Ranting to /dev/null

Another excerpt

"The countercultural movement has, from the beginning, been beset by chronic anxiety. The idea that all politics is based on culture, and that all social injustice is based upon repressive conformity, implies that any act that violates conventional social norms is politically radical. Of course, this is an extremely attractive thought. After all, the traditional work of political organizing is extremely demanding and tedious. Politics, in a democracy, necessarily requires bringing enormous numbers of people on board. This creates a lot of unappealing work - licking evenlipes, writing letters, lobbying politicians, and the like. Assembling such vast coalitions also require interminable compromise and debate. Cultural politics, by contrast, is significantly more fun. Doing guerrilla theater, playing in a band, making avant-garde art, taking drugs and having lots of wild sex certainly beat union organization as a way to spend the weekend. What the countercultural rebels managed to convince themselves of is that all of these fun activities were in fact more subversive than traditional left-wing politics because they attacked the sources of oppression and injustice at a "deeper" level. Of course, this conviction is based entirely upon a theory [the link between Freud and Marx forged by Marcuse]. And since it is so obviously in the interest of the rebels to believe in this theory, anyone with a moderately critical turn of mind will naturally find it suspicious."

-- excerpted from Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.

Also known as "Why MoveOn.org can get stuffed" or "Blogging never won an election".

I forget where I read the following, but it's true. The Republicans should love any contest that promises to mobilize both political bases in the country. The first reason is because the Republican base is larger, as proven by the last election. The second reason is that the Democratic base is freaking insane.

Just feeling my corns at the moment. Don't mind me.

Posted by ryan at November 7, 2005 12:57 PM | TrackBack