On the one hand, the intolerant, angry left-wing elitists did have much more of an impact at one time than they do now. A lot of our values (environmentalism, gay rights, feminism, anti-racism) have become mainstream now, and many people we wouldn't recognize as allies embrace at least some of these notions themselves.
But on the political front, we don't count for as much. I wonder is it because we're so meek and mild or is it because we've lost our fire? Did we alienate too many people when we had the megaphone, or have the Archie Bunkers of the world simply gotten more assertive?
I really don't know.
4 comments:
It's usually a combination of things, isn't it?
A lot, we have no control over.
"or have the Archie Bunkers of the world simply gotten more assertive?"
I don't think the word "assertive" gets anywhere close to the mark, Thwap. They have gone absolutely, irrefragably, psychotically batshit insane. They have proved on numerous occasions that they are ready, willing and able to commit any atrocity in order "not to lose". In order to fight fire with fire, we would need the same caliber of allies they have enlisted from amongst the "business" and/or "corporate" world and that aint gonna happen 'cause we're the fucking "enemy" of those aforementioned psychotics who intend to continue to plunder the planet until it becomes uninhabitable. So, without that kind of money backing "us" against "them", we, for lack of a better selection of vocabulary, is fucked. Only a grass-roots uprising of immense proportions would turn things around here but it is probably not going to happen because it is not the right thing to do because we're much too "polite" and "civilized" to do things like that and, besides, what would the visiting "royals" think of their colonial proletariate?
Cheers, y'all!
when you look at some of the Tea-Party in the USA (most of 'em), ... they are crazy.
They're often sane people who believe crazy things. They're given prejudices and then those prejudices are pandered to.
If you look at the rise of Hitler, ... he was a right-wing, paranoid conspiracy theorist. But his delusions appeared useful to the traditional elites. He got all sorts of important help from them.
We don't have money behind us. And we're trained to think our democracy and the sources of our rights and freedoms are all a contemptible joke.
I think the failure to rise up as one and condemn torture as completely unacceptable did a lot of damage to our collective psyche.
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