On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> I do think the Lobby's influence is real and that its existence and
>> development go a long way in explaining why US Mideast policy is the
>> way it is. But I don't believe it's a fifth column or that the
>> policymakers associated with it are mere proxies for Israel. What I'm
>> trying to say is that the ideas and interests and personnel of the
>> "Lobby" are partly constitutive *of* America.
>
> Then I don't really get why you use the term "lobby" at all.
Because that's what we call all the other similar groups? The oil lobby, the car dealers lobby, the environmentalist lobby, the Cuban lobby? They all have this same property of being simultaneously In and Of -- of being a faction of the government, a faction of elites, and fraction of the public as well as being a pressure group on government that is more or less mobilizable vs. their opponents.
Michael