> It's very sad and destructive, and as was the case during
> the Pacifica civil wars of several years ago, it's very difficult to
> take sides.
The US Left continues to lead the world in its ability to generate circular firing squads.
I'm convinced, though, that much of this has to do with the larger pathologies of US society: money-driven, polarized, riven by social, spatial and ethnic apartheid, an archaic 18th century capitalism masquerading as a high-tech superpower, etc. There must be a reason that the US ends up with the same Naderesque politics of entrepreneurial moralism (or as Doug and Liza so accurately tagged it, activistism), over and over and over again.
Here's something I've been thinking about for awhile...
I consider myself a Left intellectual, but I feel horribly isolated from most US social movements. Nowhere to plug into, because I don't do community activism or street heat, I don't do foundation advertising or NGO fundraising. I'm not a marketeer or a salesperson or a lawyer, but those are the priorities of the larger society. I'm not even allowed to be a professional culture-worker or theorist, because no university will hire me, despite being outrageously overqualified for most of the jobs out there. (Four years on the market, and absolutely nothing. I don't even have a *campus interview* to show for it. Pure market McCarthyism.)
Not that I would change a word of what I've written or a single concept which I've formulated. On the contrary, it's pushed me to work that much harder on my geopolitics/theory/texts, messages in informatic bottles for more fortunate galaxies, to paraphrase Heiner Mueller. But the US Left lacks even the most basic support structures, spaces and places -- a political commons, if you will -- where long-term conversations can happen between identity-movements, artists, interested laypeople, union activists, NGOs and political parties.
Or I am wrong about this?
-- DRR