Ralph the Leninist

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Nov 1 13:29:14 PST 2000


At 03:43 PM 11/1/00 -0500, Max wrote:
>
>But better policy to an important extent comes out of
>what people think, and the Gore philosophy induces people
>to think of things that defeat their interests. Incidentally,
>these same premises militate against unionization. You get
>shit like you can't unionize or demand higher wages because
>of the global economy; or because it will push up inflation;
>or because it (public employees) would expand the evil public
>sector.

Yes, but that shit is hardly produced by presidential campaigns. Presidential campaign is about sucking up to the ideas people hold (no matter how reprehensible or irrational they may be) rather than challenging them - on the pain of defeat.

The fact of the matter is that collective consciousness of this country, especially the college-educated stratum, is inculcated with neoliberal, anti-labor, market-schmarket shit that comes not as much from the presidential pulpit, but from the academe, the corporate media, and the ruling class punditry and think tanks, and resonates quite well with the social climbing aspirations of most college-credentialed folks.

The question is to what degree Gore simply pays the lip service to that shit because that is the rule of the game (i too move my lips when people who invite me for a dinner like to clear their throats with a prayer before using them as intended) and to what degree he intends to actually implement it, if elected.

My hunch is that the lip-service/will-to-implement-that-shit ratio is probably considerably higher in Gore than in Bush. Hence my voting preference.

Again, I would love to see a serious candidate paying at least a lip service to social democracy - but that would require grassroots work to undermine the dominant paradigm rather than presidential politics.

wojtek



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