----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 12:44 PM Subject: Re: Robert Fisk
> Your reformulation "if I were you..." doesn't say anything about social
structures, so it > says something different from statements that begin with
"if I were a capitalist...," "if I > were an Afghan refugee enraged by the
West's war on Afghanistan...," "if I were a
> woman trapped in a violent domestic relationship...," and other "if"
clauses that refer > to social conditions.
>
> As long as many Americans think that ethical choices of individuals matter
more than > social conditions, we'll never get any Left off the ground here.
For instance, if you
> think what needs to be changed is the "attitude" of capitalists, the
"attitude" of Afghan > refugees, the "attitude" of Western journalists like
Robert Fisk, the "attitude" of ghetto > kids, the "attitude" of cops, etc.,
rather than social structures that create exploitation > and oppressions,
you might as well give up on left politics and turn to a prayer.
>
> Yoshie
Agreed. However, there's no good reason for Fisk's personalization of systematic analysis in this particular instance.
-- Luke