The identitarian Left gravitates towards Gaza, because it is a good fit for their "settler-colonial" thesis.
Three-quarters of a million Slavs killing each other is not nearly as interesting.
Plus, if you opposed the State Department-created war in Ukraine, you would be associated with "icky" people like Majorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz or Thomas Massie.
CodePink & JVP refused to stand on the same stage with Ron Paul and Tulsi to Rage Against the War Machine.
I am against every war, sanction, or coup, since 1968. If the Republicans or any subset of either party is also against it, I align with them.
The captured Left within the Democratic Party is, as Glenn said the other day, impotent. There is no way for Democrats to lose without Republicans winning. Ordinary Americans understand this, and flow seamlessly from party to party.
But the predominately PMC Left has had their ruthlessness taken from them, obliterated, they are indoctrinated beyond being able to reason. There are no adults within the Democratic Party.
So whomever you define as "the identitarian Left" must all think identically. That's the very definition of prejudice--they're all alike.
Usually the charge of "identity politics" is either the right wing castigation of "woke" or the dogmatic leftist's insistence that class is the only issue and anything else is dismissed as "divisive," such as BIPOC and LGBTQ. Most often armchair theorist white guys who've never had to fight to be recognized as who they are. Whose culture is not trying to survive despite an at best ignorant majority and at worst one openly hostile. And to top it off, have never held a tool in their lives.
I was a blue collar union rank and file activist for 28 years and a local Dem campaign mgr. I also fall within both sets of letters; it's not either/or--as if one "identity" precludes another. Like my grandfather the Wobbly, (I.W.W.) I know we workers can manage our own economic and political movements. We don't need some self-appointed vanguard dictating what we should do.
As for Dems, my knowledge of them is from long and bitter experience. I fought the usurpation of the party by the neolibs who then dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class. Sure, the Ds have no problem with your race, or religion, or gender, or sexual orientation. As long as you are Ivy League elite or the equivalent. We of the letters can see that just because someone has the same set doesn't mean we have the same interests. We realize the Ds only represent the10-20% administrative and professional class. People who don't worry about mass layoffs, healthcare, or local schools. Who don't question the neocon wars of empire. People who are fine with the destructive trickle up econ system and whose political campaigns are funded by the corporations they serve.
I'm pretty sure that I agree with you but don't understand two of your terms: "the identatarian left" and the "PMC left". I personally gave up on the US "Left" years ago.
Read my comment above that takes apart the smug assumptions of leftist ideologues about class v. race, etc. It's not either/or. I'm BIPOC, LGBTQ, and working class! We workers are not so feeble that we need them to tell us what to believe and what to do.
"Identitarian" meaning seeing every conflict through race & gender; PMC as Professional Managerial Class, what we called in the New Left 1960s "petit bourgeois."
Ah yes, New Left. What I referred to as the "I hate my parents" school of revolution. In the late '60s-early '70s as an activist union member, I was trained by people who'd been hard core union organizers in the '30s. (C.I.O.) Who knew by experience that building community coalitions was hard work over many years. Not just rousing your own naive kind on the local campus lawn. I never forgot what the labor trainers told me: "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." And they did.
I was UAW 16 years (1976-1993). I went to school in my late 30s; one problem with social media is you don't know who you are f*cking with. (Half the time they are cops).
My radicalization began when I was 16, at Kent State. Nixon and the Republicans were the bad guys.
I understand the critique of the New Left; they were white, petit bourgeois privileged kids.
But I would submit that the Port Huron Statement is a pretty sturdy document and a principled statement of anti-war and anti-imperialism.
I want to be clear: both parties are really really really really bad; but the Democrats are a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy bit worse, that's why they gotta go first, that's why all the populist energy is currently on the right.
There is one theory, that is that there is no such thing as right or left populism, there's just populism, and you follow the people.
We all abhor war in any form, I am just observing that "left Democrats" have been given permission, under the "worthy victim" rationale, to bitch about Gaza, but not about Ukraine, and they are so programmed that it didn't even occur to most of them to bitch about Ukraine.
Plus they are gutless, afraid of Trump-Russia hoax and Putin-puppet neo-McCarthyist smears.
Maybe an illustration helps: I love Sean Fain, he is doing great job with the UAW. I don't blame him for endorsing Biden-Harris, but no effing way am I following that, just like I did not follow Bernie endorsing HRC. They gotta do what they gotta do; I don't.
Well now that clarifies things! I was a Berner also; what he presented was New Deal, not at all rabidly left. Of course I liked that his hero was Eugene Debs.
No way was I going to vote for HRC, either. Nasty, cold, vicious neolib/neocon. I'll never forgive her for that "basket of deplorables" bit; the Ivy Ds are so certain of their own superiority. They really mean they see the entire working class as in that same basket. So do I, but for very different reasons.
That nice liberal Ds like the ones who comment on Jim Hightower's site buy into the Trump-Putin propaganda is amazing to me. It's a willful blindness; like how young and middle-aged people with families don't want to see how the econ system is destroying the planet, either. I understand that--I've been aware of many things for many years yet couldn't quite acknowledge the full horror. Because then what? (Took me awhile to recover, but I do have some answers based on indigenous knowledge, local ecosystems, and co-op economics. The natural world is mostly symbiotic.)
That well educated people won't take the time to look into Russia-Ukraine recent history is bad enough. That they refuse to see that the Ds have become the party of Russia (Red) scare is outright cognitive dissonance.
For years I've been asking D party apologists if they support neolib economics. Never a real reply, just personal attacks and deflections. Now I add neocon and ask if they're okay with Cheney trained neocons running Biden's State Dept. I think they think I'm making that up--and they for sure aren't going to check. More don't want to see.
No way I'm voting for the Ds except maybe for local offices. Harris is simply another elitist neolib. Walz seems like a good guy but I doubt that matters. Will they keep the neocon agenda? There's slight movement re: Gaza, but not a word contrary to the blatant pro-Ukraine propaganda... never mind the Nazis, there since Bandera WWII--nothing "neo" about it.
As I wrote at Les Leopold's site, if the Ds turn out to be people who actually are for the working class, he can pick out the hat or crow I'll be eating. (Check out Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What To Do about It)//
My tales are anecdotal; his are facts--years of research and sound stats. Which BTW prove we're not a bunch of stupid bigots. And which would be a huge winning issue for the Ds. But that won't happen since they'd have to admit their decades of econ neoliberalism was wrong plus they'd totally offend their corporate sponsors.)
Cornel West 1st preference, next is Jill Stein. As I've pointed out, the "lesser" claim means the Ds admit to being evil. An accurate description of being neolib and now neocon.
So, ergo the title: consistency. Medea did in fact go to Rage ATWM; Codepink stayed home and whined about the other speakers.
Kind of like your whining about Republicans, even the anti-interventionist ones.
Any Member of Congress will last 10 minutes if they denounce Israel, ask Cori Bush or Nina Turner. That's why it's up to us; power really does come from the bottom.
Identitarians on the other hand, have no excuse, they are just captured. At this point in time, the Democrats are simply worse, they are the more captured and they are perfecting every bad idea the Bush Republicans started.
I know that's a hard pill for Chris and you to swallow, but that is the current state of affairs.
The Democrats will erect a One Party System before the Republicans will: Exhibit A, the Republican actually held a primary.
CONSISTENCY.
The identitarian Left gravitates towards Gaza, because it is a good fit for their "settler-colonial" thesis.
Three-quarters of a million Slavs killing each other is not nearly as interesting.
Plus, if you opposed the State Department-created war in Ukraine, you would be associated with "icky" people like Majorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz or Thomas Massie.
CodePink & JVP refused to stand on the same stage with Ron Paul and Tulsi to Rage Against the War Machine.
I am against every war, sanction, or coup, since 1968. If the Republicans or any subset of either party is also against it, I align with them.
The captured Left within the Democratic Party is, as Glenn said the other day, impotent. There is no way for Democrats to lose without Republicans winning. Ordinary Americans understand this, and flow seamlessly from party to party.
But the predominately PMC Left has had their ruthlessness taken from them, obliterated, they are indoctrinated beyond being able to reason. There are no adults within the Democratic Party.
So whomever you define as "the identitarian Left" must all think identically. That's the very definition of prejudice--they're all alike.
Usually the charge of "identity politics" is either the right wing castigation of "woke" or the dogmatic leftist's insistence that class is the only issue and anything else is dismissed as "divisive," such as BIPOC and LGBTQ. Most often armchair theorist white guys who've never had to fight to be recognized as who they are. Whose culture is not trying to survive despite an at best ignorant majority and at worst one openly hostile. And to top it off, have never held a tool in their lives.
I was a blue collar union rank and file activist for 28 years and a local Dem campaign mgr. I also fall within both sets of letters; it's not either/or--as if one "identity" precludes another. Like my grandfather the Wobbly, (I.W.W.) I know we workers can manage our own economic and political movements. We don't need some self-appointed vanguard dictating what we should do.
As for Dems, my knowledge of them is from long and bitter experience. I fought the usurpation of the party by the neolibs who then dumped the New Deal and abandoned the majority working class. Sure, the Ds have no problem with your race, or religion, or gender, or sexual orientation. As long as you are Ivy League elite or the equivalent. We of the letters can see that just because someone has the same set doesn't mean we have the same interests. We realize the Ds only represent the10-20% administrative and professional class. People who don't worry about mass layoffs, healthcare, or local schools. Who don't question the neocon wars of empire. People who are fine with the destructive trickle up econ system and whose political campaigns are funded by the corporations they serve.
It seems there are no adults in our country.
They are all retired. Mostly in long term care.
I'm pretty sure that I agree with you but don't understand two of your terms: "the identatarian left" and the "PMC left". I personally gave up on the US "Left" years ago.
Read my comment above that takes apart the smug assumptions of leftist ideologues about class v. race, etc. It's not either/or. I'm BIPOC, LGBTQ, and working class! We workers are not so feeble that we need them to tell us what to believe and what to do.
"Identitarian" meaning seeing every conflict through race & gender; PMC as Professional Managerial Class, what we called in the New Left 1960s "petit bourgeois."
Ah yes, New Left. What I referred to as the "I hate my parents" school of revolution. In the late '60s-early '70s as an activist union member, I was trained by people who'd been hard core union organizers in the '30s. (C.I.O.) Who knew by experience that building community coalitions was hard work over many years. Not just rousing your own naive kind on the local campus lawn. I never forgot what the labor trainers told me: "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." And they did.
I was UAW 16 years (1976-1993). I went to school in my late 30s; one problem with social media is you don't know who you are f*cking with. (Half the time they are cops).
My radicalization began when I was 16, at Kent State. Nixon and the Republicans were the bad guys.
I understand the critique of the New Left; they were white, petit bourgeois privileged kids.
But I would submit that the Port Huron Statement is a pretty sturdy document and a principled statement of anti-war and anti-imperialism.
I want to be clear: both parties are really really really really bad; but the Democrats are a teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy bit worse, that's why they gotta go first, that's why all the populist energy is currently on the right.
There is one theory, that is that there is no such thing as right or left populism, there's just populism, and you follow the people.
We all abhor war in any form, I am just observing that "left Democrats" have been given permission, under the "worthy victim" rationale, to bitch about Gaza, but not about Ukraine, and they are so programmed that it didn't even occur to most of them to bitch about Ukraine.
Plus they are gutless, afraid of Trump-Russia hoax and Putin-puppet neo-McCarthyist smears.
Maybe an illustration helps: I love Sean Fain, he is doing great job with the UAW. I don't blame him for endorsing Biden-Harris, but no effing way am I following that, just like I did not follow Bernie endorsing HRC. They gotta do what they gotta do; I don't.
Peace.
Well now that clarifies things! I was a Berner also; what he presented was New Deal, not at all rabidly left. Of course I liked that his hero was Eugene Debs.
No way was I going to vote for HRC, either. Nasty, cold, vicious neolib/neocon. I'll never forgive her for that "basket of deplorables" bit; the Ivy Ds are so certain of their own superiority. They really mean they see the entire working class as in that same basket. So do I, but for very different reasons.
That nice liberal Ds like the ones who comment on Jim Hightower's site buy into the Trump-Putin propaganda is amazing to me. It's a willful blindness; like how young and middle-aged people with families don't want to see how the econ system is destroying the planet, either. I understand that--I've been aware of many things for many years yet couldn't quite acknowledge the full horror. Because then what? (Took me awhile to recover, but I do have some answers based on indigenous knowledge, local ecosystems, and co-op economics. The natural world is mostly symbiotic.)
That well educated people won't take the time to look into Russia-Ukraine recent history is bad enough. That they refuse to see that the Ds have become the party of Russia (Red) scare is outright cognitive dissonance.
For years I've been asking D party apologists if they support neolib economics. Never a real reply, just personal attacks and deflections. Now I add neocon and ask if they're okay with Cheney trained neocons running Biden's State Dept. I think they think I'm making that up--and they for sure aren't going to check. More don't want to see.
No way I'm voting for the Ds except maybe for local offices. Harris is simply another elitist neolib. Walz seems like a good guy but I doubt that matters. Will they keep the neocon agenda? There's slight movement re: Gaza, but not a word contrary to the blatant pro-Ukraine propaganda... never mind the Nazis, there since Bandera WWII--nothing "neo" about it.
As I wrote at Les Leopold's site, if the Ds turn out to be people who actually are for the working class, he can pick out the hat or crow I'll be eating. (Check out Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What To Do about It)//
My tales are anecdotal; his are facts--years of research and sound stats. Which BTW prove we're not a bunch of stupid bigots. And which would be a huge winning issue for the Ds. But that won't happen since they'd have to admit their decades of econ neoliberalism was wrong plus they'd totally offend their corporate sponsors.)
Question: who your favorite candidate for president is? I'm going Green. I had enough of to lesser of evils.
Cornel West 1st preference, next is Jill Stein. As I've pointed out, the "lesser" claim means the Ds admit to being evil. An accurate description of being neolib and now neocon.
So, ergo the title: consistency. Medea did in fact go to Rage ATWM; Codepink stayed home and whined about the other speakers.
Kind of like your whining about Republicans, even the anti-interventionist ones.
Any Member of Congress will last 10 minutes if they denounce Israel, ask Cori Bush or Nina Turner. That's why it's up to us; power really does come from the bottom.
Identitarians on the other hand, have no excuse, they are just captured. At this point in time, the Democrats are simply worse, they are the more captured and they are perfecting every bad idea the Bush Republicans started.
I know that's a hard pill for Chris and you to swallow, but that is the current state of affairs.
The Democrats will erect a One Party System before the Republicans will: Exhibit A, the Republican actually held a primary.
You, and everyone, shoulda gone to Rage ATWM. End of story.
Blessed were the peacemakers.