[lbo-talk] The Crackpot Sophistication of Belittling Utopists

Peter Ward nevadabob at hotmail.co.uk
Sat Sep 26 14:04:46 PDT 2009


A favorite of pastime of the Left it seems, apart from complacently extolling the virtues of not being a redneck, is belittling anyone calling for any form of radical social change (in some cases, "radical" includes advocating "single payer")*; i.e., change beyond the limits set by the Democratic Party as not only childish and naive but also positively harmful. I'm not talking about DailyKos bloggers and their kin, but bona fide skeptical left-intellectuals, the kind sophisticated enough to see through the hoax of liberal politics.

Priest-like Owen Paine of StopMeBeforeIVoteAgain.org typically represents this position (in contrast to blog administrator and LBO-talk comrade Michael J Smith), for example by referring to the cause of ending the terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel as a "placebo".

But as the world comes more and more to pot--as things get worse and worse for more and more people--this crackpot sophistication becomes less and less defensible. Unless one claims that it is an "iron fact", that beyond all doubt (in an absolute sense) things cannot be substantially changed, and can back this claim up one has to admit the possibility, however microscopic, for creating a decent society exists. Therefore, since we can fairly reliably predict the catastrophic outcome if things are left as they are there becomes less and less to lose if we try, even impiously (as the "secular priests" of the Left would have it), to bring true democracy into existence.

*Who are often derisively labeled Utopists, Futuristas and so on.

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