It’s no secret that the far right loathes anyone and everyone to the left of Adolf Hitler. Just try to get into one of Sarah Palin’s Nuremberg-style rallies; you’ll find plenty of evidence for that statement. But a certain branch of liberalism is hated even by unapologetic left-wingers.
In a 1996 column by Adolph Reed, reproduced this week on CommonDreams.org, the progressive writer summarized the reason for his hatred in one paragraph:
during the ’80s liberal opinion gradually accommodated to Reaganism by sliding rightward. Two rhetorical justifications emerged for this adaptation. The Democratic Leadership Council called for a new centrism, jettisoning egalitarian politics and the constituencies identified with it. Additionally, an excesses-of-the-’60s-as-fall-from-grace fable propelled this slide and justified the smug dismissal of those of us who didn’t want to go along. This new liberalism curtly demanded that we grow up and accept the realpolitik; Reaganism was all our fault for going too far anyway.
That evaluation is echoed this week by self-professed socialist and TruthDig.com writer Chris Hedges, who writes:
They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama-as if he reads them-asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
Robert Scheer blasts Obama for wearing the mask of a reformer while continuing business as usual. Glenn Greenwald reports on the creepy, cult-like devotion of Obama’s remaining supporters, exposing them for the false leftists they are.
Can one really begrudge these guys their bitterness? John Conyers can bitch all he wants about everything from witnesses thumbing their noses at subpoenas to continual waffling by Obamacrats, but at the end of the day he still cannot be counted upon to actually follow through on his frustrated-sounding rhetoric. The tired old man who had the power to start impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for two years and refused sure as hell isn’t going to start playing hardball with Hopey McChangerton now.
The same holds true for the rest of the so-called liberals, who have proven as dangerous to America and the rest of the world as any right-wing, fascist Republican. These are the same people who regularly denounce anyone to their left as “purists,” as though not selling one’s principles for access to power is somehow a bad thing. These are the same people who promote half measures as the only reasonable things to push for, proceed to accept less and less when told no by the powerful, and then lecture us on the left for calling them on it as though we’re made up of children who can’t handle the grim realities of political activism.
Small wonder they earn the scorn of genuine left-wingers. Perhaps it is time for all of us who haven’t thrown away our principles to look upon these pseudo-liberals for what they are: shameless phonies masking their true right-wing ideology.
by John Cory
There is, I suppose, a remote possibility that Obama and the democrats might finally wake up and realize they need the independent and liberal votes they’ve thrown away since inauguration day last year, and that all the corporate donations in the world aren’t going to save them without those votes, and start producing some useful progressive legislation and pass it in time for the midterms.
Creating and passing a universal single payer health care bill for example might do it all by itself, for example.