[PEN-L:30636] Re: Personalities and the List

["Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Perelman" <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 6:59 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:30609] Personalities and the List

> A new participant wrote me off for his criticizing me for trying to put
> the lid on the discussion of Hitchens.  Jim's post of Paul Krugman's
> article on the California energy crisis made me recall the message
> regarding Hitchens.
>
> While Clinton was president, some of Krugman's articles were awful; with
> Bush (and his handlers) in charge, Krugman is mostly on target.  During
> the Clinton era, Jim even sent many of his articles as part of the
> Krugman Watch.
>
> How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
> personalities?  With Bush as president, we have a non entity formally in
> charge, and yet the right wing agenda keeps plugging along -- even
> faster than under Reagan.  Yet all Bush can communicate is his anger.
> We could have an inflatable president, which could be pumped up and
> presented at important occasions, and the system would be virtually
> unchanged.
>
> Yet very little discussion here and elsewhere seems to be directed at
> the underlying nature of the forces in control.  So, here is my
> question: what could be done to try to redirect analysis away from
> personality?
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Chico, CA 95929
> 530-898-5321
> fax 530-898-5901
>
Michael, I appreciate your leaving me anonymous, in your response, but hey,
here I am. I want to enter the list without incurring a grudging welcome,
but really, I don't feel that I was that out of line. I didn't sign up to
contribute to this list in order to pile on any individual. It frequently
happens that what someone with a substantial audience says is put in such a
way that analysis of what they say might be instructive for me as well as
others- and I'm perfectly content to leave out, on this list, that which is
merely snide and pejorative personality bashing; it would be helpful if they
did, too. I'm also in agreement that personality bashing is not particularly
productive, although I can qualify that in some instances. I'm also most
willing to accept criticism of my positions, because I'm a life-long
learner, just as is everyone else here, I assume. I also like what you say
about looking at "the underlying nature of the forces in control".

But I do think that people who sound off without a grasp of historical
materialist analysis, [there, I said it, now I won't be able to get on an
airplane any more] and who then take umbrage when challenged, are leading
people away from a focused view of the world and should be called on it. And
anyhow, being very shy about my capacity to argue at this level, I probably
will enter very seldom.

This is what I wrote to Michael Perelman [note that I said "debate on the
positions of..."]:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>
To: <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: american solipsism redux

> I don't understand why Perelman should say that debate on the positions of
> people of the soggy left of center like Mark Cooper and Hitchens is
> unnecessary. It's obvious, from both of Cooper's statements quoted here by
> Henwood and Proyect, that his analysis is not grounded in consistent
> comprehension of the nature of capitalist imperialism.
>
> Statements like "during the first Gulf War you could delude yourself into
> thinking we were rescuing occupied Kuwait", for example. Who could so
delude
> themselves - besides, that is, Mark Cooper? For what benign reasons does
he,
> or did he, think that the US entered Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait,
> other than concerns about interference with absolute US domination of all
> energy sources? Does he trouble himself with the history of this episode,
> including the fact that Saddam had tacit US approval and that Kuwait,
before
> it was ruled by its current "syphilitic sheiks', was part of the territory
> of Iraq? [I may not have that accurately, but I welcome correction].
>
> Or this: "the administration's warmongering stems not at all from any
> authentic security concerns but rather from cold and cynical domestic
> political calculation". The implication is that when war criminals
preoccupy
> themselves with "authentic security concerns"  rather than
> mitigation/elimination of the crimes committed which give rise to their
> hysterical fear of the rest of the world, that is somehow an acceptable
> response.
>
> Or this: "The U.S. has not (unfortunately) occupied the country. Millions
> were not driven out or killed or forced into famine. American ground
troops
> have not been dragged into a Vietnam-like quagmire. The regime we have put
> into power is not worse than -- or the same as -- the Taliban. It's
backward
> and corrupt, but it's better. Civilians were killed -- as they are in all
> wars. (The Salvadoran guerrillas -- heroes to the left -- once boasted of
> their successful assassination of dozens of civilian mayors of poor rural
> towns.) But there was no targeting, no carpet-bombing, of Afghan
civilians."
>
> Well, what can one say about such sloppy clap-trap, except let's look at
it
> closely and learn the lessons that are there, so that we do not go and do
> likewise.
> Ralph Johansen
> Also, how do I subscribe, so that I can post directly to the list?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
> Michael Perelman wrote:
> I don't think that we need to debate Cooper here.  I only wished that more
> people would oppose this war, which seems to combine silliness, crude
> politics, and brutality in an unprecedented way.
>
> On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 01:18:39PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
> > At 01:11 PM 9/24/2002 -0400,
> > >
> > Right. Our "intelligentsia": Christopher Hitchens, Marc Cooper, Michael
> > Berube, George Packer and all the others who would have been writing
> > articles in 1914 had they been alive in favor of stopping the Hun.
> >
> > Marc Cooper wrote this in the LA Weekly for August 16-20:
> >
> > Must I remind you that US imperialism is involved in multiple wars?
Cooper
> > favors the war on the Taliban but not the war on Iraq.
> >
> > "The left might have seen that American military deployment is not a
priori
> > evil. Virtually none of the dire predictions the left made about the war
in
> > Afghanistan have come to pass. The U.S. has not (unfortunately) occupied
> > the country. Millions were not driven out or killed or forced into
famine.
> > American ground troops have not been dragged into a Vietnam-like
quagmire.
> > The regime we have put into power is not worse than -- or the same as --
> > the Taliban. It's backward and corrupt, but it's better. Civilians were
> > killed -- as they are in all wars. (The Salvadoran guerrillas -- heroes
to
> > the left -- once boasted of their successful assassination of dozens of
> > civilian mayors of poor rural towns.) But there was no targeting, no
> > carpet-bombing, of Afghan civilians."
> >
> > http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/43/dissonance-cooper.php
> >
> > This kind of flag-waving from Nation Magazine liberals gives impetus to
> the
> > war against Iraq, no matter their declared intentions against it.
> > Ultimately there are class questions involved. Socialists never back the
> > imperialist adventures of their ruling class, not even during WWII. For
> > liberals like Cooper, Alterman, Berube et al, the questions are decided
> >not on the basis of principle but on a blend of pragmatism and
sanctimony.
> >Now that the US is openly declaring that it will use nuclear weapons in
Iraq,
> > it is rather astonishing to see elements of the left either openly
favoring
> > imperialist war or reserving their most venomous prose for the Ramsey
> > Clarks of the world, as if Clark had the blood of millions on his hands.
> >
> > Louis Proyect
> > www.marxmail.org
> >
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>
>