I don’t mean to make reprinting Chris Hedges Monday columns from TruthDig a regular thing, but this one is just so damned right.
“Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.” (Click here for the rest.)
Can't argue with any of that. I voted for Obama. How could I not? Hell, I wept when he was elected. I never thought I'd live to see the day. I guess I also hoped he would energize some kind of a leftward movement in this country. I thought maybe it would be like FDR who was forced to chase the masses as they moved to the left ahead of the Democrats. Unfortunately, the masses are scared and crazy with conspiracy theories and despair. What we've got are liberals. Liberals have always, always sucked.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's more people out there who think like we do than we imagine.
ReplyDeletebe red hot or ice cold or the good lord will spew you forth from his mouth.
ReplyDeletePhil Ochs said it 40 yrs ago
ReplyDeleteI cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Not Churchill despite popular attribution but Guizot in the early 1800's, and I'm paraphrasing here, "If you're not liberal when you're twenty you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're forty you have no brain."
ReplyDeleteThere's really no political party out there for me, unless P.J.O'Rourke or Mick himself started one when I wasn't looking.
Chris Hedges writes useless jeremiads out of impotent anger.
ReplyDeleteThere's little that liberals can do when representative democracy is owned by the plutocracy. Short of armed insurrection, there's nothing to be done.
"damned right" is right, all right. as in, furthering the right-wing goal to demonize the word "liberal." most praiseworthy indeed.
ReplyDeleteLiberals wouldn't be demonized if they had the balls or the solidarity to put up some kind of an effective fight.
ReplyDeleteHedges may be impotent, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.
ReplyDeleteI always thought the quote was "If you're not a conservative when you're forty you have no money."
ReplyDeleteSo what have liberals done for us lately? Put Goldman Sachs back on the gravy train, handed healthcare back to the insurance industry and put abortion for the poor at risk. Will they ever come out from behind their lace curtains and fight?
ReplyDeleteAs others have pointed out, "liberals" (a relative term) are now in charge of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Liberals are sending drones into Pakistan to blow up "terrorists" (and their wives and children). Liberals are fighting The War On Drugs by continuing to imprison drug "offenders." There are even liberals who are prepared to support a health care plan that is nothing but a gift to Big Insurance. As The Leveler noted above, Wall Street (with its massive Obama donations) is as liberal as it's conservative.
ReplyDeleteI just got screwed by my credit card company, JP Morgan Chase (it wasn't a JPMC card when I got it, but my original bank went under and Morgan Chase took over). That company's boss is Jamie Dimon, a liberal Democrat and huge Obama supporter, and by all accounts one of the most autocratic CEO's in the banking racket.
What does "liberal" mean when Jamie Dimon is a liberal? I don't have an answer to that question, but I know that whatever Dimon (or Demon as I call him) stands for, I don't. It's very nice that there are millionaires who support abortion rights, but agreement on a handful of social issues does not make a liberal truly progressive, nor does it make someone like me a liberal.
In order to end war, save the planet from environmental murder, support economic and legal justice for all citizens, capitalism is going to have to be irrevocably regulated or -- to be safe -- smashed. Marx nailed it when he said capitalism is the most dynamic economic system known to man. Because it's fueled by greed, it's vampiric, requiring a stake through its heart to stop it -- if you can find its heart.
Abbie Hoffman once warned against "sinking in the marshmallow of tolerance" -- and by tolerance he wasn't referring to tolerance for ethnicity or religion. He was talking about the mealy-mouthed criticism of radicals -- by liberals -- for the crime of being intolerantly extreme. "You're going too far," as a family member always tells me. It's precisely because the left has not gone far enough that we've ended up tolerating a pro-corporate, pro-war party like the Democrats because Republicans are so transparently egregious. For various reasons, I voted for Obama with eyes wide open about who he represented. But at what point do we say ENOUGH to both the Dems and the Repubs and the whole fucking system of corporate capitalism?
And what's wrong with armed insurrection anyway?
ReplyDeleteTriskaidekaphobia dicates I move this along to 14 comments.
ReplyDeleteLiberals play a very expected role in today's scheme of things. Specially when we're still playing the "democracy" game in a predominantly capitalist world, where there's still the appearance of choice and social participation.
ReplyDeleteThe system changed, the new era began with the Bush administration and now we're led to believe that with Obama everything will get back to "normality."
I still feel that Obama is the biggest marketing trick ever. It's a growing feeling, which gets confirmed everyday.
It seems that for those who are still waiting for him to "come back to his "true" self," the only alternative is to wallow in despair.
But maybe right now we need to wallow in that despair and come to terms with reality. Maybe something else will grow out of that despair, because it needs to.
And I don't mean armed revolution, because there's no way to sustain an armed revolution without turning into a re-inforced and strict power structure, as bad or worst as the previous one.
Besides the present power doesn't have guns pointed at our heads - they don't need to. They own our heads.
The power of word and image over the "reactive mind" as postulated by our dearly missed Uncle Bill.
Orson Welles once held a whole nation with a radio show.
True revolution is within. That's the only one that lasts. That's the only one that expands outwards in a genuine and honest way.
The first step is to clean out all this sand from our collective eye.
"The "what should be" never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no "what should be," there is only what is." Lenny Bruce
It's very hip to slam liberals, and I'm an anarchist myself. But liberals have some heart and brains, especially the kids. Communism is too easy, like calling oneself a Christian. It seems like absolving oneself from blame of any kind, in a very, very general way . . . .
ReplyDelete