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Dems - fight for nothing, stand for nothing
  by Chris Hedges

 Link 

Barack Obama is another stock character in the cyclical political
theater embraced by the liberal class. Act I is the burst of enthusiasm
for a Democratic candidate who, through clever branding and public
relations, appears finally to stand up for the interests of citizens
rather than corporations. Act II is the flurry of euphoria and
excitement. Act III begins with befuddled confusion and gnawing
disappointment, humiliating appeals to the elected official to correct
“mistakes,” and pleading with the officeholder to return to his or her
true self. Act IV is the thunder and lightning scene. Liberals strut
across the stage in faux moral outrage, delivering empty threats of
vengeance. And then there is Act V. This act is the most pathetic. It is
as much farce as tragedy. Liberals—frightened back into submission by
the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party or the call to be
practical—begin the drama all over again.

We are now in Act IV, the one where the liberal class postures like the
cowardly policemen in “The Pirates of Penzance.” Liberals promise
battle. They talk of glory and honor. They vow not to abandon their core
liberal values. They rouse themselves, like the terrified policemen who
have no intention of fighting the pirates, with the bugle call of
“Tarantara!” This scene is the most painful to watch. It is a window
into how hollow, vacuous and powerless liberals and liberal institutions
including labor, the liberal church, the press, the arts, universities
and the Democratic Party have become. They fight for nothing. They stand
for nothing. And at a moment when we desperately need citizens and
institutions willing to stand up against corporate forces for the core
liberal values, values that make a democracy possible, we get the
ridiculous chatter and noise of the liberal class.

The moral outrage of the liberal class, a specialty of MSNBC, groups
such as Progressives for Obama and MoveOn.org, is built around the
absurd language of personal narrative—as if Barack Obama ever wanted to
or could defy the interests of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase or General
Electric. The liberal class refuses to directly confront the dead hand
of corporate power that is rapidly transforming America into a brutal
feudal state. To name this power, to admit that it has a death grip on
our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and
religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated
popular movements, including labor, is to admit that the only weapons we
have left are acts of civil disobedience. And civil disobedience is
difficult, uncomfortable and lonely. It requires us to step outside the
formal systems of power and trust in acts that are marginal, often
unrecognized and have no hope of immediate success.

<snippage>

Either we begin to militantly stand against the coal, oil and natural
gas industry or we do not. Either we defy pre-emptive war and occupation
or we do not. Either we demand that the criminal class on Wall Street be
held accountable for the theft of billions of dollars from small
shareholders whose savings for retirement or college were wiped out or
we do not. Either we defend basic civil liberties, including habeas
corpus and the prosecution of torturers or we do not. Either we turn on
liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which collaborate
with these corporations or we do not. Either we accept that the age of
political compromise is dead, that the corporate systems of power are
instruments of death that can be fought only by physical acts of
resistance or we do not. If the liberal class remains gullible and weak,
if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes,
it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously
denounces.

And what's worse, the cavemen who are wrong about everything...

are willing to fight like hell 24/7 so no wonder we keep losing.

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