"Hate America" Left

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>>From: "Randy Steindorf" <grsteindorf at hotmail.com>
>>>
>>>Or a Marx said about the League of the Just motto: "All men are 
>>>brothers,"
>>>there are some men I don't want as brothers.  Thus he replaced that motto
>>>with "workers of the world, unite."
>>
>>Actually, I think Oscar Wilde said it best:  "The brotherhood of man
>>is no mere poet's dream, it is a most depressing and humiliating
>>reality."
>
>Carl, I worry about your misanthropy. Humans aren't all that awful.
>Excuse my sentimentality, but I don't see how anyone can subscribe to
>any kind of radical politics and not have some degree of optimism and
>love at the base of it.
>
>Doug

I worry about your literal-mindedness, Doug.  I find Oscar W's statement a 
clarion call *for* affirming kinship with humanity and doing all possible to 
create a society that gives full vent to every individual's best abilities 
and impulses.  The point is, actually existing humanity is a pretty sorry 
spectacle.  Leaving aside the influence on people of Inexplicable Evil 
(which we can do nothing about), there are the malign social effects of 
global capitalism, which we damn well can do something about by moving on to 
some form of socialism.  As I've said before, any society that -- by its own 
boastful, frequent admission -- is driven mainly by fear and greed tends to 
bring out the worst in people.  By striving to create an equal outcomes 
society, I think we can bring out the best in people and make the 
inescapable reality of the brotherhood of man a source of genuine delight, 
not something to flee or to honor by pious platitudes.

Carl

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