>I can't help but think Carrol is right about all this. There's much to
>mourn about right now, but this isn't a time to be gloomy; rather, the
>violence of neoliberalism is finally erupting into geopolitical violence,
>the sort which has always accompanied revolutionary eras. The
>petro-periphery of Central Asia is going to explode, ushering in a period
>of seismic political transformation which may bring the most horrific and
>barbaric regimes to power; it may also spur new revolutions, and the
>Central Asian equivalent of Lenin, Trotsky, Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and Ho
>Chi Minh.
Funny. My filters broke and some of the mail that from the 911 group that i subbed to but never read landed in another mailbox. So, I skimmed thru for a looksee. Whaddya know?! The religious folks seem to think the same thing! Now is the time for recruits, they declare, rubbing their hands, awaiting to take into their folds the uprooted, the disenchanted, the "oppressed creatures" who've had the flowers plucked from their chains.
I think it's a big mistake to want to recruit people to left ideas and political practices out of weakness, out of confusion, out of a need for order. That kind of situation makes for good soldiers. Indeed, that's how they create obedient soldiers -- by creating chaos, by breaking all their toys, by stripping their sense of individuality and leaving them with nothing so that they want to be one with the group, to meld with them in some sort of mystical consciousness... a WE.
We sit here and nod to the claim that the conditions of the middle east led to the rise of the bin Ladens of the region. And yet, some here seem to think that the same kind of conditions are good for creating the kind of converts to left ideas?
No thank you.
Depressive marxism. feh. kelley