Sunday, June 22, 2008
3 comments:
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There's one small flaw in your reasoning about the failure of incremental change by selecting the lesser of two evils - I'd think that to really falsify that, you'd actually have to see the lesser evil candidate actually win every election over that time period - or at least most of them. Instead, over the past 50 years, the greater of the two evil candidates have won many, if not most, of the elections, certainly for the exectuive branch.
ReplyDeleteDems have gotten a tiny bit of a spine more recently (though it is barely there) and I think it was in part because they did so well in 2006 and felt a bit of confidence about their popular support. They still fucked that up by not being as confident as they SHOULD be - the GOP brand is in the toilet. The country wants us to get out of Iraq. They could have done far more, but they still play it safe. They don't seem to understand that there's no point in even having power if you act like you're afraid to use it. The GOP knows this well - they strut about still as if they set the agenda (and really they still do to a great degree) and still get the Dems to meekly acquiesce. Sickening.
BB-I appreciated your article, and admire the fact that you will not vote for Obama- but take a little bit of an issue with two things.
ReplyDelete1) a recurring theme: "spineless" democrats...
I think this is a paralyzing framework (no pun intended) because it gives the illusion that the Dems COULD actually be something other than imperialists.
2) Also, I think it still begs the question, what do we do instead? and voting for McKinney or Nader just don't add up. They also serve to keep the (even more) disenfranchised tied up within this electoral system. What is truly needed is a 'pole' out there that says 'we won't buy into the horrors of this system, and we won't try to influence something that can't be influenced in a meaningful way'...and that pole can never, and has never been part of the electoral system.
That's why I'm for revolution and communism, as re-envisioned by Bob Avakian. I can already hear the refrain (from readers): yeah yeah yeah, good idea, but it failed. Time to get realistic. Well, I think people need to grapple with something Marx stated: "The ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class" This idea that revolution and communism were failures needs to be reassessed.
I always think its funny how people who believe almost nothing the ruling class says, buy wholesale into their number one mantra: communism bad, capitalism good (or at least, "there is no alternative")
keep it coming, BB- good questions coming up here.
it gives the illusion that the Dems COULD actually be something other than imperialists.
ReplyDeleteAnd they're not even very good imperialists.
and that pole can never, and has never been part of the electoral system.
I don't know about that. I still think democracy is a pretty good idea. I'd like to see it actually tried someday.
This idea that revolution and communism were failures needs to be reassessed.
Indeed. However, Lenin and Mao did fail: The best we can say about them is that they did not adequately protect communism against bourgeois revisionism.