Before I get started, I want to say, the Democratic Party is the party of racial inclusion. The Republican party has become the white-power party. Now I'm going to criticise the shortcomings of the American Left, and the Netroots as they exist today.
The users of the Internet are overwhelmingly white, because of the "digital divide". The "digital divide" is the digital equivalent of, and result of the disparity of economic opportunity and saved capital between the european colonial cultures and most of the other cultures of the world.
The "digital divide" further exacerbates the prosperity disparity between the have-races and the have-not races.
Much of the blindness of the American left is due to subjectivity. A failure of imagination, some might call it. When it's the failure of white people to escape their own subjective racial context, I call it "white subjectivity". It's not really racism, but racism thrives on this type of blindness. It's not based on animosity toward another race, it's just based on a lack of imagination and understanding.
How many white people have seriously contemplated the "master's" whip falling across their own backs? The "master's" cock violating their mother, wife or daughter?
How many white people have seriously contemplated the experience of losing an entire continent (such as North America) to a militant, invasive, deceptive, expansionist, technologically-superior, foreign culture?
How many white people have seriously contemplated the slow death of Africa by a combination of militant adventurism, exploitive political intervention, deliberate cultural-destruction by missionaries, neglect of millions suffering famine, and the neglect of millions of AIDs sufferers.
What goes on in the minds of the executives of drug companies who insist on protecting their "intellectual property" from those millions in India and Africa who will certainly die without access to free generic anti-retroviral drugs.
How many Americans have considered the feelings of Iraqi fighters, many of whom feel patriotism, comradery, the neccessity to defend their streets from a foreign occupier.
How often do you hear anyone speak up for the right of Iraqi self-defense? We all say that invading Iraq was wrong, yet we do not often say, that Iraqis have a right of self-defense against a foreign invader. Not only do unprovoked attackers not have a right to attack them, but they do have a right to defend themselves.
What was going on in the mind of Barry McCaffrey when he order that huge, stranded, helpless convoy of Iraqi Republican Guard to be slaughtered on the "Highway of Death" during "Gulf War I"?
What was going on in the hearts and minds of Nixon, Kissinger, Rumsfeld and Cheney when hundreds of thousands of kind-hearted, rice-growing Buddhists were being slaughtered in south-east Asia? Probably the same thing as today, with regards to Iraq.
They don't care about the experience of all the US soldiers that bleed and die, and are permanently disfigured by their imperial ambitions. Kissinger confesses that power is an aphrodesiac. I guess his raging war-boners cut off his capacity to be aware of the suffering of a little girl splashed with napalm.
This ability to disregard the suffering of civilians, and yes, even the fighters who resist America's military adventures, is directly correlated to the ability to disregard the suffering of our own troops.
Please, lets all be concious of exactly how much injustice exists in the world today, and let's not forget the historical context for this disparity of wealth, physical security and creature-comfort.
Let's not exacerbate it with racial subjectivity, nationalist subjectivity, cultural-arrogance, and failure of imagination. All of these failures fall short of the definition of "racism", but they result in mass-death of people who belong to other cultures, races, nations.
I've written before on this theme of self-criticism of the American Left.
Excerpt:
The Failure of the American Left Hurts The World
The American Left has been shoehorned into self-identifying as the Democratic party. As Democrats, we've become decadent, weak-willed, and complicit in the crimes of our Republican countrymen. I say this as someone who only votes for Democrats and because I don't see any viable alternatives.Democratic political awareness is myopic, seeing domestic politics only, and of the last few decades only. The Democrats need to wake up and realize they need a geopolitical viewpoint, and a longer view of history.
We must not think of ourselves merely as Democrats. Instead, we should think of ourselves as world citizens.
Widen the scope of political awareness from national politics to geopolitics.
Widen the scope of historical awareness from decades to centuries.
Understand that Democracy and Socialism are not mutually exclusive.
I'm going to finish by asking a difficult question.