While reading Harry's Place, thought it really intersting that an anti-warist is boasting about Fukuyama coming out against swamp-draining.

(Jackthebear, 10 posts from the top)

I've noticed things like 'Even Fukuyama realises...", pop up in the last few days. I can see how a Blairite might get a bit worried about that, since Blair and Fukuyama are vaguely in the same liberal paradigm. But not that worried, surely?

What struck me was how the psychology was working. They really are ossifying intellectually.

This got me to thinking about making a list of people we meet in the blogosphere with open minds.

If we are going out there promoting ourselves, we should offer encouragement to those people who are engaging in original thought and open-minded debate. This seems even more important, at our small stage, as finding people who actually agree with us as such.


Just to seen often to engage with the smart, insightful people will help us get more  people interested in what we are doing here

 

Not much point looking for debate with people who "actually agree with us as such" - debate requires disagreement. Nor much point "going out there and promoting ourselves" to people who are into "engaging in original thought and open-minded debate" - they would want to engage in original thought and open-minded debate rather than with being "promoted" to.



Surveying the blogosphere and compiling notes about various interesting sites with analysis of how they see things and how they engage would certainly be a good start to finding others interested in original thought and open-minded debate. An area of this site should be set up for maintaining the blogroll with associated notes and analaysis. This could include references to individuals who inhabit their comments areas- though I suspect that will be less productive.


Certainly when actually engaging in the comments area at a site one would need to resist any temptation to get sucked into the general trivia by just "showing off" and demolishing the people making the most stupid remarks. We should instead focus on those who show more intelligence and  insight.

In general however,  it's likely to be more productive if we try to engage in debate with someone actually running a site rather than with those only commenting it.


This is done throughout the blogosphere by posting a response to one of their items on your own site and then drawing attention to it in their comments so they are more likely to respond.


My impression is that the boasting about Fukuyama meme is spreading rapidly because the people spreading it get their world outlook directly from the liberal/conservative mainstream media which is spreading it. This highlights the importance of the concept of a "pseudo-left". The pseudos see nothing whatever incongruous or ossified about taking comfort from endorsement by liberals and conservatives because they are liberals and conservatives and their "leftism" is pure verbiage.


The pro-war liberals at sites like Harry's Place have more in common with the genuine left because they are "left liberals". But that means they are also rather ossified and that they use the term "pseudo-left" primarily as a form of abuse similar to "stoppers" and "mongers".


They have good reasons to want to confuse the "stoppers" with the "hard left" that they are also opposed to.


As far as "promotion" goes,  I think the most useful meme we could actually help spread is the widest possible usage of the term "pseudo-left" to describe people who oppose the war in Iraq for conservative/reactionary reasons and prefer  stability under autocracies to the "dangers" of democracy while (at teh same time)  using "anti-imperialist" verbiage usually in "anti-american" form.

This should be sharply distinguished from other phenomena such as "anti-americanism" which has its own name and can be seen coming from people who do genuinely prefer democracy to "stability" and  also from  people who openly hate america  for reactionary reasons .... basically "because they hate freedom".


I'm inclined to think that there is more chance of finding people to engage with in parts of the explicitly right-wing blogosphere - especially by challenging their relentless pounding of "the left" by pointing out that they are in fact having to fight their own previous "right wing" policies,  and that there is nothing remotely "left" -apart from the verbiage- about the people they are so easily ridiculing for continuing to uphold the middle east policy which Bush has admitted was America's right-wing policy for many decades and  has now  become so totally bankrupt that even they can now see it  - whereas the genuine left saw it long ago.

Spreading usage of the term "pseudo-left" there  (the rightwing blogosphere) could be highly productive. I'm also inclined to think we have not actually done that - partly from not actually being clear about the term "pseudo-left" ourselves and partly because of  not being confident enough to debate the right on other topics.

Unfortunately most people who are genuinely interested in original thought and open minded debate are steering well clear of "politics" these days as there isn't much room for it in the current confused "strange times".

Most "smart, insightful people" are also  themselves too confused about what's going on to get involved in changing that. You'll find them discussing science and philosophy while quite ostentatiously avoiding "politics". (Which of course is exactly what the ruling class needs and an important background reason for the way things have developed politically - if a less confusing approach to the "war on terror" had been used , a lot of smart, insightful people would have got engaged in politics in ways that would not be good for long term ruling class rule).