Reply #13: Maybe the bottom line is... [View All]

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Those of us on the Left have heard for decades now sentiments such as "what will ever make you happy?" and "you are a purist" and "it is easy to criticize, but do you have any positive suggestions or do you just like to whine and complain?" and other similar statements.

There are a number of implied assumptions behind this "not perfect enough for you" line of assault - and make no mistake, it is an assault, designed to silence people and terminate discussion.

To say that we are seeking perfection is to imply that the political ship of state is kinda sorta there or moving “in the right direction." What "the purists" tend to point out here is not that our elected officials are failing some perfection test – an imaginary test that suggests that he/they are mostly OK but has a few flaws that only perfectionists would notice, and a test that the people being accused of using it are not using - but rather that these people are not at all, in any way, remotely, or vaguely aligned with the working people and that the notion that they are aligned with us is all a carefully created and totally false illusion. What are presumed to be "flaws" – which a few of us are supposedly unwilling to overlook in our stubbornness and obtuseness – are actually accurate glimpses through the camouflage at the whole picture, not minor peripheral and insignificant flaws.

Beyond the question of whether or not this particular person is perfect, I also reject the assumption that we are all looking for a person to begin with, and that looking for a person is the essence of politics.

Looking for a person is the problem, not the solution. Insulting, frustrating, and silencing the most perceptive among us is what is destroying the possibility of a strong Left emerging, and is the tawdry and amoral House Negro work that keeps the ruling class in place.

Maybe the bottom line is whether or not we all seek the same depth of changes in our society.