>Nice dull metaphor, "stopped clock." Brilliant analysis.
Love ya, CC!
>But what was the clock stopped on? A metaphor, even as dull a one as
>stopped clock, ought to have some remote indication of the tenor the
>vehicle carries.
The reason the stopped clock metaphor is accurate is that you write as if everything we need to know about politics we could have learned by 1917, or 1968, or some other moment in the past. Most of your examples come from thirty or forty years ago, and most of you textual citations come from dimly remembered items you read decades ago.
>My arguments at the time (and the arguments of 10s of millions around
>the world, was (1) that a U.S. occupation would turn out to be a
>disaster (prediction confirmed)
I thought from the first that the invasion of Iraq would be a crime and a disaster. But once it happened, what was the best course to advocate? My position then, as it is now, is that we should try to find out what Iraqis want - which, 15 months ago was some UN without the US solution, and now is just US out.
> and (2) that as a matter of practical
>politics the anti-war movement _had_ to make one core demand: U.S. Out
>Now! The seminar-room wankery of acadmics and journalists lusting for
>nuance was one major barrier to such a development of the anti-war
>movement.
Bullshit. I know you don't think it's important to talk with people who aren't already in agreement, but building the antiwar movement requires talking to such people, and a lot of them had serious problems with the immediate withdrawal position. That's a fact of public opinion, whether you like it or not.
>When a prediction based on the intransigence of u.s. imperialism turns
>out to be as disastrously wrong as your and Parenti's prediction proved
>to be,
What was being predicted? Neither he nor I had high hopes for U.S. behavior after the invasion. The Afghanistan precedent was just one reason to believe that.
> then you can babble about stopped clocks and I won't have a
>rejoinder except to admit I was wrong.
>
>You and Parenti were wrong, horribly wrong. That kind of false
>dependence on passive opinion (as opposed to action) in Iraq and of the
>ability of left-liberals to influence the u.s. government to do good
>things seriously fucks up left thought and action.
That wasn't our position at all, and I don't know where you're getting this.
And if "left-liberals" (though both CP & I consider ourselves Marxists) can't influence the USG, what the hell could the handful of people like you do?
> It has in the past,
>it will in the future. You are the stopped clock it appears. You are
>stopped on the number which says "Trust the U.S. Government."
Are you demented, confused, or lying?
> (Numbers
>don't say anything; clocks point to numbers, not seminar papers. Which
>is why I objected to your metaphor on both aesthetic and political
>grounds.)
Could you offer your professional opinion on "the sword outwears its sheath"?
Doug