The journalist Chris Hedges has done some fine work, but reading his analysis on the site "Truthdig" that he and fellow journalist Robert Scheer operate, reminded me of an adage I haven't heard in a while:
"Some people on the left are so left they are far right."
If you look at the comments, you realize that there are people on the left who are so, so put out with the Democratic Party, with Obama, with Congress that there are a few bloggers willing to abandon all restraint and enthuse about heads rolling, and even the prospect of guillotines on the national mall.
Is the left joining the Tea Party movement? In the call to not vote, to "not pity the Democrats" what kind of fire are these people playing with? This would seem to be an example of how the need to make money from punditry seems to drive everyone to the furthest extreme. Apparently some people feel that it is progressive to withdraw from elections altogether and watch as the country descends into anarchy and fascism so that there will be enough clarity for the middle-grounders. But no one asks, "then what?"
http://www.truthdig.com/...
I sometimes wonder if there is not a stupefying ray aimed at earth from outer space that is projecting some kind of brain freeze. The "ground zero mosque" thing and the burning the Koran thing really make one wonder, on top of Pain's tweets making news and Glen Beck trying on George Washington's hat and a long list of other such follies.
As a participant in political processes for years at the municipal level, where everyone involved can be pretty well known, it has become obvious that a certain number of participants are affected too much by TV.
It isn't so much the content that brainwashes us, but the over and over saturation of the plot line pattern. Every commercial, every sort of TV show, even the news, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In dramas, there is always a crisis resolution. Everything on TV is over in a satisfactorily short time frame.
In real life, it may be difficult for the best minds to gain a consensus on how to define problems, let alone solve them and let alone in a satisfying time frame. Real solutions may take years, and even decades.
So what happens is that people come to the process because they have become concerned about a problem. They come forth in full umbrage, demanding something be done. When the process fails to respond to those who have just now figured out something is a problem, they get mad. You can see that they have only budgeted a short amount of time. When the situation appears to not be moving towards a resolution quickly enough, they go supernova and then they disappear from the process. If you see them later on, they will usually just give you a glare or pretend they don't recognize you.
My suspicion is that this is the real psychology behind the Tea Party movement, and to me, those on the left who express the greatest impatience with the electoral process are probably responding to the same underlying issues, which are about how much this society is conditioned by the media at a level people won't recognize. Most people are not subtle and deeply reflective thinkers.
One shouldn't need a crystal ball to foresee that frustration will continue to rise because the complexity of our problems is going to continue to increase.
I think when people imagine that a revolution would be good, they tend to fail to ask what happens the day after the revolution. Won't people want the electricity on? Won't people want to take their kids to school without fear of gangs running loose with automatic weapons without police to contain them? Won't they want the schools to operate? The buses to run? Stoplights to work? Contracts honored?
The day after the revolution we have the very same issues that frustrated everyone the day before. Nothing changes except that, if the guillotine has been set up on the National Mall and heads are rolling on CNN,
a lot of things will be very much worse.
When I compare the fora, Daily Kos seems to have the potential for bringing together a lot of different people along the greater part of the Democratic part of the political spectrum, many of whom are among the more deliberate and reflective thinkers as well as activists who go out in the real world and interact with the neighborhood. My hope is that those who are concerned enough about the fate of the country to be involved will prevail through taking leadership and promoting a more conscious process.
To me, our only hope lies in becoming more intelligent, through self discipline, self reflection, study of what is really going on, and deconstruction of all the ways that our minds are influenced artificially. The survival of the Republic depends absolutely on the health of the "enlightened public."
That, is us.