Re: [Pen-l] Remember, the recession isn't all bad

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 2:04 PM, raghu <mraghu01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Just to be clear I never once suggested that sustainability and consumption
> reduction while keeping everything else the same is feasible or desirable.
> But it seems to me that no one on the left wants to talk about these 800
> pound gorillas at all.

Those of us who insist on talking about the 800 pound gorilla are
scolded for being "one-issue fanatics".

> I strongly believe that sustainability should be an important part of the
> discourse on the left. I also believe that there is a faction on the left
> that is strongly opposed to including these subjects and treats them like
> taboo. Why else would a Sarah van Gelder be compared to a rapacious predator
> like Andrew Mellon?

I don't think the faction in question is "strongly opposed" to talking
about these things. I think they are just more interested in scoring
cheap rhetorical points than in engaging in dialog. Their grad school
training prepared them for delivering smart-ass zingers, not for
listening attentively.

At a moment when the entire spectrum of bourgeois stupidity and
cowardice is breathlessly embracing the magical "stimulus package"
nostrum, one might imagine that a "left" would be eager to develop a
critique of the prevailing idiocy. Instead, many of those who style
themselves "on the left" reveal their thinking to be simply the left
flank of bourgeois stupidity.

-- 
Sandwichman
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