Jim wrote: > Thus, in his heart of hearts, Obama may not like kow-towing to Wall > Street or Likudnik Israel, but the political system pushes him to do > so anyway.
Doesn't this get Obama off the hook? Insofar as we can address Obama, using whatever channels may be open to us, the message should be: "We know you are under severe constraints. Although you won't know how hard or soft they really are until you push them back real hard. In any case, you have an untransferable personal moral responsibility to use your powers in advancing the best interest of the U.S. people, and doing so means... [insert here a very well reasoned factual and logical argument], i.e. building socialism in the world." As tactics, this is a personal, moral and intellectual, appeal to Obama. Of course, it requires (again) that we make it clear to him that the best interest of the U.S. people lies in building socialism, that we are specific about what the correct next step in building socialism is, and that we hold him accountable one way or the other for his actions and omissions. Piece of cake. ;-) Ultimately (strategically), to paraphrase Carrol, the true target audience of this message is not Obama, but others like us, because nothing above means anything if we don't build the mechanisms to hold him accountable, which are byproducts of transforming ourselves into the rulers of this screwed up nation. Of course, the truth of building socialism is not the repetition of the strategic goal. If it were, we'd all be living in a communist society now. The truth of building socialism is tactically concrete; it is hence relative, contingent, risky -- nothing of which is very apparent when we fulminate as if the next step were self evident to everybody. And this leads me to applauding initiatives like that of Robert, Danny Glover, Mark Weisbrot, and others -- even if Krugman says it's a bad idea. I can see how these initiatives may seem naive or misguided. But, IMHO, we never know. We really need to try things and observe, see what sticks and what doesn't. None of these things is mutually exclusive of radical propaganda. Re. Michael's (Yates) serious personal criticism of Robert (Naiman): > [Robert] couldn't even grasp why he shouldn't write for Huffington Post when > the Writers' Union was urging a boycott. He brought all of his sophistry to > bear > on this when he was criticized for it by saying that lots of labor people were > still writing. I think this is a serious charge. I was mildly aware of criticisms against the Huffington Post for not compensating its contributors, but I didn't know they amounted to any formal boycott. On this regard, my honest question is: How did the Writers' Union validate its choice of tactics? How did they involve the writers already contributing to the Huffington Post in the discussion? Or other, potential contributors? I have to admit that, after receiving a nice invitation at some point, I was myself tempted to blog for the Huff Post. I declined, but it wasn't in protest or anything of the sort. If I had known that there was an active boycott against the Huff Post, I could have at least said that I did it in solidarity with the other writers. However, if the choice of tactics was not duly validated collectively, then I don't think it is fair to attack Robert on these grounds. My two cents. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
