> Doug:
>
>> But if you go to the heavy stuff, like the fundamental goodness of
>> the USA, you're really getting to some bedrock stuff. You can recite
>> a long list of American crimes, and the likely response from most
>> Americans would be: you're lying, or they concede the truth of the
>> bill of particulars, these were rogue elements, or mistakes, or
>> youthful indiscretions.
>
> Too true. I've encountered this since I became politicized in the Army.
> Many
> Americans simply don't want to hear about war crimes and exploitation...
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Which is why the "left" (apologies to Carrol), confronting the enormous
weight of the dead hand of the past on the living, was early on forced to
adapt to religion and nationalism in lieu of direct challenges to these
obstacles to science, reason, and internationalism - reworking religious
and patriotic themes and imagery to serve popular rather than reactionary
causes. Even the most resolutely internationalist and anticlerical movements
like the IWW, for instance, presented Jesus as a proletarian militant and
injected revolutionary lyrics into traditional Christian hymns to facilitate
its organizing. The CPUSA famously (or infamously, depending on your POV)
described "Communism as 20th century Americanism" and organized the
"Lincoln" and "Washington" brigades to fight in Spain. Other parties and
movements across the left-wing political spectrum in all countries employed
the same devices, often under pressure from their own members with residual
loyalties to church and nation. What Jerry and other exasperated radicals
see as duplicity by leftists afraid to show their true colours are more
often seen by others active in mass political parties and left-liberal and
church-based groups as necessary tactical and rhetorical compromises
provoked by the "bedrock stuff" embedded in the culture.