The 'Left' in America: Intellectual Masturbation
The so-called left in America became irrelevant long ago and some like Christopher Hitchens have been put in the graveyard of history, as historical opportunists.Indeed, even forums like this one are nothing but a practical irrelevance or intellectual masturbation by people who "imagine" they are effective or relevant but actually produce nothing.
Look at how many people actually read an essay here or bother to make a comment on it to find how capitalism has subdued radicalism and its praxis. The Left is dead and died when the first drunk rat, Hitchens, jump out of the ship! 911 put the final nails in the left's coffin!
The funniest thing of all is that they think that because they have a forum, they are relevant.
Actually, to be in this Forum or write for ZNet, Commondreams, The Nation - you name it - is the manifestation of the demise of the left into a philosophical abyss of Hegelian Nihilism and becoming an idealist without action.
A fat-cat or worse a blind fat-rat in a capitalist system which sings La Marseillaise and enjoying the echo, ignorant that nobody is listening to their music.
The country has been hijacked by the Neo-Cons. Civil liberties have been curtailed. Marshal law and State of Emergency is the fact of life.
All branches of government are controlled by one ideology. There is no debates where it matters and the dead left is still challenging the fat Tariq Ali for a debate about the left irrelevance.
Wake up and smell your Starbuck Coffee. You are all dead because you have become intellectually impotent.
FREE INTELLECTUALS VERSUS CORPORATE EXPERTS
What is happening in America is that Independent Media, instead of being a free investigative body, is embedded within the corrupted powers that it is supposed to investigate.
America has become a one-party system in which one ideology controls all aspects of government. Since the selection of George Bush the whole political landscape has irreparably changed to a corporate plutocracy rather than democracy.
American society, culture and its corporate intellectuals have become dumbfounded by the progress of Neo-Cons and their apparent supremacy in social control by instigating Fear in the heart of its citizens.
Except a few unsettled souls in alternative media, who either write self-congratulatory reports, publish fruitless articles, or play their own little power games to prevent publication of critical views of themselves, there exists no alternative politics.
THE INTERNET AS OPIATE OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Mass media is in corporate control and is acting as the Public RelationS and propaganda machine to control the voting public.
The public is controlled by the corporate media and the internet is nothing but a psychological release bottom for public.
Instead of building a social movement against the socio-political manipulation and control of public, it has become the opium for the voices of dissents to drawn themselves into seclusion.
The internet has created Virtual intellectuals, who live in a “make-believe” world of Google and Microsoft.
The internet has become the main playground for the discontent of any kinds, and is often ignored by the voting public.
It is an arena for restless intellectuals to get their anger out. Internet publishing and exposing the atrocities of the power elites is not an expression of free media in a democratic society.
It has become an anger management class and sedative practice to channel all anti-structural factions into a state of despair and fatigue.
Psychologically, people who waste energy in writing become devoid of praxis and lose their dialectical interrelationship with others, who could have otherwise acted in concert in a revolutionary act against the oppressive system.
The Internet is an arena for fools who produce nothing but individuated atomized beings. It gives them a Forum for empty communication which lacks socio-political bondage and is devoid of communal cohesion or human sentiments. It has become a Wonderland for fools who have no effect on social policy.
And yet, we cannot underestimate the impact 'real-time technology' has had
on the formation of transnational consciousness. i.e. the Islamic sense of
itself as a nation, with 'terrorism' being the most salient of its
manifestations. When we realise that the nation-state is a formation
emerging, amongst others, from, and being reinforced by a previous state of
technology and technological literacy, we'll realise that much of the
global upheavels we are currently witnessing is a direct result of new
technology, increase in technological literacy and the inability of the
Oligarchs of the Day to monopolise communications technology.
The corporate media is, more or less, as you describe it. The internet,
however, is more important than you think. It is an alternative view, sure,
but it is, also, a gathering place - a forum - in which to discuss,
develop, encourage, and disseminate ideas. The corporate view still
predominates, but less and less, year by year as internet influence
continues to gather steam. I think many of us are getting tired of being
talked down to by "pundits" who are a bought and paid for to spread the
conventional corporate "wisdom" that all the while leaves out or distorts
so much inconvenient information.
Farhat, the focus of your concerns is misplaced. The Internet, in the
context of your article, is simply an electronic communication devise. It
attests no personal or political values, it assures no definite successes
or failures, its policy propagation capacities are near nil and as a
vehicle of political revolution, it lags even the cell-phone.
DON’T RANT ABOUT IRRELEVANCIES