LIBERAL BETRAYALS

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—In a healthy world, the most powerful government on earth wouldn’t be trying to squint at its own laws in such a way that permits a prosecution of a journalist for telling the truth. In a healthy world, the most powerful government on earth wouldn’t prosecute anyone for telling the truth at all. In a healthy world, governments would prosecute their own war crimes instead of those who expose them. In a healthy world, governments wouldn’t commit war crimes at all. In a healthy world, governments wouldn’t start wars at all.

CALEB MAUPIN—It’s the system, stupid, not just vile individuals. How John Steinbeck explained this basic truth about capitalism decades ago in his classic The Grapes of Wrath. The Dems & GOP national conventions: lies, misleading narratives and abject content. Either party is no more just a lesser evil, only a different kind of evil.

BRUCE LERRO—But what excuse do left-liberals have? Most left liberals are upper middle-class. They have the resources to build a party. Why don’t they? What keeps left liberals from pouring resources into the Green Party, which has always been at least truly left-liberal? Clearly the number of people in the United States who are for Bernie Sanders convinces me that the population would welcome such as party.

The narrow postwar political framework, however, within which these individuals would subsequently be obliged to operate was established early on. In 1947, Shirer, perhaps the most talented of the crowd, was forced out at CBS, without Murrow’s coming to his assistance, for criticizing the Truman Doctrine (that the US, as leader of the “free world,” must lead a worldwide crusade against communism) and the network’s kowtowing to corporate sponsors. Shirer was named in Red Channels, the anti-communist tract published in 1950, and blacklisted for all intents and purposes.

Cronkite was not of that stature. He apparently found no great difficulty in accepting the limits set by the American establishment during the Cold War. He was known to be critical, as was Murrow, of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communist witch-hunting, but he made a career for himself nonetheless.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—It is definitely not a racist term but entirely a class term: 1970s Blaxploitation movies were filled with Black-to-Black admonishments not to join “The Man” in his nefarious schemes of exploitation against all colors (excepting green). In many ways it was the equivalent of today’s “1%” – you were either for against “The Man” just like today you are either against the “1%” or aspire to join them. It’s not like The Man was ever routed, but what ever happened to “The Man”…?