Skip to content

The Cowardly Liberals

The Cowardly Liberals

January 3, 2011 SVadmin Comments 7 comments

Chris Hedges, like many on the left, is becoming angrier and angrier. Author most recently of Death of the Liberal Class, he writes today in Truthdig.Com:

There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.

Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same.

[ … ]

“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. “The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.”

Hedges, who was arrested along with Daniel Ellsberg and more than 130 other anti-war demonstrators outside the White House earlier this month, says that “either we begin to practice a fierce moral autonomy and rise up in multiple acts of physical defiance that have no discernable short-term benefit, or we accept the inevitability of corporate slavery.”

The left, he says, must stop merely making noises, only to cave in the end.

Again quoting Nader:

“The best example is Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. Obama has given them nothing. Therefore, they are demanding nothing. They huff and puff. They make tough speeches. But Trumka hasn’t even made Obama’s campaign pledge of a $9.50 minimum wage by this year an issue. If you want to increase consumer demand, what better way to do it than to unleash $300 billion in wages? The card check for unionization, which Obama pledged as his No. 1 sop to the labor unions, is dead. The unions do not even demand a hearing. And now wait till you see what they will do to the public employee unions. Part of it is their own fault. They are going to be crushed. Everybody is ganging up on them. You have new class warfare. It is non-unionized lower income and middle class taking it out on the unionized middle-income public employees. It is a classic example of oligarchic manipulation.”

Read full article here: ‘The Left Has Nowhere to Go’

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Blog, Politics

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
800,000-Year History of Atmospheric CO2
NEXT
Robert Parry: “The Coming War over the Constitution”

Join Our Mailing List

7 thoughts on “The Cowardly Liberals”

  1. GregZaller says:
    January 5, 2011 at 5:55 pm

    I don’t think trying to shame people should be in the liberal tool kit. It just exacerbates the problem by allowing the shamer to feel self righteous and the shamee to shut down and turn off.

    Where are the realistic solutions, please?

  2. Don Pelton says:
    January 5, 2011 at 7:27 pm

    It has nothing to do with shame.

    It has everything to do with responsibility.

  3. GregZaller says:
    January 5, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    This is what dictionary.com uses to define “shame”

    verb (used with object)
    5.
    to cause to feel shame; make ashamed: His cowardice shamed him.
    6.
    to drive, force, etc., through shame: He shamed her into going.
    7.
    to cover with ignominy or reproach; disgrace.

  4. depelton says:
    January 5, 2011 at 11:09 pm

    Thanks, Greg. Very enlightening.

    It sounds like shame is a very charged issue with you, and — if I get your point — you want to spare the Dems and liberals from being shamed. The best way for them to avoid shame is to walk their talk, something they seem to be having difficulty doing.

    I’ve been a dedicated liberal Democrat myself for over fifty years, so I have a personal stake in the values of the Democratic Party. My concern is the abandonment of core progressive principles by the centrist elements of the Democratic Party. They might as well be conservatives Republicans.

    To dismiss this concern as merely self-righteous, as you did in your original comment, is offensive.

    You ask what are the realistic solutions. Hedges clearly calls for acts of “fierce moral autonomy.”

    These are the realistic solutions if the goal is — as I believe it is — to recover the soul of the party.

  5. depelton says:
    January 5, 2011 at 11:29 pm

    By the way, Greg, I have tremendous admiration for your courageous work in Pakistan, so I suspect you’re looking for something concrete and positive in that sense. I do appreciate that.

  6. GregZaller says:
    January 6, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Hi Don, I don’t want to spare them the shame, I just don’t think it works as intended if the object is to raise their consciousness. You must have heard my Buckminster quote, “You can’t change things by fighting the existing reality. You have to build a new model that makes the old obsolete.” I really believe in that.

    Too bad you don’t have an email alert for comments. Maybe we ought to move over onto one of Jeff P’s old blogs and use it there. My email is also gregzaller@gmail.com but perhaps we are done?

  7. Don Pelton says:
    January 6, 2011 at 5:17 pm

    Thanks, Greg. Yes, I think we’re done.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

“Everlasting Arms”

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Recent Posts

  • Where to get abortion pills and how to use them
  • In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out
  • Why Am I Obsessed With Ukraine?
  • Is “Ukraine Losing Badly” ?
  • Bill Clinton Makes a Pathetic Attempt to Retroactively Justify His Decision to Expand NATO

Recent Comments

  • Putin in Media Myth and Reality: Which is Which? on Ukraine War: A Bonanza for the Arms Industry
  • SVadmin on Countdown to World War III?
  • Pratima Basu on Scenes From Our Weekend at Lake Tahoe
  • IN PRAISE OF WARRIORS, NOT WAR on Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us
  • SVadmin on How Suzanne Simard changed our relationship to trees

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Abortion
  • Afghanistan
  • Aging
  • American Empire
  • Anti-Depressant
  • Arms Sales
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Budget
  • Buskers
  • Capitalism
  • Carbon Offsets
  • Cartoon
  • China
  • Climate Change
  • Compassion
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Cosmology
  • Coup
  • COVID-19
  • Democracy
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Drought
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Empire
  • Environment
  • Extinction
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Filibuster
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Ecology
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Gardening
  • Gender
  • GOP
  • Great Movies
  • Groundwater
  • Halloween
  • Health Care
  • High Country News
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Ignorance
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous Peoples' Day
  • Insects
  • Israel
  • Labor
  • Lobbying
  • Local
  • Lunar Influence
  • Marijuana
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Men's Issues
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Moral Obligations
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • NATO
  • Neoliberalism
  • New Cold War
  • Nuclear War
  • Nutrition
  • Oligarchy
  • Palestine
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Peace
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Physics
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Race
  • Religion
  • Republican Derangement
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rights of Nature
  • Rise Gold
  • Rivers
  • Romance
  • Russia
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Slavery
  • Sleep
  • Smoke Inhalation
  • Student Debt
  • Summer
  • Technology
  • The Hartmann Report
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Tyranny
  • Ukraine
  • Uncategorized
  • Unipolar vs. Multipolar
  • Vaccine Refusal
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wells
  • Wildfires
  • Winter
  • Women's Issues
  • Work
  • Yemen

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2022   All Rights Reserved.