Matt Taibbi

By Owen Paine on Tuesday January 3, 2012 11:51 PM

"this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we've ever had."

exactly


"... . In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event "

" the real event ...a looming confrontation
between
huge masses of disaffected citizens ..
and
a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment..."

Comments (18)

sk:

Something more meaningful than the elections.

chomskyzinn:

People know in their hearts, in their bones, in their deepest reccesses, that global capitalism is ruining their lives, their families, their wellbeing. They don't have words for it and they don't know what to do about it. Yet, anyway.

And they won't be any more inclined to engage against capitalism if the only leftists driving the theory and critique are aging tenured professors, Trots, Maoists and dialectical mystics.

op:

crow u old crinch u

Jack Crow sez on 01.04.12 @09:54:
they won't be any more inclined to engage against capitalism if the only leftists driving the theory and critique are aging tenured professors, Trots, Maoists and dialectical mystics.

That's kind of where the Occupy Movement comes in. At every Occupy event I've been to in DC, the general attitude is screw the academic geezers and the anal old Trots'n'Maoists and Zeitgeist zanies, let's get down to fuckin' the One Percent's shit up.

par4:

@ Jack Crow; in re aging profs,Trots etc...I think it's worse than that because most of the public thinks 'liberal capitalists' are of the Left.

op,

The language has drifted. That's a fact. The High Church Voodoo of European philosophy will still get an academic tenure, but it doesn't even motivate the domey yutes in France, Italy or Germany anymore.

Mike,

I think Occupy has to evolve and adapt soon, but you're right. It's like the recent unrest in Britain, too. The Trots and theory-boys spent the whole shindig trying to play theoretical catch up with the kids. Which means they played the role of scolds. That is when they weren't trying to purge so-called anti-Semites.

par4,

I've been jawing with some social con friends of mine, lately. They really do identify the liberals as socialists. So, I think instead of trying to recapture the Socialist brand of analysis and theory, leftists should realize that the language has changed, the old fights don't matter, the old intra-left divisions are historically useless, and Bakunin has had the last laugh - a tune to which the ghost of goodman Marx is gladly dancing.

In another words, welcome to the age of Rude Communism. I for one welcome it.

op:

rude communism

like weitling ???

or just know nothing universality

black turd think
braying away
one flat note after another

on the other hand
to master populist rhetoric
hardly requires a lobotomy

Woosh, op. Woosh. It's a play on Marx.

op:

there must be magic nuggets convealed inside this bit :

" Bakunin has had the last laugh - a tune to which the ghost of goodman Marx is gladly dancing"

but threaten me with a bashing
and i still couldn't make head nor tail out of it

woofie :
is this an example of rude communism ??

mjosef:

On, for christ's sake, now Taibbi is prophesyzing some sort of Armageddon between his new found enthusiam (OWS - he swooned long and hard for Obama) and the forces of the State - guess that's going to go well for the kids, right?
No dumbass mic checks here. No repeating back OP's doggerel lines back to the crowd, word for word, like some sort of robotic Red Diaper youth cadre. No latest iteration of deluded Portlandia messiah complex. Whatever will come,the other side is well, well ahead in size, preparation, and anticipation. The fascists won World War II, and the ideology of corporate oppression is to last triumphant until the last human generation.

op:

mjoe baby

in this bleeding eye ball screed
u make woofie look like tiny tim

but unlike our black drain plug from northern new england

what the source
of this sudden vigorous animation might be
escapes detection

its like two fence posts
breaking out into a horn pipe


but please please
i love you muchly
i'm blessed with the thickest of hides
and yet my vanity requires
i protest your calling my odd word presentation is doggy style verse

its as plain jane prose
as the instructions for operating an alarm clock

op:

sk's polar bear white poodle
racng down stairs on her front legs
in red clam biggers
comes off less comical and less extra ordinary then the fussin' and fumin'
of our gallant mr m joe

mjosef:

duly noted, OP -
alarm clocks and their manuals have done more damage to the human psyche than the bible and the koran
and the NYT times put together -
24-karat word "doggerel" used wrong
by Mike Tyson-like vocab striver - my bad.
Still, could you please mash a video
of the OWS kibbutzniks mic-checking back your "plain-Jane words?" I don't think the montessori kids could do it for more than a verse or two - they seemed (past tense is operative now) to only be able to handle Hedgesian warmed-over folkish inspirational finger-wagging.

op:

m-joe nevers fails to pep me up

"could you please mash a video
of the OWS kibbutzniks mic-checking back your "plain-Jane words?" I don't think the montessori kids could do it for more than a verse or two .."

Bakunin as the decisive say in the struggle? Sure. For now. Anarchists always help lead the charge in any revolution. It's figuring out what happens after that that's difficult, and we're nowhere near those struggles and battles. I suspect that the moldy old maoists, trots, guevarists and dialectical mystics will have more to offer than many anarchists want to see, once the foot soldiers of the broader resistance start to figure out that anarchism or Bakuninism and its secret societies can be just as Eurocentric and dogmatic as marxists can be.

op:

"Anarchists always help lead the charge in any revolution."
the uprising that at last breaks
the old regimes grip is one of those splendid rare culminations Clio produces
out of us as a specific set of people in a specific context

no one can be said to really lead such an eruption
but the anarchos can feel free to claim it
presumptuous as that obviously is ....

ahh but as mh suggests
apres the collapse ....
and i must add in the stages leading up to the collapse or defensive guardian class progressive reforms

its all about
organization organization organization

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