Reply #202: so what? [View All]

[Two Americas]

Who is praising the Clinton candidacy? It is such a clear sign of profound weakness to promote Obama by criticizing Clinton.

When I say "turn the world upside down" I mean confusing cause and effect, a chronic problem in modern liberalism for which the Obama campaign is the penultimate (and I believe final) expression. The "war" - and there is no "war," and calling it a "war" illustrates the problem with modern liberalism and its obsession over isolated and emotionalized feel-good causes, as well as reinforcing and promoting the administration's propaganda about what is happening in Iraq - is an effect, an effect that is consistent with the plans and goals of the extreme right wing, acting on behalf of the wealthy and powerful few.

We have a candidacy that is very strong when talking about effects, and very weak on talking about causes. This is a weak message to take to the public, and is easily compromised and co-opted. Why is that? It is because the small faction that controls modern liberalism and the party seeks to eliminate the unpleasant effects of the social problems, so they are all turned into "positions" on "issues" and phrased and promoted in childish ways - "I am against war" and "I am against poison" and "I am against bad things," but there is a violent resistance to looking at causes and a rock solid commitment to the status quo.

In this way, modern liberalism succeeds, though it looks as though it is failing. It succeeds in being an outlet and a diversion to lure people away from real political action, and it succeeds in giving people an opportunity to express themselves and feel good about themselves, and it succeeds at keeping inequality and injustice in place by mitigating the most obvious and unpleasant effects of that inequality and injustice.

This is all very weak politically, and the right wingers - not living in the fantasy world of self-delusion that we live in - make mincemeat of us again and again. They go for results, we go for being "right." They laugh their asses off at us, at how pathetically weak, divided and hypocritical we are. It is child's play for them to demolish modern liberalism.