[lbo-talk] Bush expected to announce candidacy any day now

John Halle john.halle at yale.edu
Tue Feb 17 17:21:25 PST 2004



>You've criticized me and others for treating people we disagree with
>as idiots, though I plead innocent to the charge. But what are you
>doing here but accusing someone who may not even disagree with you of
>being indifferent, and maybe even a dolt for not seeing things your
>way. There's no one who posts here regularly whose intelligence or
>good faith deserves to be doubted.

In a previous posting you took me to task for assuming too much about list members. Now you're jumping on me for not assuming enough-i.e. that, while we might not agree on everything, we are all anti-corporate here.

Please. We have on the list, for example, Brad DeLong who not only has no problem with corporate power but actually implemented policies which tightened the corporate noose around the economy during the Clinton administration. Another, from my day, was the vile neo-con Leo Casey, who, in his capacity as a UFT functionary presided over business unionism in its most craven form. (I'll forgo mentioning others.)

In any case, it is not an "accusation" that someone might not be concerned with increasing "corporate hegemony." It is either a fact or not. As I said, given that the correspondent has had little to say on the subject in his previous posts, I can't make any assumptions along these lines.

If he does care about the matter, I look forward to his proposing a viable, long-term strategy by which an anti-corporate agenda can be advanced. It is pretty obvious to anyone that, whatever his virtues, the election of Kerry, supported by massive donations from the telecom industry, corporate lobbyists, white shoe law firms etc. is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

You, at least, have proposed a strategy: reading more books by authors you like.

I don't agree with it, but at least its something.

Let's let a thousand flowers bloom on the subject.

JH

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