Stan Goff: Golloway's courage challenges Dems to be a real opposition

[JackRiddler]

An open letter from Stan Goff intended for free distribution.

Original link at http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=102

Gorgeous George - An Open Letter to U.S. Democratic Elected Officials

Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States
(with damn few exceptions),

I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.

George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be -- a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths -- I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies. While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman -- though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does -- if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians -- not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

The reason Galloway was able to break from your mirror party in UK -- Blair's sell-out Labor Party -- and still get elected, is that Galloway fights for his convictions and the real needs of his constituents, and doesn't run for cover every time the bully-boys of the capitalist extablishment attempt to take him down.

Here's a hint.

People follow those who speak plainly and fight. Aside from Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, and Cynthia McKinney (not surprisingly Black women who know where it goes if you let rich white men get away with giving you a bunch of shit) and a precious few others, the Democratic Party is not only just another party controlled by big capitalists; it is not even a good *capitalist* opposition party (much less a real opposition).

You don't deserve anyone's support, not even as a tactical matter any longer, because you end up doing ritual verbal combat then giving the “cornpone Nazisâ€? of the Republcan Party any goddamn thing they want. That’s why Galloway rhetorically spanking that soap-opera-looking shitbird was the most satisfying thing many of us have seen in months.

That's exactly why some of us are saying go Bolivian on their asses. Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die. Stop working, stop obeying, block the streets and highways, shut down the capital, and watch them choke on their own sewage. If Americans weren't so bewildered by television, so addled and soft from junk food and cars and electronic appliances, and so addicted to their own cultural superficiality, they might begin organizing general strikes: women's strikes, workers strikes (without union bureaucrats to calm them down), Black people strikes, Brown people strikes, info-tech strikes, eco-strikes, all working our way up to One Big Strike.

It's a ways off, but it's coming. Of course, there won’t be any Democrats there. They’ll be wringing their hands about their defunct careers, and conducting focus groups to see how they can shift further to the right in the next election.

And the reason this doesn't happen is that people still hang their thin hopes on you, on electing Democrats who stab them in the back the first chance they get. But Galloway's appearance before the U.S. Senate moved us an inch closer to the Big Strike and an inch further away from your worthless asses.

Because Galloway didn't, as some are saying, expose the Republicans.

Someone with a full frontal lobotomy could expose a Republican politician.

He exposed the spinelessness of the Democrats.

Yours very truly,

Stan Goff

(My thanks to James Howard Kunstler for the term "cornpone Nazi." I’ve known quite a few… even been related to some of them.)

[Kolesar]

1. More Dem-bashing from that asshole

"there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be "

Overvaluing the influence of the DLC: "Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die."

He thinks he's got soul so he drops names: "Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, and Cynthia McKinney "

How many doors did Stan Goff knock on last fall as a matter of principle and/or urgency? Sitting on his ass lobbing crap through the internet does not count as activism.

[JackRiddler]

3. so, you have no answer

Is knocking on doors for Kerry the only thing you can do to stop the Bush agenda? I demur.

You offer ad hominems and a with-us-or-against-us mindset.

Golloway showed up the Democrats for participating in a farce, by speaking simple truths.

(Note: the operative part being not simple but truth. As opposed to apparent expediency.)

[Kolesar]

4. Me.. offer ad hominems?

Have you read much of Stan Goff's work?

[JackRiddler]

5. How well have the Democrats lived up to this standard?

"Leaders are the stewards of organizational energy--in companies, organizations, and even in families. They inspire or demoralize others first by how effectively they manage their own energy and next by how well they mobilize, focus, invest, and renew the collective energy of those they lead."

Can you say the Democratic leadership has led by that standard?

Why pass up every opportunity to nail the lies of the Iraq invasion on the neocons and Bush crew? Why participate in the oil-for-food distraction? How is this mobilizing or focusing?

[Kolesar]

8. "They inspire or demoralize others.."

Goff definitely chooses the latter. I coined the term "lugubrious malaise" to describe his Counterpunch essays, especially this evisceration of my party's candidate: dick-measuring. His modus is apparently to bash and denigrate the Democratic Party.

I was always amused by Goff's use of that term (dick-measuring), while offering up his resume which seems to be centered on having been a rough-tough special forces soldier.

Further, I cannot see what Goff has done to actually create progress. Typing anguished essays in the echo chamber of the leftist internet does not count.

[JackRiddler]

9. you're not answering...

you're right, Goff is "just" a writer. How well has the Democratic leadership lived up to your own standard of what leaders should do? Have they focused? Have they mobilized?

Why did they pass up the opportunity to nail the Bush regime for its lies on Iraq? The ball is on the ground at their feet. They do not pick it up. Why?

[jayctravis]

6. That wasn't lobbing crap, that was a locker room pep talk.

You know, the part where the coach decides you're worth enough to tell the truth to? He no longer panders, unafraid to censor the four letter words.

Isn't that how we'd ALL like our fine Democratic leadership to be?

[Inland]

2. At least, he makes me want to insult C. Hitchens. nt

[dweller]

7. thanks for posting this again Jack

it sure met an untimely demise in Eds. and other Arts.

dp