[extropy-chat] future is up for grabs

[Robert Lindauer]

On Aug 12, 2005, at 12:42 PM, Al Brooks wrote:

>  After learning of Workers World Party and other communist 
> organizations being involved in protests I wouldn't even think of 
> protesting even if convinced the war is unjustified and wrong-- which 
> isn't the case.

This is a fascinating attitude.

I think -the- thing that defines the right's rise to power in the last 
decades has been it's ability to make room for everyone - to make peace 
between staunch athiests and fundamentalist extremists, between 
anti-progressive racists and racial "minority" groups, gay-bashers and 
log-cabiners, libertarians and statist hard-liners, etc.  That is to 
say, it's ability to warp its fundamentally capitalist/imperialist 
vision to suit the desires of many groups while not making any 
-fundamental- changes that would tarnish its single-minded vision of 
domination of the "other" groups whoever they may be.  The leadership 
of the Republican party manages this balancing act by taking a very 
Machiavellian pragmatism as a fundamental approach to political 
ideology.  Up with rich America and everyone who works for them or 
wants to -be- them, f- everyone who doesn't like it, the unspoken cry 
of the PNAC.

The left, on the other hand, being filled with -philosophically 
committed- people - people who resist change in their ideology 
self-consciously, are therefore unable to organize a resistance to the 
rise of the right because of the endless splintering of resistance due, 
in my opinion, mostly to a kind of unspoken leftist fundamentalism more 
akin to the "political correctness" movement or the hard-line 
fascist/communist movements than the "peace and love and freedom" 
hippy-child attitude that still fundamentally shapes the culture of 
"the left" in the US.  That is, due to close-mindedness and the 
inability for progressives to put aside petty differences (like "those 
freeking commie hippies are against the war, so I couldn't possibly 
help their cause even though they're right about that one thing.")

What's funny but unsurprising is the result that the right wins their 
battles relatively consistently with negligible resistance from the 
so-called left which is unable to put together a convincing platform 
and that people respond to this inability to "just get along" on the 
part of the left as wishy-washiness whereas in the hands of the 
Republican party, the wishiest, washiest of all political machines, 
their wobbling is regarded as sturdy toughness, mostly because of good 
neocon-controlled press.

That is all,

Robbie Lindauer
thetip.org