On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 16:54:10 -0400 Eric Beck <rayrena at accesshub.net> writes:
>Alex, this sounds eerily similar to the stuff that Ken Lawrence was
>taunting you with a few months ago: that is, that you were not living up
to
>his "brave" example, that you were "sniveller" yourself; in essence,
that
>you weren't doing things the way he thought they should be done.
Eric,
Thanks for the well-reasoned response. Chest thumping? Maybe. Misdirected anger? Very true. Fawning over John-John a media creation? Also potentially true. But at the same time, I can't help but a feel a little distressed that anyone would give a fuck about a Kennedy enough to lay wreaths at a memorial, for crying out loud. Whether or not the majority of "the people" feel this way or not is irrelevant. That fact that a substantial portion of them do seems to be cause for alarm.
As for the feud I had with Ken Lawrence a few months ago; well, you don't need to be a Hegelian or Marxist to know that thesis + antithesis = synthesis. Because of some of Ken's taunting, I'm a bit more involved in "activism" than I used to be. This doesn't mean that I'm still not critical of the defensive and myopic nature of much activism (if anything, I'm more critical now that I'm in the middle of it), but beneath Ken's nastiness there was a point.
>Is it possible that leftists have looked to the Third World because it
is
>much more romantic than revolt in their backyard, because revolution and
>struggle are much prettier to think about than to participate in?
Very true. But I also think discouragement about the reactionary climate in this country plays a big role. You're more apt to take up the cause of indigenous peasant guerillas in Mexico when "the people" in this country are watching Ally McBeal and chomping down Big Macs.
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