Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>
> Yeah, but hegemony consists in part of being able to assert things as
> true without having to prove them. America good, France bad. QED.
>
This seems as good a core definition of hegemony as I've ever seen. I think it should be opened up, expanded, and its implications (for left resistance) explored.
And obviously "what we are up against" is a very great deal. If politics were a polite highschool debate tournament, with judges carefully weighing the accuracy and efficacy of all arguments, it would be different.
The strength of capitalist ideology and ideological hegemony is totally unrelated to the strength of the formal arguments for any given position or action.
In individual conversation, in the context of a struggle of at least the minimal intensity to open the mind ever-so-slightly, the proposition "American Good" could be argued against. But not in any mass way.
Carrol