Re: Dysentery

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

strangely enough, I used to subscribe to DISSENT, in the early 1970s. (My wayward youth!) I needed a clearer theoretical understanding of what was going on and the folks I was hanging around with recommended it. It didn't do. 

Not only did the late Irving Howe (DISSENT's guru) go on and on about how bad the USSR was while largely ignoring or playing down Pinochet's crimes (and those of other capitalist "totalitarians") but they published such crap as "the Manson Family: the My Lai of the counter-culture." I've never seen a poorer analogy. (The Mansons were one part of a totally diverse and heterogeneous rejection of the dominant culture, while My Lai was a logical extension of the monolithic US war machines's invasion of Vietnam.)

It's not surprising -- at least with 20-20 hind-sight -- that DISSENT would converge with the neo-cons.

Jim Devine


>You've lost me Louis, are you arguing for the necessity of torture?
>
>Joanna

No, Dissent Magazine is. Sanford Levinson basically wrote a defense of Alan
Dershowitz there using formulations that were a bit less crude. If you
watch Dershowitz's debate with Norman Finkelstein, you'll see a bit of
casuistry around the acceptability of "soft torture" like keeping depriving
people of sleep, etc. This is the sinkhole of social democracy and
liberalism that some on the left are trying to accomodate themselves to. I
am afraid that American fascism will not come in jackboots but in
Birkenstocks.