Doug Henwood wrote: > I thought that myself, and still do somewhat, but it must be conceded > that Bush has done serious damage to the American empire: its > reputation hasn't been this low since Vietnam, and it may be lower > now; its finances are in terrible shape; the military is so stretched > that new adventures would be hard to imagine; and while he's been off > on his frolic in Iraq, Latin America has moved steadily to the left > with a surprisingly weak (so far) response from Washington. > Domestically, the reputation of the Republican party and its policies > are in tatters, with only the hardcore base now expressing approval. > This is something to work with, not that the Dems are the ones to do > it.
We cannot view the future in retrospect. If there's much at stake and all we do is rely on the ability of our enemies to overreach, to shoot themselves in the foot (or to shoot one another in their hunting expeditions), then we are taking big chances. It's not a good idea to give them rope "to hang themselves," because we don't know whether they'll end up using the rope to hang *us*. And if we don't just sit on our hands, but try to do organizing around some long-run strategy (and if the left doesn't have a long-run strategy, then short-run "victories" dilute), we will clash with the practical common sense of most working people. In my experience, organizing becomes extremely difficult when one tells people not to take what feels to them, in their collective experience, as the "natural next step" (NNS). Say, we persuade people that the occupation in Iraq is wrong. Regular working people (as opposed to grouplets of radicals) will think that the NNS is to vote the incumbent out. Collectively, in terms of action, they won't infer that the problem is systemic, the two-party system, imperialism, capitalism. We will have a hard time convincing them that the correct NNS is to abstain or waste the vote for the sake of radical posturing. We'll go nowhere if we try to convince them that the NNS is to bump our heads against the two-party system. Even if we convince them that the war in Iraq is the symptom of larger, systemic forces, forces that set the parameters of U.S. foreign policy regardless of incumbent party, then regular people will think that the NNS is to reform foreign policy. That's a big step. We'll go nowhere trying to persuade them that the next step is a revolution, but then we'll be closer to confronting the two-party system. The U.S. is not a society with shaky, untested institutions. The legal and political structures of this society have endured a number of crises, a long and bloody civil war, world wars, costly neocolonial adventures, a cold war, Watergate, Monicagate, a massive civil rights movement, a massive anti (Vietnam) war movement, etc. The workers are divided every which way, etc. The DP is a shame. The left is split in a number of minuscule formations. We cannot assume that the system will be incapable of surviving Bush. When things feel really bad, we can be sure that they can get *much* worse. The system (including here the toxic role of the media, religion, etc.) is not unable to cope with widespread discontent. It has many ways to scatter it into impotent individual bitching. There's an Occam's Razor in politics. Like in the billiards, you don't try to shoot a fancy cannon when what you have is a clear straight shot. Betting on unintended consequences is risky. History may betray our enemy's intentions. Or it may betray ours. Julio
