"Hate America" Left

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 13 11:20:43 PDT 2001


Zak McGregor wrote:
>
> On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 09:46:00 -0700 (PDT)
> Angelita Manzano <angiemanzano at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > did you read the whole thing?
>
> I did. I'm still not sure what the problem is. Wanna enlighten us idiots
> please?

I'm probably among those that _Alterman_ would classify as "hating America," since I feel that the U.S. government and the ruling class it serves are the primary threat today to the very survival of humanity. I, however, following standard (or what ought to be standard) marxist practice differentiate between leaders and followers. There are part's of Craft's article that are objectionable. Consider the following:

*** U.S. "innocent" citizens with their tax dollars have funded, trained, financed and harbored most every terrorist our media eventually vilifies. Most "innocent" U.S. citizens don't seem to care that slave labor makes the tennis shoes they wear. Most "innocent" U.S. citizens are oblivious to how many people resent and hate them world wide for monopolizing too much of the world's natural resource and wealth. Most "innocent" U.S. citizens don't seem to care that hundreds of thousands of people die to keep our prices low at the gas pump. Most "innocent" U.S. citizens don't seem to care what the government does to protect their comfort and lifestyle.***

"Innocent" is becoming offensive regardless of its context; it's a mere piece of jargon that replaces thinking. And "'innocent'" is just as bad. Someone whose posts I have read recently has a signature quote by [memory lapse: Trotsky or Russel] distinguishing stupidity from ignorance. Craft fails to make that distinction, or to recognize just how hard it is in a bourgeois democracy for the mass of workers to know the truth. That is why somehow or other scattered leftists must come together, utilizing whatever openings the capitalists provide us, to form a strong and unified or coherent left, because only such a left can provide a means for the mass of workers knowing even part of the truth. Until such time, that mass is innocent (ignorant), not "innocent."

Carrol



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