It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . A famous lament of those that follow the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ as a good, pragmatic strategy. These things are formally defined as triangles with positive and negative relationships. If two share friendship for the third it is stable. If two hate the shit out of the third it is stable. But the love hate things produces an unstable structure. It is usually good to do some historical work on this before declaring your support. Let me get to the messiness of this and why I am troubled, again.
Based on response here, and there are a lot, here are some problems: 1) People are confusing this with getting out of their “bubble”. Communication is critical in society and it does no one any good to ignore those that do not agree with you. This is not about that; 2) Recognizing and supporting good no matter the source of the good statement or action is essential. That is not what is being proposed here; 3) Caitlin Johnstone has a large following and that is fine but increasingly plays to emotion. That excites her audience but is too much like a pep rally for the ‘cause’. The most important thing is the ‘cause’ and that is very complex. Ignoring the complexity and exciting emotions is what Trump did and it is the only thing that he did, in fact the only thing he knows how to do; 4) Taking this at face value: destroying the establishment media, raises the questions, what will that accomplish? And what will replace it? Yes, people need to wake up to the manipulations in the US media particularly but is destroying the media the way to do that? To put it bluntly I tend to see the “establishment media” as a straw man.
On the Counterpunch issue I will only say I follow Counterpunch and they do very good work. They also take specific positions that I find hard to justify. That’s as it should be. I’ve always felt very much the same way about Glenn Greenwald.
The strategy that I find more appropriate is to ignore the mainstream or US establishment media. I see them obviously but they do not lead and are pretty consistently reactionary. There are now rapidly growing people’s media (for lack of a better term) such a Medium. There are excellent international media, The Guardian for one, the Economist for another that I find much more balanced and focused on discussions we desperately need to have. I push people there. Go international. It helps. Ignoring the capitalist owned media is what they fear more than anything.
Extremism is a large and growing danger. It is an old truism that radical right and radical left have long been very similar. They just use different words for almost the same thing. As I and others are saying in greater numbers, right and left are not the issue. And that is a base problem that I have with Counterpunch. It is oriented, correctly or not to the old array of ideas that are past. What we’re seeing is not the internal pendulum of right wing to left wing. Those terms were defined by 18th century ideas and conditions that are no longer extant and, in any case, have worn out their welcome.
What is emerging is new. It is no longer defined by The Mountain versus The Plain which became the right and left of the French Parliament in 1789 or the monarchy versus the people as represented by Estates and then the people’s representative organizations acting as revolutionary agents of the people by the rights of the people. Notice how easy this is to change into the Presidency and Congress acting not on behalf of the people but on behalf of other elements of the establishment justified by the people (who don’t have any say in any of it other than as the symbol of authority). And so for two hundred years this heritage has the people periodically getting very pissed because the exploitation becomes too blatant. But what we now see, legitimately, as a structural problem prevented this from ever being solved. So, yet again, the people get very pissed and elect an idiot because he is going to make it great again even though he is obviously completely incompetent. And yet again he and the people’s representative completely ignore the people’s desires and invite a completely new batch of snakes and alligators into the, now gold plated, swamp. And their media carefully justifies it all as the way things have always been and, even if it is a disaster, hasn’t it always been a disaster? So here’s another disaster and another conspiracy and another, and another. . .
We’re now using different weapons in a very different set of battles on a very complex battle field. The establishment is already destroyed. The establishment media is already destroyed. We are all very active in the new media that is not the old at all. There are connections to the old but that is primarily writers who want to get paid because the old media still has the money. But not for long. There is a new, sustainable economy that needs to be grown.
Why should we complicate a complex process by joining forces with the wrong to fight a battle that has already been won? Why aren’t we simply replacing the old and looking to the new? At worst this is misdirection and at best risks wasted effort and increased confusion.
