[lbo-talk] Kucinich saw UFO on Shirley MacLaine's porch, was deeply moved

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Mon Oct 29 22:46:05 PDT 2007


On 10/29/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 29, 2007, at 11:14 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> > But the pile on was going beyond just laughing to painting
> > Kucinich as the craziest candidate in the race. As oppose to the
> > mainstream candidates who all seem to favor bombing Iran, and who
> > mostly (with a few exceptions like Obama) favored attacking Iraq.
>
> Is the only way to beat some nuts with another nut?
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>

Kuchinich is not going to beat anyone. I'm just pointing out that over all he is probably the least crazy Democrat. But as I said upthread, most people have areas they are crazy in. I can't find a survey where the question was asked, but I'll bet a majority of people in this nations would say they have personally had prayers answered. (75% of the U.S. population believes in angels; that was asked and answered in a major survey; given the odds that if you pray often enough something you prayed for will happen, it would be very odd if a majority did not believe they personally had a prayer answered.) So I would say that a movement excludes people for harmless nuttiness is not going to get very far. Let me put it this way. Given the candidates available, Kucinich had a real chance would vote against him --given the really good things he does support. More to the point, if you ever get a meaningful left movement in this country, what are the odds that it would at minimum have a lot of leadership with nutty beliefs. Maybe it will be conventional Christianity; maybe it will be some of the weird new age stuff. A lot of weird new age beliefs are very mainstream; UFO crap is one of the most popular examples.

Look if we ever get a real mass movement behind a Nader or a a Kucinich, I'm not going to hold out for Noam Chomsky. Our odds are bad enough without insisting we will only ally with sane people. Talk about your fringe movements!



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