Reactionary radicals call themselves conservative, even as they tear away at the foundations of democracy all over the world and hand over more and more power to corporations and fossil-fuel interests.
Democratic socialists seeking ways to stabilize the situation with sensible limits on business prerogatives and re-orient the economy for the preservation of what's left of nature are called... liberals.
What better time to launch a new effort to pare away the nonsense and craft a new awareness and direction?
Capitalism has ravaged our mental world as human beings with its insistence on disorienting, disrupting, "innovative" change, as fast as can be put on the shelves, regardless of consequences - and all so that individuals can have more money and freedom for themselves to carry out their heart's little desires.
It hates tradition, preferring fad and shallow newness.
It utterly rejects the sacred, the solemn, the venerable, for those resist being turned into immediate profit.
It remakes neighborhoods overnight, obliterating community ties and memory.
It relentlessly uses up natural resources, most of which can never be "renewed" any more than an ancient forest can be replaced by a field of monoculture.
Its vast media powers bombard our children with violence, greed, selfishness, and the message that to seek any good other than one's own personal desires and ambitions is uncool.
Left to its inherent mechanisms of disruption, capitalism breaks down the integrity of family life, creating labor conditions that engender frequent employee moves, financial precarity, both parents working at least one job each to pay the bills, the children parked before screens, being told to care only about their individual desires, to give in to every whim.
Why do we persist in using political terminology that characterizes all this wreckage as the result of "conservative" policies and values?
I invite those who participate in this blog to challenge me on my thesis, but I do not welcome cynicism, defeatism, "never happenism". My theory is that things have already changed and I'm just pointing it out.
Capitalism has been given a free pass for a very long time by those who call themselves conservative. That's why it could be a very powerful thing indeed to attack capitalism from a position that refers to itself as a conservative one.
Put them on the defensive at last. Make them explain how the unhinged modernity we are all swimming in can possibly be made more stable or sane by further liberalizing capitalism, money, business. Call them out on their refusal to preserve, conserve, or even acknowledge the fragile ecological underpinnings of our lives.
Conservative and left. It's been there all along, the argument for moderation and conservation as prerequisites to a social and economic order that includes everyone.
Language is a tool, not a cage. And it can also be a weapon.
Please join me as we take up arms against the rightist bullshit army and win over hearts and minds toward a more inclusive, stable, equitable economy and society.
By setting and embracing limits that are based on reason, rather than superstition.
By turning back the assault on democratic government as a driver of positive change toward sustainability and social health.
By identifying and honoring the great traditions and legacy of leftist thought and policy from decades and centuries past - including democracy itself.
Please join me as we take up arms against the rightist bullshit army and win over hearts and minds toward a more inclusive, stable, equitable economy and society.
By setting and embracing limits that are based on reason, rather than superstition.
By turning back the assault on democratic government as a driver of positive change toward sustainability and social health.
By identifying and honoring the great traditions and legacy of leftist thought and policy from decades and centuries past - including democracy itself.
