The stupidity I was talking about was yours, Michael, sorry to say. I am as disillusioned about the Democrats as you. And I agree that optimism of the will is a good thing. But pessimism of the mind is really called for.
1. The Democrats will not go away, wither away, disappear, or otherwise do our work for us if they lose the next election. The two-party system is just too useful. They will just shift further right again, while the GOP continues to fall into the Schwarzchild radius of Christofascism.
2. The masses are not quivering on the brink of left wing revolution; the people who are organized to take advantage of a political vacuum want things that you don't even want to think about, theocracy -- "dominion" -- they call it being just the start of it, the implementation of which involves the death penalty for all of us here on about a million counts each. For Jenna Jameson, too, I'm sorry to say.
3. Sure, the masses might run up the red flag and start singing The Internationale tomorrow, and pigs might grow wings and fly, but "the beans might be magic" is a pretty poor substitute for political analysis. Why on earth should be base a political strategy on the possibility that for reasons no one can explain, all the observable forces now in motion, with all their inertia, might inexplicably reverse direction?
4. I love that "yeah, well, there might be some suffering if the Democrats collapse, but social upheaval involves suffering." You're pretty fucking blithe about it. Omelets and eggs, yawn? The worse the better? "Nach Hitler Uns!" Gee, that didn't work out so well either. No wonder the far left has about as much traction on the working class as a flea on ice.
5. Our alternatives suck. The Democrats are lousy, they will sell us out, they are in the process of doing so. Again. The Republicans are threatening to put the lights out for real. Our enemies are extremely well organized. We are fucked sideways.
6. I kind of agree with Carol that the best thing we can do is help organize in movements. That's not inconsistent with an open eyed support of less obnoxious Democrats. It doesn't require such support, but when I look at what the Supreme Court just did to the Equal Pay Act, I think maybe it's nor such a bad idea, as long as we are clear that this isn't a step towards the revo. It's just as step back from the abyss.
--- Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 18:28 -0400, Doug Henwood
> wrote:
> > Just what are the Dems blocking? The
> revolutionary urge of
> > the masses? When they fall, this frustrated and
> hitherto unexpressed
> > revolutionary urge will spontaneously organize
> itself into a party
> > and program?
>
> Well, you never know. These things happen when they
> happen. I'm not
> holding my breath, personally, but then I don't
> think history is over,
> either. No telling what will trigger it. It's like
> earthquake
> prediction.
>
> The main thing that the disappearance of the
> Democrats would clear away
> is a massive apparatus of political fraud -- a
> stultifying shell-game
> that absorbs people's constructive energies and
> turns those energies
> against them and their purposes. People would be
> infinitely better off
> sitting at home and watching Jenna Jameson on the
> Web than working to
> elect Democrats -- even if that were all they did,
> and I don't think it
> would be. Even Jenna Jameson is finite.
>
> > If there were all this bottled-up lust for
> > transformative politics, why couldn't Ralph break
> 5%?
>
> Fear? Ignorance? Indoctrination? (What's magical
> about 5%, anyway?)
>
> We lefties are oddly fond of arguing both sides of a
> question. We're
> committed -- are we not? -- to a fundamentally
> positive view of the
> capacities and destiny of humankind, and yet we
> delight in hymning the
> adamantine obduracy of our fetters.
>
>
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