>
>
>But now for the most part we don't even have groups with a (possible)
>future proclaiming complex programs for the imperialist states to carry out.
>We have pipsqueak individuals -- including individuals who proclaim
>their opposition to any party that might have an effective voice --
>laying out such preposterous proposals for positive actions by the
>imperialist states.
>
>Probably nothing individual leftists think at this time can
>make any difference. But whatever power we *might* have must
>consist simply in saying NO! to the imperialists. Stop the bombing!
>Stop giving aid to Indonesia! Attemts to complicate those slogans
>result in merely private opinions the only effect of which is to give
>the individual a warm fuzzy feeling of his/her moral superiority.
>
I think that what we must do is develop an alternative frame of discourse. Too often US foreign policy is understood as the either/or proposition that State Dept. types make it out to be. In the case of East Timor, its EITHER intervene miltarily OR not, while strangling the Indonesian military is not a consideration. Its as if the US-led West must be an empire, or the third world must be a bloodbath. Given such a choice, what is the 'average voter' going to choose? Its sort of a strange choice to begin with, since it seems that your 'average voter' doesn't really have much say-so anyway. But these delimas are useful for social control, since they define in the mind of people (even some on the Left, apparently) the acceptable ways of understanding what's going on, and as such the reasonable expectations that people can make regarding public policy. They also tend to reinforce accepted beliefs regarding 'our' inherent goodness, goodwill, and honesty, the currency of these beliefs making it easier to brand dissenters as bad, ill-willed, and dishonest. This is how in a formal democracy decisions are made by the powerful on behalf of the rest of us.
So this pipsqueak says: No! to bombing, No! to imperialism, and No! to collusion with the Indonesian military. Now what?
-david