Chris Hedges: Where Liberals Go to Feel Good

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Where Liberals Go to Feel Good
Posted on Jan 24, 2011

By Chris Hedges


Barack Obama is another stock character in the cyclical political theater embraced by the liberal class. Act I is the burst of enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate who, through clever branding and public relations, appears finally to stand up for the interests of citizens rather than corporations. Act II is the flurry of euphoria and excitement. Act III begins with befuddled confusion and gnawing disappointment, humiliating appeals to the elected official to correct “mistakes,” and pleading with the officeholder to return to his or her true self. Act IV is the thunder and lightning scene. Liberals strut across the stage in faux moral outrage, delivering empty threats of vengeance. And then there is Act V. This act is the most pathetic. It is as much farce as tragedy. Liberals—frightened back into submission by the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party or the call to be practical—begin the drama all over again.

We are now in Act IV, the one where the liberal class postures like the cowardly policemen in “The Pirates of Penzance.” Liberals promise battle. They talk of glory and honor. They vow not to abandon their core liberal values. They rouse themselves, like the terrified policemen who have no intention of fighting the pirates, with the bugle call of “Tarantara!” This scene is the most painful to watch. It is a window into how hollow, vacuous and powerless liberals and liberal institutions including labor, the liberal church, the press, the arts, universities and the Democratic Party have become. They fight for nothing. They stand for nothing. And at a moment when we desperately need citizens and institutions willing to stand up against corporate forces for the core liberal values, values that make a democracy possible, we get the ridiculous chatter and noise of the liberal class.

The moral outrage of the liberal class, a specialty of MSNBC, groups such as Progressives for Obama and MoveOn.org, is built around the absurd language of personal narrative—as if Barack Obama ever wanted to or could defy the interests of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase or General Electric. The liberal class refuses to directly confront the dead hand of corporate power that is rapidly transforming America into a brutal feudal state. To name this power, to admit that it has a death grip on our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated popular movements, including labor, is to admit that the only weapons we have left are acts of civil disobedience. And civil disobedience is difficult, uncomfortable and lonely. It requires us to step outside the formal systems of power and trust in acts that are marginal, often unrecognized and have no hope of immediate success.

The liberal class’ solution to the bleak political landscape is the conference. This, along with letters and cries of outrage circulated on the Internet, is its preferred form of expression. Conferences, whether organized by Left Forum, Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun or figures such as Ted Glick—who is touting a plan to lure progressives, including members of the Democratic Party, into something he calls a “third force”—are where liberals go to feel good about themselves again. These conferences are not fundamentally about change. They are designed to elevate self-appointed liberal apologists who seek to become advisers and courtiers within the Democratic Party. The conferences produce resolutions no one reads. They build networks no one uses. But with each conference liberals get to do what they do best—applaud their own moral probity. They make passionate appeals to work within systems, such as electoral politics, that have been gamed by the corporate state. And the result is to spur well-meaning people toward useless and ultimately self-defeating activity. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/where_liberals_go_to_feel_good_20110124/

[Laelth]

1. Excellent essay. Recommended.

I, for one, and completely willing to acknowledge that corporate power "has a death grip on our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated popular movements, including labor."

I understand, though, why this fact is so difficult for many liberals to accept. Our reality is not pleasant.

-Laelth

[jaxx]

2. He forgets to mention Scene 1 to all of the Acts.

Scene 1 in which the far left blogosphere tries to stymie everything the President tries to accomplish. We've all seen Scene 1....

it's not good enough,
it's appeasing,
it's kowtowing,
it's writing the speeches before they are given,
it's creating conspiracies about every other word.

Hedges once again writes Scene 1....we've heard it all before.

[NorthCarolina]

3. Great article, thanks for posting.

The last paragraph says it all:

"Either we begin to militantly stand against the coal, oil and natural gas industry or we do not. Either we defy pre-emptive war and occupation or we do not. Either we demand that the criminal class on Wall Street be held accountable for the theft of billions of dollars from small shareholders whose savings for retirement or college were wiped out or we do not. Either we defend basic civil liberties, including habeas corpus and the prosecution of torturers or we do not. Either we turn on liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which collaborate with these corporations or we do not. Either we accept that the age of political compromise is dead, that the corporate systems of power are instruments of death that can be fought only by physical acts of resistance or we do not. If the liberal class remains gullible and weak, if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes, it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously denounces."

[pscot]

8. That's the money quote

It's worth repeating:

Either we begin to militantly stand against the coal, oil and natural gas industry or we do not. Either we defy pre-emptive war and occupation or we do not. Either we demand that the criminal class on Wall Street be held accountable for the theft of billions of dollars from small shareholders whose savings for retirement or college were wiped out or we do not. Either we defend basic civil liberties, including habeas corpus and the prosecution of torturers or we do not. Either we turn on liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which collaborate with these corporations or we do not. Either we accept that the age of political compromise is dead, that the corporate systems of power are instruments of death that can be fought only by physical acts of resistance or we do not. If the liberal class remains gullible and weak, if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes, it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously denounces.

[canoeist52]

4. There is no liberal class in politics.

There are many citizens with liberal values but no one to represent them.

[Joanne98]

5. I'm ready to fire the whole top of the party.

[pscot]

7. I'm ready to set fire

to the party and some other, more tangible, things.

[n2doc]

6. Brutal. Honest. The truth. n/t

[Citizen Worker]

9. "Brutal. Honest. The truth." But more significantly, a call to action to begin the long and very

uncomfortable process of building new institutions that speak to and for working class people. As Hedges points out so eloquently traditional liberal institutions have failed and must be replaced if we hope to break the strangle hold of corporate feudalism.

The DLC was formed in the mid-80s with Bill Clinton and Al Gore as the public faces of this "new" movement. The DLC co-opted the machinery of the democratic party and has since spun off several new institutions such as, The Third Way, Progressive Policy Institute, and more recently, No Labels.

Progressives are not going to retake control of any of these institutions because we never controlled them prior to the takeover. We need to build our own progressive movement. The blueprint is there all we need do is read it and act.