Re: Dispiriting Suburbs?
On Oct 20, 2006, at 3:34 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Doug Henwood quoted:
“…the quixotic fantasy of activists who craved acceptance from
the same society they wanted to revolutionize.”I’m a little baffled by your approbation for that sentence.
If democratic change is possible, then by definition, society is
going to have to accept our ideas.
The context for this is Kazin’s point that most American radicals -
all the permutations of the populist strain, including the CP in its
popular front phase - have done so as “patriots,” accusing elites of
corruption and betrayal of the constitution and American ideals. It’s
all a closed circle: we need to get back to some “true Americanism”
which the vile usurpers have sullied. So no critique of American
society as needing a serious overhaul is possible, because that would
be “unpatriotic.”
Doug