SECTION ONE

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COLUMN SEVENTY, APRIL 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 Al Aronowitz)

HATE YOUR GOVERNMENT BUT LOVE YOUR COUNTRY

Do America's holier-than-thou Far-Left fundamentalists hate Clinton-Gore more than they hate the far-right government they were so instrumental in imposing on our country? Do they hate America's imperialism enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Not only have they proven that they're willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, but they seem to be as downright suicidal as the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center. I hate America's Imperialism, too, but the fundamentalist Far-Left seems to hate it so vehemently that they're willing to let these Islamic fanatics destroy our country and everybody in it, including themselves.

On the one hand, they're against the War on Terrorism. Don't drop bombs on innocent women and children, they say. Which is exactly what the terrorists did to us and will continue to do to us unless we do what the fundamentalist Far-Left doesn't want us to do.

On the other hand, the Far-Left fundamentalists keep trying to justify their complicity in putting warmongers in control of our government. The Far-Left fundamentalists are on the defensive, see. They keep trying to paint Clinton-Gore as bad as if not worse than the Bush Administration.

The Democrats, they insist, are just as evil as the Republicans. And so the Far-Left fundamentalists helped put George Dubya in the White House because they wanted to teach the Democrats a lesson. In other words, they wanted to punish the Democratic Party and so they punished all of us.

For example, from PORTSIDE, apparently the Internet's voice of the fundamentalist Far-Left, comes an email in which a Nader apologist writes:

"Despite our collective acknowledgements about corporate capitalist domination of both political parties, progressives persist in adopting the lesser evil fallacy. . ."

If the Far-Left fundamentalists believe the lesser evil is a fallacy, do they believe the greater evil is also a fallacy? The Naderites knew damn well that in voting for their hero, they were casting ballots for the Republican candidate. Is


Gore did not LOSE
the election; the Republicans STOLE it


that also the way the German Far-Left fundamentalists helped pave the way for Hitler to come to power?

No, it wasn't our fault that Bush won, this Far-Left fundamentalist declares. He explains:

 "As Nader claimed, the election was Gore's to lose."

But the fact of the matter, as history will record it, is that Gore did not lose the election. With the help of too many fundamentalist Far-Left Floridians, the Republicans stole the election.

In his PORTSIDE email, this Far-Left fundamentalist goes on to say that too many on the Left "disdain the arduous task of building a genuine independent progressive electoral vehicle in this country. . . We saw the Nader candidacy as a bold step towards a new politics."

In other words, the Naderites were driven by the same fuel that drives capitalists. The same fuel that drove Pat Buchanan in his obviously hopeless quest for the Presidency. Greed! Both Pat and Ralph knew they couldn't win. What they wanted was to qualify for that Election Commission money. It didn't matter to the Naderites that the crafty, wily, pragmatic G.O.P. was surreptitiously chipping in to finance Nader's campaign. The Republicans are realists. They were well aware that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush.

This PORTSIDE email I?m referring to was written by a holier-than-thou Far-Left fundamentalist whose name is too close to mine for comfort. In this email, he serves up a plateful of Far-Left orthodoxy, the kind of holier-than-thouisms you'd expect to find coming out of any fundamentalist's mouth. Because all fundamentalists of any persuasion---Far-Left, Far-Right, Christian, Islamist or even Animal Lovers---are basically the same. They all want to impose their beliefs on everybody else. Why? Because they believe they're holier than everybody else.

Well I've been a left-wing sympathizer all my life and I'm sick and tired of holier-than-thouism from any side.  As far as I'm concerned, Far-Left fundamentalism is just as much of a threat to world peace as ANY brand of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists for the most part are guided by minds dipped into concrete, minds whose thinking is so hardened that they refuse to budge an inch. With the world population continually doubling (despite widespread outbreaks of genocidal slaughter) the only way we're going to be able to make room for all of us is through a word that is not in the fundamentalist dictionary: COMPROMISE! Either start budging inches or the world is doomed to a thermonuclear holocaust.

We live in a country that is so diverse as to be unique in this world. Our country includes so diverse a collection of ethnicity, of religion, of races and of political persuasions---it's a melting pot of almost every specimen of humanity on this earth--- that there can be no unanimous consensus. With such diversity, it's true that a consensus may become apparent. But whether the consensus seems to lean to the left or to the right, it can lean from only one place: the center. Because they have refused to accept this reality, the holier-than-thou Naderites sought to change the American political equation with a monkey wrench.

Clinton-Gore wasn't left enough for them, so now we all have to put up with a government that is essentially fascistic. As I said, the Naderites cut off their noses to spite their faces. Do they really believe they can persuade America to toe the line of their orthodoxy?

Obviously, the attack on the World Trade Center was not the last bit of terrorism America will have to put up with. We also had anthrax spread through the mails and an idiot who wanted to blow up an airliner with the explosives in his sneakers. Another idiot---this one from New Jersey---randomly mowed down pedestrians on the sidewalk. Palestinian terrorists have set a style in Israel that our Islamic tormentors would like to duplicate on American soil. These guys won't quit. The inevitable eventuality is that they'll set off a nuclear explosion in an American city.

They proclaim that they're not afraid to die---something that is more reality than boastfulness. Not only are they armed with the martyrdom fairy tales preached by their religion but another weapon in their arsenal is duplicity---a duplicity born out of the ignorance that sees others as dumb as they are. Dumb enough to believe their lies, that is. And the truth is that most people are that ignorant.

I have been accused of bigotry by someone toeing the fundamentalist Far-Left line. Accused of bigotry for pointing out that the Arabs are raising a whole generation of children whose greatest ambition is to become suicide bombers. As I explained, Arab kids collect pictures of so-called "martyrs? the way American kids collect baseball cards. It is from the Arab world that fanatics urge all Muslims to wage a Jihad---a "Holy War?---against Western civilization. The Arab fanatics are even naming their sons Jihad. Inflamed by the mullahs in the mosques, they decry the modernity of the West and seek a return to medievalism. What they want is nothing less than genocidal destruction of Western Civilization and worldwide theocratic fascism.

And so I was accused of bigotry by someone from a fundamentalist Far-Left that goes out of its way to refer to Palestinian terrorists as "freedom fighters?? Could that be an indication of bigotry on the part of the Fundamentalist Far-Left? Anti Semitic bigotry?

Yes, we're under assault by a bunch of madmen who believe so strongly in the promise of a quick trip to Paradise that they're all willing to die to burn down our house with all of us in it. Blacks, whites, Jews, Gentiles, Hindus, Buddhists, middle-of-the-roaders, right-wingers and even members of a fundamentalist Far-Left that contends America is the world's worst terrorist. Actually, I agree


Do we have
to appoint
a Hitler?


with that contention, because America does have an inglorious past. Our country is more of a hypocrisy than a Democracy. We live in a world ruled by oligarchs. In other words, like most other nations, we are governed by fools and charlatans.

So, must we take Draconian measures to protect our house from the suicide bombers? That doesn't mean appointing a Hitler, does it? If Dubya thinks he is one, I don't think Al Gore would be of the same mind if he were President. Would Ralph Nader? Do any of these men have an ego the size of Hitler's? So, if not Draconian measures, what? Should we plead guilty to our own acts of terrorism and let them burn our house down with all of us in it? What should we do?

My Pacifist comrades apparently advocate the equivalent of sticking our heads into the sand while the terrorists stick bombs up our asses. Another idea from the fundamentalist Far-Left is that we should take the terrorists to the World Court. OK, terrorists! Let us serve you with a subpoena! And then they say, "let the UN handle it."  With what? Or else, "Why do we bomb Afghanistan, when it was Saudis and Egyptians who bombed us?? Or else: "violence only begets more violence. What good would further violence do??

So, should we do NOTHING?

Ring bells, they say. Pray, they say, Sing, they say. Chant, they say. But I don't think that kinda stuff is gonna work. Do you? How about something practical? So, WHAT shall we do?

I certainly don't have any answers that're going to satisfy everybody. The only thing I can think of is that we have to improvise the way the jazz musicians do. Improvisation, after all, is how civilization evolved to the point where it is now. Right?

The fundamentalist Far-Left author of the PORTSIDE email in question says he's going to run for governor of the State of New York. I wish him luck. So, of course, will the Republicans. I'm sure the G.O.P will help fund his campaign. He says he's running as a Green. Me, I'd rather be red, white and blue.

My parents loved this country. Immigrating here as refugees from the anti-Semitic pogroms of Eastern Europe, they became citizens of their new land and raised four children in the dirt-poor poverty of the Great Depression. Like most naturalized lower-class Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe with Socialist leanings, they voted Democratic and even named me after the Democratic Presidential candidate that lost to the George W. Bush of 1928. I grew up loving this country and even as I've learned how despicable a place it can be, I still love it because this is where I live. The more despicable a place I find it, the more I want to make it better. To quote an old friend, U. Utah Phillips, one of America's great characters of the Left---a folksinger, a storyteller, an anarchist and a Korean War deserter:

"Hate your government but love your country." ##

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