Protests
There was a protest in Wash, DC, today (I think another one in San Francisco). Pacifica Radio made it sound like it was shaping up to be a massive deal. C-SPAN showed that in spite of it being a beautiful day, the turnout was poor and the whole thing had zero energy. Just the usual suspects, with their Socialist Workers Party placards. Lost in the Sixties.
These are the remnants and the heirs to the New Left that was sure that when the Viet Cong defeated America in the Viet Nam War the peasants would at last be liberated. In fact, North Vietnam took over the country, executed tens of thousands of people, tossed many of the Viet Cong into re-education camps, let the Russians occupy Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang, and sent their armies into Cambodia and Laos, paving the way for the Khmer Rouge to slaughter two million people. Some liberation. But the New Left never looked back, never apologized or re-evaluated, just villified anyone who questioned this chain of events as "stooges" of the CIA. Later, they ignored or justified the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Chinese invasion and culture-cide in Tibet (a leftist friend of mine in graduate school wrote it off this way: "Yeah, well, Tibet was always part of China"), and always, always glorifying the Workers' Paradise that Fidel (the Heinz's hero) established on his miserable island. The astounding difference in living standards and political freedom between North Korea and South Korea, or between East Germany and West Germany, and what those differences should tell anybody with half a brain, is completely lost on these people. They never notice that people have to get on rafts to leave Cuba (and are willing to risk their lives to do it), or that it took a wall with border guards to keep people from leaving East Germany for West, and not the other way around. The Left was clueless in the 60's, and they are clueless now.
How can this be? I think the answer is that the Left is doubly blind, blinded by a vision and by a hatred. The vision is of an ideal society where inequality, which they see as the root of all social evils, has been eliminated. What they refuse to see, in spite of the whole depressing string of catastrophic examples that are there for anyone to examine, is that the kind of levelling they want can only be achieved by state enforcement, and a state strong enough to have any chance of doing it will of necessity be a totalitarian state. Totalitarian states, of course, involve the most hideous kinds of inequality, as we have seen repeatedly. They cannot accept that the theory behind their vision is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed, despite that fact having been demonstrated in the murders of tens of millions (Stalin and Mao combined killed something on the order of of 40 million people), gulags and slave labor camps, and starvation and misery due to failed economies. The Left is also blinded by its hatred for America as the exemplar and exporter of capitalism. Bush is the monster, so Saddam must be a misunderstood victim; America did not liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban, we mercilessly bombed the people of a poor country; etc. etc. etc.
The Left pursues its bankrupt agenda (listen to Pacifica any day, read the Nation any week, pick up anything by Noam Chomksy), while enjoying safe, prosperous, and free lives in the bourgeoisie democracies they claim to loath. (It is hard not to think of the Heinz's in their gated Scottdale golf course condo.) The hypocrisy is mind-numbing. Meanwhile, other people in other places, in vastly poorer circumstances, pay the price for this nonsense.
Byron
These are the remnants and the heirs to the New Left that was sure that when the Viet Cong defeated America in the Viet Nam War the peasants would at last be liberated. In fact, North Vietnam took over the country, executed tens of thousands of people, tossed many of the Viet Cong into re-education camps, let the Russians occupy Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang, and sent their armies into Cambodia and Laos, paving the way for the Khmer Rouge to slaughter two million people. Some liberation. But the New Left never looked back, never apologized or re-evaluated, just villified anyone who questioned this chain of events as "stooges" of the CIA. Later, they ignored or justified the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Chinese invasion and culture-cide in Tibet (a leftist friend of mine in graduate school wrote it off this way: "Yeah, well, Tibet was always part of China"), and always, always glorifying the Workers' Paradise that Fidel (the Heinz's hero) established on his miserable island. The astounding difference in living standards and political freedom between North Korea and South Korea, or between East Germany and West Germany, and what those differences should tell anybody with half a brain, is completely lost on these people. They never notice that people have to get on rafts to leave Cuba (and are willing to risk their lives to do it), or that it took a wall with border guards to keep people from leaving East Germany for West, and not the other way around. The Left was clueless in the 60's, and they are clueless now.
How can this be? I think the answer is that the Left is doubly blind, blinded by a vision and by a hatred. The vision is of an ideal society where inequality, which they see as the root of all social evils, has been eliminated. What they refuse to see, in spite of the whole depressing string of catastrophic examples that are there for anyone to examine, is that the kind of levelling they want can only be achieved by state enforcement, and a state strong enough to have any chance of doing it will of necessity be a totalitarian state. Totalitarian states, of course, involve the most hideous kinds of inequality, as we have seen repeatedly. They cannot accept that the theory behind their vision is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed, despite that fact having been demonstrated in the murders of tens of millions (Stalin and Mao combined killed something on the order of of 40 million people), gulags and slave labor camps, and starvation and misery due to failed economies. The Left is also blinded by its hatred for America as the exemplar and exporter of capitalism. Bush is the monster, so Saddam must be a misunderstood victim; America did not liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban, we mercilessly bombed the people of a poor country; etc. etc. etc.
The Left pursues its bankrupt agenda (listen to Pacifica any day, read the Nation any week, pick up anything by Noam Chomksy), while enjoying safe, prosperous, and free lives in the bourgeoisie democracies they claim to loath. (It is hard not to think of the Heinz's in their gated Scottdale golf course condo.) The hypocrisy is mind-numbing. Meanwhile, other people in other places, in vastly poorer circumstances, pay the price for this nonsense.
Byron
posted by Byron | Saturday, October 26, 2002
|
0 comments
