From Berube's blog:
. . . and why I'm glad I'm not a real leftist, either
From Paul Street's righteous takedown of the liberal bourgeois ideologist Barack Obama on ZNet:
Serious left vision is about all-around leveling before, during, and after the policy process. The world view enunciated in Obama's address comes from a very different, bourgeois-individualist and national-narcissist moral and ideological space. . . .
Real leftists are suspicious of those who downplay internal national divisions, "patriotically" privileging "homeland" unity over class differences and over international solidarity between people inclined towards peace, justice, and democracy. We are deeply critical, of course, of war and empire, which advance inequality and misery at home and abroad. Global humanity - the species - and not "fatherland" or nation-state, is the "reference group" that matters to us.
That's why many leftists cringed when they heard the newly anointed Great Progressive Hope Obama refer to Americans as "one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
OK, so Street didn't care for that bit about how "If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties." National-narcissist smokescreens for US imperialism, like this one, aren't everyone's cup of tea-- I understand that.
But for future reference, folks, that's how you can tell who the real leftists are in the Popular Front rallies-- they're the ones over there cringing. "Cringe, cringe," they cringe. "We wanted to work with the people-- just not these people."
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'