A Voice From The Left-The Latest From The Steve Lendman Blog
A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Sam Lowell was feeling his years these days, not so much the physical aches and pains that seem to reside for months when in the days of his youth, the days when he would cavort around the country doing his best Jack Kerouac on the road imitation and later after Jake Jacobs was killed in some Vietnam outpost in the Central Highlands his best high hat radical fight against the American monster role, and think nothing of it but politically weary. As he told his old time friend and comrade Ralph Morris over the cellphone one night when he was feeling down after a day of trying to get his Congressman, Danny Shea, to listen to him and the others in his delegation to vote against the war appropriations for the Middle East nightmare and for the umpteenth time was told that by Shea that he had to support the supply of American “boots on the ground” no matter what, he was weary unto death of such thankless delegations, small anti-war rallies where passers-by show utter indifference and of people refusing to talk any serious politics except the fruitless “horse race” stuff for President and the like. (That comrade expression by the way not signifying some allegiance to Moscow or Peking [sic] like it very well might have done in the old days but in the old fashion 19th century way to connote a politically solid friendship for which either party would scale the barricades for, and gladly.
Of course Ralph felt a little badly for Sam (although he knew better than to mention the fact to Sam for Sam was not the kind of guy who took feeling badly for, especially in politics, with good grace) since he had been instrumental in getting Sam back into the left-wing liberal political battles back in 2002 in the lead-up to the Bush junior Iraq War after years of badgering him about his withdrawal from active progressive politics when the great wave of the 1960s ebbed and it looked like an Ice Age had set in for the kind of world that they both were seeking in their callow youths. Ralph had stayed far more active in progressive circles over the years but even he had to admit that he had drifted far from the in-your-face street confrontations like the one down in Washington in 1971 where he and Sam had met in RFK Stadium after they had been arrested and placed there after an indiscriminate police round-up of anybody who even looked young and was not wearing a three-piece suit that day. He had spent his off-hours when not running his father’s electrical shop doing the exact same things that Sam had bitched to him about over the phone. With the advent of the Internet and the rise of social networking he had originally thought that the old idea of a world “tribal youth nation” had traction again. He had even gone full force when the rising star of Barack Obama seemed like it would push the rock up the hill. And although that particular star had turned into a cipher he was still fighting the good fight trying to make this foolish messy democratic system work since those old street confrontation days didn’t produce anything but forty plus years of cold cultural civils wars, and they were not on the winning side.
Ralph thought he would try to buck Sam up after that last call by referring him to some blogs that he “followed” (followed here meaning merely clinking onto the blogger’s homepage and nothing more sinister like some cultish madness that he had nearly got caught up in after the ‘60s wave turned tepid and he was looking for some “new age” personal solutions) to show he had kindred out there in the progressive political universe. Sam did pay attention to a couple, one in particular the Steve Lendman blog which gave good analyses but after a while he had this abiding feeling that he was again spinning his wheels in this progressive mish-mash. He decided to write something about his dilemma although he is not a writer but rather had just recently retired from the printing business which was taken over by his son. Here is what he had to say, and here is where the problem lies:
Over the last couple of years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog. The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies.
I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air.
I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.
Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.
The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. As do my old anti-war comrade Ralph Morris and myself as well. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank).
Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work. Hell, I hope I can find such a home too because this endless beseeching of bourgeois politicians to do the right thing is getting threadbare and getting me old time street action crazy.
A link below to link to the Steve Lendman Blog
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
Sam Lowell was feeling his years these days, not so much the physical aches and pains that seem to reside for months when in the days of his youth, the days when he would cavort around the country doing his best Jack Kerouac on the road imitation and later after Jake Jacobs was killed in some Vietnam outpost in the Central Highlands his best high hat radical fight against the American monster role, and think nothing of it but politically weary. As he told his old time friend and comrade Ralph Morris over the cellphone one night when he was feeling down after a day of trying to get his Congressman, Danny Shea, to listen to him and the others in his delegation to vote against the war appropriations for the Middle East nightmare and for the umpteenth time was told that by Shea that he had to support the supply of American “boots on the ground” no matter what, he was weary unto death of such thankless delegations, small anti-war rallies where passers-by show utter indifference and of people refusing to talk any serious politics except the fruitless “horse race” stuff for President and the like. (That comrade expression by the way not signifying some allegiance to Moscow or Peking [sic] like it very well might have done in the old days but in the old fashion 19th century way to connote a politically solid friendship for which either party would scale the barricades for, and gladly.
Of course Ralph felt a little badly for Sam (although he knew better than to mention the fact to Sam for Sam was not the kind of guy who took feeling badly for, especially in politics, with good grace) since he had been instrumental in getting Sam back into the left-wing liberal political battles back in 2002 in the lead-up to the Bush junior Iraq War after years of badgering him about his withdrawal from active progressive politics when the great wave of the 1960s ebbed and it looked like an Ice Age had set in for the kind of world that they both were seeking in their callow youths. Ralph had stayed far more active in progressive circles over the years but even he had to admit that he had drifted far from the in-your-face street confrontations like the one down in Washington in 1971 where he and Sam had met in RFK Stadium after they had been arrested and placed there after an indiscriminate police round-up of anybody who even looked young and was not wearing a three-piece suit that day. He had spent his off-hours when not running his father’s electrical shop doing the exact same things that Sam had bitched to him about over the phone. With the advent of the Internet and the rise of social networking he had originally thought that the old idea of a world “tribal youth nation” had traction again. He had even gone full force when the rising star of Barack Obama seemed like it would push the rock up the hill. And although that particular star had turned into a cipher he was still fighting the good fight trying to make this foolish messy democratic system work since those old street confrontation days didn’t produce anything but forty plus years of cold cultural civils wars, and they were not on the winning side.
Ralph thought he would try to buck Sam up after that last call by referring him to some blogs that he “followed” (followed here meaning merely clinking onto the blogger’s homepage and nothing more sinister like some cultish madness that he had nearly got caught up in after the ‘60s wave turned tepid and he was looking for some “new age” personal solutions) to show he had kindred out there in the progressive political universe. Sam did pay attention to a couple, one in particular the Steve Lendman blog which gave good analyses but after a while he had this abiding feeling that he was again spinning his wheels in this progressive mish-mash. He decided to write something about his dilemma although he is not a writer but rather had just recently retired from the printing business which was taken over by his son. Here is what he had to say, and here is where the problem lies:
Over the last couple of years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog. The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies.
I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air.
I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.
Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.
The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. As do my old anti-war comrade Ralph Morris and myself as well. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank).
Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of depending on bourgeois society to reform itself. On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work. Hell, I hope I can find such a home too because this endless beseeching of bourgeois politicians to do the right thing is getting threadbare and getting me old time street action crazy.
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