Time for a good bloodbath to bring everybody together. REH
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 3:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: (for Canadians) A Coalition: Still the Only Way Out 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/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
