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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Search for Heroes and Villains
The most enduring story in our culture is the one that focuses on the battle between a hero and villain. Perhaps that's because it captures the way so many of us see the world. And so it should come as no surprise to any of us that much of our political story winds up being about the search for a hero and the identification of a villain.
As the Cold War ended in the early '90's, a lot of us on the left celebrated the fact that conservatives were relieved of their overarching villain...communists. Of course, it didn't take long before communists were replaced by terrorists and now, for some, that has morphed into Muslims as the villain in our world today.
But make no mistake about it, liberals have their own villains. These days they go by names like corporations, corporatists, plutocrats, etc. The same anger and fear that drives conservatives to blame the world's woes on Muslims drives liberals to do the same with corporations. Of course, there is an element of truth in both of these when it comes to certain specifics. But it is the demonization and labeling of whole groups of people as "villains" that is the problem.
And so today I began reflecting on why it is that we are so drawn to narratives that oversimplify things in this way.
Read More http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-search-for-heroes-and-villains.html
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cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
cali
(114,904 posts)one is how shallow the analysis is, but second and more importantly, is how dishonest it is. Conflating opposition to a system with bigotry against a religious group, is repugnant, but the underlying theme is this author's desire to bash the "far left". Reading more on her blog, makes that undeniable.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)1 in 5 children experiencing hunger per month in the good ole USA, while 1% control 40% of the wealth. That's capitalism; corporations are merely one instrument by which capitalism produces such a grotesquerie.
"During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists."
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/
“We Must Keep the Labor Unions Clean”: “Friendly” HUAC Witnesses Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney Blame Hollywood Labor Conflicts on Communist Infiltration
During the 1930s, the dominant labor union in Hollywood, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees Union (IATSE), was led by men with ties to organized crime. Studio heads also supported union leaders financially in order to inhibit strikes and keep labor cost increases low. After IATSE leaders were sentenced to prison terms for extortion, organizing drives by opposition labor groups began to surge. The Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), a craft union coalition headed by Herbert K. Sorrell, was founded in 1941 following a divisive, but successful strike against Walt Disney Productions by cartoonists aligned with Sorrell. During an eight-month CSU-led industry-wide strike in 1945, IATSE, aided by the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Values (MPA), a right-wing anticommunist industry group, launched a campaign to brand their rival as communistic. A further strike marked by police violence occurred the following year, and in 1947, with the cooperation of Screen Actors’ Guild president Ronald Reagan, the studio heads, MPA, and IATSE emerged victorious in the jurisdictional battle. In the following testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)—which the MPA had repeatedly urged to investigate subversives in the industry—Reagan and Disney portrayed the labor struggles solely in terms of a battle between forces for and against Communism.
TESTIMONY OF RONALD REAGAN . . .
Mr. STRIPLING: As a member of the board of directors, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and as an active member, have you at any time observed or noted within the organization a clique of either Communists or Fascists who were attempting to exert influence or pressure on the guild?
Mr. REAGAN: Well, sir, my testimony must be very similar to that of Mr. (George) Murphy and Mr. (Robert) Montgomery. There has been a small group within the Screen Actors Guild which has consistently opposed the policy of the guild board and officers of the guild, as evidenced by the vote on various issues. That small clique referred to has been suspected of more or less following the tactics that we associate with the Communist Party.
Mr. STRIPLING: Would you refer to them as a disruptive influence within the guild?
Mr. REAGAN: I would say that at times they have attempted to be a disruptive influence.
Mr. STRIPLING: You have no knowledge yourself as to whether or not any of them are members of the Communist Party?
Mr. REAGAN: No, sir; I have no investigative force, or anything, and I do not know.
Mr. STRIPLING: Has it ever been reported to you that certain members of the guild were Communists?
Mr. REAGAN: Yes, sir; I have heard different discussions and some of them tagged as Communists. . . .
________________________
Liberal/leftist criticism of plutocracy, "corporatism", etc., is not similar.
Not at all similar.
As illustrated above anti-communism was used to attack union leaders in the USA, to attack the right to free association in the USA. The union movement in the USA was all but destroyed. No liberal/progressive is advocating a similar attack on "corporatists".
The War on Terror is used to advance chaotic war externally, to advance attacks on or diminish 4th amendment rights (rights to privacy) internally, and so on, and is no way similar to left wing critiques of the moneyed plutocracy.
It's a false equivalence.
MaggieD
(7,393 posts)The extreme left lumps all corporations and wealthy people together the way the right lumps all Muslims together. Sadly.
cali
(114,904 posts)
MaggieD
(7,393 posts)Search on the word "rich" on this site. You will find plenty of examples.
cali
(114,904 posts)representing any the left and people like you who argue for such things as cluster bombs, but on the whole, most liberals- and there are vanishingly few extremists here, if any- make distinctions regarding people who have money.
MaggieD
(7,393 posts)Denying reality. Whatever.
cali
(114,904 posts)and as usual, maggs, you don't supply any evidence for your claims.
MaggieD
(7,393 posts)
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)"Game, set, match?"
MaggieD
(7,393 posts).... so I doubt it. 
Many of those are questions and some are how to fix the problem.
We live in a time where the disparity of resources between rich and poor is almost at it's zenith and you wonder why people on a progressive, democratic, left leaning website might have antipathy towards wallstreet?
I am at a loss of words for what exclamation to shout at you.
Then again it's never a bad idea to remember who's done what for whom . . .
. . . and who would prefer that he didn't.
How soon we forget, sigh.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Take those away, a lot of people in GD wouldnt know what to do with their own bad selves.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I still haven't found anywhere with more solid laughs per hour, we have some very funny people here both deliberately so and not.
cali
(114,904 posts)one is embodied in the quote from the Talmud: We don't see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. The premise being that there exists this true state outside human observation, of the way human affairs ARE. But that's impossible, of course. There is no objective true state of affairs. The closest we can get to that is the collective subjective- and consensus about any given human affair can get it wrong too. History is replete with examples. We see things through our filters and the most we can do is recognize that and consider the perspective of others and enlarge our base of knowledge to broaden the prisms we view the world through.
I'm not keen on the word evil. I don't use it. Perhaps that's a fault, but operating within the author's use of language, and her charge that liberals see corporations as evil, she neglects to investigate that charge, leaving the reader to do so.
Here you go: Corporations have become the most powerful block of entities in our society. They influence everything, and arguably exert control over the population. Is that influence/control, more beneficial or more detrimental? The author doesn't say. And she neglects to recognize that we use a form of shorthand when we discuss such things, that can be mistaken for "oversimplification". The author does that in her brief essay.
It's a fairly well written piece, but it's not a terribly thoughtful piece.
cali
(114,904 posts)as far as human history goes. We can discuss why, this is so, but not that it is so. A cursory examination of our earliest myths- Gilgamesh, for instance- illustrates that clearly. So the trick is, to be aware of that human tendency and not to fall into the twin traps of idolization and demonization: A difficult if not Sisyphean task in our culture.
The casting of corporations as villain has a long tradition. It's in the tradition of of viewing systems that bestow great power on the few at the expense of the many. I'd ask the author if she believes that such structures are more positive than negative in outcomes for the majority living within them..
When liberals speak to the "evils" of corporations, they're speaking more to the system that enables the few to shape our world, than to any individual. They're referring to a system that makes CU the law of the land, that creates a system that bails out corporate entities guilty of gross mismanagement at the very least, with taxpayer money. They're speaking to corporations that place profit over life and the environment. Do some corporate entities act well under the system? Yes. Do the most powerful and profitable? Largely no.
And anyone that can't see the difference between abjuring a system and bigotry against a religious or ethnic group, isn't looking.
trueblue2007
(17,234 posts)just watched the movie again.
cali
(114,904 posts)to be kind about it. More accurately, she's full of right wing talking points.
She conflates unions, schools and non-profits with corporations. She conflates Cornel West with Alex Jones. And more:
I'm skeptical of the comparison you're making here. When conservatives blame Muslims for the world's woes, they're making a culturally essentialist argument about Islam (and Muslims) to the effect that Islam is uniquely violent, uncivilized and generally hostile to anything not Islamic (which is not borne out by history, as you know). It's rooted in conservatives' view of a cultural and (sometimes) ethnic/racial hierarchy, and it's something that's more sinister than liberals' arguments about corporations, which are structural in nature. Liberals and other leftists are pointing out that certain institutions and social structures (and those who control them) acquire, concentrate, and exert power often to the detriment of those who are not similarly advantaged. To me, that's very different.
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Replies
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 7:39 PM
You are right that they are very different kinds of villains. I purposefully didn't go there because I was trying to get to the underlying need we seem to have to identify a villain.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:14 PM
Thanks for this comment - it made me think.
What I'm thinking is that there are lots of different institutions that have power over a certain group of people. And some of them do evil things. We're learning a lot lately about how that happens in police departments. But it also happens in some churches, schools, unions, nonprofits, etc. [/
Context is so important here. We can accept that people and groups are complicated while at the same time, in a particular context, emphasize what a particular person or institution is doing. So when we say that wealthy people and corporations exert outsized influence on our political system and can rig the game, so to speak, in their favor, it's not demonizing. It's pointing out responsibility in the context of the conversation we're having about power in American society and how it is allocated.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:47 PM
So when we say that wealthy people and corporations exert outsized influence on our political system and can rig the game, so to speak, in their favor, it's not demonizing.
That's not what I'm talking about when I refer to demonizing. I actually don't think corporations "rig the game" to the extend that some folks do. But I'd totally agree with the idea that they exert outsized influence.
Perhaps I'd have to go back and pull some quotes from things I've read lately that demonstrate what I mean by demonizing. Here's one example:
Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats. The question becomes, what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street. - Cornell West
Bernie Sanders tweeted a poster of this. It stirred up quite a reaction on my timeline.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:55 PM
I know people don't like these kinds of comparisons, but I don't find all that much difference between Cornell West's statement and the conspiracy theories of people like Alex Jones. And yet an awful lot of liberals buy it. Why is it so appealing to have a villain to blame?
cali
(114,904 posts)yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)I like, in comments: "People who actually want to engage approach a conversation with curiosity and respect rather than caricature and name-calling."
Wouldn't that be nice?
sheshe2
(83,844 posts)
Thanks~
cali
(114,904 posts)there are a couple of fatal flaws in the author's argument
one is embodied in the quote from the Talmud: We don't see things the way they are. We see things the way we are. The premise being that there exists this true state outside human observation, of the way human affairs ARE. But that's impossible, of course. There is no objective true state of affairs. The closest we can get to that is the collective subjective- and consensus about any given human affair can get it wrong too. History is replete with examples. We see things through our filters and the most we can do is recognize that and consider the perspective of others and enlarge our base of knowledge to broaden the prisms we view the world through.
I'm not keen on the word evil. I don't use it. Perhaps that's a fault, but operating within the author's use of language, and her charge that liberals see corporations as evil, she neglects to investigate that charge, leaving the reader to do so.
Here you go: Corporations have become the most powerful block of entities in our society. They influence everything, and arguably exert control over the population. Is that influence/control, more beneficial or more detrimental? The author doesn't say. And she neglects to recognize that we use a form of shorthand when we discuss such things, that can be mistaken for "oversimplification". The author does that in her brief essay.
It's a fairly well written piece, but it's not a terribly thoughtful piece.
TM99
(8,352 posts)to Alex Jones?
That kind of curiosity and respect? 
leftofcool
(19,460 posts)That was in the comments section. You probably should clarify that.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)And how bloody awful of them to do so. Dr Cornell West is a beautiful human being who tries to see the best but fiery in his demand for justice. Alex Jones is an inflamed boil who does nothing but lie and agitate and divide people for a buck.
TM99
(8,352 posts)to someone in the comments section. Pay attention and keep up if you are going to defend this POS.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Yea right! Republican party that way --->
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)
cali
(114,904 posts)funny how when you give them what they so self-righteously demand, they just ignore it.
sickening.
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)leftofcool
(19,460 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)which no had the guts to respond to. do tell what it made you think about and what conclusions you came to.