.
From: Magali Sarfatti Larson
Date: Sat Aug 30, 2003
Subject: the "left" and the elections
Every 4 years, and even every 2 years, we hear from "the left" about what
progressives should do. In the meantime, this left is silent: it has not been
the leader in the anti-war movement, it has not visibly energized local
campaigns, it has not started clubs, coffee houses or other arenas where one
could talk and politics could be formed. Portside and Move-on are the two
organizations that have made the mnost effective use of the Internet to reach
out, at least in my experience, and the "Dean for America" organization has
followed suit with exhilarating openness and success. Politics IS dicussed at
the Dean Meetups. The "real left" obsesses about the importance of elections
that we cannot win, only "influence"... or so we think, as if elections were the
only political activity in the world. In the meantime, the urgency of 2004
seems to escape many Portside writers; even Norman Solomon writes one piece
against Dean and implicitly contradicts himself the next day! If one more
"progressive" informs me with ponderous self-indulgence that "Dean is not on the
left" (thank you for the news) I will stop even listening to anything that calls
itself "from the left." The Greens talk as if this was still "business as
usual," cocksure that they pushed Gore "to the left!" (no evidence needs to be
given, right?). Dream on! Inthe meantime, the Bush administration has plans for
decades of one-party rule (as the Texas redistricting strategy shows), the
judiciary is veering to the far-right all the way down from the Supreme Court,
and the dangers of a second Bush presidency to the US and the world are far from
even the usual fare served by corporate America. We can go on dealing with our
not too coherent utopias and symbolic ideal principles (let's endorse a woman
candidate --never mind her record-- let's support a black candidate because he
is black, let's run Ralph Nader ... who cares if we use resources and energy in
"advancing" principles that died on the branch after the last "spoiler campaign"
of 2000?). The fact is that we do not have anything resembling a set of clear
ideas for an extremely complicated world. Much of the "left" refuses to
analyze
what the larger sections of the public actually think, or feel, or know (isn't
it that 62% still believe Iraq attacked us on September 11? and 59% agree the
invasion of Iraq was "worth it"?). In fact, we can think what we like and deal
in political talk that has absolutely no effect, because we don't have the
remotest hope or even the faintest illusion of ever coming close to governing.
This irrelevance and ideological disconnect has become the hallmark of the
American "left" and the rest of the world knows it well.
Magali Larson
-- Michael Pugliese