Kautsky parle

James Baird jlbaird3 at hotmail.com
Thu Sep 3 10:18:00 PDT 1998


--you see it coming out sideways in
>odd places: like the recovered memory movement of the early '90s, which
>always seemed to me in one sense a displacement of what is better
>understood as political alienation.

One of my motorcycle-riding buddies (yeah, I know tearing around highways at triple-digit speeds wasting hydrocarbons isn't very progressive, but hey - I yam what I yam...) is a housepainter. last week he was telling me about all the reading he has done on the various "alien" conspiracies. He is absolutely convinced of all the stories about Area 51, Roswell, you name it - and takes it as a given that the government is lying about it.

I started telling him about Chomsky, etc. and about the real conspiracies that go on, and the thing that struck me is how much more receptive he was to leftish ideas than my "educated" friends. People know that they are being lied to - but in the absence of a rational alternative explanation, alienation transmutes itself into aliens.

Jim Baird

______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list