[lbo-talk] Weiner unhid!

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 13 20:10:05 PDT 2011


Michael Smith: He's a structural phenomenon. If he were taken off the board, a la Weiner, he would be replaced by another tomorrow, as Weiner will be. Seeing either one of them with egg on his face is of course intensely pleasurable. But viewing right-wing crazies as more of a threat than centrist crazies seems to me a quintessentially liberal outlook. Beware! Bewaaare!

Somebody: This is breathtakingly infantile. It matters on what basis a neoliberal like Weiner is tossed out of office. If a Clinton is impeached for sexual transgressions by the ultra-right, it tips politics more rightward still, as we saw after 2000. If the collapse of the Spanish economy led to the resignation of the Prime Minister at the instigation of the right-wing People's Party, it'd be a bad thing, whereas it would be positive if it resulted from an uprising like France in 1968. I can only conclude that you'd rather things get worse before they get better, so that the working class can form cordones and take control of industry. That's the generous interpretation. At worst, you're in it just because it's "intensely pleasurable".

Does anyone seriously suppose that center-left bourgeois politicians being forced from office by conservatives and sexual puritans advances the interests of the working class? Where's the evidence for this assertion?



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