Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> Oh, come on Carroll.
>
> I used to be a Democratic Party activist, door-knocker, committee meetings,
> the works. As you know, I am not any more, but I never would have said (a)
> don't try to explain evil, or (b) the policies of the DP are great and to be
> defended come what may. I had a Rainbow Coalition approach, the DP is pretty
> awful, and promotes many evil policies (for explicable reasons, but it is
> the only game in town, and maybe we can turn it around. I still know lots of
> people who think like that bout the DP--or indeed, in olden days, about the
> CP.
"Maybe we can turn it around" is rather different in tone and substance from what we have seen both before and after 9/11 coming from Leo and Nathan. And Nathan is not quite saying that; he is saying that the Democratic Party is correct in its response to Bush's criminal proposals.
The Fitzgerald quote is silly, its apparent profundity coming from the fact that empirical judgments of a complex whole are almost always wrong. And since a perception of hopelessness in most situations is subject to correction, there is nothing at all contradictory in continuing efforts to change the condition. Nathan seems to hold on to the conviction that "turning the DP around" is the _only_ sensible course for a "socialist." That involves him in endless absurd contradictions. The presence of someone with Nathan's belief in an anti-war campaign would cause nothing but endless confusion and inaction. The debate that you, Doug, and Steve Philion have carried on with him and Leo, on this list and Socialist-Register cannot be considered an effort towards collective knowledge -- unless you think of his relation to a sensible position as being that of a whetstone to a knife.
Carrol