[Peace-discuss] The source of our problems

[C. G. Estabrook]

  Yes, we were - and quite properly - single-issue voters on Vietnam (when there 
was anyone to vote for). But you remember that it took us a long time to descry 
the sources of the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon crimes in SE Asia. We seem to have to 
go thru a similar process re the Clinton-Bush-Obama crimes in SW Asia.

The 1970s were the origin of the counter-attack of the US ruling class on "the 
sixties" and the reason people like Obama must excoriate the "excesses" of that 
decade. Bench marks are the book /The Crisis of Democracy/ (q.v.) from 1975 (the 
crisis being too much democracy) and the neoliberal turn of the Carter 
administration, including its imperial war in Afghanistan (or, "How Osama bin 
Laden Became a CIA Asset") - consolidated by the election of 1980.

Yes, your account of the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972 is 
over-simplification, but don't feel bad.  That's the way we talk about politics 
in the political class. (For openers, remember that Nixon was elected against 
the administration that was prosecuting the war - on his promise that he had a 
"secret plan" for ending it.  We forget that Nixon was elected as Obama was - as 
the anti-war candidate. Both of course were lying.)

I also think it's not too helpful to parallel the US and USSR occupations of 
Afghanistan; the politics, both domestic and foreign, were quite different.


On 10/17/10 2:59 PM, John W. wrote:
> Wait, Carl.... Weren't many of us "single-issue voters" in the 1970s, on the 
> subject of the war in Viet Nam?  You suggest that that's the cure once again. 
>  Strange, isn't it, that you identify the 1970s as precisely the time when the 
> Democratic Party began its "long right turn"?  Can you reconcile the obvious 
> illogic?
>
> While you're at it, perhaps you can comment on how a LARGER bloc of 
> "single-issue voters" - those concerned with "law and order" - elected Richard 
> Nixon to the Presidency in 1968 and re-elected him in 1972, all while the war 
> in Viet Nam was still going on.
>
> Over-simplification, anyone?
>
> [Of course I too think that Amerika should get out of the imperialism 
> business.  The only thing that will bring that about - if anything - is our 
> ever-declining economy.  It'll be the same exact thing that got the Soviet 
> Union out of the imperialism business.]
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 2:45 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
>     [Or, how not to be that terrible thing, a "single-issue voter." Tsk, tsk.]
>
>     /The source is "...the long right turn of the Democratic Party since the
>     1970s, as financialization of the economy led to shedding New Deal
>     commitments so as to compete with the Republicans for corporate patronage."
>     /
>     And the cure is to make the single-issue large enough.  ("Be as radical as
>     reality," said Lenin.)
>
>     Opposition to the war is the necessary if not sufficient first condition
>     for a serious politics. What is required is "a revitalization of the
>     founding tradition of civic virtue and republican values of liberty."  And
>     that's what the teapartiers are calling for, even if they need to clarify
>     their analysis.
>
>     "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry
>     about answers."
>
>     Imperial war contradicts that revitalization.  And avoiding the question
>     of the war disqualifies any further discussion.
>
>     It's important that the Democrats do that, while the teapartiers are
>     conflicted on the matter.  Although the polity is far from democratic, a
>     serious defeat for the Democratic party and the concomitant rejection of
>     their policies is the probably necessary beginning of an insistence on
>     different - and contrasting - policies.
>
>     Although it's true that no one - outside of a few Greens - are clear on
>     the matter.
>
>     There's work for people like us.
>
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