This change in “the left” that you cited was usurpation and obfuscation from the right. FDR was considered “left” because he saw the wisdom in sharing some of the wealth with the starving, angry immigrants who marched and demanded economic justice. THEY were “left” and their numbers thinned and their anger subsided. FDR was born into money, and believed in the capitalist class hierarchy, so he was being pragmatic when he placated the street mobs. The Democrat Party, from FDR to LBJ saw its mandate as protecting the liberal-capitalist system by supporting the least able to support themselves. During LBJ’s stint in the WH there was actually a government plan called “The War on Poverty!” Unions were touted and working conditions were the bread and butter issues that helped create a “middle class,” and this made the DP the favored party among workers and liberals, the latter being the upwardly aspiring believers in the liberal-capitalist model...like FDR. But between Watergate and the dissolution of the USSR, the DP was less and less interested in currying the votes of working people. In 1990, when Bill Clinton was campaigning to succeed Bush 1, the DP had abandoned all pretense of representing working people. It still wanted to get their votes, as it supported trade deals that hurt them, and deregulation to further impoverish them. So now most elected officials in the DP are millionaires and we no longer have anybody representing the vast majority of Americans. It’s Republican and Republican-lite. Any “leftists” among the American electorate have had to suffer in silence.
I still think the progressive left are being duped. America has an lefty idealogical justification for foreign meddling - the promotion of individual freedom - which sounds good and noble but obscures that these foreign adventures are at the end of the day simply the looting of other countries. The entire progressive left project - countering power differentials - is massive overreach, impractical and always makes things worse. You are useful idiots.
And I still think that you are using the liberal-capitalist definition of left and progressive. These are not leftists promoting war and looting other countries. As long as you agree to let the liberal-capitalist propagandists set the bounds of what is left and what is right, you will be consigned to muddled thinking.
Gotcha. Labels. The real left. We are talking at cross purposes.
I say it is the language of the left. It’s the appearance of doing good, the compassion for the oppressed and the desire to right the wrongs of the wrong thinking natives, (Hungary) followed by mismanagement, resource capture (looting ), withdrawal and the chaos of a power vacuum. The left’s story is redeployed as a justification for wonton power; the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium hides under the lovely patina afforded by talk of of liberation, freedom, democracy and all the rest of the jingoistic tripe. The causes of the left have been commandeered, repurposed and deployed to neutralize and bamboozle your bona fide left. You are cuckolds.
This change in “the left” that you cited was usurpation and obfuscation from the right. FDR was considered “left” because he saw the wisdom in sharing some of the wealth with the starving, angry immigrants who marched and demanded economic justice. THEY were “left” and their numbers thinned and their anger subsided. FDR was born into money, and believed in the capitalist class hierarchy, so he was being pragmatic when he placated the street mobs. The Democrat Party, from FDR to LBJ saw its mandate as protecting the liberal-capitalist system by supporting the least able to support themselves. During LBJ’s stint in the WH there was actually a government plan called “The War on Poverty!” Unions were touted and working conditions were the bread and butter issues that helped create a “middle class,” and this made the DP the favored party among workers and liberals, the latter being the upwardly aspiring believers in the liberal-capitalist model...like FDR. But between Watergate and the dissolution of the USSR, the DP was less and less interested in currying the votes of working people. In 1990, when Bill Clinton was campaigning to succeed Bush 1, the DP had abandoned all pretense of representing working people. It still wanted to get their votes, as it supported trade deals that hurt them, and deregulation to further impoverish them. So now most elected officials in the DP are millionaires and we no longer have anybody representing the vast majority of Americans. It’s Republican and Republican-lite. Any “leftists” among the American electorate have had to suffer in silence.
I still think the progressive left are being duped. America has an lefty idealogical justification for foreign meddling - the promotion of individual freedom - which sounds good and noble but obscures that these foreign adventures are at the end of the day simply the looting of other countries. The entire progressive left project - countering power differentials - is massive overreach, impractical and always makes things worse. You are useful idiots.
And I still think that you are using the liberal-capitalist definition of left and progressive. These are not leftists promoting war and looting other countries. As long as you agree to let the liberal-capitalist propagandists set the bounds of what is left and what is right, you will be consigned to muddled thinking.
Gotcha. Labels. The real left. We are talking at cross purposes.
I say it is the language of the left. It’s the appearance of doing good, the compassion for the oppressed and the desire to right the wrongs of the wrong thinking natives, (Hungary) followed by mismanagement, resource capture (looting ), withdrawal and the chaos of a power vacuum. The left’s story is redeployed as a justification for wonton power; the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium hides under the lovely patina afforded by talk of of liberation, freedom, democracy and all the rest of the jingoistic tripe. The causes of the left have been commandeered, repurposed and deployed to neutralize and bamboozle your bona fide left. You are cuckolds.
Great post.