How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain)
Of lefties and liberals …
Chris Hedges speaks at an anti-war rally in DC on Dec 17. He (and Daniel Ellsberg) were arrested. There was no media coverage of the event. I was listening to Chris Hedges being interviewed by Bob McChesney this weekend (his Sunday, December 19, broadcast), and am not quoting him precisely but have his meaning – he said that the reason that Noam Chomsky is so despised by liberals is that Chomsky spends so much time exposing liberals.
LiberalThat is one of the truly hard concepts to grasp about our nation – that our “liberals” are as much spear-chuckers for power as our right wingers. Neo-liberals and neo-conservatives are the same animal. They are totally in the game.
Thomas Friedman is a liberal, as are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. They are somewhat reserved about certain actions – for instance, they might think that the Iraq invasion was not well carried out, tactically. But they would never, ever go so far as to say that the Bush people had dishonest motives. LiberalThat would be offensive, and would quickly move them to the margins with those who are true dissenters. Like Chomsky, they would never be heard from again.
This is why, when Bill Clinton took office, he closed the door on the crimes of Bush I, and why Obama has slammed closed the door on those of Bush II. As “liberals,” they represent the furthest we are allowed to go to the “left” in dissent. Those who go further are automatically marginalized. LiberalThose Democrats who hoped that Obama would haul up Bush Administration officials for torture, preventive and aggressive war, and other crimes, should have adjusted their perceptions to instead understand the American liberal.
LiberalWe need to relieve the term “liberal” of all its baggage. Liberals are not concerned about mainstream social issues, nor are they in any sense pacifists. They have no problems with the use and abuse of American power, whether it is used to attack innocent people and countries or be used righteously. It is safe to say that most American liberals are pro-legal abortion, but beyond that it is not safe to say that they differ much at all with conservatives or right wingers.
Liberal I chuckle when I hear someone call an extreme right-wing “liberal,” like, say, Joe Lieberman, a “moderate.” Perceptually, that’s the only way we can describe him that makes any sense within our two-party structure. He’s not in the Republican Party, but he acts as if he is. Because, there is only one ideology.
To say that our liberals and right wingers are all the same overstates the case. But not by much. From this vantage point, then, it should come as no surprise that Barack Obama won the 2008 election because he had more money to spend that John McCain, and that this was due to a shift on Wall Street from right wing Republicans to “liberal” Democrats. They have no problem backing either party. (Obama’s largest bundle of corporate contributions came from Goldman Sachs.)
LeftyThis is Carl Oglesby speaking at the SANE march on Washington DC in 1965 to protest the Vietnam War:
“Think of all the men who now engineer that war, those who study the maps, give the commands, push the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge, Goldberg, the President [Johnson] himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals.”
It was not any different in 1965. It has not changed since then. We are not a different country now than we were then. Journalism has not changed. American foreign policy has not changed, and does not change when we switch from one party in power to the other. And this gives the lie to the ultimate fraud: We are not comprised of two major parties.
There is only one. And it has been that way throughout the entire post-war era.
If you believe imperial rule began before the U.S. Constitution, then the 60s is a lot like today. Liberals deny this is just another track laid down in the primordial mud of American history that repeats, over and over again. Conservatives love to puff up over authoritarian power. The impression made – left behind from the likes of a big wheel with a distinguishing mark, or unique tread design – by war and financial fraud in banking, insurance, war contractors, and so on, is the essence of Empire. Power thinks of power, little else.
I suppose it was always like this – after all, what was Manifest Destiny if not a power grab. And it is what it is – I don’t say that it will ever be different. In the post-war era, U.S. power has been dominant, and since 1990, insurmountable. It is so overwhelming that we have to make up enemies and use crude propaganda to keep the population in fear.
And that is the problem with the post-1990 world, that this one nation can do things and no one can fight back. But the rise of East Asia, a trillion dollar military budget on borrowed funds, spell the end. We’ll be a better country, it will be a safer world, when it does end.
Balderdash. It won’t be a safer world. Our hegemony will come to an end, and it will, when China attacks someone and we passively watch it. Taiwan? Indonesia? It doesn’t matter. We will seethe with anger and do nothing. That assures that we won’t be a better country. We’ll just be more bitter. It’s not strange that you think that “better”.
China is attacking the world, not with tanks and planes, but with the purchase of land and resources we financed with the purchase of all the junk in our landfills. And we did more than nothing, our trade policy provided the tax incentives to offshore capital, jobs and production – and; and give domestic tax breaks to companies big into foreign investment – to China, India and other deregulated markets with “cheap-labor.” Multi-nationals won a long time ago. Our job now is to protect China’s global “investment” in natural resources. Like Manifest Destiny, they stole it fair and square while we aided and abetted.. If cash is king, we’re whistling in the dark.
ps. China’s Imperialist history is actually quite impressive. Tibet and the Korean Peninsula instantly come to mind. In Vietman, Cambodia and Laos, Khmer, Mung, and most all other SE Asian peoples were either occupied by, or dependent upon trade with, Chinese and Indians for millennia before the Brits and French wandered in, or so the stories told today by Vietnamese go. Never trust the locals. Historically, globally, of the last 15 Centuries, 13 were dominated by China according to one account I can’t recall at the moment.
I’ll concede the point, but what you describe sounds more like hegemony than imperialism. China is so massive that it could easily be ten different countries, but somehow is one.
Piece of Mindful 
If you believe imperial rule began before the U.S. Constitution, then the 60s is a lot like today. Liberals deny this is just another track laid down in the primordial mud of American history that repeats, over and over again. Conservatives love to puff up over authoritarian power. The impression made – left behind from the likes of a big wheel with a distinguishing mark, or unique tread design – by war and financial fraud in banking, insurance, war contractors, and so on, is the essence of Empire. Power thinks of power, little else.
LikeLike
I suppose it was always like this – after all, what was Manifest Destiny if not a power grab. And it is what it is – I don’t say that it will ever be different. In the post-war era, U.S. power has been dominant, and since 1990, insurmountable. It is so overwhelming that we have to make up enemies and use crude propaganda to keep the population in fear.
And that is the problem with the post-1990 world, that this one nation can do things and no one can fight back. But the rise of East Asia, a trillion dollar military budget on borrowed funds, spell the end. We’ll be a better country, it will be a safer world, when it does end.
LikeLike
Balderdash. It won’t be a safer world. Our hegemony will come to an end, and it will, when China attacks someone and we passively watch it. Taiwan? Indonesia? It doesn’t matter. We will seethe with anger and do nothing. That assures that we won’t be a better country. We’ll just be more bitter. It’s not strange that you think that “better”.
LikeLike
I don’t know the future, but I do know some history. China doesn’t have an imperialist history. India/Pakistan holds real potential.
Better? Bitter? Who cares as long as we’re not slaughtering people.
LikeLike
China is attacking the world, not with tanks and planes, but with the purchase of land and resources we financed with the purchase of all the junk in our landfills. And we did more than nothing, our trade policy provided the tax incentives to offshore capital, jobs and production – and; and give domestic tax breaks to companies big into foreign investment – to China, India and other deregulated markets with “cheap-labor.” Multi-nationals won a long time ago. Our job now is to protect China’s global “investment” in natural resources. Like Manifest Destiny, they stole it fair and square while we aided and abetted.. If cash is king, we’re whistling in the dark.
LikeLike
ps. China’s Imperialist history is actually quite impressive. Tibet and the Korean Peninsula instantly come to mind. In Vietman, Cambodia and Laos, Khmer, Mung, and most all other SE Asian peoples were either occupied by, or dependent upon trade with, Chinese and Indians for millennia before the Brits and French wandered in, or so the stories told today by Vietnamese go. Never trust the locals. Historically, globally, of the last 15 Centuries, 13 were dominated by China according to one account I can’t recall at the moment.
LikeLike
I’ll concede the point, but what you describe sounds more like hegemony than imperialism. China is so massive that it could easily be ten different countries, but somehow is one.
LikeLike