> Credit to MaxSpeak for the link.
>
> -- Shane
>
> A WAR AGAINST ELITES
> The America will vote for Bush
A brilliant piece! The US is indeed the "land of militant symbolism," and few American leftists understand how this symbolic populism, so accurately anatomized by Frank (see especially his distinction between the "populism of the market" and "backlash populism"). Consequently, as he says, they refuse to take the backlash populism seriously, and that cripples the fight against the forces that support Bush.
As Frank says, the "populism of the market" is put on the shelf by the right wing in hard times. The solution is to organize real populism, a.k.a. "the class struggle." My fantasy slogan: "No class war? Hey, the other side has been fighting it for 200 years! It's time for our side to start fighting back!"
Neither Kerry nor Nader would be interested in that, of course, and Dr. Dean seems to me to be basically a petit bourgeois type who wouldn't dig it, either. Edwards sometimes sounds as though he could be a good spokesman for the cause, though, if he were to undergo a sudden conversion and give up his ambitions in the Dem Party. And, for the ultimate political wet dream: how about a big bunch of class strugglers infiltrating the DP, taking it over, and making* it* a real working class party?! (OK, I'm really losing it now, so I'd better quit.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax