I’m having a hard time finding my muse this week. I guess I’m like everyone else in blogland, you get overloaded and underenergied. More than that and less I suppose. I’m not having the personal crisis of faith that so many seem to feel lately. I keep reading about people trying to define “Who we are, what we want, what are we doing, and what does the very word ‘left’ mean.” I keep seeing people buying into the outside-driven meme that the Left is powerless, or is defined by the Elites in Washington, who are all Right, IMO.
In part, my thoughts this morning are also driven by Ed_Encho’s chat with me over the weekend and his ensuing essay, on why he is leaving the Left. He is still going to post here, by the way, he just internally changed the angle he is coming from.
To each his own, man, and I’m not dissing where he’s coming from. I’m just not buying any of it. I’m not buying that we are ineffective as an ideology, a movement or as people. Its in fact, amazing that we have stemmed the tide for as long as we have as much as we have when we are up against people with the Power and the Money to defend their Power and Money jealously.
Nothing they can do, nothing anyone can say, can change what and who I am. I always know, have always known which way to go. There is only one way to make the World a better place for all human beings. Its This Way.
LEFT.
I think about all the posturing happening in Politics and how sucked up we get in the Kabuki, and I have to laugh. I’m not really here to get anyone elected. Ok, I may be here to block some of the biggest douches elections at the very least, but I just don’t think anyone in those halls can do a thing for us.
I’m here for the People themselves. It is of utmost importance to educate them. It is important to make them feel less alone.
There is only one way to be: For the rights of the oppressed. Loving as a parent to those in need. Left. There is only one way to be: against War and genocide. Protective as a parent to those being abused.
I don’t care if the Democrats are ineffective. They are NOT LEFT, they are not YOU, they are not ME.
The real left doesn’t need calculations and definitions to tell us what we are.
We already know, man.
We are for no poverty as a result of others greed and excess. We are for the right of people to be who they are; gender or orientation. We are for education and questioning exploration. We are for a clean sustainable Earth. We are for losing hatred.
We may be more servants than masters, but isn’t that what its all about? You come to my house, and you will be brought food and drink, and probably sent home with even more. You need a ride? You’ve got one. If you’re an utter stranger broke down on the side of the road, we stop. If you have a fever, my hand will be holding the cool washcloth to your forehead. If you’re in pain, it will be my hands rubbing the knots from your shoulders. The Left means being a healer, both grand and small.
There is only one way and its to do the right thing.
Its about connecting. I made a new friend Sunday evening, one of Jake’s friend’s Moms. She was cool as hell, and not only was she Left, but wanted to know more. One mind at a time, my friends.
Revolution can no longer happen in the voting booth. It may not even be bloody, though it may have to be. Its in the people themselves, the information, the refusal to play their game.
I watched the documentary “Trouble The Water” about Katrina yesterday, and those folks got it. Former enemies became brothers. People shared homes, food, help. I loved the Mother who said, after this, there was no way in hell she would let her boy serve in the Military for a Country that didn’t give a fuck about them. Right on. I’m hearing that more and more from people around here too, despite the ramping up of Arabascare in the Media.
It happens at kitchen tables, and it happens when we read one another’s views and share them. Its not enough to “feel” that way, we are only effective when armed with knowledge, and use that knowledge to present true, researched information with others.
The citizen media is the tool.
The Left is the Way.
I can’t break with the Left, I am the Left, and the Left is the only way through. It is the oppressors only enemy…. people who love people.
Bugger the noise we are doing nothing. We are doing everything.
We are the farmers, the autoworkers, the Iranians, the Palestinians, the Darfurians, those in need of medical care, children in schools without toilet paper let alone books, we are you.
That is everything.
C’mon, don’t worry about definitions, come this way.
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I understand the frustration that provoked it but it has propelled him in a direction that will be just as frustrating and unfulfillable. See my sig lime at the GOS
He won’t fit in with them either.
Be where you’re coming from, by all means and 100%. Know yourself and be yourself. That said, looking for like minds in this day and age is ESSENTIAL. Refusing to do so is NOT an option conducive to survival.
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” — Edmund Burke
they are old criticisms like,
I picked up a book that was left in my bathroom the other day, it was the memoirs of a social democrat from the 20s and 30s. I remember distinctly his quote about communists is that they smell bad and do not dress appropriately.
That kind of contradictory elitism, and its critique has been picked up by the right, and it coming from them makes little sense. But it is true nonetheless, there is an elitism among some even in the far left.
I am also very much influenced by the old left as he is,
I think it is weird that what he seems to be most appalled with is the New Left multicultural identity politics, liberal hawks, and third-way ineptitude. Each of which I have my gripes about as well.
He also confuses as you mention the Democratic party leadership as representing the left. I think this is only partially right, many would classify themselves as the left, socialist, progressive but still happen to have real problems with holding each other accountable and making sure the blue dogs, DLCers and others pay. But that neglects all of those who do NOT do that.
His functional position in the political field, seems now to include largely anti-government left-libertarianism.
It is kind of sad, which he points out, that the left is reduced to either working with a Tea Party – Ron Paul movement where leadership doesn’t seem to welcome them or even if captured would yield any fruit. And the Democratic Party, his former option, which doesn’t seem likely to relent either without massive destruction to the party itself. A much bigger obstacle, that Democratic Party. But at least one that could yield real solutions to the problems he discusses if he and people like him had more control. And then he rules out the Greens because they do not have enough political influence already.
He wants it all. Don’t blame him, but it is hard to cheer his defeatism on the matter.
about how powerless we are, we make ourselves powerless, not only with the talk but with our wise inherent suspicion of any wielding of power.
It is said that you cannot herd cats. Very well, then, we will have a Revolution of Cats.
Liberals are cats. They don’t do what you tell them and they cannot be herded, but they can be damned annoying when there are thousands or millions of them, all doing the little things they do.
People talk about a revolution. When we look at history a hundred years from now, these years will be included. The revolution is now, man 😉
dreams where I go back to my parked car and it’s stolen.
We’ll eventually wake up and realize that our car is still parked in the garage or wherever. Whenever that happens, we’ll get on a roll again, figure things out, and realize that it’s much better to be awake.
But right now, I’m still too groggy.
This and the comments in this diary pretty well display what is happening on the left. Talk about infiltrating the enemy and capturing them from within.
I haven’t clicked on the links in your diary yet, but I can’t say I blame him. I do think the left is useless. No guts – no glory, and they have absolutely have no guts. Those that do, get
bannedshunned, e.g.ekHoward Dean.Was the illusion we had some control over our destiny. It went back and forth between left and right each directed by think tank focus groups of immense and wasteful proportions. I will even venture into the big R word.
As MLK Day approaches I think back upon it now as the empire dies and call the civil rights movment a hijacked one. My baby boomer generation appeared to be far more tolerant and open to it than my kids are. Had we spent all of this time bridging the gaps between people instead of making minorities a protected special class we might have been far better off. My kids loathe, absolutely loathe this PC correctness. Look for the general pattern here in the broadest sense, a series of social engineering marketing events. My Dad came home from the Big War, WWII. None of the wives worked. We got by, women got “liberated”, yeah well that’s nice but now two people HAVE to work to have less than what Dad did.
I can’t join the Tea Bagger party. No you can’t. Been there and done that because Tea Bagger is another media compromised marketing event. Beck dissed the 911 truth movement which I believe started the term by dumping the commission’s bogus fallacy into Boston Harbor.
You are not so much abondoning your entire belief system but should dismiss the daily punditry of the what to think electronic network. Should we abandon the left? Well the right has guns so regardless of how anyone “feels” about it.
Arg. It could get ugly.