New Year Bageantry: Joe Bageant Interview

[eg101]

The Richard Oxman-Joe Bageant (Rich/Joe Interview)
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 31, 2004




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JB: Hoooboy! That's a biggun. See, I don't believe the U.S. really has a political left. It just has personalities who consider themselves leftists and make an identity gig of it. If we really had a left, then I could walk out this door to a leftist party headquarters and take political action. It's not like I can call up the local chapter of the Rifondazione Comunista, as in Italy. It's not like I can stop by the newsstand and buy a copy of Liberazione. Americans kid themselves about having choices. Hell, they won't even dare call themselves leftists. They've backed off into calling themselves "progressives." That is totally gutless. What is the alternative to “progress?” The Stone Age? I think the U.S. has a cottage culture industry called the left. And it has a body of middle class professionals and semi-professionals who cannot bring themselves to associate with Republicans, so they call themselves “liberals”. But liberals are too comfortable. So they deny reality. They are not going to do anything so long as they are comfortably insulated in the middle class. They are not going to wade into that hate filled ditch of political action, real political action that requires sacrifice, to battle for America’s soul---not as long as they are still living on a good street, sending their kids to Montessori and getting their slice of the American quiche. I guess what I'm saying is that until we get a real left in this country, one capable of creating change through radical action, one willing to risk everything for what they believe, we should not be talking about what our pseudo-left should be doing. Our pseudo-left is doing exactly what it should be doing. Posturing, bickering amid itself and boring the hell out of the rest of America.

I just realized that I didn't come close to answering your question: What must “progressives” wake up to...to have a chance at moving in solidarity nationwide against The Extreme Right?

American progressives need to wake up to the fact that they are just as big a part of the world's problems as the Republicans, so long as they insist on living the American lifestyle. As long as they continue to thoughtlessly consume the world as if it were their birthright. All talk and no walk. Buying organic toilet paper and voting for evasive Democratic hacks just isn't going to cut it guys.

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JB: One man never beat a mob on the mob's own turf. But one man can sure as hell get outside the turf and lob hand grenades at the mob. Can one even get away at all? Of course not. But I don't have to suffer the daily insults of America's military capitalist mind warp ALL the time for chrissake! I think I can leave the country for months at a time...get away to think and write and screw and feel free. And to hear some other voices and opinions from the outside world. It is impossible to do so inside this capitalist military state, where information is so controlled and the citizenry's behavior and attitudes are so heavily modified by media, consumer advertising, etc. Also, the older I get the more I appreciate simplicity...like buying vegetables in the market and spending all day preparing them. Playing my little parlor guitar. Napping with my dogs in the afternoon. Frankly, I'd like to slip away to a more contemplative life, but if you are born in this country you gotta buy back your fucking life before you are allowed to change it. The state owns us from birth. Ensnares us in its economic system as productive and consumer units. As far as planting seeds that may not bear fruit in our lifetimes, well, that's a global proposition, isn't it? You can do that from anywhere because it is about how you conduct your daily life. I think it is as much about what you refuse to do as what you do. Of course I am very much full of shit and tend to do as little as possible whenever possible. So screwing off and leaving the world alone, not using much of it up, appeals to me. That and internationalist solidarity of mankind. But even to accomplish that, we need to slow down, shut the fuck up and think about the world and our places in it. THEN we can commence to raise hell against the systems that enslave us.

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more here:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec2004/Oxman-Bageant1231.htm