Harper's magazine: The Vanishing Liberal: How the Left Learned to Be Helpless

[Lydia Leftcoast]

An excellent look at the history of the progressive movements since the 1890s, fake Republican populism, and the pernicious rise of the DLC.

Harper's doesn't put their current articles on their website, but the story is on newsstands now.

[ShortnFiery]

1. The LEFT isn't helpless. Some of our LEADERS have became Corporatists FIRST ...

if there's any "left-overs" of social justice that won't harm the corporations, for example, DADT, they'll throw us those crumbs.

It's not "the left" but the CORRUPT legislators who play back-room games and then play out a faux drama on TV when they know before hand what the outcome will be, i.e., their decisions ALWAYS ends up benefiting the large corporations before the wage earning American.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. You just summarized the article

:-)

But I have been observing the Left here in Minneapolis, and they do some really lame things. For example, there's a "big anti-war" march on Saturday, but the route for it ensures that no one will see it. They've done things like that before, so they're either disspirited or compromised.

[ShortnFiery]

5. I grew up in a right wing family.

I know how to get to the heart of the matter real fast and many times REAL CRUDE.

It's only when we, as a group, get backed into a corner financially that people will be less worried about decorum and more open to speak out.

Even as crude and blunt as I can be, I have no desire to harm anyone.

What many liberals do not understand is that many in the right wing hates US with every fiber of their being. Other than the beloved members of my family who I choose not to disown, the other members of the rabid right do not deserve my respect.

They are vicious. Obama, having not mixed much with the far right, can not understand that they HATE HIM. Nothing he says will make any difference at all. For all his intelligence, he just will not embrace that fact. I'm sorry, but that is just pathetic.

We all LOSE. :(

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I know, and the big downward turning point came in the early 1980s

when the Democrats decided to become all mushy and bipartisan against the onslaught of Reaganism.

I was angry then, but if I had known how bad things were going to get, I would have taken one of the three chances I had to emigrate.

Now I'm old enough that my chances for emigration are slim.

[Doctor_J]

9. Our "representatives" are corrupt, therefore we ARE helpless

Unless you can present some ideas for how we can actually get some results, I will agree with the title of the OP

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. We need to find new representatives

It's up to us, especially the younger ones who have the energy. I'm tired of banging my head against that particular brick wall.

[sabrina 1]

21. Mostly I agree with you. But the 'left' if we are to believe that those

claiming to be 'left', are to blame for being so willing to go along with every betrayal of their own principles.

If the leaders feared that they would not be able to sell the lies eg, 'we can't get the votes' or 'we can't use reconciliation to get a PO passed' they wouldn't dare tell try to get away with them. But they know that they can 'bring the people along' if they just get them all riled up against the other party and make 'winning' the goal, instead of doing what's right.

Leaders can be blamed, but the willingness of the followers to buy the lies makes it all possible. So, in that way, I do blame the 'left'.

[ananda]

3. There's not much a "left" left.

The USA is a one party country now: corporate.

[Cronus Protagonist]

8. Just us and Dennis

And we can't even exist on a place called Democratic UNDERGROUND without raising hackles.

[SteveM]

4. I've made myself obnoxious by saying this for years. nt

[Gman2]

7. We have been framed by Newt. We are told over and over that we are peaceful, and inert.

That we dont like scenes, trouble, confrontation. So, we believed him. WE can just as easily wake up, and unbelieve him.

[tom_paine]

17. Oh, the whole country has been the subject of the Biggest Psyop and HTT Op in history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Gman, I wish it was that simple, but ultimately, the level of manipulation that has been directed at the American Subject Populace (once "We the People") is equivalent of a carpet-bombing of Nuclear Bombs of the Mind.

Behavioral psychology coupled with mass psychology and statistical psychology, delivered by a nation wired from head-to-toe for maximum effective delivery over the course of 40 years has taken it's toll.

And, of course, Homeland Security is there in case the Serfs get riled in the wrong direction. The Teabagger Psyop and the rest of the "tapped into" RW Authoritarian Follower Impulses facilitated by our "New Pearl Harbor of 9/11 is also there to make sure that there will be plenty ready to staff The Camps.

I just don't know anymore if it's possible to turn back from our Far-Right (or perhaps Uber-Right) destiny, it has been engineered and marketed so well.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Four fine paragraphs from the article (bold type added by me)

". . . Instead of building constituencies as counterweights to the rapid consolidation of power by global corporations, politicians in both major parties now had to spend nearly all their time going hat in hand to the leaders of those corporations, trying to raise money. Even as Democrats worked to give up power, they also de sure to ostracize any persons deemed embarrassingly radical--women and people of color in particular--with arranged "Sista Souljah moments" in which party members competed to see who could display the most "independence" by insulting core constituencies.

"...Whereas the Populists' soapbox lectures or the Progressives' magazine exposés or FDR in his "fireside chats" explained the way of the world to the people and argued for why and how that way must change, Obama, like most Democratic leaders, concedes that the way of the world is wrong but tells us that it must stay that way, because, some time in the past, powerful interests decreed it so.

"Thus we are told that single-payer or a public option may be a good idea but that private insurance companies are simply too well-ensconced for reform. Afghanistan may be hopeless, but we've already committed to it. The power of the people is never activated, nothing much is asked or required of us, even as thugs overrun Congressional town hall meetings.

"Coming to power when he did, with the political skills and majorities that he possesses, Barack Obama squandered an almost unprecedented opportunity. but it is increasingly clear that he never intended to challenge the power structure he had so skillfully penetrated. With the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are, once more, people, American democracy has snapped shut again--the great, forced opening of the past 130 years ha ended. There is no longer any meaningful reformist impulse left in our politics. The idea of modern American liberalism has vanished among our elite, and simply voting for one man or supporting one of the two major parties will not restore it. The will have to be done from the ground up, and it will have to be done by us."

[starroute]

11. I keep being reminded of that old World War II cartoon

From 1940, I guess -- before the US and Russia got into the war, when it was just Britain against the nazis.

[glitch]

13. Perfect. nt

[amborin]

20. C.Wright Mills wrote of the power elite, and of the inactionary masses,

who are complicit in their own subjugation

[Jefferson23]

14. Since you have read it, and I haven't yet, is there any mention in the

article about fighting for public funded elections?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. No, he's doing a historical survey of how the problem developed

although he does mention the harmful effects of corporate personhood and the non-stop search for campaign funds from wealthy donors.

[Jefferson23]

16. Thanks, sounds like a good read regardless. Perhaps one day

we'll manage to reform campaigns, the amount of money influencing policy is infuriating. The Chamber of Commerce alone brings in such huge
amounts, competing with that group and others is close to impossible.


Great topic, thanks for posting it.

[MisterP]

18. another problem: whittling

good, sensible, reason-and-empathy-based policies are

% watered down, as was insurance reform
% surrendered in the name of winning (the environment, reducing big-agribusiness subsidies, gun control)
% labeled as "secretly conservative" (gun control again; single-payer because it's against the HCR bill "just like" Bachmann is against the bill)

usually we're given stirring, revolutionarity rhetoric by Obama, Slaughter, and Pelosi--but it's as slimy as when Reagan said that Lenin or Ortega had "hijacked" and "betrayed" their respective revolutions, so we have to support the Contras as the true revolutionaries a la 1776

[ihavenobias]

19. A subscriber should PM me the article.

;)