[Peace-discuss] Progressives Seek to Close "Enthusiasm Gap" for Evil
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Oct 27 16:22:19 CDT 2010
Don't mourn. Organize.
On 10/27/10 3:02 PM, John W. wrote:
> "No!"
>
> NOW what do I do?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 12:09 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
> Say No or Surrender: Progressives Seek to Close "Enthusiasm Gap" for Evil
> <http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2038-say-no-or-surrender-progressives-seek-to-close-qenthusiasm-gapq-for-evil.html>
> PDF
> <http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2038-say-no-or-surrender-progressives-seek-to-close-qenthusiasm-gapq-for-evil.pdf>
> Print
> <http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2038-say-no-or-surrender-progressives-seek-to-close-qenthusiasm-gapq-for-evil.html?tmpl=component&print=1&page=>
> E-mail
> <http://chris-floyd.com/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=aHR0cDovL2NocmlzLWZsb3lkLmNvbS9hcnRpY2xlcy8xLWxhdGVzdC1uZXdzLzIwMzgtc2F5LW5vLW9yLXN1cnJlbmRlci1wcm9ncmVzc2l2ZXMtc2Vlay10by1jbG9zZS1xZW50aHVzaWFzbS1nYXBxLWZvci1ldmlsLmh0bWw%3D>
>
>
> Written by Chris Floyd
> Tuesday, 26 October 2010 12:14
> <http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fchris-floyd.com%2Farticles%2F1-latest-news%2F2038-say-no-or-surrender-progressives-seek-to-close-qenthusiasm-gapq-for-evil.html&t=Say%20No%20or%20Surrender%3A%20Progressives%20Seek%20to%20Close%20%22Enthusiasm%20Gap%22%20for%20Evil&src=sp>
>
> alt
>
> In these last days before the massively important, world-historical
> off-year election, as all our good progressives are out there rallying the
> troops for the beleaguered Democrats, trying to hold the racist,
> tyrannical, warmongering Tea Party at bay, Scott Horton at Harper's
> <http://harpers.org/archive/2010/10/hbc-90007762> provides us with yet
> another reminder of just what kind of governance these poor, beleaguered
> Democrats are delivering with the power they received in 2008.
>
> Horton reports that Barack Obama has won a great victory for the power of
> the state to falsely imprison innocent citizens, subject them to repeated
> abuse, tell slanderous lies about them -- then absolve itself of any
> responsibility for this systematic series of crimes ... crimes committed
> in the name of racist, tyrannical warmongering.
>
> Yes, Obama is back on the front lines in the legal battle to defend,
> uphold, entrench and expand the worst abuses of power carried out by his
> loathed predecessor. His Yoo-like legal minions have convinced the Supreme
> Court to consider quashing a case that has been upheld by several lower,
> conservative courts as one worthy to be heard in court. As Horton notes:
>
> The case involves Lavni Kidd, a star football player at the University
> of Idaho who converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdullah
> al-Kidd. He was seized as he boarded a flight to pursue religious
> education in Saudi Arabia in 2003. Justice Department officials
> claimed that he was needed as a material witness in a case against
> another University of Idaho student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, who was
> charged with visa fraud. It does not appear that Kidd knew anything
> relevant to the visa fraud case, federal authorities never called him
> to testify, and the prosecution of Hussayn, which rested on a feeble
> evidentiary case to start with, failed before an Idaho jury. The claim
> appears now to have been a shabby pretext for arresting Kidd, whose
> offense apparently consisted of converting to Islam and espousing
> views critical of the Bush Administration and its plans to invade Iraq
> under false pretenses.
>
> Over a period of 16 days, Kidd was moved to three separate detention
> facilities in three different states. He was treated brutally,
> according to procedures that the Justice Department approved for use
> on terrorism suspects. He was subjected to a withering interrogation
> by FBI agents who demanded to know why he had converted to Islam. He
> was stripped naked, subjected to body cavity searches, shackled hand
> and foot, and incarcerated with violent convicts.
>
> To secure Kidd’s detention as a material witness, the Justice
> Department made a series of false statements to the magistrate who
> issued a warrant—claiming that he had purchased a one-way, first-class
> ticket to Saudi Arabia, when in fact the Justice Department knew he
> had purchased a return economy class ticket, for instance. It also
> withheld such information as the fact that Kidd was a U.S. citizen who
> had cooperated with authorities. The record strongly suggests actual
> malice and bigotry. These facts no doubt played a strong role in
> persuading judges at the district court in Idaho and on the appeals
> court in California of the merits of the case. They therefore denied
> the Justice Department’s vigorously argued efforts to have it dismissed.
>
> But Obama is tireless in his protection of tyranny. He seeks to defend it
> from any and all challenges, small or great. It would be the easiest thing
> in the world to simply step back and let this case be heard in court, let
> it be argued on its own merits and decided accordingly. It would not
> require some harsh denunciation of his predecessors, since he finds such
> things so distasteful. It would not require him to support his
> predecessors. It would not require the White House to do anything at all
> except to let justice takes its course.
>
> But we know that our brave progressive paladin never takes the easy way.
> No, he will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with George Bush and John Ashcroft,
> he will stand up boldly, yea proudly, for jailing young students for
> voicing dissent, for rigging up false charges based on deliberate lies,
> for stripping innocent people and subjecting them to body cavity searches
> -- and for ensuring that no minion of the state who so abuses innocent
> citizens need ever face the slightest disturbance in his cushy,
> comfortable life. So he has fought it convince the Supreme Court to hear
> his earnest pleas for throwing out al-Kidd's case and protecting all those
> who abuse and pervert the power of the state.
>
> This is what you support when you support Obama and the Democrats. And if
> we are about to get another gaggle of rapacious rightwing geese flapping
> into the corridors of power, it is precisely because the Democrats long
> ago sold out, lock, stock and millions of smoking barrels, to the
> corporate-militarist elite, leaving no genuine institutional outlets of
> opposition to corporate rapine, continual war and state tyranny within the
> American political system.
>
> Chris Hedges has much to say
> <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_opportunists_made_20101025/>
> on this point:
>
> The liberal class, which once made piecemeal and incremental reform
> possible, functioned traditionally as a safety valve. During the Great
> Depression, with the collapse of capitalism, it made possible the New
> Deal. During the turmoil of the 1960s, it provided legitimate channels
> within the system to express the discontent of African-Americans and
> the anti-war movement. But the liberal class, in our age of
> neo-feudalism, is now powerless. It offers nothing but empty rhetoric.
> It refuses to concede that power has been wrested so efficiently from
> the hands of citizens by corporations that the Constitution and its
> guarantees of personal liberty are irrelevant. It does not act to
> mitigate the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who now make
> up a growing and desperate permanent underclass. And the disparity
> between the rhetoric of liberal values and the rapacious system of
> inverted totalitarianism the liberal class serves makes liberal
> elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source of public
> ridicule. The liberal class, whether in universities, the press or the
> Democratic Party, insists on clinging to its privileges and comforts
> even if this forces it to serve as an apologist for the expanding
> cruelty and exploitation carried out by the corporate state.
>
> As long as the liberal class had even limited influence, whether
> through the press or the legislative process, liberals were tolerated
> and even respected. But once the liberal class lost all influence it
> became a class of parasites. The liberal class, like the déclassé
> French aristocracy, has no real function within the power elite. And
> the rising right-wing populists, correctly, ask why liberals should be
> tolerated when their rhetoric bears no relation to reality and their
> presence has no influence on power.
>
> The death of the liberal class, however, is catastrophic for our
> democracy. It means there is no longer any check to a corporate
> apparatus designed to further enrich the power elite. It means we
> cannot halt the plundering of the nation by Wall Street speculators
> and corporations. An ineffectual liberal class, in short, means there
> is no hope, however remote, of a correction or a reversal through the
> political system and electoral politics. The liberals’ disintegration
> ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the
> middle class will find expression in a rejection of traditional
> liberal institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. The
> very forces that co-opted the liberal class and are responsible for
> the impoverishment of the state will, ironically, reap benefits from
> the collapse. These corporate manipulators are busy channeling rage
> away from the corporate and military forces hollowing out the nation
> from the inside and are turning that anger toward the weak remnants of
> liberalism. It does not help our cause that liberals indeed turned
> their backs on the working and middle class. ...
>
> The corporate state, by emasculating the liberal class, has opted for
> a closed system of polarization, gridlock and political theater in the
> name of governance. It has ensured a further destruction of state
> institutions so that government becomes even more ineffectual and
> despised. The collapse of the constitutional state, presaged by the
> death of the liberal class, has created a power vacuum that a new
> class of speculators, war profiteers, gangsters and killers,
> historically led by charismatic demagogues, will enthusiastically
> fill. It opens the door to overtly authoritarian and fascist
> movements. ....
>
> The liberal class was permitted a place within a capitalist democracy
> because it also vigorously discredited radicals within American
> society who openly defied the excesses of corporate capitalism and who
> denounced a political system run by and on behalf of corporations. The
> real enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck, but Noam
> Chomsky.
>
> The purging and silencing of independent and radical thinkers as well
> as iconoclasts have robbed the liberal class of vitality. The liberal
> class has cut itself off from the roots of creative and bold thought,
> from those forces and thinkers who could have prevented the liberal
> class from merging completely with the power elite. ...
>
> Once the liberal class can no longer moderate the savage and greedy
> inclinations of the capitalist class, once, for example, labor unions
> are reduced to the role of bartering away wage increases and benefits,
> once public education is gutted and the press no longer gives a voice
> to the poor and the working class, liberals become as despised as the
> power elite they serve. The collapse of liberal institutions means
> those outside the circles of power are trapped, with no recourse, and
> this is why many Americans are turning in desperation toward idiotic
> right-wing populists who at least understand the power of hatred as a
> mobilizing force.
>
> The liberal class no longer holds within its ranks those who have the
> moral autonomy or physical courage to defy the power elite. The
> rebels, from Chomsky to Sheldon Wolin to Ralph Nader, have been
> marginalized, shut out of the national debate and expelled from
> liberal institutions. The liberal class lacks members with the vision
> and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. It offers
> no ideological alternatives. It remains bound to a Democratic Party
> that has betrayed every basic liberal principle including universal
> healthcare, an end to our permanent war economy, a robust system of
> public education, a vigorous defense of civil liberties, job creation,
> the right to unionize and welfare for the poor.
>
> ... As Wall Street steals billions of taxpayer dollars, as it
> perpetrates massive fraud to throw people out of their homes, as the
> ecosystem that sustains the planet is polluted and destroyed, we do
> not know what to do or say. We have been robbed of a vocabulary to
> describe reality. We decry the excesses of capitalism without
> demanding a dismantling of the corporate state. Our pathetic response
> is to be herded to political rallies by skillful publicists to shout
> inanities like “Yes we can!”
>
> The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will
> provide the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward
> despotism. The liberal class prefers comfort and privilege to
> confrontation. It will not halt the corporate assault or thwart the
> ascendancy of the corporate state. It will remain intolerant within
> its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors an unwritten
> quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve
> corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into
> the halls of power.
>
>
> The Democratic Party has become the enabler -- and the eager, avid
> /enactor /-- of the same sinister, inhumane, corrosive and murderous
> policies that liberals, progressives, dissenters, true patriots (call them
> what you will) once fought so hard to resist.
>
> Now you can seek to close the "enthusiasm gap" ('Hey, did ya see that Big
> Dawg Bill is out there on the hustings for us again? Yeehaw!') for the
> Democrats, you can tremble in fear at the corporate-owned Tea Partiers (as
> if the Democrats are not also corporate-owned by war profiteers, community
> eviscerators and rapers of the land) -- but all you are doing is
> perpetuating the dynamic that has brought the Tea Partiers and their ilk
> to prominence. All you are doing is guaranteeing the further drift -- or
> rather, stampede -- of American politics toward the openly fascist,
> brutal, barbaric future that Hedges describes above.
>
> You are standing with tyrants, with those who strip and abuse innocent
> citizens, with those who wage ceaseless, needless war, who kill the
> innocent, torture the captive, and drive millions of innocent people from
> their homes.
>
> As Arthur Silber has said so many times, why do you support
> <http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/12/honor-of-being-human-why-do-you-support.html>
> such things? Will you go on "making friends with evil
> <http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/05/ii-story-for-children-making-friends.html>"?
> Will you give your support to it yet again? Or, in Silber's words: "Will
> you say, 'No''?"
> <http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/05/iii-life-in-shadow-of-death-and-power.html>
> Will you, at last, say No to this bipartisan cycle of horror?
>
> There will be no end to the horror, and not the slightest possibility of
> healing this broken society, and turning it, painfully, fitfully, toward
> something more holistic and humane, until you speak that word.
>
>
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