Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama
by Chris Hedges
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/01-0



We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.



The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.



"Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name," the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. "Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism-who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored."



The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.


"We" are outta ideas, ya see? So now we need some good socialist ideas to overcome the hypocrisy and ineptitude of our liberal class. But we need to fix them. First, we have to turn them into good, liberal, declassed, socialist ideas.

You can't make this shit up.

http://www.bluecorncomics.com/pics/tonto.gif

Reminds me much of a bunch of new 'bloggers' at another site....

is that the grains of truth tucked in this essay are compelling enough to suck people in.

But as much as he refers to the left as having no ideology, he doesn't either. He presents the Green Party as the viable answer, without even touching on what (if anything) they stand for ideologically. And he undermines his own argument by saying voting isn't the answer.

He says this slide to 'protofascism' started under Bush. What about the last 20 years? 50 years? 100 years? 250?

He implies that the solution lies in electoral system, as if, assuming the Green Party is the answer, it's a matter of just convincing enough people to vote for them through a 'grassroots movement'.

'We' will be inundated with slick commercials that will make us afraid. What about the people who are 'inundated' with unemployment, crime, environmental injustice, hunger, bombs? Isn't that why people are afraid? If commercials are the source of your fear then shut the fuck up. Real life is a lot scarier.

I'm sorry, did Obama not make you feel better about yourself and the role you are playing in protecting the status quo, is Obama not kinder and gentler enough? The only time he says 'class' is the 'middle class' (what's that?) and the 'liberal class' (if you are promoting socialism, at least call them the bourgeoisie, it's the least you can do).

He finishes with this: "Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite. " Then why is the only somewhat practical thing he puts forward electing the Green Party/Nader/McKinney?

The only thing I find useful in here is the Zinn quote, because I can use that on my dad, and the reference that the RW calling Obama a socialist is absurd. Because it is, and it drives me crazy. Although it's useful in conversation when someone brings it up because then I get to say "I *wish* he was a fucking socialist like they say he is!"

But whatever the author is putting forward is not socialism either. It's empty and reactionary.

magical incantations. They are physical, real world constructions that have purpose, goals, missions, etc. - and you got to know what those are before you dive in.

This is just beautiful - the "left" have no ideas, therefore, we need to become more "left". I wonder what this guy would say if you said that the model for "organizing" and "action" is the Panthers or Lenin or Mao - no compromising, no dissimulation, no doubts as to what was being stood for. "Oh you'll just scare people off with that stuff!" I wonder...

Well shit, he's worried his audience will be scared by commercials, LOL...they must be like little bunnies.

I can't get that image outta my head, of a liberal-minded person sitting on their Ikea couch, eyes wide with the fear of the political ads and talking heads. Snarf.

here last year.
I was talking to a Liberal friend yesterday and he said that "things weren't bad enough" yet for any kind of socialist threat to be serious. I asked him who it wasn't bad enough for yet. He just looked at me kind of blankly. The problem is that these numb-nuts like in the OP article are saying "leftists" or the "left" but they are actually talking about are "Liberals", upwardly mobile, lickspitals and water-toters for the bosses. He is talking about effete, yuppie, gentrified members of the "disappointed class" - the ones who are afraid that the jobless recovery "just around the corner" is gonna shoot through them like crap through a goose. And they will be on the outside with the *shutter* working class...god no!

I say they need to build some callouses on those soft, little hands, 'cause gloves cost too much. "Are you shovel-ready, well here's your shovel! Hey, that's a nice Prius you driven..."

I think of that commercial "Tastes great! less filling!" I'm glad you pointed out the problem with this article, if I'd seen it at DU I probably would have rec'd it without thinking about it very deeply. But on reflection, it screams "time to rebrand!".

Here's where you guys should go to gain an audience no matter how hair-brained and confused some are.

These Hedge's articles get bajillion comments and I'm sure 3 or 4 times more read the stuff.

I plopped Megan's comment in there and it was misunderstood but still some others probably looked at it and considered it without comment. I'm also ploppin' a bunch of other old PopIndy stuff in there for effect.

You see articles like this get so many comments once it dissipates the folks wait around for another Hedge's article (or similar) and flock to it. Use this to engage and you'll get a whole bunch more folks to see through this kinda confusion.

Even if it is a roach motel.;) (That's for you anax)

Troublemaker!!

I had to go clarify ardent1's total misinterpretation (which is understandable, honestly, for someone who doesn't know me better) :shrug:

eta: is there a trick to finding out if someone replies to your post? I found the 'track' tab on 'my account' =- will it show up there or do I have to just look through threads to see if people reply?

I think you have to look through the threads. The current system there is only useful for quick hits IMO but many folks do check out the site. Prolonged discussions are fairly difficult and uneven there.

Get in, get out.

Yes, troublemaker is true.

... and pretends to be insider knowledgable about any of the names that go by.

I wonder how many wood nymphs reside forever in these web-swamps.

I'll take your advice, old friend and professional agitator... though my name may no longer be el greco.

http://www.robertabaird.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/roach-motel_contained.jpg

All Mairead can do is cast up a cheap shot. The number to which you wonder is great.

I suppose part of my problem is that to rebuke them is seen not only as an obligation but also as a pleasure.

How ya' been? I'm still goin' through some oscillations. Not quite in the clear. Soon enough. Thanks for it all bro'...


]El Greco's elongated figures, ever straining upward, his intense and unusual colors, his passionate involvement in his subject, his ardor and his energy, all combine to create a style that is wholly distinct and individual. He is the great fuser, and also the transfuser, setting the stamp of his angular intensity upon all that he creates.

Calling All Rebels
by Chris Hedges
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-2


There are no constraints left to halt America's slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.


"We are going to be poorer," David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill," a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. "Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America."


The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs. Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform. We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."



The power structure and its liberal apologists dismiss the rebel as impractical and see the rebel's outsider stance as counterproductive. They condemn the rebel for expressing anger at injustice. The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to stand with the power elite. The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments or empty rhetoric. The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage-anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. The rebel is aware that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion defines itself.


Those in power have disarmed the liberal class. They do not argue that the current system is just or good, because they cannot, but they have convinced liberals that there is no alternative. But we are not slaves. We have a choice. We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner. We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate. Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority. "There is beauty and there are the humiliated," Camus wrote. "Whatever difficulties the enterprise may present, I should like never to be unfaithful either to the second or the first."


"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop," Mario Savio said in 1964. "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

A week later, we are calling out the "rebels" and threatening to pile up the barricades...

But... what happened to "socialism"? Now, we are back to 1964: the "rebel" as hero. We are "indicating" to "the people who run it, to the people who own it" that we gotta be free. Really?

What about power, Chris? How do we take power?

And, who's "we"?

Leea March 9th, 2010 5:28 pm

There are two ways to be a slave, physically and spiritually. The former enslavement relies in its success to be perpetrated upon a person who has as precondition a belief of spiritual enslavement or 'death' as would have been said in the past that is caused not by self, but by another. The slave masters are serving the spirit of darkness, and capitalizing on this later slavery. The enslaved, the sleeping, and this death of choice they are in is a condition that relies on the loss of knowing they have the choice to be the enslaved of spirit, or free of spirit as a simple thought, a simple belief. To rebel here is to rebel against self belief not against the slave master, and when that battle is won, the elements necessary for spiritual freedom are unleashed and so the physical enslavement has been dissolved.

Our first act of rebellion is against our own self delusions, and then we are free to choose what we will serve. Nature in life, or nature in death. This story is as old as is our humanity. But the balance of life and death has been thrown askew because not enough souls are alive to the choice, and making up a life of love according to their will and their fate. These people, the suppressed and the trodden down, need that message of hope and wings of choice that carry it so they may finally be free. Democracy does not create freedom or love or right, it stands for the choice, and then the people make it. The statue of liberty that beautiful lady frozen with her torch across all of time is the torch bearer to that truth.

Let us see the choice, and let us see what choice we make.

We must rebel....and rebel we will, but against the loss of our belief in our freedom to choose. Not against those who would have us believe we lost that choice.


----------------------
yourstruly March 9th, 2010 4:26 pm

That the moment has arrived is suggested by the many and diverse groundswells of public indignation now emerging in the form of tea partiers, coffee partiers, tax resisters, war-resisters, environmentalist and student protesters. What's missing is a sense of urgency to match the seriousness of the threat to all living beings that's posed by the combination of global warming, perpetuals wars and economic collapse. What, alas, isn't clear to all who seek to turn things around is that no way can this be accomplished by our sticking with the same old same old business as usual status quo incrementalism, since, that's what's gotten us into this here guagmire of capitalism, glub, glub, glub. What's the answer? That we rise up en masse. How? Well, sorry about this, but rather than repeat "Revolution Is Not Only Possible It's Doable", please see yourstruly's 2:53 pm post to Sunday's "Time For A Revolution - 15 Reasons" by Bill Quigley. What's proposed there are tactics for starting up a peaceful popular movement for change, beginning with very safe and easy ways for rebels to publicly come out of the closet, and then, step-wise, upping the level of peaceful action. Very little on the vision "thing", believing as I do that that's a collective matter to be decided online, democratically, based on the principle of one equals one. Back to tactics, though, the start-up is deliberately very simple, easy and low risk (wearing arm bands inscribed with the "Count Me In", then bumper stickers with the same words, thereby enabling solidarity to build up, such that, when it's time for peaceful street action, the heretofore timid will be emboldened. Have confidence, revolutionaries. We can do this!

-----------------------
readjr March 9th, 2010 4:22 pm

I hear support for the Green Party as a possible avenue to start a revolution. And I agree that a third party would be one tactic to start bringing about change. But I don't think that a renewed third party is the only way to go.

What if we built a coalition of progressive nonprofits with progressive political parties (Greens, Socialists, others?) that pushed for political reform on one front but also set up communities that help themselves with social reform? The coalition could disseminate workable reforms to local communities and unite political lobbying for nonprofit programs for a stronger voice. Combining the political platforms of the smaller progressive political parties and pushing to get progressive candidates into local, state and federal campaigns to offer people a real choice in elections could provide the impetus for more lasting change by changing the political field.

I have been hearing small beginnings toward these revolutionary (but non-violent) tactics. But I think we need to join together under one umbrella with some strong advocate voices - like Chris Hedges - to make our united voices heard over the din generated by imperial capitalism.

What if we called it the "Common Good" party - Common Sense reform for the Common Good of our society? Is anyone interested in such a movement?


---------------------
ubrew12 March 9th, 2010 6:49 pm

readjr: "What if we... pushed for political reform" What political reform? Make other parties illegal? Got to have the secret decoder ring before you can vote?

The only political reform worth talking about is whether money should vote in our democracy before people. Most people would say no, but the problem is that the money says yes, and the money is already in charge. But, not completely. fixcongressfirst.org aims to put people back in charge of our democracy.

Go ahead and form a third, or forth, Common Good party, I wish you luck. But, if you don't take the money out of the democracy FIRST, I worry that the common good will end up like the democrats: long on 'common-good' talk, and short on 'common-good' action. You changed the name and little else.

The first part of identifying a victory, is identifying a foe. Too many progressives think the political parties are the bad guys in all this. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bad guy is what it has always been... greed. Greed is a universal human attribute so good luck taking it out of your 'common good' parties functionaries. But our democracy isn't human, its merely a human-engineered construct. This is good, since we actually have a chance to formally take greed out of that construct. We were all supposed to hold hands and vote in a representative. We weren't supposed to find him representing 'king capital'. We need to fundamentally take back our democracy. Against that imperative, no party, no representative, no hero anywhere is significant, cuz they're all human, and thus susceptible to corruption. Democracy was an idea that became a set of relationships, complete with the method of their own improvement, the first of which was the Bill of Rights. Fix the construct or go home. fixcongressfirst.org

--------------------------------

Leea March 9th, 2010 7:01 pm

Money, like guns, both are abused and used to kill by people. Take away guns and money and you still have the problem, people who's choice is abuse and death. Change not the bad people who choose abuse and death, change the good people who do not understand they can choose. This is the majority, pushed around by the bad choices of the minority combined with their own lack of choice that leaves them without anchor and mooring and so easy to be pushed by bad.

"Spiritual slavery"? "Fixing congress first"? "Guns and money don't kill people, people kill people"?

Can you translate this crap for those of us who don't speak Yuppie Librish?

Good and bad, Leea? Really?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7900257

Idiots...

Reminds me of 6th grade 'social studies' with Sister Theresa.

:roflmao:

One party: ruthless dictatorship

Two parties: Perfection

More than two parties: Ineffectual, anarchistic

Of course, the commies were gonna haul off all the priests & nuns, make ya spit on the cross & send ya to hell in a handbasket.

I can see those pages plain as day.....

over whether it was sexist for him to write "submission" as a virtue for women.

nt