Hitting A Hippy's Nerves

Yesterday I wrote about an article by Daniel Flynn that looked at the history of radical student groups from the '60s and their founder's history and connections to or support for Barack Obama. It must have hit a nerve as Carl Davidson left a comment on the post, yes this Carl Davidson, his comment follows.

Then there’s Carl Davidson, who was one of SDS’s three elected national officers in 1968, when the organization first urged young people to refrain from voting. His disillusionment with traditional politics became so pronounced that, in the post-sixties hangover that followed, Davidson joined Klonsky in rejecting traditional politics for fringe Marxist movements. More recently, he helped organize the 2002 rally in which Obama first spoke out against the Iraq War and now serves as the webmaster of Progressives for Obama. “The last thing we need is a simple repeat of 1968, which saw Nixon and the new Right as an outcome, as well as the defeat of [Humphrey],” Davidson contends. “One thing I’ve learned. Social change is not made by elections, but it certainly proceeds through them, not by ignoring them or chasing the illusion of end runs around them.”

He desparately tries to cover for his hopeness Obama but I don't buy it one bit, here is his comment/obamafuscation. Yea I can make up words, shush.

This crap is just silly.

Yes, I met Obama in 1995, along with some ACORN ladies, for less than an hour. I later lobbied him to spend some state money on learning centers with computers for inner city kids, which he did. I was one of several inviting him to speak at our first antiwar rally, but never talked to him that day. A little later, I said hello to him at a fundraiser for his senate race for two minutes.

That the complete total of my 'connections'.

I'm an 'acquaintance,' not a 'friend' and if he even remembers my name at all, it's because of bugging him to spend money on the learning centers.

Today I run 'Progressives for Obama', a web site completely independent of him. We distance ourselves from him, and he can do likewise. Technically, we don't even endorse him; we simply say he's our 'best option.' So there's no need for him to reject what's not there. We do want people to vote for him, mainly as a way to end this horrible, unjust and stupid war. But we criticize him on many things all the time

But if you look out there in rightwing cyberspace, I'm the dreaded 'terrorist' and 'Communist Mentor' responsible for shaping the 'Marxist Obama.' I kid you not.

And this crap gets bounced around as 'Research' and 'Fox-Hannity truth.' Spare me. These guys have such tiny brains that they wouldn't know serious research or polemic if they saw it.

With my trusty Google, and six degrees of separation, I can show 'connections' between this author and advocates of Biblical slavery and worse, and it would mean just as much.

What he really wants to do is 'Willie Hortonize' the entire 1960s new left, which number in the millions, and 'demonize' them to shut them up.

He doesn't even bother to ask the most interesting questions. Why is Bill Ayers a widely respected educator and school reformer, acknowledged and defended by even Mayor Daley, despite his over-the-top politics of 40 years ago? Or why Mike Klonsky is respected enough to be a voice on national commissions on prevent school violence? The irony is that none of these guys, including me, could give a hoot if Obama 'throws them under the bus,' because it's not about us, and never has been. Here, we're only scary, carefully made-up cartoons, with little connection with who we really are, designed to scare gullible people, to play all of you as suckers, and some of you are falling for it.

I've been part of the real Chicago left for decades, and believe me, Obama has never been part of it. He's a decent reformist liberal with ideas far removed from socialism or Marxism.

Obama is a 'high road' industrial policy capitalist and multipolar globalist--just read his Cooper Union speech a while back. Clinton is a garden-variety corporate liberal capitalist, which got her on the board of Walmart for years. And McCain is a US hegemonist and an unreconstructed neoliberal capitalist--'state all evil, market all good'--that kind that says 'We're in business to make money, not steel, so we'll gut these plants and speculate in oil futures, and the workers and towns be damned.' In other words, the ones who 'cut taxes' by putting everything on the China Visa card and got us into this mess.

Actually, truth be told, Obama's brand of capitalism is best for productive businesses, as opposed to many speculators, and does least harm to the working class. That doesn't mean we can't press him to be better at it, as in promoting and building infrastructure for new green businesses and green jobs for youth. All those solar panels and wave and wind turbines have to be built somewhere by someone.

If you want to criticize him, all this stuff is fair game, that is, if you want to get out of the nasty-name calling of the kindergarten sandbox and learn enough to play with the big kids, let alone the grownups.

But being enthralled by Mr. Flynn just means you have a ways to go.

The words of a commited communist Obama supporter that thinks we are being silly and considers Billy bomber Ayers to be a respectable person. To bad he doesn't have a grasp on reality since his wing of the party blocks all those solar and wind projects because they harm birds and desert rats. I guess all those drugs went to his head and he now lives in a fantasy land or should I say a yellow submarine with strawberry fields forever.