The biggest problem with modern American liberalism may be the word itself. There’s just something about the word, liberal, something about the way it sounds – it just hits the ear wrong. If it were an animal it would be something squirming and hairless, something that burrows maybe, with no eyes and too many legs. No child would bring home a wounded liberal and ask to keep it as a pet. More likely he would step on it, or maybe tie it to a bottle-rocket and shoot it over the railroad tracks.
Perhaps its biggest, but certainly not its only problem according to Taibbi. Well worth the read.
2 comments:
Good article, and worth the price of admission just for this:
"Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home."
Interesting article, but Matt Taibbi still has a pretty big blind spot about the working class. For instance:
Unfortunately, today, when you talk about the ‘American left,’” [Bernie Sanders] says, “... you’re not really referring to millions of workers who have lost their jobs because of disastrous trade agreements,” he says. “You’re not talking about waitresses who are working for four bucks an hour.”
It doesn't seem occur to Taibbi, or Sanders, that these isn't much point in chasing a voting demographic that doesn't really exist in the US. It is not just the college educated elites that are rich. The working class is too. The current rate of unemployment is 4.5 percent.
The working class that he wants liberals to relate to are working as personal trainers, plumbers, or at other similar jobs in the services industry, all of which pay well.
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