I'm always amused by popular references to the allegedly all-powerful American "Left." The term suggests that progressives today possess the same kind of robust, ideologically driven political apparatus as the Right -- a machine putting principles before party affiliation.
This notion is hilarious because it is so absurd.
Yes, there are certainly well-funded groups in Washington that call themselves "progressive," that get media billing as "The Left," and that purport to advocate liberal causes regardless of party. But unlike the Right's network, which has sometimes ideologically opposed Republicans on court nominations and legislation, many "progressive" institutions are not principled at all -- sadly, lots of them are just propagandists for Democrats, regardless of what Democrats do.
Everyone in professional "Left" politics knows this reality "deep down in places they don't talk about at parties," as Jack Nicholson might say -- and they don't discuss it for fear of both jeopardizing their employers' non-profit tax status and/or undermining their employers' dishonest fundraising appeals to liberal donors' ideals.
During the Bush years, this truth was easily obscured, as bashing the Republican president for trampling progressive initiatives was equivalent to aiding Democrats. But in the Obama era, the "The Left's" destructive, party-over-principles motivation has become impossible to hide, especially recently.
Behold, for instance, major environmental groups' attitude toward the Gulf oil spill.
We know that before the disaster, President Obama recklessly pushed to expand offshore drilling. We also know that his Interior Department gave British Petroleum's rig a "categorical exclusion" from environmental scrutiny and, according to The New York Times, "gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first getting required (environmental) permits." Worse, we know that after the spill, the same Interior Department kept issuing "categorical exclusions" for new Gulf oil operations, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar still refuses "to rule out continued use of categorical exclusions," as the Denver Post reported (heckuva job, Kenny!).
Undoubtedly, had this been the behavior of a Republican administration, "The Left's" big environmental organizations would be scheduling D.C. protests and calling for firings, if not criminal charges. Yet, somehow, there are no protests. Somehow, there have been almost no calls for the resignation of Salazar, who oversaw this disaster and who, before that, took $323,000 in campaign contributions from energy interests and backed more offshore drilling as a U.S. senator. Somehow, facing environmental apocalypse, there has been mostly silence from "The Left."
That silence is similarly deafening when it comes to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
We know Kagan was among the Clinton administration advisers urging the president to support a serious abortion restriction and to avoid reducing racist disparities in criminal sentencing. We know that as Harvard Law School dean, Kagan "hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members (and) did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian -- not one, not even a token," reports Duke University's Guy-Uriel Charles. And we know that in her solicitor general confirmation hearings, Kagan stated her radical belief that the government can hold terrorism suspects without trial.
Again, if this were a Republican nominee's record, "The Left's" pro-choice and civil rights groups would be frantically mounting opposition -- or at least raising concerns. But this is a Democratic nominee, so they've fallen in line. Planned Parenthood celebrated Kagan's "dedication," the NAACP trumpeted her "commitment to diversity" and the liberal Alliance for Justice said it "applauds" her nomination.
Surveying the hypocrisy, CNN's Roland Martin wrote that "The Left's" organizations "need to decide what matters: their principles or their politics ... their convictions or chicken dinners in the White House."
He's too late: They've already made their decision, which is why -- regrettably -- a powerful Left does not exist in America.
David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota. This is his latest column for Creators Syndicate.
Follow David Sirota on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidsirota
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
- John Maynard Keynes
actually, most of the above types are so far to the right anyway they augment the american love of authoritarian power.
how about tossing this into the bag of snakes you're carrying in order to follow obama and the democrats:
http://www.infowars.com/feds-move-to-throw-pot-smokers-in-prison-for-impaired-driving/
i know it's infowars- but don't expect much on this anywhere else. it's fine to support democrats as lesser of evils; but the "lesser evils" include constant war and cultural authoritarianism over personal behavior. Cultural liberalism has many adherents but no democratic advocats.
It is important to recognize the stunning continuity of policy in this country since the Reagan years, and even more important to recognize that we have had administrations from both parties during that time. The rhetoric changes, surely, but significant policies remain constant.
Some of the truest words ever put up on Huffpo. Thanks for having the guts to say it. The fake left's cave-ins on war, privacy, the Constitution, health "reform" and now this disaster should make it painfully obvious to all.
I counted 20 different hypotheses for why things are as they are in the first 20 comments. I can't comprehend 300-plus. I surmise this is because the problems in our political culture are so prolific and pervasive, everything about politics in America are affected by them. So every proposed solution is partial and additionally invokes new challenges as it moves forward.
In such a situation, given the historic lack of revolutionary zeal among Americans (other than bitching and moaning), the environment will provide the constraints that bring clarity to the situation. A natural or manmade calamity will consolidate or prioritize the forces for chaos and then we will have a chance to apply solutions. The narrower the focus, the better our ability to solve a problem. But the "left" or "progressives" or whomever is supposed to lead the charge for a better life, reforms, cultural revolution, whatever had best be ready to act. Such moments come and go with the wind.
Until then, do your best, be successful locally, fight the good fight. And organize. Organize. Organize.
The fear of being associated with Marxism has driven the Left into an intellectual "no-man's land" I am not suggesting that the Left go back to Marxist rhetoric but they could certainly use the Marxist critique of the status quo much more effectively and translate it into a language that the American people can understand. Marxist critique can be merged with the fundamental American ideals of freedom, justice, and equality to create a formidable ideological base.
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Yes Obama is far from a radical, he is barely a reformer. We need real changfe, we were promised real change, lets go get real change. Primary out the conservatives in Democratic Suits. Blanche Lincoln is the rule, not the exception. Get invoolved, dont just comment organize, get out voters, challenge the party, challenge for change.
And then, you turn around, and hear liberals complain that liberals aren't ideological enough.... IF ONLY liberals would be more extreme, more pure, and more ideological, then... what? Everything would work out ok?
Does nobody else see the irony in this?
The Republicans, however, have actually WRITTEN ideological purity tests to see if those in their ranks are far enough to the right. As a result they are driving longtime conservatives out of the party (Chris Buckley and Colin Powell come to mind). Worse yet, the Republican Party is actually fanning the flames of the worst aspects of society, such as the xenophobia and racism on the side of the Teabaggers. You have Congresspeople and Senators lending credibility to the most asinine and bizarre conspiracy theories about the President (which is really the racists speaking in code words) and doing nutty things like bringing guns to town halls. The Republican Party exploits the people who voted for them and convinces them to do their dirty work and support policies that are against their own interests.
At the very least, the corporatists in the Democratic Party, while wholly corrupt, are more or less sane.
Instead of a true tug-of-war between opposing ideologies, the right has simply tied their side of the rope to a post planted firmly into the ground.
The Democrats and the Republicans Party are just two different power blocks of the elites. The Democratic Party is much more concerned with getting corporate lobbyist money and scoring political. than actually getting things done correctly, hence the half measures in HCR and FinReg, and if the recent trends are any indication the new energy policies will also be woefully inadequate for civilization going forward.
What the US considers "left wing" in other countries is at best centrist. Just another indication of the Overton window being nowhere near center. Look at what happened when the PO (a centrist compromise) was being talked about during the HC debates. The baggers were just livid that we were moving toward a communist takeover of healthcare when the reality is that people were trying to find alternatives to being exploited by for-profit insurance companies. Bringing our Health Delivery system to worldclass standards was not a priority I guess.
We need to stop waiting for the corporate-financed Democratic Party or our corporate shill President to do the right thing.
We need to stop enabling the Democrats just because they are less evil than the Republicans. The lesser of evils is still evil. I am voting Green this year for Congress and Senate as I will never vote for a corporate financed candidate again. But we really need a new Progressive Party.
The Democratic Party is a corportate controlled farce that cannot, will not, and does not want to be reformed from within.
I didn't vote for years because I was so disillusioned with the ugliness of politics; then I got hopeful--and now I'm disillusioned again. I will keep voting Left, though. The alternative is unthinkable; the Right should never be fully unleashed again.
I only mean that the biggest issues arise from the smallest. (Did you know that Transactional Analysis got traction as a method to increase squad effectiveness? Yes, I mean army.) I discovered that "liberals" were every bit as careerist/opportunistic as others, and every bit as committed to conspicuous consumption. Maybe the Moral Majority gets the gold medal for hypocricy but from what I've seen it's the swaggering libertarian types who fly their true colours ... which I find unsettling, to say the least.
Life philosophy and world-view have to be of one piece. "Aspirational values" for the sake of image maintenance ... that's like some sort of self-inflicted psychological abuse.
hypocrisy- not hypocricy
http://www.itaa-net.org/ta/CoreConcepts/index.htm
It would be much more useful I think to label every public issue or policy as being ethically right or wrong. Or label one politician's position on a given issue as being more moral than his/her opponent.
In the moment the best I can come up with Kant's "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch". Extending it only slightly gives me "If for some reason you rationalize not testing BOP then youj're gonna get massive oil spills" ... as though karma is just common sense.