02-16-2017, 05:31 PM
A very thoughtful letter to the editor of The American Conservative (TAC), and an equally thoughtful reply, was posted on TAC's website.
But before providing the link to that, I would like to preface those letters with something that Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig, had to say about keeping an open mind in our (still) highly divisive political environment.
If we are to succeed we will have to make alliances with people and groups whose professed political stances are different from ours and at times unpalatable to us. We will have to shed our ideological purity. Saul Alinsky, whose successor, Ed Chambers, was [Mike] Gecan’s mentor, argued that the ideological rigidity of the left—something epitomized in identity politics and political correctness—effectively severed it from the lives of working men and women. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when college students led the anti-war protests and the sons of the working class did the fighting and dying in Vietnam. But it is true today as liberals and the left dismiss Trump supporters as irredeemable racists and bigots and ignore their feelings of betrayal and very real suffering. Condemning those who support Trump is political suicide. Alinsky detested such moral litmus tests. He insisted that there were “no permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests.”
“We have to listen to people unlike ourselves,” Gecan said, observing that this will be achieved not through the internet but through face-to-face relationships. “And once we’ve built a relationship we can agitate them and be willing to be agitated by them.”
Good advice, which Chris Hedges himself would do well to heed, self-admitted--sometimes uncompromising--socialist that he is.
Now for The American Conservative article:
"Is TAC Too Easy on Trump?" A reader voices her concerns; the editor replies.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a...-on-trump/
But before providing the link to that, I would like to preface those letters with something that Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig, had to say about keeping an open mind in our (still) highly divisive political environment.
If we are to succeed we will have to make alliances with people and groups whose professed political stances are different from ours and at times unpalatable to us. We will have to shed our ideological purity. Saul Alinsky, whose successor, Ed Chambers, was [Mike] Gecan’s mentor, argued that the ideological rigidity of the left—something epitomized in identity politics and political correctness—effectively severed it from the lives of working men and women. This was especially true during the Vietnam War when college students led the anti-war protests and the sons of the working class did the fighting and dying in Vietnam. But it is true today as liberals and the left dismiss Trump supporters as irredeemable racists and bigots and ignore their feelings of betrayal and very real suffering. Condemning those who support Trump is political suicide. Alinsky detested such moral litmus tests. He insisted that there were “no permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests.”
“We have to listen to people unlike ourselves,” Gecan said, observing that this will be achieved not through the internet but through face-to-face relationships. “And once we’ve built a relationship we can agitate them and be willing to be agitated by them.”
Good advice, which Chris Hedges himself would do well to heed, self-admitted--sometimes uncompromising--socialist that he is.
Now for The American Conservative article:
"Is TAC Too Easy on Trump?" A reader voices her concerns; the editor replies.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/a...-on-trump/