"Things Unseen" (Great article by Tom Hayden on Dems and progressives)

[Armstead]

This is a great overview that is ultumately a call for unity among Democrats and progressives to defeat Bush. It covers the Whole Enchillada, from globalization to Iraq to the forces of history.

(Hope people will comment or give a kick if they feel this is worthwhile.)



Evidence Of Things Unseen: The Rise of a New Movement
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17000


By Tom Hayden, AlterNet
October 21, 2003

EXCERPT:

The evidence of things unseen. There is rising a new movement in the world. It is bigger than the movement of the 1960s. Yet it is barely seen by the experts and analysts. They look only at the behavior of institutions and politicians, not the underlying forces that eventually burst into visibility.

<snip>
Together these movements mount a challenge to an entire worldview. We are experiencing an enlargement of dignity, an enlargement of what we consider sacred and therefore off the table, not negotiable. The purported Masters of the Universe are becoming as obsolete as those who once claimed the divine right of kings. The earth and its people are not for sale; the environment is not just a storehouse of materials for utilitarian exploitation; and cultural identities can't be replaced as if they were commodities, whether the treasures of Babylon or the rainforests of the Amazon. This movement is saying that diversity will not be looted.


Why is this happening? No one really knows. Movements arise in mystery at the margins, eventually change the mainstream, are repressed or co-opted, and return to the oblivion we call official history.


One explanation is that the globalization of US military and economic power is globalizing an opposition. It's a dialectic and, as it swirls and intensifies it can even bring down George Bush.

<snip>

MUCH MORE

[ulysses]

1. interesting

Or take Niall Ferguson, a major advocate of empire and contributor of many influential articles in the New York Times, who has extolled the Protestant Ethic as the major difference between America and Europe. Let me take you through his clever argument on behalf of a WASP America. First, he notes that Americans attend church services in far greater numbers than Europeans, evidence that Max Weber's "protestant ethic" is alive and well here. As a result, Americans are inspired to work harder and longer than the Germans, the French, the Dutch and Norwegians who are "astonishingly idle," "work-shy" and, of course, "Godless." He says the Protestant Ethic is being replaced in Europe by "the spirit of secularized sloth."

Is this the same Niall Ferguson who wrote The Pity of War a few years back, arguing that the UK shouldn't have gotten involved in WWI? I haven't seen any of the NYT articles, but I may have to thumb through the book again seeing this take on the PWE, etc...

[Armstead]

3. What's interest i9s Hayden's response

(From the article):

"Well, I tell you, if Americans learn to read between the lines and understand what the conflict with the Europeans is about, they will reject the scapegoating and bashing that comes out of this Administration.


Instead of looking down our noses at the Europeans, we should be Europeanizing our approach to work, vacations and leisure time – and for that matter, Canadianizing our approach to health care. How's that for a progressive platform – longer vacations for all!


Instead, because of cultural brainwashing, a recent survey showed that 19 percent of Americans thought they already were in the top 1 percent income bracket, and another 20 percent believed they would be eventually. That's what watching too much television in the center of empire can do to your head, and why the struggle is a cultural one, not simply political or economic, but a battle over how images and demons and fantasies are produced and wired into our consciousness."

[ulysses]

4. right

This is all good, good stuff. And hey, as long as the Europeans are serving indolence in equal measure with their sloth, you know I'm a fan. :)

The message of corporate globalization boils down to "you - but not I - need to accept less consideration for more work".

[Armstead]

10. Perfect

>>>The message of corporate globalization boils down to "you - but not I - need to accept less consideration for more work".<<

You nailed it Uly.

[Woodstock]

6. That quote is amazing

"...a recent survey showed that 19 percent of Americans thought they already were in the top 1 percent income bracket, and another 20 percent believed they would be eventually."

Does anyone have figures on what income level the top 1% really is?

[ulysses]

2. more

Each of us may decide to back an individual candidate, and that can expand our movement. But let's not let ourselves be swallowed in any single campaign. When the candidates ask for our time and money, let's also ask them to join our movement around a new vision of what America can be.

:kick:

[ulysses]

5. anyone up for a good read today?

:kick:

[DUreader]

7. kick

[mandyky]

8. Has Hayden endorsed anyone yet?

Great speech, wish I'd been there.

[sendero]

9. great...

... 'big picture' insights, well worth reading.

[MissMarple]

11. "Where ever there is life, dignity resists suffocation and oblivion."

"It comes down to recognizing the dignity in all things. Dignity has intrinsic value, it cannot be violated without a resistance. It cannot be defeated. Wherever there is life, dignity resists suffocation and oblivion. That's the world we want. That's the world the world wants. Not an empire, not even a world of great powers, but a world of democracies based on dignity."

Pretty good stuff, even if it is all idealistic and all. :D

[KoKo]

12. What's interesting about this article is that it would go well with

posts from the old DU-1 Forum in the "Meeting Room." Where humanists, New Agers and Astrologers talked about this quite a bit when so many of us were "down in the dumps" after the Mid-Term Elections and during the buildi-up to the Iraq invasion.

The feeling of many of these posters is that we have a chance for a change from Corporate Globalism to new ways of working together as our planet grows smaller. If we don't do this, well then some think the "Mayan Calendar" will kick in in 2012. Because unless this work is done by all of us "we are doomed." We don't have a choice, but to keep working away chipping away at the PNAC'ers and the Globalists (who work for the Corporate Good) over the basic rights of humanity to exist in a dignified way, and to have some harmony with our Global Earth Environment.

I'm giving this a kick, although I know my comments will be ignored or not taken in the spirit they were intended, but I hope with all my heart and soul that there really is a "new movement" budding and that some of us here are part of it.

:kick:

[mandyky]

14. This chance for change is why

I come here, support Dean, and a few other things. Hopefully there are still Americans who root for underdogs and want to see real justice prevail.

PS Your post did not go unnoticed. ;)

[Armstead]

19. Big Picture

You are on the money in terms of all of this being in tune with larger forces.

Personally, I have some New Ager in me, but I don't like it when it gets too specific. However, whether put in those terms, or in a more earthly level of historical patterns and cycles, something bigger is going on.

[Resistance Is Futile]

13. Hopeless optimism

An unseen 'movement' will defeat the 6000lbs gorilla known as corporate functionalism which is capable of devouring entire countries and leaving behind nothing but grinding poverty and happy olgiarchs. If you believe this, boy have I got a deal for you....

Right wing power is in ascendence at present and nothing the masses can do will stop it. Public protest is only a useful weapon against enemies who can be shamed. The right wing has no shame and will do whatever it wants regardless of public opposition. The conquest of Iraq is absolute proof of this.

The only point this guy gets right is that mass movements have been known to by terminated by repression. Repression is already ending the left in many countries, including the US (for what passes for the American 'left') and it will only get worse as the fascists get closer to their objectives.

[JanMichael]

15. Well geez...Don't you just live up to your user-name!

Nothing is permenant. Nothing is invincible.

[Armstead]

18. Yup permanent like the Spanish Empire

or the "Sun never sets on the British Empire"

Or the days when Rome was the center of power in the world.

Nothing is permanent, least of all empires.

[JanMichael]

16. This one statement stood out to me.

"This new globalization arises, some say, in response to a power vacuum after the Cold War which the US filled. But contrary to the end-of-history theorists, the failure and fall of communism did not mean the dialectic was dead and that the wretched of the earth would quietly go away."

No. It will not go away. It will never go away.

And someday, perhaps sooner than we anticipate, it will defeat the avaricious system that we are under today.

[RichM]

17. A good article. Of the many points one could single out for attention, I'd

choose a small one, & a larger one. Here is the smaller:

"While there is growing opposition in this country to the American death toll and budgetary costs of the Iraqi quagmire, there is virtually no debate about our assault on the Iraqi public sector by the writ of Bremer..."

- When I read this, it struck me that it just isn't enough for Democrats to say that Bush invaded Iraq "without an exit strategy," or that "his plan was flawed," or that his management of the war "failed to exhibit leadership." All those criticisms are true but still entirely miss the point. The point is that the very conception of the invasion was to allow US investors to take over everything valuable in that country. Democrats are chipping away at the petty level of "his plan was flawed," instead of saying, in dead earnest, that the President of the United States and his closest advisors have committed a horrible crime. They are not objecting to the concept of the crime, merely the manner in which it was carried out.

The larger point of Hayden's article is one I have much sympathy for. It was the recurrent theme of the piece, expressed in several places, among them by the statement that: "...the globalization of US military and economic power is globalizing an opposition."

Ever since the big march of last Feb 15, I have wanted to see the coalescing of the next logical stage of that opposition.

[Armstead]

20. It is coalescing

but the nature of it is that you don't see it coalescing.