They are irrelevant, so it's best to ignore them, as they can be ignored safely. Pick your battle and focus on what matters in a big picture.
> > That is ironic, because Chavez doesn't need US leftists' support now:
> > his national and Latin American support is rock-solid, and Washington
> > is too busy with the Middle East, what with campaigns for dual regime
> > changes in Iran and Palestine -- to make a major move against
> > Venezuela at this moment.
> >
> > Most US leftists seem to me to be always a couple of years behind the
> > revolutionary solidarity schedule:
> >
>
> Good point.
>
> The important question seems to me "Why is this so?" Partially, it is
> because most of us do not have direct connections to people in other places
> in the world. There are no direct institutional or >personal connections.
I have many indirect personal connections with people in Iran, Israel/Palestine, etc. and some direct personal connections with people in Venezuela. Many of my friends here still have many relatives there. Those direct and indirect personal connections are politically useful. Leftists who don't have any should cultivate them, with exiles, expats, migrants, immigrants who are neither on the Right (as you know, the USA is more a haven for monarchists, aristocrats, and soldiers of fortune than for "huddled masses yearning to breathe free") nor sectarian leftists unable to see the big picture.
Many of us have acquired at least a reading knowledge of Spanish, because it is a politically significant language for leftists here, but it's time for us to learn Farsi, Arabic, and Hebrew.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>