narcistic
Wow, this is full of blasts from the past. In parts I can agree and others I
might have some mild quibbles. There are also many very mixed-bags in here
in my opinion for as much as my Catholic soul thinks of things in extremes
of black and white, there are often shades of gray, for lack of better
terms.
I think the fundamental premise that what has been defined for a few
centuries as "liberalism" was an excuse for imperialism and ne-imperialism
outright. This is not a new notion by any means. Neo-cons are thus
neo-liberals.
(Yes, I know the notion of liberal as used in the U.S. doesn't often fit
this paradigm, but think about it and its use here and the tenor of this
article.)
Personally I think this article is thought provoking but a bit simplistic,
or, rather the situation is more nuanced at least as fares the past. Forgive
me for I'm writing online and extemporaneously and off the cuff. But, for
example Leo Cherne who was a confidant of a pig like McArther and all that
shit was also a true believer and the best of the
political-political/economists and pragmatists in re-developing the modern
nation of Japan and to a lesser degree the nation of South Korea in to
modern democratic states with some New Deal spins and without the
extravagant reparations or other punitive extractions that led from WW 1 to
WW II in the war in Europe. He was not a hero, but he wasn't an anti-hero
either at least in my mind.
I met Cherne in the early nineties. And I know Koreans who did gain greatly
over his role in Korea over what the Japanese or other imperialist did to
those goodly people including, btw the Chinese imperialist for more than
five hundred years before us.
For, did all you know that many Southeast assians including the Koreans and
Vietnamese had national identities that fought imperialism well before they
fought our imperialism or, as the cloak it nowadays neo-liberalism?
Just saying....
Things are complex.
Now, as for the "new new left", and coming from my more radical perspective
from the late sixties and, more, from the early seventies I find this all
very interesting as I lived, though often in teenage bliss or whatever,
obvious, and ironically, oblivious to it at the same time.
many of the activities referenced or alluded to herein.
SDS was formed right down the road about 30 miles to the East. The
Weathermen were formed a little later about furor than five miles to the
north, in the deepest part of black Flint at the time, which to this, albeit
near, geographically speaking white, working class kid was on the other side
of the galaxy. Sometimes I was just a kid, a teen or even pre-teen.
Sometimes I was a football player. Sometimes I was just a Catholic kid,
waiting for miracles within and without me. Sometimes I didn't even know
what the fuck was going on because I was so lost and confused and mixed up
in my lust and love and emotions while the world was spinning so fast and so
weirdly about me as I couldn't even catch my breath, let alone define the
moment. Sometimes sentences were not long enough to describe the moment, let
alone the condition. And, sometimes words were not only not, but, also they
were little along the way to self-discovery; simultaneously fighting, or
blocking my way to attainment, and yet signaling like a betaken me in to a
common direction.
I seek truth. I want truth. I struggle for truth. I wish to know truth> I
wish for a definition of truth mother fucker!
Come on ....Com on.....
I Hold your throat in my eating teeth, with your neck spewing its
lifelessness spilling in to me; heating my inner essence and mingling it
with pure essence.
Forbidden and forbade.. This is the most primal of us all. This blood in the
mouth thing of it all....
This is the spilling of essence to create another essence. Not, it is not.
It is not because it is not so.
What we are discussing here in this manner is ribald. Blood is flowing of
the cliffs of Normandy, and off the Roman legions in to the present from
rivers of blood in to the past and flowing in to the present in to our wide
and open and gag maws.
We swallow every drop the warm and vibrant effervesisence because blood is
life as if were ancient Aztecs expecting the sun to rise from our
bloodletting. And we are so. We are so animal in our nature and being. Think
Castaneda! Think the virulent mementos the sissies in the reptilian and
phallic desires of The Doors.
Then think and rest your common heads on soft grass of our collective souls
in the Minerva grasp of beauty through the ages, and the soft glimpses of a
quiet lass in ashort skirt with a wink and anob of free expression, let
alone free love on the plain of human expression....
Oh so sensual, oh so emotional all so experiential on the plain of love and
emotion.
And just a few years later I was living in the middle of Flint in a house
full of Black Panthers on the East Side and writing for "The Freedom Reader"
and "Ann Arbor Sun" while drinking Boones Apple wine and smoking Mexican
dirt reefer and while all were for workers rights and against the Vietnam
War.
It was complex, nuanced and confusing as I was a delegate for the Democratic
State Convention with my long hair and my leftist, often traditional
leftist, mingled with the so-called new leftist notions.
Oh, my must I bless myself with confessions, neo-religious, in context as
they are? For, I met many conventional Communistic,socialists, or
self-described what-so-evers including some who by the way led to the union
movement in Michigan with the famous sitdown strikes.
So the more that I think about it the more I think that there is no sort of
political economic blueprint for people. Oops, skipped something did I?
Yes, I did. I skipped all the love and all the altruism let alone all the
evolution, revolution, and cosmic rivets that formed us in to a human race
after we got our collective asses civilized, and blued screwed and tattooed
in to the common mold that we spin off the factory minds of our modern day
looms of conformity.
It is kind of weird but you know we humans are omnivores. We eat meat, and
the protein andthe desire for it is primal. It has caused our brains to
grow, and gave us an evolutionary advantage in that, and, indeed in that
fact.
We also are vegetarians both in feeding and in notions, for a lack of a
better term.
Our meat eating, carnivore nature makes us aggressive, , territorial, but
also clever and in some sorts of the term quite progressive.
Our vegetarian nature makes us often familial, nurturing and
sharing/altruistic. But, also sheepish, compliant and dominated in many
instances.
Thus the duality and often the rivalry of being omnivores, botliterally, and
more importantly, emotionally and once again for lack of better words,
"spiritually"
Are we mad and self-killing machines against our very nature. What explains
this dicotomy in our very nature? What explains the duality within us?
What is it that makes us hunt and kill? What is it within is that makes us
love and hold?
What is it within us that makes us examine the very question: "What is it
within us?"
I don't know. It is very existential, very epistemological. Ok, which is to
say frankly, "What the fuck? I don't know the reason for the universe let
alone my own existence. And I don't, precisely how to define something
simple:"Why am I here and is my meaning?"
And yet that sounds so narcistic somehow>. Doesn't it?w.
For why does my meaning mean anything more than anyone else's meaning or
....Well... I mean wtf... Whatever?
I mean my existence is only really important to me isn't it after all and
isn't that the ultimate notion of narcism? You know this me thing?
And that has always frightened me, that concept of the selfish self I guess.
In fact I explore now only again extemorasiusly withinn my my my my
self.
These are concepts concepts concepts
These are struggles struggles struggles
And these are fawns foraging in the woodlands of the mind, spirit and the
human condition.
These things are happening free form, without conversion or hope in the
midst of conspiracies and in collisions with conflicts of all sorts of
emotions, let alone the sol-struggling and finding of it all.
No one tells us we are masters of our experience, let alone our essential
being, or essence except for our self; our inner self sometimes, or our
so-called spiritual self sometimes....Oh we all say we know whatI'm talking
about here except, of course, the self deluded.
Now, the self deluded is just some sort of simple-minded, simple-headed
shithedd right? Not true....
To be continued...
and ----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 3:54 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Hillary's No Neo-Con. She's Far More Dangerous
Weissman writes: "Hillary Clinton can do what neo-conservatives and
paleo-conservatives and theological conservatives never could. She can sell
imperialism as a liberal, humanitarian imperative."
Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Debate. (photo: Travis Dove/NYT)
Hillary's No Neo-Con. She's Far More Dangerous
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
18 January 16
Back in September 2013, well before Bernie Sanders decided to run for
president, the liberal journalist Peter Beinart called attention to the
leftward swing among Democratic Party voters, marked by Elizabeth Warren's
popularity and Bill de Blasio's victory in the Democratic primary for mayor
of New York City. More to the point, Beinart explicitly challenged Hillary
Clinton to move left and ride the new wave to power - or risk getting
overwhelmed by what he called "The Rise of the New, New Left." The following
month, I responded with "Don't Let Hillary Housebreak the New New Left."
Beinart's choice of labels was wildly misleading. For those who missed his
reference, the original New Left of the 1960s - best embodied by Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) - initially looked toward the kind of
Democratic Socialism that Bernie Sanders now proclaims. We gave radical,
mostly white support to the civil rights movement, usually leaning toward
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We opposed both sides
in the Cold War, seeing both as promoting nuclear disaster. We broke with
the mainstream refusal to cooperate with Communists, an ideological
prohibition that encouraged witch hunts, red-baiting, and the stifling of
thoroughgoing social and economic reform.
And perhaps best known, we played a leading role in organizing the
campus-based opposition to the War in Vietnam, which Beinart's liberal
heroes - former vice president Hubert Humphrey, labor leaders Walter Reuther
and David Dubinsky, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, and theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr - condemned us for doing.
Though Hillary and Bill opposed the war at the time, Beinart correctly
places her in the same political tradition as his liberal heroes, who forged
"the dominant ideology in American public life" long before the neo-cons
emerged. These liberals believed with FDR "that government should intervene
in society to solve problems that individuals cannot solve alone." And they
zealously insisted that the US should have, as I put it, "a muscular,
hyper-activist foreign policy, one with all the multilateral trappings of UN
resolutions and NATO-led coalitions, but still decidedly neo-colonial and
inescapably in the service of Big Oil and the merchants of death."
Hillary embodies this liberal imperialism and will do her best to groom the
new political generation that sees itself as liberal to follow her into
endless war, especially in the Middle East. That is why she is so dangerous.
She can do what neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives and theological
conservatives never could. She can sell imperialism as a liberal,
humanitarian imperative.
Domestically, before Obamacare, Hillary fought for something approaching
universal health care, no matter how corporate and inadequate it was. By
contrast, America's number one neo-con, William Kristol, made his bones as a
hard-ass Republican right-winger by leading the fight to destroy what she
was trying to create. Which of them do you think will do better selling
self-identified liberals on war?
No doubt, many neo-cons will support Hillary. Some will serve as her
advisers, and one of their top leaders, Robert Kagan, has already started
calling himself a liberal interventionist. He sees the future if Hillary
becomes president, and he realizes she will build that future by drawing on
what the Democrats did in the past, not on what the neo-cons said and did
under George W. Bush.
Support for Israel? Woodrow Wilson, who preached "the self-determination of
nations," went along with Britain's Balfour Declaration, offering Palestine
as a homeland for the Jewish people. Harry Truman quickly recognized the new
Jewish State, and whenever it counted, the Democratic Party has sided with
Israel against the Palestinians.
Support for the Saudis? FDR forged Washington's initial alliance with the
Saudi monarchy to secure a supply of oil for the coming world war. Jimmy
Carter funded the mujahideen, the holy warriors, months before Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan, and pledged to defend the Saudis in case the Soviets
extended their activism. His "Carter Doctrine" also committed the US to use
military force if needed to ensure the flow of oil and natural gas from the
entire region.
The Cold War? Harry Truman certainly pumped it up in Greece in 1947, though
historians have traced the conflict's origins back through decisions made
during FDR's alliance with the Soviets in World War II and Woodrow Wilson's
decision to join allied troops to fight against the Bolshevik Revolution in
1918.
And Vietnam? The American Friends of Vietnam, the loudest cheerleader for
interfering in the former French colony, was headed by a New Deal Democrat,
Leo Cherne, who also ran the International Rescue Committee and served as
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House. Two of his strongest
backers were Democratic senators John F. Kennedy and Mike Mansfield, who
joined with New York's right-wing Cardinal Spellman to help impose the
Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem to rule over the largely Buddhist South Vietnam.
These are just snapshots of the Democratic Party's past, which we all need
to understand in much greater breadth and depth. But trying to make the
neo-cons our number-one bogeyman is to make them far more important than
they were. It absolves the mainstream Democratic Party from the blame it so
richly deserves. And it makes it so much easier for Hillary Clinton to shape
a new generation of Democratic voters in her own imperialist image.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Debate. (photo: Travis Dove/NYT)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Hillary's No Neo-Con. She's Far More Dangerous
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
18 January 16
ack in September 2013, well before Bernie Sanders decided to run for
president, the liberal journalist Peter Beinart called attention to the
leftward swing among Democratic Party voters, marked by Elizabeth Warren's
popularity and Bill de Blasio's victory in the Democratic primary for mayor
of New York City. More to the point, Beinart explicitly challenged Hillary
Clinton to move left and ride the new wave to power - or risk getting
overwhelmed by what he called "The Rise of the New, New Left." The following
month, I responded with "Don't Let Hillary Housebreak the New New Left."
Beinart's choice of labels was wildly misleading. For those who missed his
reference, the original New Left of the 1960s - best embodied by Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) - initially looked toward the kind of
Democratic Socialism that Bernie Sanders now proclaims. We gave radical,
mostly white support to the civil rights movement, usually leaning toward
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We opposed both sides
in the Cold War, seeing both as promoting nuclear disaster. We broke with
the mainstream refusal to cooperate with Communists, an ideological
prohibition that encouraged witch hunts, red-baiting, and the stifling of
thoroughgoing social and economic reform.
And perhaps best known, we played a leading role in organizing the
campus-based opposition to the War in Vietnam, which Beinart's liberal
heroes - former vice president Hubert Humphrey, labor leaders Walter Reuther
and David Dubinsky, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, and theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr - condemned us for doing.
Though Hillary and Bill opposed the war at the time, Beinart correctly
places her in the same political tradition as his liberal heroes, who forged
"the dominant ideology in American public life" long before the neo-cons
emerged. These liberals believed with FDR "that government should intervene
in society to solve problems that individuals cannot solve alone." And they
zealously insisted that the US should have, as I put it, "a muscular,
hyper-activist foreign policy, one with all the multilateral trappings of UN
resolutions and NATO-led coalitions, but still decidedly neo-colonial and
inescapably in the service of Big Oil and the merchants of death."
Hillary embodies this liberal imperialism and will do her best to groom the
new political generation that sees itself as liberal to follow her into
endless war, especially in the Middle East. That is why she is so dangerous.
She can do what neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives and theological
conservatives never could. She can sell imperialism as a liberal,
humanitarian imperative.
Domestically, before Obamacare, Hillary fought for something approaching
universal health care, no matter how corporate and inadequate it was. By
contrast, America's number one neo-con, William Kristol, made his bones as a
hard-ass Republican right-winger by leading the fight to destroy what she
was trying to create. Which of them do you think will do better selling
self-identified liberals on war?
No doubt, many neo-cons will support Hillary. Some will serve as her
advisers, and one of their top leaders, Robert Kagan, has already started
calling himself a liberal interventionist. He sees the future if Hillary
becomes president, and he realizes she will build that future by drawing on
what the Democrats did in the past, not on what the neo-cons said and did
under George W. Bush.
Support for Israel? Woodrow Wilson, who preached "the self-determination of
nations," went along with Britain's Balfour Declaration, offering Palestine
as a homeland for the Jewish people. Harry Truman quickly recognized the new
Jewish State, and whenever it counted, the Democratic Party has sided with
Israel against the Palestinians.
Support for the Saudis? FDR forged Washington's initial alliance with the
Saudi monarchy to secure a supply of oil for the coming world war. Jimmy
Carter funded the mujahideen, the holy warriors, months before Soviet troops
invaded Afghanistan, and pledged to defend the Saudis in case the Soviets
extended their activism. His "Carter Doctrine" also committed the US to use
military force if needed to ensure the flow of oil and natural gas from the
entire region.
The Cold War? Harry Truman certainly pumped it up in Greece in 1947, though
historians have traced the conflict's origins back through decisions made
during FDR's alliance with the Soviets in World War II and Woodrow Wilson's
decision to join allied troops to fight against the Bolshevik Revolution in
1918.
And Vietnam? The American Friends of Vietnam, the loudest cheerleader for
interfering in the former French colony, was headed by a New Deal Democrat,
Leo Cherne, who also ran the International Rescue Committee and served as
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House. Two of his strongest
backers were Democratic senators John F. Kennedy and Mike Mansfield, who
joined with New York's right-wing Cardinal Spellman to help impose the
Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem to rule over the largely Buddhist South Vietnam.
These are just snapshots of the Democratic Party's past, which we all need
to understand in much greater breadth and depth. But trying to make the
neo-cons our number-one bogeyman is to make them far more important than
they were. It absolves the mainstream Democratic Party from the blame it so
richly deserves. And it makes it so much easier for Hillary Clinton to shape
a new generation of Democratic voters in her own imperialist image.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
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