> (But is that just a reflection of general U.S. anti-intellectualism?)
It's more that the US has a Second World political culture: worst-past-the-post electoral systems, an unaccountable oligarchy called the Supreme Court, a moneyocracy which buys politicians by the non-metric barrel, etc. Anyone who doesn't have a lot of money is pushed to the margins by this culture.
> What causes it? I'm in a southern town with a big public university, the
> profs and grad assistants that speak up don't get contracts, don't get
> tenure, or if tenured are driven out. If you support activist students, you
> get attacked for unprofessionalism (meaning, have you thought about changing
> your profession?). If you use a Marxist critique, it better be about
> literature or culture.
The Left has to create its own institutes and think-tanks; noone is going to do that for us, least of all the company in a company town. We need the rough equivalent of what Indymedia has done for the Web-press -- structures close enough to the ground to feed into campaigns, but permanent enough to think strategically. Kind of like an informatic Vietcong.
-- Dennis