. At this point progressivism becomes, if nothing 
>> else, an ideology of calculated outrage and the provocation of fear. The 
>> frequency of this terminology and these tactics has increased exponentially 
>> during the final weeks of the current election campaign; the Democratic Party 
>> will still be a major party, but progressivism will be mercifully unraveled.
>>
>>
>> The progressive movement, such as it is, increasingly reflects the Tea Party, 
>> such as it is, in defining itself in terms of what it is opposed to, and what 
>> it is afraid of. But interestingly, the Tea Party seems to more genuinely 
>> reflect a rejection of the (rightfully feared) two-corporate-party system, 
>> while progressives come to sound more like Thomas Friedman in their desperate 
>> and cynical efforts to save the Congress from the Republican Party; they 
>> revert to elitism, if in fact it can be called a reversion.
>>
>>
>> If those who currently call themselves progressives and take the term 
>> seriously have an alternative framework with which to help me to understand 
>> their behavior, I will gladly and seriously consider it.
>>
>>
>> Barring that, when the coming debacle is complete and the bodies are buried, 
>> it is to be hoped that one of them will be this habitual reliance on a term 
>> that merely reveals that in this country, many of those who claim to 
>> constitute the left nevertheless lack either the clarity or the courage of 
>> their convictions, and thus fail to act on them in a serious manner.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:*C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>>
>> *To:*Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net 
>> <mailto:peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
>> *Sent:*Mon, November 1, 2010 10:47:55 AM
>> *Subject:*[Peace-discuss] Chris Hedges rips Jon Stewart rally
>>
>> "The Rally to Restore Sanity ... ridiculed followers of the tea
>> party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
>> many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
>> fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
>> the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
>> out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
>> its back on the working class for corporate money. Fox News’ Beck
>> and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
>> mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
>> have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
>> run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
>> liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
>> television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
>> and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
>> in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
>> backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
>> stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
>> Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
>> Republican Party."
>>
>>     The Phantom Left
>>     Posted on Oct 31, 2010
>>     By Chris Hedges
>>
>> The American left is a phantom. It is conjured up by the right wing to
>> tag Barack Obama as a socialist and used by the liberal class to justify
>> its complacency and lethargy. It diverts attention from corporate power.
>> It perpetuates the myth of a democratic system that is influenced by the
>> votes of citizens, political platforms and the work of legislators. It
>> keeps the world neatly divided into a left and a right. The phantom left
>> functions as a convenient scapegoat. The right wing blames it for moral
>> degeneration and fiscal chaos. The liberal class uses it to call for
>> “moderation.” And while we waste our time talking nonsense, the engines
>> of corporate power—masked, ruthless and unexamined—happily devour the state.
>>
>> The loss of a radical left in American politics has been catastrophic.
>> The left once harbored militant anarchist and communist labor unions, an
>> independent, alternative press, social movements and politicians not
>> tethered to corporate benefactors. But its disappearance, the result of
>> long witch hunts for communists, post-industrialization and the
>> silencing of those who did not sign on for the utopian vision of
>> globalization, means that there is no counterforce to halt our slide
>> into corporate neofeudalism. This harsh reality, however, is not
>> palatable. So the corporations that control mass communications conjure
>> up the phantom of a left. They blame the phantom for our debacle. And
>> they get us to speak in absurdities.
>>
>> The phantom left took a central role on the mall this weekend in
>> Washington. It had performed admirably for Glenn Beck, who used it in
>> his own rally as a lightning rod to instill anger and fear. And the
>> phantom left proved equally useful for the comics Jon Stewart and
>> Stephen Colbert, who spoke to the crowd wearing red-white-and-blue
>> costumes. The two comics evoked the phantom left, as the liberal class
>> always does, in defense of moderation, which might better be described
>> as apathy. If the right wing is crazy and if the left wing is crazy, the
>> argument goes, then we moderates will be reasonable. We will be nice.
>> Exxon and Goldman Sachs, along with predatory banks and the arms
>> industry, may be ripping the guts out of the country, our
>> rights—including habeas corpus—may have been revoked, but don’t get mad.
>> Don’t be shrill. Don’t be like the crazies on the left.
>>
>> “Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution
>> or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?”
>> Stewart asked. “We hear every damn day about how fragile our country
>> is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a
>> shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is
>> we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only
>> place we don’t is here [in Washington] or on cable TV.”
>>
>> The rally delivered a political message devoid of reality or content.
>> The corruption of electoral politics by corporate funds and lobbyists,
>> the naive belief that we can somehow vote ourselves back to democracy,
>> was ignored for emotional catharsis. The right hates. The liberals
>> laugh. And the country is taken hostage.
>>
>> The Rally to Restore Sanity, held in Washington’s National Mall, was yet
>> another sad footnote to the death of the liberal class. It was as
>> innocuous as a Boy Scout jamboree. It ridiculed followers of the tea
>> party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by
>> many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made
>> fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over
>> the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold
>> out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned
>> its back on the working class for corporate money.
>>
>> Fox News’ Beck and his allies on the far right can use hatred as a
>> mobilizing force because there are tens of millions of Americans who
>> have very good reason to hate. They have been betrayed by the elite who
>> run the corporate state, by the two main political parties and by the
>> liberal apologists, including those given public platforms on
>> television, who keep counseling moderation as jobs disappear, wages drop
>> and unemployment insurance runs out. As long as the liberal class speaks
>> in the dead voice of moderation it will continue to fuel the right-wing
>> backlash. Only when it appropriates this rage as its own, only when it
>> stands up to established systems of power, including the Democratic
>> Party, will we have any hope of holding off the lunatic fringe of the
>> Republican Party.
>>
>> Wall Street’s looting of the Treasury, the curtailing of our civil
>> liberties, the millions of fraudulent foreclosures, the long-term
>> unemployment, the bankruptcies from medical bills, the endless wars in
>> the Middle East and the amassing of trillions in debt that can never be
>> repaid are pushing us toward a Hobbesian world of internal collapse.
>> Being nice and moderate will not help. These are corporate forces that
>> are intent on reconfiguring the United States into a system of
>> neofeudalism. These corporate forces will not be halted by funny signs,
>> comics dressed up like Captain America or nice words.
>>
>> The liberal class wants to inhabit a political center to remain morally
>> and politically disengaged. As long as there is a phantom left, one that
>> is as ridiculous and stunted as the right wing, the liberal class can
>> remain uncommitted. If the liberal class concedes that power has been
>> wrested from us it will be forced, if it wants to act, to build
>> movements outside the political system. This would require the liberal
>> class to demand acts of resistance, including civil disobedience, to
>> attempt to salvage what is left of our anemic democratic state. But this
>> type of political activity, as costly as it is difficult, is too
>> unpalatable to a bankrupt liberal establishment that has sold its soul
>> to corporate interests. And so the phantom left will be with us for a
>> long time.
>>
>> Politics in America has become spectacle. It is another form of show
>> business. The crowd in Washington, well trained by television, was
>> conditioned to play its role before the cameras. The signs —“The Rant is
>> Too Damn High,” “Real Patriots Can Handle a Difference of Opinion” or “I
>> Masturbate and I Vote”—reflected the hollowness of current political
>> discourse and television’s perverse epistemology. The rally spoke
>> exclusively in the impoverished iconography and language of television.
>> It was filled with meaningless political pieties, music and jokes. It
>> was like any television variety program. Personalities were being sold,
>> not political platforms. And this is what the society of spectacle is about.
>>
>> The modern spectacle, as the theorist Guy Debord pointed out, is a
>> potent tool for pacification and depoliticization. It is a “permanent
>> opium war” which stupefies its viewers and disconnects them from the
>> forces that control their lives. The spectacle diverts anger toward
>> phantoms and away from the perpetrators of exploitation and injustice.
>> It manufactures feelings of euphoria. It allows participants to confuse
>> the spectacle itself with political action.
>>
>> The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox
>> are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty,
>> emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth
>> on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national
>> Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is
>> entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is
>> driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same
>> celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented
>> with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of
>> it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse
>> how we are made to feel with knowledge. And in the end, for those who
>> serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and
>> advertising.  Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And
>> it is not us.
>>
>> Chris Hedges, who writes every Monday for Truthdig, is the author of the
>> new book “Death of the Liberal Class.”
>>
>> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_phantom_left_20101031/
>>
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