"Hate America" Left

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Zak McGregor wrote:
>  > 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

I agree with Carrol in the main, but allow me to raise a question. 
While it is indeed hard to know the truth in a bourgeois democracy 
(especially in the belly of the beast), it is not necessary for 
Americans to know the truth (either of details of the CIA funding of 
Contras, the Contra-drug connection, etc. or the "big picture" of 
capitalism & U.S. imperialism) in order to see that, for instance, it 
is illegal, not to mention *absurd*, for the U.S. government to 
invade & bomb another nation allegedly to capture its head of state 
indicted in the USA for drug trafficking (Cf. the U.S. invasion of 
Panama), is it?

Yoshie