I like Hedges' spirit:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_opportunists_made_20101025/
...but some of his ideas are flawed and really not indicative of
what is needed for progressive policy gains - which is what everyone
here is after, right?
For example, he writes:
"And the rising right-wing populists, correctly, ask why liberals
should be tolerated when their rhetoric bears no relation to reality
and their presence has no influence on power...The liberals’
disintegration ensures that the frustration and anger among the
working and the middle class will find expression in a rejection of
traditional liberal institutions and the civilities of a liberal
democracy...The real enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck,
but Noam Chomsky."
Hedges here
displays a radical misunderstanding of the Republican/Right agenda.
They want tax cuts
for the corporate class, and the further erosion of the U.S. Social
Safety net, along with a deunionized, subervient worker class that
smacks of feudal peasantry. They do not 'question' whether or not
the Left should tolerated or considered in terms of diplomatic
negotiation and policy construction. They do not want to share the
power of representative government - they want to dictate the terms
of American citizenship and livelihood in a very specific royalist
and plutocratic way.
The worst elements of the Right simply want to subsume and destroy
the Left - they do not want to consider or negotiate at all. Still,
progressives want to be represented - they simply cannot find
representatives who will do so. That is our task at hand.
Progressives
are not 'converting' to the Right, as Hedges miscalculates. Rather,
the Right is becoming more emboldened, with every passing moment
that the Left is less politically active. This is the trend that
must be reversed among the progressive community. Cannibalizing the
Left, as Hedges does by blaming Noam Chomsky, is a failure to
recognize the real problem for the Left: its lack of political leaders.
There are plenty of great progressives writing great academic
journalism, prose and poetry. But what we need right now, more than
ever and in addition to the Hedges of the world - are progressive
leaders who will legislate a progressive agenda. That is the boat
that Hedges - and most of our progressive brethren - have missed.
Hedges should have written a piece about all of the progressives,
who are running for office across the nation, trying to make better
of the situation he so often laments. If he and other writers did
that small task - consider how much support they could garner for
new political leaders. Imagine if he, or Michael Moore,
or Keith Olbermann, or Jon Stewart,
etc. - actively supported and endorsed, where possible, real
candidates for real progressive agendas? How different would America
be then?
Hedges makes some great points, but that's only half of what we
need.
We need progressive leadership.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D NRIII for Congress 2010 http://intertheory.org/nriiiforcongress2010.html ____________________________________ Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org ____________________________________ Director, Florida Forum for Social Justice http://intertheory.org/ffsj.htm