Murray Dobbin (quoted by Mike Gurstein):
....the Liberals have become such a sorry shadow of their former
self-confident selves that expecting anything approaching
political intelligence from this quarter is a false hope....
That leaves the ball in the NDP's court. But here, too, there
seems to be a kind of willful denial of reality. Nothing the NDP
does gets them even to where they were in the last election. They
have proven no more capable of taking advantage of the Harper
missteps than the Liberals and they would, by most recent polls,
lose seats this time around.
[snip]
You would think after decades of working their politics in a
basically social democratic culture and failing to make progress
they would try something different.
It turns out they are. But their reaction to this continued
failure is to move precisely in the wrong direction. Just as
capitalism is proving to be a global catastrophe and dominated by
a class of unrepentant sociopaths, the NDP is suddenly tightening
its embrace and moving away from its traditional values. How so?
....the NDP is running from the very values and principles that
make it relevant in a world entering a period of permanent crisis.
Over at:
http://www.truth-out.org/the-world-liberal-opportunists-made64497
Chris Hedges writes,
CH> The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers
CH> toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did
CH> nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working
CH> class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class
CH> is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the
CH> prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to
CH> act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the
CH> long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of
CH> privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent
CH> right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the
CH> liberal class' flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.
He goes on to say,
CH> The real enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck,
CH> but Noam Chomsky....The liberal class no longer holds within its
CH> ranks those who have the moral autonomy or physical courage to
CH> defy the power elite. The rebels, from Chomsky to Sheldon Wolin
CH> to Ralph Nader, have been marginalized, shut out of the national
CH> debate and expelled from liberal institutions. The liberal class
CH> lacks members with the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant
CH> free market ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives.
Dobbin again:
You would think after decades of working their politics in a
basically social democratic culture and failing to make progress
they would try something different.
It turns out they are. But their reaction to this continued
failure is to move precisely in the wrong direction. Just as
capitalism is proving to be a global catastrophe and dominated by
a class of unrepentant sociopaths, the NDP is suddenly tightening
its embrace and moving away from its traditional values. How
so?....the NDP is running from the very values and principles that
make it relevant in a world entering a period of permanent crisis.
The local NDPers that I know personally aren't, AFAIK, coopted by the
corporate behemoth but neither are they even slightly inclined to
Chomsky-esque scrutiny of what's on the ends of our political and
economic forks. Nor do they approach Chomsky's intellectual abilities.
Ray wrote:
> At this juncture I would point out that the American Governmental
> system is neither communist nor capitalist nor socialist. It
> doesn't have that system. It has a system of checks and balances
> that require that everyone enter into the act of governing. For the
> last two years the Republican Party has refused to govern and...they
> have gone on strike. They would like to make this about Capitalism
> and Socialism but that is gratuitous and a specious argument.
The Republicans, or the frenzied radical rump of that former party
anyhow, claim to believe that you don't *have* to govern. Governing,
they say, is bad, a waste of effort and money and an infringement on
human rights. They're not on strike, they're just getting a bit ahead
of themselves.
If the Dems/liberals have been suckered into freeloading on the
corporatist elite's gravy train as Hedges says, that leaves a
heterogeneous rabble of progressives, eccentrics, intellectuals and
retired trouble-makers to restore the democratic process, to
"[re-]establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity".
No wonder a whiff of morbid pessimism occasionally drifts across the
FW list.
A month ago, Sally wrote,
SL> Can we discuss feasible long-term strategies to address this
SL> fundamental 'new' reality' which, as Keith points out, FW has been
SL> talking about for years)?
Help the global financial system to implode completely? Gee, I dunno.
Not much for a strategist, am I? And *anybody* can be a critic. :-/
Ho hum. Just sayin' .....
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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