Several recent developments bode well for this country, the world, and specifically for the political left. The fact that they are all occurring so close in time to each other is also salubrious. For those of us who have been wondering when things were going to break in this direction, these developments are extremely welcome and very promising.
Some background to this: When Obama ran for the presidency, he rode a wave a revulsion against the disastrous and malignant Bush White House, promising change. Millions were taken in by his promises and his charisma and the stark contrast between his persona and that of his predecessors, smirking George “We do not torture” Bush and the dark lord himself, Dick “waterboarding is a no-brainer” Cheney.
Millions thought that they could put this horrid period behind us by supporting and voting for Obama. Millions are now waking up to the fact that Obama isn’t delivering as he promised (nor, by the by, was he going to in the first place). Millions are waking up to the fact that “bipartisanship” means that the GOP gets to block anything that they don’t like, and that fascist acts like Limbaugh and the murderer of Dr. George Tiller and his apologists get to be on TV, radio, on the Internet and in print constantly polluting the air (which is worse, global warming or these guys and gals?), bringing shame and opprobrium upon this country.
Obama’s election has also triggered a reaction among those who “want their country back,” by which many of them mean, taking it out of the hands of a BLACK president, the very idea of which causes them fits. The Tea Party movement of which I speak represents an amalgam of sharply contradictory tendencies, some of which are reactionary, and some of which are actually progressive.
Now, to the items:
Item 1: The Coffee Parties. Begun a few days over six weeks ago by Annabel Park on Facebook, the Coffee Party movement mushroomed nearly overnight. Its unifying elements: revulsion for the Tea Partiers and anger about the failure of the Democratic Party, Obama in particular, and the media to curb the outrageousness that Bush, Cheney, the GOP and Fox News et al so concentrate. They regard the two-party system as a failure.
From the March 13, 2010 CNN report on the Coffee Partiers:
Coffee vs. Tea: A political movement is brewing
Coffee Party leaders held 350 to 400 events Saturday across the country
"Just like in the American Revolution, we are looking for real representation,” founder says
Group's first action will be April 27, during Congress' Easter recess
Washington (CNN) -- The new Coffee Party movement deemed its official kickoff Saturday [March 13, 2010] a "huge success," with dozens of talks held at coast to-coast coffee shops as members came together to discuss the issues most important to them.
Billed by many as an answer to the conservative Tea Party movement, the Coffee Party was born on Facebook just six weeks ago. While the group has become an instant hit online -- it boasts more than 141,000 Facebook fans as of Saturday -- gauging the success of this weekend's coffee meetups was predicted to be an indicator of the group's strength.
A statement released by the party said "today's coffee houses have been a huge success -- both for Coffee Party USA and for democracy. All across the U.S., Americans from all political sides sat down for civil conversation and, of course, coffee."
At Java Monkey in Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, coordinator Stacey Hopkins said turnout far exceeded expectations, with around 60 people participating at the "very productive" meeting where health care reform was the overriding issue.
"We had kids there, we had college students, high school students, and we had retirees," she said. "It went across a very broad spectrum age wise and racially, and this is that we'd like to see."
…
"I think the biggest thing to come out of it was people were tired of being labeled and divided," said Jernigan, who added that a Tea Party member was among the attendees. "They do agree on a lot."
…
Coffee Party founder Annabel Park, who worked as a volunteer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia's 2006 campaign, says the group is not "aligned" with any party and calls the two-party system out of date.
Park said the bitter battle over health care is an example of how government is not working.
"We feel like the health care debate showed not only that we are a very divided country, but there's something really wrong with our political process. We kind of got to see the innards of the political process and realize there's something very broken. I think that's what we're responding to."
…
"Just like in the American Revolution, we are looking for real representation right now. We don't feel represented by our government right now, and we don't really feel represented well by the media either," Park said last week on CNN's "American Morning." "It's kind of a simple call to action for people to wake up and take control over their future and demand representation. And it requires people standing up and speaking up."
Item 2: On March 9, 2010, Bill Quigley of Truthout.org ran an OpEd entitled: “Time for a US Revolution – 15 Reasons.” This article is notable given the fact that Truthout is and has been a strong supporter of the Democratic Party, but is now broaching the “revolution” word. This reflects a shift, even though what Quigley means by “revolution” is not armed struggle but a “revolution in values” a la Martin Luther King, Jr. A few months ago this would have been unthinkable. A lot has happened since Obama’s ascension, however, and even one of his strongest cheerleaders, the Truthout group, has become increasingly critical of him and the Democratic Party. (Alternet, by the way, in reprinting the article, substituted the word “revolt” for revolution. While this reflects reluctance on Alternet to broach the term, it also underscores the significance of the difference between a revolt and revolution and the fact that Truthout is daring to use it now.)
Item 3: At Reader Supported News, begun by one of the founders of Truthout, Marc Ash, whose split from Truthout I don’t know the inside story of, John Cory posts an article entitled “I am Angry,” on March 6, 2010. In it Cory says that he’s going to throw up if he hears the word “bipartisanship” one more time. The fury he articulates is coming from a thoroughly fed up supporter of Obama.
The article sparked a petition signed by thousands so far based on it. It has received over a thousand mentions on Facebook and 95 Tweets.
While Cory’s argument remains within the confines for now of calling for the Democratic Party to stand up against the reactionaries, the anger he is showing at the Democratic Party’s actions will have to find other outlets as the Democrats will not shift the course they have been on to date. The Democrats may and probably will adjust their approach some in an attempt to mollify people like Cory, but they won’t fundamentally do what he is calling on them to do. This spells trouble for the Democrats and for those in the ruling circles of this country whose backing of Obama represented a major gambit to try to still the outrage about Bush and Cheney’s policies and direct it within the safe confines of business as usual and electoral politics, under the leadership of a man who so many thought was going to be different, but who the PTB knew wasn't.
“I am Angry” by John Cory at Reader Supported News http://readersupportednews.com/opinion/75-politics/1174-i-am-angry
I am angry.
I'm tired of pundits and know-nothing media gasbags. I'm tired of snarky "inside politics" programming. I am sick of the bigotry and hatred of "birthers" and faux patriotic cranks and their GOP puppet masters. And I'm really pissed at the Democratic Party that confuses having a plate of limp noodles with having a spine.
I'm going to vomit if I hear the word "bipartisanship" one more time.
It was "bipartisanship" that gave us this activist conservative Supreme Court. A Supreme Court that says money is free speech and corporations are persons except when real people try to hold them accountable for their greed and poisonous ways.
"Bipartisanship" gave us the Patriot Act and FISA and illegal wiretaps and two wars and "free speech zones" and "no fly" lists. God bless bipartisan America.
I get nauseated every time the Senate explains how it takes a super majority to do anything for the American people. Tell you what Senate Bozos, if it takes 60 votes to pass legislation then it should take 60% of the popular vote to get you elected.
When some Tea Party crank says, "I want my country back," I respond, "No madam, you want your country backward."
When a deficit-mongering politician says, "How do we pay for this?" Why not ask, "What did you Republicans do with the surplus we Democrats left you?"
When a compassionate conservative says, "Healthcare reform is socialism," why not answer, "No, sir it is the moral and American way to care for people."
Yes, I can hear it now: "You are naïve and simplistic. These are complicated matters and require sophisticated solutions. Democrats are a big tent and strive for balance. But Republicans block our path at every turn. We are thinking and considering new ways to work in harmony with everyone."
Bite me.
The only thing you get with "harmony" is a Barbershop Quartet.
Democrats stop being Republican Lite. Stop whining about that mean GOP and their nasty messaging. Grow a pair, get a message, get a bumper sticker and hang it out there. Get some strong vivid talking points.
G-O-P = Greed Over People.
Greed Kills - jobs, people and the economy.
Terrorism is Viagra for Republicans: The more fear - the more excited they get.
When a soldier dies for America, who dares ask if they were gay or straight?
Don't act so shocked, Democratic Party. Have you looked around lately?
You're losing the young vote that showed up to elect Obama. You're losing those old enough to remember real Democrats. Why? Because you don't talk to them any more than you talk to me. You talk at me. You talk around me. You talk down to me. You talk about me. You don't talk with me. And you don't inspire and you don't champion and without that you are nothing more than an arbitrator of compromise and abdication.
You are facing a bully. Deal with it!
Republicans want the country backwards. They champion superstition over science because it entrenches ignorance and bigotry and captures the easily frightened.
Republicans treat the Constitution the way they treat the Bible, with selective interpretation and selective application to others while exempting themselves from judgment and accountability.
Republicans preach the gospel of fear because fear is darkness and darkness covers their theft of civil liberties and Constitutional principles.
For thirty years the Republican Party has claimed the mantle of law and order but now quake in dread of the American judicial system when putting terrorists on trial. How criminal is that?
Torture is illegal. Period. John Wayne and Jack Bauer were not our Founding Fathers - only in the make-believe world of Republican drugstore-patriots.
DADT needs to be repealed. Now. It is unconscionable, immoral, and disgusting.
Empathy, compassion and equality are not pejoratives. They are American values proven again and again throughout our history.
Republicans believe that bake-sales and cookies for chemotherapy best determine the value of life and healthcare because life is a pre-existing condition and the "free market" should not have to take on such a high risk - after all, no one gets out alive, so why should the corporation be left holding the bag? Unless of course the price is right.
Republicans believe that government should keep its hands off healthcare but should put its hands inside a woman's body.
Republicans believe in small government - small enough to hold the "right" people and small enough to be owned and operated by the "right" people. And who are the "right" people? Them. Not you.
Democratic Party, DNC, DLCC, DSCC or whatever your acronym - I have only one question for you: Really?
You can't win against these guys? You can't get your message out against these guys? You can't give America leadership against these guys?
Really?
Item 4: On March 10, 2010, actor James Cromwell (“Babe,” “LA Confidential”) was interviewed on KPCC on Patt Morrison’s show about the play that he is starring in called “The Einstein Plan” that is opening in LA on March 27.th The play is by Donald Freed, who was on Nixon’s Enemies List, and is based on a proposal by Einstein that if 2% of the American people were to engage in civil disobedience that they could bring the government to a halt. Cromwell’s father, by the way, was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the play, Cromwell reads the Einstein plan and in the second half of the play, the audience converses about ways to make this happen. As Cromwell states in the KPCC interview, movements that change society don’t need more than one or two people to start something that can grow the way the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement did. The fact that civil resistance is being promoted this way is a very welcome development and by people as prominent as Cromwell and Freed, a very good thing. Cromwell makes clear that the government and media are not doing what the people want and that it is up to the people now to do what must be done. This makes this item one of the most advanced expressions of what is afoot now.
Item 5: The powerful, large, and determined March 4th demonstrations in 100 places nationwide and in several other countries on behalf of public education. These demonstrations are causing people like Glenn Beck fits as they rail against the spoiled students who outrageously think that government subsidy of public education – imagine that! - is a right rather than, as Beck and others such as the top administrators of California’s University system think, a PRIVILEGE. These complaining folks like Beck should know privilege when they see it, since they are among the most privileged of our society. It would be much better to have only those who can pay a ton of money for higher education be able to go to college and beyond, don’t you agree? We don’t need a highly educated workforce in America, do we? No, drones will do fine in this fine neoliberal world. Best of all, if we can make sure that even college educated students are trained via methods like No Child Left Behind so that they can’t really think for themselves but have learned to memorize answers, then those who really run things can get their way indefinitely.
Item 6: On the seventh anniversary of the US attack upon Iraq anti-war demonstrations will be held on March 20, 2010 in many US cities, including D.C. The resurgence of the anti-war movement cannot come too soon.
All in all these items spell major trouble for the powers that be and for reactionaries everywhere. At this point the movements from the left are in their embryonic stages. But what they portend is extremely significant. The genie is threatening to get out of the bottle that the Democratic Party and the media in general have tried to stuff it in. Obama's candidacy was the ace in the hole played by the PTB. They don't have another ace up their sleeve like Obama. Part of the genie is, in fact, already out of the bottle. These developments tell us that the political dynamic that has been dominated so much by the right, in which the reactionaries have had the stage almost entirely to themselves, is now going, finally, to turn into a two-sided fight. These developments represent an extremely important turning point.
I can hardly wait.
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Unfortunately, in the short term, the kooks will also make Obama look less extreme which helps him. So, the other part of me likes the idea that this so-called movement is going to be small and pointless.
If we already knew what was going to happen, there would be less fun...
McGarrett: Kooks? Ending the unjust and illegitimate wars, health care for all and public education adequately funded, fighting against fascist norms, these things are the actions of kooks?
Darryl: I'm sorry, I don't see a pendulum at work here. The Dems and the Repubs are all much further to the right than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Today's Dems are the 1980s' GOP.
"Republican Lite" is the best description I've heard yet. The Dems sack-lack is like a John Hughes film character- would almost be hilarious if not at the world's expense. Indeed, it is time to man up and Talking Points Up ... yours are a good start. Imagine millions of educated humans talking in a cadence (Palin's trick) the hoi polloi can hear in words dressed up with some verbal karate, after all that is the right propagandist's main method and works very well.
Nixon literally was a caught crook- in the Dem's offices no less? Reagan's policies, state and fed, have crippled the California golden goose of the US economy- with Bush's cronies literally raping the state through Enron to finish the job- top it off with a bank failure, yet, they still get the votes, only because they insist on talking in simple simon terms no matter what. It works- how you figga?
Aloha Kakou
Alaska Progressive - as you say, the people need to realize that Obama isn't going to save us and act independently as The People.
Darryl: The people have much to learn, but these are good signs, as they are now on the road to those lessons. The crucial aspect of all of this is that the people are beginning to break out of the confines of the chilling embrace of the ruling class' dead ends.
The problem is that the oscillations are growing faster and more extreme....the center is spread too thin and the center is always where the strength is found.
As the poles spread further apart, the center stretches to the breaking point and when the center breaks, the poles spin away from each other, out of control.
The problem is exemplified by your very rendition of what you see as positive trends. They will evaporate in a matter of weeks as the groups themselves break down into factions.
If you think, I'm pessimistic, you don't know the half of it. The more you know about what's going on, the more dire things appear to be. Too much information can be deadly, to both individuals and societies.
Whatever mix of skill, style and aura moved Obama up the mountain to sit at the top can surely be marshaled to keep him there long enuf to win the respect of the political operators on the slopes and in the valley. Once he has enuf respect from the partisan meat traders his "magic" will again shine down to the populace, which now will have corroboration of its initial sense that, yes, change, real change, isn't just what the country wants, it's what it needs.
Intellectuals, bless their pointy heads, will never run anything, much less a country. They can sure as hell point out the traps, the dead ends and the bogeys in the misty terrain, but they're programmed to reflect, record and analyze, not to lead. That's because effective leadership is a job for engineers. It requires, at some point, a faith that's anathema to abstract thinkers.
Leaders must be willing to step into the arena and make deals and survive, relying on their instincts to do so when, too often, perhaps, a situation cannot be parsed into strictly principled choices. We hope that their instincts are in tune with their better natures, and that our own instincts are, as well. (r)
"The Tea Party movement reflects the fracturing forces of capital and imperialism as capital attempts to hold the center together, even as the forces of capitalism and its logic create greater and greater levels of instability through plunder and manifest and increasingly dramatic inequities. The GOP and the Democratic Parties are both in danger from this movement, even as the GOP tries to stoke, hijack, and control the Tea Partiers. The Massachusetts election of Brown demonstrates both the power of the Tea Party movement and the bankruptcy of their "rejection" of establishment politics by participating in electoral, establishment politics - how is electing a Republican any kind of repudiation of what is wrong in this country's political arena?
"The Tea Party movement also reflects, in part, the relative strength of the forces of the reactionary Right and the relative weakness so far of the Left. Imagine the impact if the genuine Left (needless to say I'm not speaking here of the Democratic Party as the Left) had the equivalent of Fox News and the pulpit that that network alone is. We don't have its equivalent, obviously, and we're not going to get it, either. But what we can do with even a modest increase in funding and participation in the Left by new forces is immense..."
Since I wrote this on February 28, 2010, those new forces on the Left have begun to appear.
As William Butler Yeats put it in "The Second Coming" in 1919 in the aftermath of WWI:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The last two lines here are most pertinent to our situation. The best who lack the conviction are getting passionate and emerging.
The notion that Obama is "all we've got" and that he represents something good does not correspond to what has been going on, what he represents, and what he has and is doing. All we've got is shielding torturers, perpetuating torture and institutionalizing indefinite detentions, even if you've been found NOT GUILTY in a court of law or military - kangaroo court - tribunal, escalating drone attacks on Pakistan, dispatching special forces on the ground in Pakistan, continuing the war upon Iraq and escalating the war on Afghanistan, making deals with private insurers not to offer a public option, continuing the massive, warrantless surveillance over all Americans, seeking common ground with fascists on gay marriage, abortion, and health care? Wake up! Smell the coffee!
You don't address my point that we need a leader. If you don't believe that we need a leader, then to listen further to your interesting views would be pointless, cotton candy of the mind. If you believe that we do need a leader then, pray tell, whom would you recommend?
Let me begin by saying this: If all we have is a grassroots movement to turn the tide, that's all we need.
Your point about needing leaders is certainly true and one that I agree with wholeheartedly. The difference here between us I think is that you are looking to someone within the existing array of establishment leaders. They are not the solution. For the most part they are part of the problem.
Movements of the people spawn leaders. This is a point that James Cromwell made in his interview with Patt Morrison when asked the same question by a caller. Movements produce their own leaders. There are existing leaders now that I could mention: Debra Sweet, Nat'l Director of World Can't Wait, Cindy Sheehan, Sunsara Taylor... And there are others who are coming forward who are not widely known yet and there are going to be others yet to come forward who will become well known.
Great article. In terms of leadership, I think that if people look at how intolerable things in the world are and how they don't have to be that way, it opens up the possibilities of things being much different. I would like to suggest that people check out Revolution newspaper at www.revcom.us and the Revolution talk at www.revolutiontalk.net and at YouTube. A movement of resistance to the outrages in this society and the world can potentially lead to a possibility of a much different future.
At least my drink is coffee.
That "sophomoric passion" played a crucial role in ending not a bogus war but an imperialist war. This was the first true defeat for the US Empire. Yes, the draft helped to end the war, the media itself didn't end that war, although the media was better than the bastardized version of it that we have today. You have this upside down. The ending of the VN war was one of the best things that the American people have ever accomplished. To deride it as you do does a major injustice to that movement.
You seem to be defining political savvy in a way that I wouldn't. Yes, political sophistication is necessary. What do you mean by sophistication? Working within the existing parameters of what the ruling groups deem acceptable? The very ground on which they claim as acceptable is immoral and illegal. Consider what now passes for acceptable and mainstream: torture, rendition, indefinite detention, negating the Fourth Amendment, abrogating habeas corpus, no public option for health care, bailouts to Wall Street, etc., etc.
If you find these preceding things unacceptable, then just how could they be dealt with without a mass movement filled with righteous passion and intensity? How do you think that you can undo these things by working through the very people who are responsible for these things - and I am speaking here not just of the GOP but also of the DLC/Democrats.
If that's your idea of a utopia, one that doesn't have these things going on, then ok, I'm for a utopia. I find it remarkable that you consider such basic things as these utopian. Says something about what you are willing to tolerate.
There's a big difference between personal qualities and the policies by governments and by corporations that I was speaking of. You're talking about personal traits and behaviors. I'm talking about the logic of systems and why they are behaving as they do.
As someone who studies systems - which is one way of describing what sociology is about - I can tell you that individual personality is trumped overall by the structures (systems) that we occupy.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a very good demonstration of this - Stanford students quickly adopted the behaviors of prison guards and prisoners. This isn't because they were secretly harboring pathologies but because they adopted the roles appropriate to prisons.
Obama isn't doing the very bad things that he is doing because he's a bad person. He's doing them because he is in a role as president of a superpower. He's doing so because he is chief political representative of a capitalist/imperialist system. These aren't rhetorical terms. They are facts.
To change this we don't have to all become Buddhas. We have to get rid of the system responsible for these systematic ills. It's not the personalities of the people, their failings or virtues. It's the system itself that is chiefly to blame.
The real world of systems doing their work upon the people causes people to seek answers to why things are so bad and so clearly unnecessarily so. In the course of seeking answers and entering into struggle against the forces they are fighting people learn more deeply what is causing what they are experiencing and try out different means as solutions. Millions thought mistakenly that Obama was the answer. Billions have been told that capitalism is the panacea. How's that working out for you?
You have missed my point. I suggest that you read up on the Milgram Experiment and the Zimbardo Experiment (aka the Stanford Prison Experiment). You might also want to read up on the "sociological imagination." Your native wisdom about power corrupting and absolute power corrupts absolutely applies certainly to the people who now wield power, as far as it goes. Acton's dictum only goes so far, however. You might find, if you do this kind of investigative reading, that your views are actually closer to mine than you think.
People operate more in concert with the structures that they occupy than the structures reflect the individual characteristics of the people in them. This is the foundational message of sociology. It is what makes sociology possible. Sociology studies groups and people in groups don't behave the same way they do as individuals.
As for Lincoln, it's true that he temporarily suspended habeas corpus. He didn't, however, institutionalize this, which is what Obama has done. If you don't believe me, then again, do some research on it. What you're getting from the mainstream media isn't very helpful. But then again, if you read the NYTimes carefully you will see that many of the facts are there. Glenn Greenwald does a good job of covering civil liberties issues so you could read him.
Events have proceeded so rapidly in the last nine years that it's breathtaking what has been overturned. The mainstream media has been remiss (to say the least) in properly informing people of what has happened. That is part of the problem. Most people don't know and don't realize how far things have gone. I've enumerated a number of them here and referred to many of them here. Let me just add two more to this list: the person getting the most votes (both nationally and within each state) did not take office in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races. If we were really a "democracy" or even a republic, that wouldn't happen.
But I do want to keep this centered on the primary point of the discussion we've been having. It is not uncommon for discussions to sail out into the realm of which system somebody wants or believes in. That is really, while an important and interesting question, not the main point here. The problem with it is that it takes the discussion away from whether the matters immediately in front of us are going to be addressed or not. Is public education a right? Is it permissible for the privateers to continue to destroy it piece by piece? Is health care a right? Or is it ok for Obama and the Democrats to cater to the private insurance industry who are, let's face it, parasites? Are these wars and occupations ok and should they be allowed to continue? Is maintaining American gulags like Bagram and GITMO ok? Or are people going to oppose them in meaningful ways? These are the questions before us now. Do you speak out against them or do you permit them to continue?
On the Right, willfully blind diehards deny that we lost that war, or like Cheney and Rumsfeld, they foolishly insist we could have won were it not for the evil "Liberal Media" and Hanoi Jane traitors. That is absolute bullshit, a charge that would be laughable if it weren't so vile. Do these fools really mean to say our armed forces were defeated by a bunch of effete reporters and Hollywood actors?
As always, Cheney and Rumsfeld drew the wrong conclusions and insisted the way to defeat The Invincible Media and Hollywood was with an all "volunteer" army supported by an overpriced, privatized supply chain made up of crooks and cronies at Halliburton and Blackwater. How'd that work out for ya, fellahs? Pretty damned good for you, it appears, but for the rest of us? Not so much.
As for our “volunteer” army, these young men are no different than the "volunteer" armies of Rome and England. Young men will always "volunteer" for adventure, especially when they have no prospects as civilians. The New Rome requires the New Hessians.
Those on the Left are sadly mistaken as well, continuing to pat themselves on the back for bravely protesting -- and thereby ending -- the war -- when in fact much of their protest was self-serving and motivated by the draft. That is not to say those protests didn't have an affect, but they were far from the root cause for why we lost in Vietnam. And if, as diehards foolishly claim, we were winning the war, protests would not have ended it.
So what was the root cause? Millions of Vietnamese who fought and died for decades against colonial powers -- with an assist from their neighbors. In our utter hubris, we saw – and still see – that war as being all about us – and that is why we learned nothing from the French debacle in Indochina. Nor did we learn a thing from Korea; surely that experience should have taught us the Chinese and Russians would not stand by idly while we tried to dominate their next-door neighbors.
Having learned nothing from Korea, Vietnam or the Russian disaster in Afghanistan, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – with the approval of Congress and the majority of Americans, marched our “volunteer” army off to two more wars in some of the most inhospitable, far-flung corners of the world.
We smugly insisted we were spreading democracy -- when in fact we were only spreading corporate capitalism and securing supplies and profits for Big Oil – as even Alan Greenspan had finally to admit. And hubris of all hubris, we proclaimed -- as fools have throughout history – we were doing God’s work – Bush even used the word “crusade” - and God was on our side.
Whatever lessons we should have learned from Vietnam have been too little and too late, as with Robert McNamara's self-serving book and movie confessional The Fog of War. But if hubris prevents us from learning the lessons of far-flung wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, hubris ought to at least teach us a lesson from our own revolution – a revolution in which a rag-tag army of fiercely independent citizen soldiers – insurgents by our reckoning these days – defeated the greatest military and the most powerful nation in the world.
As Santayana so rightly warned, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
D,
"Obama isn't doing the very bad things that he is doing because he's a bad person. He's doing them because he is in a role as president of a superpower. He's doing so because he is chief political representative of a capitalist/imperialist system. These aren't rhetorical terms. They are facts. "
Indeed, and he is also now commander in chief and has to deal with getting our kids home and the pressures surrounding that in and of itself ... another fact that influences his joined at the hip attachment to established practices.
Lots of cheap shots at a good post here. Interesting to abhor intellectualism through pseudo-intellectualism; that it quite a prism.
The USA is a MIXED economy, a mixed system, ever, hopefully, growing and yes, changing- awww too bad status quo benefiters. And, the same is true of government. The definition of Socialism is no private property; I've never heard Prof. Cousin Loo advocate that. The term Communist when wielded in a McCarthy-esque is absurdly misappropriated.
Oh, another important FACT you mention: new movements produce the leaders of tomorrow organically.
IMUA
Thanks for your observations. As to the VN War, you are right that the primary factor in the ending of that war was the heroic struggle by the Vietnamese themselves. An important secondary factor was the anti-war movement here and abroad. That movement was indispensable for the fracturing that eventually occurred in the US military itself, soldiers defecting, soldiers refusing to fight. Lessons to be learned from that, and, as you say, from the American revolutionary war in which a rag tag army took on the premier army of its time and won.
As for why the lessons of those debacles aren't being learned: there is a difference between what the leaders of our country "learn" and what the rest of us can or have learned. This nation's putative leaders can't learn the lessons you speak of because it is in their nature to pursue colonial dominance. When I say nature I mean it is the logic of the system of imperialism that imperialist powers don't learn the lesson that their wars are losing propositions in the long run. They can no more practice different ways on their own without being forced to do so than a vampire can learn to be a vegetarian. Just because a vampire has just witnessed his fellow vampire getting smoked by sunlight and wooden stakes in the heart doesn't make him learn the lesson that he ought not to try to drink people's blood.
Oahu Surfer - anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of the right in this country, it's true. As Tom says, those who fail to learn history are condemned to repeat it. And the people can learn, it's just our leaders who are incapable.
Would that this come to pass.
I'm sorry, it won't. Our only hope at this point is that Obama is smart enuf and strong enuf to adjust to the shifting trend in public opinion and do enuf of the right things to keep from being washed away and replaced by Ronald Reagan reincarnate, or worse.
You say no, I presume. No meeting of minds. There rarely is in these things, I've found, but sometimes the exercise is good.
It's been a worthy chat. Be well. - Clark/Matt
You assume that I was talking about a movement that will bring a new set of politicians into office and that these reformers would be impervious to the temptations and compulsions of the existing power structure.
I never said this, although it is true that many or most of the Coffee Party people are seeing it that way right now, so perhaps that is partly where you reached that conclusion.
If you look at my posting in its entirety, you will see, for example, that I described the fact that The Einstein Plan's one of the most advanced versions of this shift in the wind that I am chronicling and that the Einstein Plan is calling for civil disobedience. CD is not an electoral strategy. I am not talking about an electoral strategy. Obama's candidacy was an electoral strategy. How's that working out for everyone? That's the reason why so many people are so angry now because an electoral strategy is NOT working, and it WON'T work.
The existing structures are not something that you overcome or change by people resisting its compulsions. You have to change the system itself and you don't do that by thinking that by putting new people into that old system that they will change the system. That's not how systems come into being in the first place and that's not how you change them.
If this is one of those "gotta get the last word in" threads, then have at it, Dennis. I guess that's a reasonable privilege on one's own blog. I'm through here, but I did want to point out your inconsistency for anyone else who might come upon this discussion.
This is great. I want it on my car.
The problem is not the two party system, which Jefferson et al feared, its the money IN the system. 50 parties could be perverted by one day's profit from Exxon-Mobil being spent to do so. Whole countries have been perverted by the Carlyle Group.
Movement politics. Its what is left to us, and it is what has always been our best weapon.
None of us WANT it to be true. It just is.
We can head this off, but we must act.
Clark: Yes, I think you did misinterpret my quote. I am puzzled by this "get in the last shot" comment of yours. You're welcome to post comments as you wish.
The "disconnect" with many who've responded: They keep seeing what you're talking about in terms of "Been there, done that" stuff. And keep referring to what's happened "before." I don't think they're "getting"...you are referring to a major, and I mean major paradigm shift in the making.
Translate: Know I support your insight, your perceptions. I "get" it. We're at a cusp here...one we haven't been at before, possibly because so many other pieces of our world are also at the cusp of a major turning point (geo-politics, economics, education, religion, to name some of the biggies). It's all converging, en masse, toward something...different. Something we haven't done before as a species.
So thanks, Dennis, for your tenacity in the face of "Yeah, but..." stuff. I'm with you. And concur with where you're going on this. Am observing, experiencing myself...exactly what you name here.
With appreciation.
Aww, you made my day!
You are exactly right. This is a paradigm shift underway and many people haven't appreciated that yet.
They will see. As I said in the piece, I can hardly wait.