Great stuff. Corporate-administered narcotics, that's our news. With the parallel, equally successful gutting of K-12 for those not wealthy enough to circumvent it, there is little hope for positive change in American society. When, not if, things get bad enough, America is poised for change, but it won't be pretty.
The only hope in my estimation is if the left takes to the street to begin preaching an alternative narrative. We talk to one another, we talk to largely pampered college kids, but we very rarely have an opportunity to commmunicate with those most butchered by what I hope is late capitalism.
The "American corporate police state" will never willingly or democratically cede its power or lucre. While Americans are fine and dandy with bombing brown people into oblivion to alter their realities over there, we docilely shuffle along in the US, with baffling faith in our failed democracy. All the while, in its name the oligarchy strips us of our rights and profits obscenely by making renters of us all.
As opposed to our brutal global policies, domestically, we cling to a naive and unquestioned pacifism, a recipe for our continued sink into a state only Orwell could have fully described. If we're not willing to stir things up, wind up in prison, face billy clubs or tasers, if we're not prepared for full-scale civil disobedience, then we're all wasting our breath. So few on the left are prepared to face this reality, though I'm sure they acknowledge it on some level. Until they do, we're going nowhere, until the discomfort bleeds a little further.
For now, in lieu of the civil rights or anti-war movements, the most impressive demonstration we've observed was the vacuous nonsense from Colbert and Jon Stewart last year. We don't need self-absorbed, priviledged moderates, we need hungry, pissed off radicals, and more than that we need leaders on the left who tell them the truth, if they can face it themselves.
Voting for the dems, participating in this joke called electoral politics only postpones the inevitable. But, yes, if we're not prepared to act, then only James' despair is left to us.
Still think Digby has the best response to your letter to the left:
Juan Cole makes many good points in his piece and I can't fault him. I still disagree overall because I think that the motives are much more complex and opaque than the government is admitting and that we aren't particularly good at this and usually make things worse. Most importantly, I think we are fighting wars in this region mostly because we are engaged in a Great Game over oil and that it needs to be discussed so that we can start having a rational discussion about energy.To the extent that there are other strategic reasons, the most important is around keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of extremists and rogue states and this latest adventure is probably counter-productive for the reasons Steve Clemons and Jonathan Schwartz raised above. I still feel quite strongly that "humanitarianism" is really far down the list of official concerns even as it's being raised as the main motive for our actions. It's a delusion that no populace in a mature nation, much less a military empire, should have --- raining bombs for "good" is a dangerous concept even in the clearest situation.
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Great stuff. Corporate-administered narcotics, that's our news. With the parallel, equally successful gutting of K-12 for those not wealthy enough to circumvent it, there is little hope for positive change in American society. When, not if, things get bad enough, America is poised for change, but it won't be pretty.
The only hope in my estimation is if the left takes to the street to begin preaching an alternative narrative. We talk to one another, we talk to largely pampered college kids, but we very rarely have an opportunity to commmunicate with those most butchered by what I hope is late capitalism.
The "American corporate police state" will never willingly or democratically cede its power or lucre. While Americans are fine and dandy with bombing brown people into oblivion to alter their realities over there, we docilely shuffle along in the US, with baffling faith in our failed democracy. All the while, in its name the oligarchy strips us of our rights and profits obscenely by making renters of us all.
As opposed to our brutal global policies, domestically, we cling to a naive and unquestioned pacifism, a recipe for our continued sink into a state only Orwell could have fully described. If we're not willing to stir things up, wind up in prison, face billy clubs or tasers, if we're not prepared for full-scale civil disobedience, then we're all wasting our breath. So few on the left are prepared to face this reality, though I'm sure they acknowledge it on some level. Until they do, we're going nowhere, until the discomfort bleeds a little further.
For now, in lieu of the civil rights or anti-war movements, the most impressive demonstration we've observed was the vacuous nonsense from Colbert and Jon Stewart last year. We don't need self-absorbed, priviledged moderates, we need hungry, pissed off radicals, and more than that we need leaders on the left who tell them the truth, if they can face it themselves.
Voting for the dems, participating in this joke called electoral politics only postpones the inevitable. But, yes, if we're not prepared to act, then only James' despair is left to us.
Still think Digby has the best response to your letter to the left:
Juan Cole makes many good points in his piece and I can't fault him. I still disagree overall because I think that the motives are much more complex and opaque than the government is admitting and that we aren't particularly good at this and usually make things worse. Most importantly, I think we are fighting wars in this region mostly because we are engaged in a Great Game over oil and that it needs to be discussed so that we can start having a rational discussion about energy.To the extent that there are other strategic reasons, the most important is around keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of extremists and rogue states and this latest adventure is probably counter-productive for the reasons Steve Clemons and Jonathan Schwartz raised above. I still feel quite strongly that "humanitarianism" is really far down the list of official concerns even as it's being raised as the main motive for our actions. It's a delusion that no populace in a mature nation, much less a military empire, should have --- raining bombs for "good" is a dangerous concept even in the clearest situation.