"Progressive" used to be code for a CPer or fellower traveler. That was a long time ago.
The sad fact is that we have no idea what to call ourselves, or even who "we" are. There are of course confident Marxist-Leninists who know exactly what to call themselves and who they are, but there are only about 10 of them.
The rest of us are pretty clueless. We most of us believe in a set of ideas that has lost all grip in real world politics, and we have an esoteric vocabulary as arcane, mysterious, and, necessarily secretive, though for different reasons, as any Straussian. We don't think we are better than those lacking the secret knowledge or that they are incapable of dealing with it, but we have no ide how to say in anything likea persuasive and effective and politically mobilizing way things that seem to us to be for the most part common sense.
I set aside essentially theological debates about value theory and the like. I mean basics like, that ordinary people can manage their affairs themselves without bosses (that they don't elect), that mere ownership by itself contributes nothing to society and there is nothing that bosses do that workers cannot do as well or better, that the government is run by the rich for their benefit and not ours. Well, that last you can say. You just can't suggest that anything might be done to change it.
It's very sad, and I am bewildered.
Cruelty, deception, and meaninglessness -- there, this time I got the slogan right. I'd like to generate some (rationaly based) optimism of the will. Pessimism of the mind is all too easy to come by.
jks
--- John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> ><marvgandall at rogers.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Well, "hi, I'm a liberal" seems like the kiss of
> death in American
> >>politics,
> >>so why not try "hi, I'm a communist" and see how
> that works out?
> >>MG
> >
> > Or use the Old Left weasel word, "progressive."
> >
> >--
> >Michael Pugliese
>
> Why is progressive a weasel word? I use it quite
> frequently and I never
> though of myself as being a weasel for doing so.
> Although most "weasely"
> people probably don't identify themselves as such.
>
> John Thornton
>
> ___________________________________
>
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