Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West

[seemslikeadream]

Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West

Posted on May 23, 2011

Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges

The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values.The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.

The capitulation of the liberal class to corporate capitalism, as Irving Howe once noted, has “bleached out all political tendencies.” The liberal class has become, Howe wrote, “a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.” The decision to subordinate ethics to political expediency has led liberals to steadily surrender their moral autonomy, voice and beliefs to the dictates of the corporate state. As Dwight Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man,” those who do not make human beings the center of their concern soon lose the capacity to make any ethical choices, for they willingly sacrifice others in the name of the politically expedient and practical.

By extolling the power of the state as an agent of change, as well as measuring human progress through the advances of science, technology and consumption, liberals abetted the cult of the self and the ascendancy of the corporate state. The liberal class placed its faith in the inevitability of human progress and abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism. The state, now the repository of the hopes and dreams of the liberal class, should always have been seen as the enemy. The destruction of the old radical and militant movements—the communists, socialists and anarchists—has left liberals without a source of new ideas. The link between an effective liberal class and a more radical left was always essential to the health of the former. The liberal class, by allowing radical movements to be dismembered through Red baiting and by banishing those within its ranks who had moral autonomy, gradually deformed basic liberal tenets to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization and permanent war. Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite. The liberal class at once was betrayed and betrayed itself. And it now functions like a commercial brand, giving a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power. This, indeed, is the primary function of Barack Obama.

The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade. It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine. As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act. It can maintain its privileged economic status. It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state. And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.

The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite. And when someone such as Cornel West speaks out, packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that there were three characteristics of all forms of prophecy: “First, it is entirely opposed to the general ideas of the people in the midst of whom it is uttered; second, all who hear it feel its truth; and thirdly, above all, it urges men to realize what it foretells.”

Prophets put forward during their day ideas that the mass of people, including the elite, denounce as impractical and yet at the same time sense to be true. This is what invokes the rage against the prophet. He or she states the obvious in a society where the obvious is seditious. Prophecy is feared because of the consequences of the truth. To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction. Their denunciation of all who rebel is a matter of self-preservation. For once the callous heart of the corporate state is exposed, so is the callous heart of the liberal class.

Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of “The Death of the Liberal Class” and “The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”

[Peachtree Pam]

Thanks for posting this SLAD. It reminds all of us to try and seek ways to find a voice outside the Democratic party. But when one surveys the landscape, it's difficult to find an independent, honest alternative.

The root of the problem is money, financing a candidate without recourse to corporations, and limiting the amount each candidate can spend.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling, a corporation can give limitless amounts of money to any candidate, with the American public unaware of who the true owners of the corporation are.

[Jeff]

- packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

Quite so.

[Bruce Dazzling]

NYC peeps,

Hedges will be speaking at Cooper Union this Wednesday evening.

Death of the Liberal Class

May. 25, 2011 : 6:30pm

Death of the Liberal Class
Best-selling author Chris Hedges talks about his acclaimed book in the Cooper Union Rose Auditorium
The event is free and open to the public

In Death of the Liberal Class, best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges examines the demise of classical liberalism in our society at Cooper Union, Rose Auditorium. He will outline the vital role of the liberal class in a democracy, talk about its failure to sustain itself in the face of the increasingly powerful corporate state, and bring forth the dire consequences of an empty and corrupt liberalism. "In a traditional democracy," Hedges explains, "the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements."

Chris Hedges has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper's coverage of global terrorism.

Wednesday, May 25 at 6:30pm
Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Square

[The Consul]

Man, you gotta wonder about Obama....he never calls anyone brother, know what I mean? Dr. West calls everybody brother, or especially my brother. If I was black, and I was president, I'd call everybody brother. If you're white, you can't do it....though that scottish guy on Lost tried, it never took off.

[NeonLX]

Back in the day, one of the other mechanics in the shop where I worked was from Perth. I gotta say, the first time he called me "mate", I was a wee bit nervous.

[justdrew]

- packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

Quite so.

Well what does anyone expect? People gotta put food on their families. "Liberals" also need an income, and they can't all tour college campuses and other "Liberal" venues raking in speaking fees telling everyone how shitty they are.

Blame the people responsible - the ones who vote republican.

Do you all realize the purges that have occurred? Do you realize that if you make trouble, you're a trouble maker and you loose your job? and then what? Not like there's some popular mass movement that's got your back. Then after you've been fired (not for political reasons, always some other excuse will be found) your wife leaves you takes the kids and you're homeless. congratulations on speaking truth to power, now you can ask for spare change from power. Do you realize every time I give $20 to DFA or some shit, I have to put down my employer. Do you realize that my employer has a big red target mark on it because it's employees generally give money to non-republicans? I'm absolutely on "hit" lists to be fucked with. I'm small fish so I'm down the list a ways, but they've got the paid-manpower to work their way down that list.

What has anyone done to create a support system outside the corporate world? Nothing. You're on your own. Take you life-savings and start a "business" of your own. Ha! good luck. Most likely you'll burn through that savings in no-time, get up to your ears in debt, and be fucked for the rest of your life for such an attempt. what is it, 1 in 10 new businesses survive past two years, or is it even less? What else is there?

[8bitagent]

Cornel West is brilliant, gives me goosebumps. The left is just upset someone outside of the racist Tea Party clownship is speaking up against their lord and savior.
I mean, why is it liberals seem to get more angry and upset at people who question 9/11 than even conservatives? How can so many liberals show disgust at Bush yet blindly support Obama for continuing(and in many cases EXPANDING the wars and policies)? Thankfully Chomsky has finally come out questioning 9/11 http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/no ... ion_to_os/

Liberals today seem more about hoity toity bourgeois materialism than being aware of or representing fundamental change and social justice. Am I a self hating liberal? No, I just feel greatly disappointed at how controlled and in the box many seem to be. They can take their Whole Foods Daily Show fake eco bullshit and shove it:)

The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values.The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.

Been saying this for years:) People think that because liberals support gay rights and other things, that automatically they're these bastions of light and change. The liberals of the late 60's and early 70's would be quite saddened if they saw what your average college youth or stuffy shirt liberal had become

USA! USA!



Most kneeslapper thing I saw(and I wish I had a pic of it), was a prius with an Obama 08 sticker next to a "no war" sticker.

[82_28]

Man, you gotta wonder about Obama....he never calls anyone brother, know what I mean? Dr. West calls everybody brother, or especially my brother. If I was black, and I was president, I'd call everybody brother. If you're white, you can't do it....though that scottish guy on Lost tried, it never took off.

If I had $5 for every time I refer to someone as "brother", I'd have a few bucks in my pocket. Oh, wait, I do get a few bucks each time I do. I actually call just about every man "brother" and women are "sisters" and have for years. But I'm not president yet. My presidential exploratory team got waylaid by an Icelandic volcano and some weird thread.

[Nordic]

This is an amazing piece of writing that needs to be spread around.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Man, you gotta wonder about Obama....he never calls anyone brother, know what I mean? Dr. West calls everybody brother, or especially my brother. If I was black, and I was president, I'd call everybody brother. If you're white, you can't do it....though that scottish guy on Lost tried, it never took off.

You can if you want dude.

You don't say brother tho. Bro, or bruz.

Re Obama tho, interesting observation, but its a familiarity thing and a comfort thing to say that.

Overtly calling everyone brother in public can be a political act in itself.

[8bitagent]

Another AMAZING article exposing how phony modern liberalism is

http://crookedtimber.org/2011/05/22/the ... e-musings/

The fragmenting coalition of the “left”, some musings

by Chris Bertram on May 22, 2011

Will Hutton had a piece in the Observer a week ago about immigration policy in the course of which he made the following remark:

the European left has to find a more certain voice. It must argue passionately for a good capitalism that will drive growth, employment and living standards by a redoubled commitment to innovation and investment.

I’m not sure who this “European left” is, but, given the piece is by Hutton, I’m thinking party apparatchiks in soi-disant social democratic and “socialist” parties, often educated at ENA or having read PPE at Oxford. I’m not sure how many battalions that “left” has, or even whether we ought to call it left at all. Anyway, what struck me on reading Hutton’s remarks was that calls for the “left” to do anything of the kind are likely to founder on the fact that the only thing that unites the various lefts is hostility to a neoliberal right, and that many of us don’t want the kind of “good capitalism” that he’s offering. Moreover in policy terms, in power, the current constituted by Hutton’s “European left” don’t act all that differently from the neoliberal right anyway. In short, calls like Hutton’s are hopeless because the differences of policy and principle at the heart of the so-called left are now so deep that an alliance is all but unsustainable. That might look like a bad thing, but I’m not so sure. Assuming that what we care about is to change the way the world is, the elite, quasi-neoliberal “left” has a spectacular record of failure since the mid 1970s. This goes for the US as well, where Democratic adminstrations (featuring people such as Larry Summers in key roles) have done little or nothing for ordinary people. Given the failures of that current, there is less reason than ever for the rest of us to line up loyally behind them for fear of getting something worse. Some speculative musings, below the fold:

Haven’t things always been a bit like this, though? Well not really. Once it was possible for people on the left to pretend that differences among us were primarily about means. We all shared the same sort of egalitarian, science-fictiony, abundancy, holding hands, economic democracy vision of the far-off future, but some people were more committed to electoral persuasion than others. (I realise there was a great deal of dishonesty, self-deception, wishful thinking and delusion about that pretence, but it had some kind of reality.) Now the overt differences of aim and value between various currents calling themselves “left” are deep and irreconcilable. So what are those currents:

1. The technocratic quasi-neoliberal left as incarnated by the likes of Peter Mandelson. Pro-globalisation, pro-market, pro-growth: keep the masses happy by improving their living standards. It’s the economy, stupid. Prone to witter self-regardingly about “grown-up” politics. Fixated on electoral competition with the right, with winning elections the essential prerequisite to changing anything. Who is in this box? Well I guess New Labour in the UK, plus (in practice) the leaders of the main European social-democratic parties. In power, this group (or those who think like them) have achieved very little. They certainly haven’t done much to stem the rise of inequality, to protect working-class communities from the winds of globalisation, to end poverty, or, for that matter, to protect the environment. Their attitude to those to their left has been to call for discipline and silence, for fear of frightening the median voter, coupled with hostility, ridicule, character assassination. Their appeal to the left has always and only been that they are slightly less bad than the full-on right wing. (If they have a feature one can admire, it is their comparative lack of xenophobia and racism, however much moved by a desire for “free” labour markets.)

2. The “left” version of populist nationalism. Culturally conservative, worried by immigration (and willing to indulge popular anxieties), anxious about the effects of markets on working-class community. Maybe “blue Labour” in the UK is an example of this, though, of course, plenty of Labour politicians are willing to swing both “new” and “blue”, whistling a communitarian tune whilst relaxing planning laws for the supermarkets, which would be anathema to the core blue Labourites. British Labour leader Ed Miliband was plainly flirting with this current in his most recent speech. Like the first group, power is important for this current. But power isn’t everything, for two reasons: (a) being in government and not achieving improvement in social justice would be pointless for those members of this group who are not career politicians and (b) unlike the left-neoliberals there are things they can do outside of parliamentary politics: they can organize, resist, use the power of the trade unions (such as it is). The trouble for this group is that their core group of supporters, on whom they can rely at election time, has been getting smaller for decades and the solidaristic norms that used to be the conventional wisdom of their supporters are fraying, and will fray more as the material and institutional supports of the labour movement erode further (cf André Gorz, I suppose). The current UK government may be upsetting a lot of voters with its cuts policy, but, long-term, they are also chipping away at an important social support for this kind of politics: public sector employment.

3. The eco-left. Highly egalitarian. Deeply sceptical about the capacity of capitalism to provide real improvements in people’s lives through “growth”. Anxious about the way in which both the natural and the social environments that make life tolerable are being undermined by neoliberalism. Tending to communitarianism and anarchism. Not very coherently both localist/communitarian and cosmopolitan in outlook. Highly connected to the social movements that have in fact given us most of the left’s real policy gains in the past 40 years. Again, this group doesn’t need to win parliamentary elections to make a difference, since it can, to some extent, both organise resistance to government policy and implement alternative ways of living in the here and now. Obviously there are worries about thinking of this group coherent at all, since it takes in all kinds from the Zapatistas to Colin Ward-inspired anarchists, to UKUncut, the the Spanish street protesters, to Greens and maybe even some of the people who had washed up in the Lib Dems in the mistaken belief that it was to the left of Labour in the UK.

4. The old Leninist hard left. Naturally they fancy themselves as the people strand 3 need to give them organization and direction. I don’t think so. Washed up, marginal, authoritarian and unappealing.

I have a lot of sympathy with the eco-left strand. The trouble is, whilst having, in many ways the most attractive long-term vision, it is probably electoral suicide (for now) for any left-of-centre party to run on a platform that eschews wealth-creation and rising living standards. And in the anglo-american world at least, associated ideas for shorter hours and job sharing are seen as marginal, impractical and extreme. Still, I see this group growing ever larger over time, as the environmental crisis becomes deeper, and as promises based on growth become both harder to keep and harder to translate into real improvements in quality of life. As this group grows in strength, the 1+2 alliance will become less stable since the compromises with global capitalism required by the quasi-neoliberal left will not be met be any compensating benefits for the constituency of left populist nationalism. Their voters, the swing voters of the left I suppose, will either move towards the eco-left or will drift towards xenophobic right-wing nationalism. How all this plays out, though, is surely going to vary a lot from country to country, depending on whether it is possible to build a coalition that could win elections or, as the next best thing, one with whom deals would need to made in order to govern. But I can’t think that the old 1+2 social democratic formula can be a winner for the left any more.

Any other recent articles on this subject?

To me this is the cutting edge right here, and something Barry Zwicker was doing some years back, and that's pretty much showing how "liberalism" and so called liberal media today is nowhere near as progressive as they used to be. I don't know why the right wing attacks the whiny liberals, they have a lot in common

[JackRiddler]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges.

After all, it all depends on who is using the word and how it is defined, and for the most part this word is never defined; it's only muddied. Most of the "liberals" in this society are ascribed, not self-described. They're "liberals" because some media or expert authority pinned the label on them, usually as an attack term. And that's what Brother Hedges is doing here. He's talking about Democratic Party apparatchiks, most of them indistinguishable from the Republicans on issues such as "national security," "crime" or "economic freedom." He's talking about pundits who are paid to play-act the ostensible left on television or in think-tank rounds: spin doctors, media whores, people who do not have convictions but are hired to represent opinions in predigested talking points, calcified shadow beings whose most important job in psychological terms is never to surprise themselves. He's also talking about corporate management echelons who have learned a false lingo of tolerance and diversity, who are not remotely liberal in philosophy, whose treatment of the "human resources" is still dictated by what the spreadsheets say. He's talking about a few billionaires or bankers who picked up some of their language from hippies and are celebrated as "liberal" visionaries or philanthropists. He's talking about technocrats who want to define every social problem as a deviance disorder, treat people for their bad habits, stamp out vice. He's also angry at a larger demographic of fearful middle-class conformists who tend to avoid politics and seek whatever is perceived as a centrist or moderate position. People who hope to feel good about themselves by endorsing the same milquetoast ideals of tolerance and diversity.

If these are his "liberals," then bash away.

But again, who's calling them that? It's the right wing (the self-described conservatives) generally who get to define who are the "liberal" politicians, the "liberal" academics and lawyers. It is organs of the corporate media itself that present the fantasy of "the liberal media." The same reigning mentality, the one that defines politics as a polarity between false and often flexible definitions of "liberal" and "conservative," doesn't even allow for Hedges's position to exist, except as something "liberal." What do you think the punditry are likeliest to call Hedges, when he's not specifically attacking "liberals"? He'd be a "hard-left liberal extremist." Don't tell me the latter phrase is a contradiction in terms; my point is that it's a contradiction in terms, but in this article Hedges isn't deconstructing the confusionist ideology, he's accepting its labels.

"Liberal" has been rendered derogatory since the 1980s or really the 1970s. Back in 1988 Bush feigned that he couldn't even say the dirty word, he turned it into the "l-word," and a threshold was signalled by the failure of Dukakis to respond, to say, "If liberal means [this or that good thing], then hell yeah I'm a liberal, and that's American damn it!" Since then the only thing liberal about the Democratic Party leadership has been that this is the word FOXNEWS and the Washington Post stick on them. The more Clinton or Obama pursue the same policies or continue the same wars as their Bush predecessors, the more we are told that they are "the most liberal" this or that in history, or socialists, or agents of Marxism. The term usually receives no definition beyond that it's vaguely Eastern, urban, educated, unionized, pro-Black, European, gay, unpatriotic, supposedly voting for the Democrats and looking down on down-home, Christian, flag-waving gun-owning meat-eating Americans who are proud to serve. It's a rhetorical dodge, a means of removing politics and leaving only identities that can be divided and ruled over. At the same time, "conservative" is defined by a series of hysterias about threats to life, property or some nostalgic male white heteronormative identity, but always tied to the kicker: policy proscriptions that are radically plutocratic. This is no longer "conservative" by a dictionary definition. The ideology of the right has become confusionism. All reality is inverted in the language; the labels consist in funhouse projections of the unacknowledged self on to the designated-enemy other. The most ardent supporters of a repressive surveillance state decry big government!

You can chalk it up as a victory for the old liberals and New Left of the 1960s that the once-fresh language of empowerment, grassroots, reform, and revolution was taken up and detourned by the perpetually "new" right that has called most of the shots since (perpetually new because every couple of years they're recycled and repackaged as a surprise rebellion from nowhere, as with the Tea Party). Hedges is about 50 years too late in discerning the death of the liberal class. It died in the 1960s and 1970s. It died when its leaders were shot dead in public assassinations, and the nearest followers were cowed enough to become not just believers but champions of the cover stories.

Later came 9/11 and a renewed hysteria: are you with us or against us? Are you watching what you say? Are you avoiding the thoughts that will identify you as insane and pariah to good company? It wasn't so much that you had to feel the fear personally, but you had best acquiesce in accepting its legitimacy as the new crux point of policy.

And these are far from the first waves of cultural repression, as justdrew points out. You people act like the postwar era did not start with possibly the biggest mass hysteria of all, the search for "communists" accompanied by a countrywide purge of tens of thousands of possible "communist sympathizers" from government, journalism, teaching, arts and the professions (vulnerability extended potentially to anyone who was not rabidly parroting the fairy tales of the Cold War). The modern form of this country was born with everyone already fearing they may be charged with thoughtcrime. The 1960s saw a brief opening but the culture in this country since has been managed, mostly with success, in rendering institutions of democracy and republic mostly irrelevant, and in keeping the people in a series of hysterias and general ignorance about their own government, policies, and real circumstances.

How productive is it really to pretend that these liberals of right-wing hysteria actually exist, and should be bashed from the left? This is not the acid trip the country needs, wherein all false labels and false identities and self-deceptions melt away into a helpless, cleansing laughter over, and liberation from, our own false self-images.

PS - Brother Bertram is more on point than Hedges in the OP, because Bertram bothers to define and make useful distinctions among different political tendencies identified as "left" or "liberal." Number 1 on his list he correctly calls quasi liberal. That is the "liberal class" that Hedges critiques -- the likes of Blair or Summers -- but their most important feature is that they're not liberal (except sometimes on the social issues or immigration and racism, where to be so pays out in voting clienteles).

packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals

Indeed. Perhaps one should think carefully about the choice of signifiers, and their impact on reality.

—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism.

Abso-fucking-lutely. But are the character assassins "liberal"?

The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful.

So it's the corporate forces who hold sway, no?

Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system.

Rendering the term meaningless, if they even apply it to themselves. Are these not LINOs?

They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

Well what does anyone expect? People gotta put food on their families. "Liberals" also need an income, and they can't all tour college campuses and other "Liberal" venues raking in speaking fees telling everyone how shitty they are.

Blame the people responsible - the ones who vote republican.

Do you all realize the purges that have occurred? Do you realize that if you make trouble, you're a trouble maker and you loose your job? and then what? Not like there's some popular mass movement that's got your back. Then after you've been fired (not for political reasons, always some other excuse will be found) your wife leaves you takes the kids and you're homeless. congratulations on speaking truth to power, now you can ask for spare change from power. Do you realize every time I give $20 to DFA or some shit, I have to put down my employer. Do you realize that my employer has a big red target mark on it because it's employees generally give money to non-republicans? I'm absolutely on "hit" lists to be fucked with. I'm small fish so I'm down the list a ways, but they've got the paid-manpower to work their way down that list.

What has anyone done to create a support system outside the corporate world? Nothing. You're on your own. Take you life-savings and start a "business" of your own. Ha! good luck. Most likely you'll burn through that savings in no-time, get up to your ears in debt, and be fucked for the rest of your life for such an attempt. what is it, 1 in 10 new businesses survive past two years, or is it even less? What else is there?

[wordspeak2]

8bitagent, you keep saying it, but Noam Chomsky has not "come around," my friend. There's nothing in that short, typical Chomsky article that suggests his interest in the true story behind 9/11. When Noam takes back all that he's said directly attacking the notion of insider involvement in 9/11, including the relevancy of even the possibility, as well as taking back his career of attacks on JFK researchers and JFK himself... then we can consider Noam to have had an awakening. His little Bin Laden essay did nothing of the short. You're just a wannabeliever, like much of Chomsky's massive fan base.

Folks should start to question why the military funded Chomsky's linguistics career (at the beginning, at least, which is what made Chomsky famous). Could there be something there? Here's a good article on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tV11acSRk

Props to Chris Hedges and Cornel West for challenging the liberal norm, even if the latter is a little late to the show.

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Chris Hedges and Cornel West are only saying what Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney have been saying for quite some time.

And unlike Cornel West who initially supported Obama, Ralph and Cynthia were ahead of the curve and didn't fall for the act at the get-go.

Oh, well. Better late than never, I suppose.