On Thu, 8 May 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
> You're dreaming, Michael. It's not going to happen. The "double play" is
> aimed at courting upper-status blacks and wavering whites at the expense
> of "Cousin Pookie."
Cousin Pookie likes this shtick more than anyone else. It's not a class divide in the black community. Listen to the Ta-Nehisi interview. His Dad the Panther came down on him for dissing Cosby.
> If he becomes president, let's reconvene in 2 years for an "I told you
> so moment."
What will that consist of, exactly? You saying "See, he's just like every other Democrat -- no worse no better?" Because that wouldn't actually amount to an I-told-you so moment. That's what I'm expecting too. That's what any sensible person would be expecting. We're arguing about the tiny margins -- the small chance that he'll be slightly worse or better than the average.
The only time we'd have an I told you so moment is if in 2 years the ghetto is worse off than they've been in the last 20 years. Then you'd win, so to speak. Otherwise we have no difference at all.
Do you really think that's going to be the case?
> What is it about this guy that makes people lose their critical
> faculties?
What is about opposing him that makes people lose their them? I've already told you: we're caught the vortex of the narcissism of small differences. The kind of thing you used to only find between the SWP and the Sparts has come to mainstream politics. There's no damn difference between C and O but imaginary differences. And yet we seem constitutionally unable to grant that to each other -- that it's perfectly fair to decide a coin toss on such grounds when there aren't any others. We attack each other's unjustified hunches for being unjustified hunches, and feel compelled to defend our own as as being as good as the other side's, until such hunches have grown on both sides into castles in the air. And then we say: See! You've built a castle!
Basta.
Michael