Peacefully Into the Night
Like those Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, America's liberals refuse to accept defeat. Eric Alterman makes an especially impassioned plea in this weeks Nation magazine but it is the sad voice of someone who should be moved from intensive care to hospice. Ironically, he just finished a book called The Fight For American Liberalism, an especially sclerotic version, and tries his hardest to sell it by breaking out all the icons, Waltzer,Trilling, Hofstadter, Galbraith,FDR, Dewey and Niebuhr. He still calls for a "humble" Government to intervene and find new remedies in a "militant and optimistic" spirit. What could he possibly be smoking? To add injury to insult he also tries to describe Bruce Springsteen's "political voice". Talk about irony! Springsteen was John Kerry's Vote for Change puppet. His new album Wrecking Ball is all populist anger against greed and now the opening song "We Take Care of Our Own" has been adopted (co-opted) by the Obama campaign. A classic, clueless liberal, Springsteen keeps bleating about the working man but other than the Woody Guthrie anthem he sung with Seeger at the inauguration, he refuses to see the connections, to do the intellectual work of digging below surface effects to try to uncover causes.It's the reason so few wish to identify as liberals any more. A static, stagnant political philosophy needs a kick into the grave. The magazine goes a way towards redemption by including a piece by Lee Siegal on the new production of Death of a Salesman. The disturbing play is the classic expression of Marx's pronouncement that "all that is solid melts into air." We need an Arthur Miller at this point in time, a new Willy Lowman caught in the crushing jaws of late capitalism. Galbraith the Younger will be in Missoula tomorrow night for a lecture. We'll see what he thinks about the capitalist state.I saw two college age jazz groups on Monday night that gave me the will to fight on. Jazz lives. The revolution will swing.
posted by troutsky @ 7:45 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
The article on the Fed by William Greider was pretty good. It's nice to know that Kapital still has folks in power who can save it from itself.
However, there is still the crowd that would have it fail so that we can have The Full Ayn Rand arise like the Phoenix from the ashes.
Along with a government that's reduced to the bare essentials like arming S.W.A.T for the inevitable blowback.
Meanwhile, the underclass swells and the fools assume they won't be swallowed.
And we look at the political landscape for some insight ... Here's Sarah Palin with her analysis of the recent Secret Service prostitution scandal ...
Not with a bang but a whimper.
It's nice to know you've made that half way journey to sanity by being able to see how full of shit liberals are, Trout. Now, in order to complete the journey, you need to come to grips with those evil capitalists hiding under your bed and in your closet at night, and come to see your boogie-man capitalist as the unrealistic fantasy that he is.
When you go off to work in the day, do you sometimes have dreadful forebodings that your wife might be cheating on you behind your back with a wealthy capitalist, and they might be laughing behind your back? Do you catch yourself rummaging through your wife's private belongings expecting to find an inexplicable few hundred dollar bills?
Did you ever stop to wonder if maybe you've been lied to?
Patrick : As a fishing guide who has worked at an exclusive lodge for the last 22 years, I know (and have sat down to dinner with) far more capitalists than you ever will. Following my posts as you have, you might have noticed I never used the adjective "evil". They bring their children and grandchildren to enjoy the great outdoors ( they are meanwhile destroying) Capitalism is barbaric and we are ALL barbarians. Liberals have the intelligence to sense this but lack the fortitude to do anything about it.
Conservatives, on the other hand, lack the capacity to understand what is happening to them.(see Ayn Rand) Are they innocent or ignorant? You decide.
Just in case you haven't caught on, it is wealthy individuals and companies who have made it possible for us to have a comfortable and advanced lifestyle. What you haven't come to grips with is that there are always negative consequences to everything, no matter how good. That would be true under any system.
In the meantime, the same capitalists you speak of are the ones who also donate money to environmental and wildlife preservation. Yes, they get tax breaks for doing so, but so what? They could (and do) donate to any number of other causes.
You're seeing everything through tunnel vision blinded by socialist propaganda. When these people bring their children and grandchildren to enjoy the great outdoors, isn't that telling you something?
General strike tomorrow. It's pretty to think so.
Yeah, there's some truth to that, Pagan.
Thank the left.
I am always struck by the 'aspirational' nature of American political talk. That's what 'conservatives' count on. It's a very strong tendency, and real money in the bank for the ruling elite. That is, even an 'angry populist' like Bruce (I'm not a fan...) talks about fairness, the American way, justice, etc. It's very idealistic, and sort of naive. Talking about justice during the Civil Rights movement made sense because there was such a clear TEXTUAL reference and contradiction to highlight. But without that (the Constitution, etc.) there's just everyone's interpretation.
Americans are very apolitical. Are people elsewhere less so? Is it just historical happenstance? Chinese peasants know who their oppressors were, and who they are today. When they get a little cash, will they become confused?
Paul Krugman had a blog post today in which he questioned how so much drivel that had been clearly disproved could still be talked about 'seriously' by so-called experts. He wondered about their role in the entire intellectual charade. Which brings up the question of his role, his perch on the NYTimes, even if unwitting.
The whole manufacture of consent model of American Democracy is making a lot more sense these days. I'm just not sure it was any different in the middle ages when they had feudalism.
Troutsky
Pardon me but the fact you are the hired help of wealthy people does not qualify you as an expert.
As a communist you are an imbecile
and a political criminal by definition. You are an exponent of warped ideas that have produced nothing other than piles of dead without a single achievement.
Have you ever considered doing stand up comedy? You are at best nothing more than a rubber chicken.
Poultry
Yes your friend the Trout guide who takes subsidized trips from hostile foreign governments should write about his lefty peers sexually exploiting the locals in Cuba and Hugo's crack den. A prostitute provides a service for paying customers and is morally supperior to Communists who are theives and butchers with delusions of granduer.
Hey, welcome back, Beak.
I assume customers hire trout because they want to catch fish.
They come to you if they want to get out of shape stuffing their faces with blintzes.
Hmmm
Lets do this slowly. The best guides are usually uneducated locals. The local guides in Guyana get one from place to place. They are quirky parts of the scenery at best and not fonts of wisdom.
You teach wannabe pornographers and
can lecture us about how many cameras are needed to film an orgy.
Your friendly local officer is a dedicated public official widely respected in the local legal community. Attorneys who are far smarter than you praise my dedication and wisdom.
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