This is an interesting piece from In These Times that rips the mask off the false pragmatism that the Democratic Party has demanded from its minions since the election of Barack Obama, but that has heightened in its hypocrisy as the Occupy Wall Street movement turns its attention to the broken party.
In it, Joe Macaré outlines four basic fallacies on which the prime criticism of the movement hinges — that taking a moral stand, as the Occupy protesters have done, is morally indefensible; that pragmatism requires protesters to trade principle for the potential of some paltry favor from those in power; that history shows that progressive protest creates backlash (when it actually shows that protest creates a moral momentum for change); and assumption that the Occupiers are looking to be an extension of the Democratic Party.
None of these assumptions are accurate, as Macaré makes clear, which is why they are fallacies.
The Occupiers are small “d” democrats who have as their chief goal breaking the grip of money on the political system and re-empowering the so-called 99 percent, to give us control over a government that now views corporate America as its sole master.
This goal may require the election of some progressive Democrats, but it may also require the defeat of corporate Democrats and the formation of a new progressive party outside the Democrats, which is something the Occupy movement understands.
This is about democracy not the Democrats or the liberal establishment.
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