>I will say, however, that I believe John Thornton's
>correct when he says there seems to be an assumption
>in the air about differing amounts of suffering (if I
>may use my own *silly* terms one final time) between
>*catastrophist* and *gradualist* modes of action. At
>the moment, I cannot definitively say why though I
>have several hunches.
yes, and there's not much difference between a revolutionary defeatism like chuck's (vote for shrub, he's the worst and the us deserves the worst)/ bill's (the whole world deserves the blatant bad because they didn't revolt against the worst, Clinton) or the one that says "let people assume dems are the kinder, gentler face of capitalism, watch people get their hopes up and watch their hopes get crushed. then maybe they'll see the light" (something i'd said to bill)
both contain an underlying impulse: people need to be taught a lesson.
a man i loved and respected a great deal once told me to stop campaigning for jackson in '88. u.s.ers, he said, had voted raygun into office twice. the best the dems could offer was mondale. the us deserved to get bush so this country would at last get flushed down the toilet into a sewer of its own making.
now, that's typical Chuck Grimes, too. and my friend, Frank, was also bitter. the owl of minerva flies at dusk, doncha know.
does it?
what disturbs me about these calls for shock therapy to both the US (chuck) and the world (bill bartlett) is that it's applauding conditions that foster fear. we want to build a social movement by accumulating people who are scared for themselves. (i think being afraid for others across the globe is a different set of motivations) to me, people who would turn to the left because they are scared for their own survival aren't people working from a position of strength, but from one of weakness. they are people ripe for authoritarian domination. people who've been beaten into fear and submission tend to identify tend to want to become the aggressor or remain the victim.
thank dog for the 2a, if that's a future people hope to see in the next 5-8 years. we have a looney left now? in five-ten years, if we get the kind of shock therapy people desire, it'll be even loonier.
effin' brill!
sure, there's suffering in the simplistic alternative. it's a suffering that comes from the sweat, blood, and tears of destroying/rebuilding something, together. what ted calls developmental learning, if I'm remembering his recent post correctly, what carrol is calling "reform struggles". those reform struggles are borne, not out of fear and hatred, but out of a desire to make something you identify with, that you love, better.
kelley