(09-03-2022, 01:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(09-03-2022, 05:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In practice the Hard Left provokes the Hard Right into brutal reaction that contributes to further polarization of political life. The Hard Left is thus no counterbalance to the Hard Right. Street fights are not political debate.
It is telling that the American Left was completely absent from the scene on January 6, 2021. It is just as well. It could have done nothing except to become victims and create confusion. All the disgusting stuff was by the fascistic Right (and don't fool yourself: the attempt to keep Donald Trump as President through unconstitutional means is fascistic).
The far Left can't be identified with "street fights".
Even the Communist Party of the USA deprecates street fights. At the least they are ineffective in achieving anything other than to fit the narrative of fascist pigs who deserve to remain ignored for their politics. The fascistic Right never succeeds except when it seems needed for protecting class privilege and some majority culture. I have seen the claims of the Klan types proposing to protect "white culture" only to demonstrate how impoverished their narrow idea of what "white culture" is -- something joyless, mindless, and loveless, which is crazy.
It is also worth remembering that the Armed Services deprecate street fights.
Quote:It is just the cutting edge of progressive political opinion. Right now it is focused around 5 House members called "The Squad" led by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Such figures as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are representative. The recently-deceased author you posted about Barbara Erinreich would be another example. There are many others, but my point is they don't dominate the Democratic Party in the way that the extreme right dominates the Republican Party. So there is certainly an imbalance there.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seeks to pull America in her direction. People who expose the seamy side of American life instead of acquiescing with it because of some convenience (like cheap restaurant meals or low prices in grocery stores) seek to remove the burden from those who suffer to make such convenience possible. If it takes high prices to ensure that people who do the work get to participate fully in American economic life as they contribute to it, then so be it.
That people deserve to be paid well enough to participate in the economic order whose travails make such possible is far from an extreme position.
The Left is generally not hostile to science and academia. The Hard Right, whether MAGA or "believe-it-or-burn-in-Hell" fundamentalists often reject rational science because it violates class interest or some superstition.
Quote:Here's another member of "the Left" in the US congress:
https://jayapal.house.gov/about-me/
However, most Democrats in congress and presidential candidates these days are willing to support the steps needed to move the country forward, including President Biden.
The MAGA cult has corrupted the Republican Party. The GOP would be wise to wash its hands of this, but it may be too late for its increasingly-elderly constituency and the political figures who have chosen to ride the tiger. One has more to fear from MAGA so far if one is a Republican. People who shout "Hang Mike Pence!" deserve widespread disgrace. I might not like him, but he has done nothing to deserve any legal consequences -- let alone a lynching that is the antithesis of both law and order and the rule of law necessary for human rights and for the functioning of democracy.
Quote:There was an extreme Left which offered violence as a solution back in the late sixties. In 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald was such a person. These days, those on the Left who are violent are limited to some young thugs upset over police violence who break some windows and set some fires and burned down a police station in Kenosha WI during otherwise peaceful demonstrations organized by the Black Lives Matter group or antifa. The extreme right seizes on these and calls the whole movement violent, but it's not true, and a lot of those thugs have been provocateurs. Such angry young folks acting out can hardly be called a political Left.
Yes -- and the violent extremists of the Left are no longer relevant. Violent thugs exploiting the Black Lives Matters protests? They would exploit a World Series championship, too, or even just the desire for some swag. Black Lives Matters and Antifa, through their silence, seem to accept that those who hijack their protests deserve the harsh consequences that the legal system metes out to criminal perpetrators. I could make the case that those who take cameras to document police brutality that might arise make such rallies the worst possible circumstances in which to commit serious crimes. Those who bring cameras often take photos of overt crime not part of the protest, and turn their stills or video to police and prosecutors.
Quote:Right now, the extreme Right in our country is violent, but the extreme Left is not. I'm not saying there should be a balance in the amount of violence on each side. But if the Left does go in this direction, I don't think they realize that it takes much more organization than hoping for street riots.
The extreme Right has generally had a split between Bircher types who want government to become nothing more than an enforcer of the will of economic elites and clerical types who want an America that believes in the Bible (including young-earth creationism and a worldwide Flood) at the expense of science. They want a Junker-style America in which people live in abject fear of lender, landlord, and employer but with minimal violence, and a populace that knows and believes only what those elites want them to know and believe. Ideologically this is Pinochet. The other part of the extreme Right wanted at worst some "Racial Holy War (RAHOWA)" in which white Christians would annihilate, expel, or enslave the rest. MAGA is new, showing a pervasive contempt for institutions other than profit-seeking enterprise. Thus Wal*Mart and Lockheed are wonderful and well-renowned colleges are suspect. As with many fascist causes, the Hard Right sees great cities as Sodom and Gomorrah for having people unlike them in ethnicity, religion, and economic activity.
MAGA may have melded the Bircher types and the KKK types with those who have much resentment over people outdoing them economically despite being either non-white, non-straight, or non-Christian.
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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.