"People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!"
Yes, I agree, and I further insist that we strive to defeat ALL its running dogs, including John Kerry the entire DLC confab. The Democratic Party is at this point essentially a counterinsurgency operation against the American people, creating a rationale for the postponement of genuine transformative change.
Your dismissal of John Pilger as 'not caring about' the American working class is an example of the depths of intellectual debasement the Anybody But Bush crowd will descend to to rationalize. This is like saying 'Noam Chomsky doesn't case about the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since he has barely written a word about the subject.' Pilger's indictment of Liberals as imperialisms 'willing executioners' (my words) is sound. Indeed, Pilger's view is informed by his experience with the British detachment of the DLC, New Labor. It is not a matter of 'foreginers' failing to appreciate the gravity of the historical moment in America. All our fates as intertwined.
You talk of the important task of building a movement, 'inside the belly of the beast', to fight for an 'improvement' reveals also the meagre aspirations of the ABB crowd. You seek mere 'improvements'. Even while I recognize that you probably used the term advisedly, it is still very indicative of the reasons why ABBers find Kerry palatable - because he is an expression of the fact that indeed, most liberals in the Western world are thoroughly complicit in the crimes of their charmless comrades 'the conservatives' who give 'business as usual' a bad name and only seek to tinker with the status quo, but not to make any fundamental changes.
Joe W.
>From: "John Lacny" <jlacny at earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the imperialism of the liberal
>Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 13:23:58 -0500
>
>Joseph Wanzala writes::
>
> > This business of the 'not a dime's worth of difference crowd not
> > caring about the working class' is simply untrue and pretends
> > that a different ideological ethos runs foreign contra domestic
> > policy.
>
>It has little to do with "ethos" and a lot to do with the real-life
>political forces in the United States, and the differing constituencies
>that
>will support a liberal candidate against Bush. The differences are
>substantial and the evidence is overwhelming, and all of this is obvious to
>anyone who investigates the issues. It's not unfair to say that people like
>John Pilger -- let alone the paleo-fascist-symps at "antwar.com" -- don't
>care about the working class in the US; when was the last time you saw
>someone like Pilger writing about US domestic political economy in anything
>but the most general terms? Clearly, he just doesn't care. I don't
>necessarily blame people from outside the US for feeling this way, but
>people who want to actually build a movement inside the "belly of the
>beast"
>have different responsibilities. Among those on this list and elsewhere who
>refuse to recognize the importance of defeating Bush, I have not seen a
>single one produce an argument to counter the (incontrovertible) evidence
>that replacing Bush would be an improvement worth fighting for.
>
>
>- - - - -
>John Lacny
>
>People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running
>dogs!
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
_________________________________________________________________ Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee when you click here. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963