> Doug:
> > The ideology got massive assistance from its
> oligarch friendliness,
> > for sure, but it wouldn't have gone anywhere if
> they (35 years ago I
> > would have said "we") hadn't persisted in
> prosyletizing for what felt
> > like a doomed struggle.
If all they did was prostelytize, without any thought about whom and how, I doubt we'd be in the mess we're in. But unlike the most vocal representatatives of 'the left' (whatever the fuck it is) they realize that the game, fundamentally, is not about who makes the best argument. It's about bums in seats. Like at least 5 bums in seats at the Texas state Board of Education, for instance, which has sign-off on textbooks for the state of Texas.
Since Texas is the second largest customer of textbooks, and textbook companies don't want to make separate editions for different states, this group influences what is taught not simply in Texas but all over the country. This didn't happen because history or oligarchs were on the side of abstinence education, or because regular folks are just too incurably stupid to realize what self-regarding leftwing intellectuals have to offer them. It happened because a political fringe group saw a relativley porous institution where they could have tremendous influence and penetrated it. Simple as that. And they did it all over the place. There are all kinds of oligarch-friendly ideologies, but it's the creationists and left-behinders that are calling the shots. Now why is that?
> - the inherent fat-headedness and reactionary
> sympathies of what HL Mencken
> called "Boobus Americanus" -
For all their fatheadedness and 'reactionary sympathies', on most issues, Americans are far to the left of the major political parties. They support single-payer national health insurance, distrust large corporations, oppose free trade, are fine with abortion under certain circumstances, and affirmative action. Large minorities support gay marriage. The majority would swap money for liesure time. A number of them in cities small and large have taken stands against the Patriot Act's encroachment on civil liberties. They go to war very reluctantly, which is why this administration has to lie them so relentlessly into it. When you consider the 24-7 propoganda they get to the contrary on almost all of this, and the crap education most of us get, it's pretty fucking amazing. Admittedly most of them have no taste for assessing, say, the rights of cats vs. the rights of rocks, or which country's buslines smell better, but they're busy. Give 'em a break.
I suppose the insufferably vain misanthropy of establishment liberals and leftists wouldn't be so irritating, if it weren't in the end so reactionary. Why do anything, when all those people out there are just too stupid and reactionary to embrace it? Our time will come if the little dumbasses don't let Bush blow them all up in the meantime. Let's have a protest and see what happens.
and what Richard
> Hofstadter more accurately
> attributed to the reactionary nature of the key US
> institutions -
> evangelical religion and business - and its grip on
> the popular imagination,
blah blah blah. Religion can be put to the service of defying oligarchy more easily than it can be put to serving it. Martin Luther King and the liberation theologians in Central America showed that. As far as business's grip on the imagination -- I can count on one hand the people I've met who seemed interested in business at all. Where do these assumptions about people come from? And even, if they are true, what makes them immutable?
> not counterbalanced by progressive institutions,
> especially organized labor.
agreed. this is an organization problem. not destiny.
>
> Stated differently, the demise of the progressive
> ideology and causes had
> little to do with what 'we' (i.e. lefties
> collectively) did or failed to do,
> but rather was caused by the oligarchy's renewed
> support for neo-liberalism
> thanks to technological advantage it gained in
> globalization, the demise of
> the USSR, and the
natural responsiveness to
> right-leaning calls in the US
> populace.
Alibis. The grain of truth here explains the right's dominance. It doesn't explain the loco form it has taken nor it's extent. As to the 'natural responsiveness' to 'right-leaning calls' you might see that evaporate if all those "boobs" in the red states had to choose between say, opposing gay marriage, and, government-funded health insurance or a guaranteed living wage. But you won't see that, because neither party will test it, and the majority of leftists will provide no inducement to either party to do so.
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