Legitimation Crisis Strong- Bush presidency judged as "not legitimate" by minorities, Dems.

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Dec 17 09:31:23 PST 2000


Chuck0 wrote:


>This guy is probably
>alot like Nathan and the other intellectual liberals on this list. He's
>never been an activist.

That certainly doesn't apply to Nathan, who's got plenty of activism to his credit.

Whenever I hear this sort of thing, I think of the Heinrich Boll story in which a guy gets a job where his responsibility is to take phone calls and answer them by saying either "Action has been taken," "Action is being taken," or "Action will be taken." What action is never revealed. I'm really suspicious of attempts to make "activism" the test of true political engagement; it reminds me of the manual labor fetishists. The world is full of all kinds of people with all kinds of specialties and temperaments. Activism is important, but so is thinking.

Doug



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