2ndChildhood
03-07-2011, 20:43
The Paradoxes at the Heart of the "Progressive" Project (http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar11/faux-progressive3-11.html)
What passes for "Progressive" now is not in the least progressive.
The agendas of both so-called "Progressive" and "Conservative" ideologies are based on paradoxes that proponents conveniently ignore. Let's start with the so-called "Progressive" agenda, so-called because beneath the ideologically "Left" bluster there is little actually progressive or forward-looking thinking.
A recent piece from The Nation entitled "Stockton Goes Bust" instructively communicates the monumental paradoxes implicit in the "Progressive" project.
Stripped down to its essence, the piece would have us feel sorry for a citizen who lost her $138,000 a year job (not including benefits) with a school district and as a result lost her suburban McMansion. Now, we are told, only her fancy clothing remains from her luxe lifestyle of international travel and all the other trappings of an upper-middle class lifestyle.
The implicit message is that this person somehow "deserves" a job that pays $138,000 and all the goodies that salary bought. That this person took in over $1 million in less than a decade and basically squandered that fortune on extravagances and fantasies is carefully left unsaid.
Implicit in this point of view is the basic "Progressive" assumption that all workers in America "deserve" a job which supports the "American Dream" of a suburban home, two cars in the driveway (the garage is filled with the other trappings of consumerist "success"), designer clothing, and international travel.
In other words, the "Progressive" view of what's good and right is circa 1946, only the "good life" "deserved" by all American workers has been upgraded to higher levels of consumption.
Yes, "Progressives" give copious lip service to "green" suburbs and "green" hybrid vehicles,but it's all a nostalgic fantasy of leafy suburbia and long commutes magically devoid of any value creation.
The truth is there is nothing "green" about a large, sprawling exurban community: building a house that requires vast consumption of energy in the middle of nowhere with faux-"green" materials is not sustainable, and a vehicle that depends on lithium-ion batteries isn't sustainable, either (peak lithium is a few years out, but it's coming).
Missing from this "Progressive" program is any recognition that this American Dream lifestyle which we all "deserve" as a birthright depends on cheap, abundant oil and a global Empire to secure it for our private consumption.
The "right" of American workers, some 4.7% of the world's populace, to consume 25% of its oil and resources is unchallenged by this "Progressive" agenda, which stripped of pretensions is basically the Consumerist Fantasy of ever higher consumption and ever more "growth."
In 1946, America supplied its own oil and energy. We didn't need a Global Empire with "interests" everywhere on the planet that needed "defending." You want to stripmine 25% of the world's resources for 4.7% of its inhabitants, then you need a Global Empire to enforce that stripmining, and a Central State with the power to skim trillions of dollars from others via arbitraging the world's sole reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.
The paradox is obvious, isn't it? In demanding our "rights" to endlessly rising "growth" and consumption, then you have to stripmine the planet to feed our extravagance, and you need a Global Empire to enforce and control the flow of resources to the home country.
The standard "Progressive" disapproves of all Pentagon spending in support of Empire, and heartily approves of domestic "growth" based on rising consumption, conveniently ignoring that this "growth" requires Empire.
...
more at http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2011/03/paradoxes-at-heart-of-progressive.html
What passes for "Progressive" now is not in the least progressive.
The agendas of both so-called "Progressive" and "Conservative" ideologies are based on paradoxes that proponents conveniently ignore. Let's start with the so-called "Progressive" agenda, so-called because beneath the ideologically "Left" bluster there is little actually progressive or forward-looking thinking.
A recent piece from The Nation entitled "Stockton Goes Bust" instructively communicates the monumental paradoxes implicit in the "Progressive" project.
Stripped down to its essence, the piece would have us feel sorry for a citizen who lost her $138,000 a year job (not including benefits) with a school district and as a result lost her suburban McMansion. Now, we are told, only her fancy clothing remains from her luxe lifestyle of international travel and all the other trappings of an upper-middle class lifestyle.
The implicit message is that this person somehow "deserves" a job that pays $138,000 and all the goodies that salary bought. That this person took in over $1 million in less than a decade and basically squandered that fortune on extravagances and fantasies is carefully left unsaid.
Implicit in this point of view is the basic "Progressive" assumption that all workers in America "deserve" a job which supports the "American Dream" of a suburban home, two cars in the driveway (the garage is filled with the other trappings of consumerist "success"), designer clothing, and international travel.
In other words, the "Progressive" view of what's good and right is circa 1946, only the "good life" "deserved" by all American workers has been upgraded to higher levels of consumption.
Yes, "Progressives" give copious lip service to "green" suburbs and "green" hybrid vehicles,but it's all a nostalgic fantasy of leafy suburbia and long commutes magically devoid of any value creation.
The truth is there is nothing "green" about a large, sprawling exurban community: building a house that requires vast consumption of energy in the middle of nowhere with faux-"green" materials is not sustainable, and a vehicle that depends on lithium-ion batteries isn't sustainable, either (peak lithium is a few years out, but it's coming).
Missing from this "Progressive" program is any recognition that this American Dream lifestyle which we all "deserve" as a birthright depends on cheap, abundant oil and a global Empire to secure it for our private consumption.
The "right" of American workers, some 4.7% of the world's populace, to consume 25% of its oil and resources is unchallenged by this "Progressive" agenda, which stripped of pretensions is basically the Consumerist Fantasy of ever higher consumption and ever more "growth."
In 1946, America supplied its own oil and energy. We didn't need a Global Empire with "interests" everywhere on the planet that needed "defending." You want to stripmine 25% of the world's resources for 4.7% of its inhabitants, then you need a Global Empire to enforce that stripmining, and a Central State with the power to skim trillions of dollars from others via arbitraging the world's sole reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.
The paradox is obvious, isn't it? In demanding our "rights" to endlessly rising "growth" and consumption, then you have to stripmine the planet to feed our extravagance, and you need a Global Empire to enforce and control the flow of resources to the home country.
The standard "Progressive" disapproves of all Pentagon spending in support of Empire, and heartily approves of domestic "growth" based on rising consumption, conveniently ignoring that this "growth" requires Empire.
...
more at http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2011/03/paradoxes-at-heart-of-progressive.html