Left/Right Dichotomy

http://www.alternet.org/politics/140578/the_terrorist_threat%3A_right-wing_radicals_and_the_eliminationist_mindset/


I love Dave...love his site:http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

But read the comments under this article....
Seems "liberals" are just as kooky regarding "Ideological Purity" as "Conservatives".
I've encountered this a lot..online at least.
The Purity thing from the Left is irksome, but what really gets me' goat is the idea that L?R, Conservative/Liberal, etc, are non-existant...mere divisive ploys to divide us, set us each against each.
I come to my own beliefs about such things from the Briar-Patch of "Reinventing the Wheel"...My folks, when I was growing up, were all but apolitical.
I think they "leaned Left", and still do..(vote Dem,etc)...but politics was never dinner-table fodder.
I accidently discovered the Libertarian Party in high school...( this was during the end of Reagan/beginning of Bush I).I was a "stoner",a wanna-be hippy/beatnik/radical.
The idea that Dem/Rep were 2 sides of the same coin made a lot of sense to me..and still does.So my first presidential election, I voted for Ron Paul.
Eventually, in my 30's, I abandoned the Libertarian Party...they equated Corporate Capitalism with Adam Smith-style "free-market-ism" , and that just didn't fel right to me.
W/ the advent of Lil'George,9-11, and all the pseudo-fascist weirdness that ensued...I was left w/ no alternative but to support the Democrats. I made common cause with the only organised bunch that seemed to oppose the violent swing to the right.
But they were weird, in their own way.
Coming into my own, politically, I never grokked "ideological purity".
Left or Right.
It's myopic, and leads one to ignore real problems.
To wit...the whole "conspiracy theory" meme, in which every one who finds a grain of truth in "theories' regarding thr Federal Reserve, Main Stream Media,Powers that Be, Etc, is automatically shit-canned as a nutcase.
The comments to the above post are a case study in this.
Way I see it...there IS a R/L dichotomy...just that Democrats are hardly of the Left.
R/L goes waaaay back...to the Enlightenment and before.
Right is "for" status quo...maintaining the current power-structure...because it's the current power-structure.To accomplish this feat, it has, over the years, coopted the language, and the thought-processes it stands in for.
Consider...early 20th century...suddenly Marx is no longer a "fringe' character, stuck in academic and economic corrals.Lenin, Trotsky, et alia catapulted him, (and a waterd down, corrupted version of his ideas) into international consiousness.
"Capitalism" (here read "greed" and it's maintenance) had a rival.
Those who had landed at the top of the eonomic and political heap were scared shitless that these ideas (Proletariat, worker's rights) would gain traction...and their own position at the top would be challenged.
How to justify their priveleges?
A conundrum...they couldn't rationally justify them.At leats not on an even playing field.
The answer, was to demonise.
Hence, the Red Scares, Palmer Raids, Fascism in Europe, and even things like the "drug war"...all the way to McCarthyism and the Cold War....
Union Busting...the list goes on, and is still being added to.
Heaven forbid that the "serfs" wake up and find that they are powerful...that they outnumber the "elite" 10000 to 1.
During World War 2, the Government, the Industrial Base, and the new "Intelligence" apparatus, learned that they could work together.
They learned that they had a common purpose in defending the Paradigm.
Fascism fit right in with this...but "we" had just fought a terrible war over that...so it had to be rebranded.
Two dudes really go into this whole thing in greater depth than I can...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Wright_Mills

and


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Myron_Gross


They make a good, almost irrefutable, case that the language of politics...the political "spectrum"...HAS been coopted.

I think it was , originally, intentional...but it has ,since, taken on a life of it's own.
Kinda like the "singularity"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near
, except that this is not about computers, or technology...
Matrix...Machine...these are words I use for it...but they arent really sufficient, either.
"Corporate" means "having a body" and is used to refer to artificial business entities that "we" endow with "right and priviledges" usually reserved for flesh and blood humans.
"Corporations" over the last 100 years, have gained,IMO, status as "lifeforms'.
Doesn't matter who the CEO is, or who is "on the board", the Entity itself has it's own logic and decision-tree...it operates for it's own preservation.
I see the Machine/Matrix the same way...
Indeed, the Machine includes Corporations...as well as "Organised religion".

Some peon, or group of peons, start making noise about the injustices of this Paradigm...and they are eliminated, outright...or marginalised...or,more common since the '60's, coopted and absorbed by the Machine itself.
Alternet, Democracy Now!, etc etc...are blow-off valves.
The 60's scared the "Machine"...couldn't counter it (it could never win in a fair fight of ideas...who, in their right mind would support it?)...so it "learned" to incorporate it's opposition.Folks who, for whatever reason,don't swallow the Paradigm whole, are provided with an approved outlet.
Protest!
"Grass Roots!"
The "Two-Party System."
Those who don't fall for this ruse ( and I love Amy Goodman,et alia) are marginalised...lumped in with "conspiracy theorists", code for "crazy".
"Tin Foil Hat Brigade."

The very recalcitrant, who won't go along with this marginalisation, are "eaten by sharks"...or "fall out of airplanes", "commit suicide", etc...(lots of examples,BTW)

I'm not saying that this "Machine" has conciousness in the conventional sense...only that "it" operates within it's own logic.
To be successful in the Paradigm, one must swallow (at least on the surface) the Paradigm.
Red Pill/ Blue Pill, in the Matrix movies.
This has become self-perpetuating.
"TINA" "There is no Alternative".
Unions, Universal Healthcare, and all kind of other things that would really help the "little guy' are rebranded as "Left"...which equals "Communist".

Sometime around 1979, the Right..who embraced this nonsense out of fear, or real affinity, depending on income and status....decided that they no longer needed the "left", anymore.
The whole "good cop/ bad cop" ,One Coin stuff was tedious.
Enter Neoconservatives.
The "left" was progressively (pun intended) demonised...ruthlessly.
Rush..Newt..all the "conservative" ideologues and "pundits" grew ever more unapologetic and extreme."Kill a Commie for Mommie" is something I heard on the damned playground in 3rd grade....
The Bush II era was the pinnacle of this break from "Bipartisanship".
"Liberals" (the "big government", pseudo Communist kind .LOL) were painted as traitors...evil...monolithic.
And we swallowed it whole.
Even the "opposition" got on that wagon.Wouldn't do to be seen as "weak" or "unamerican"...

Well..."they" overreached..we are told.
A new era has dawned (Morning in America?)
We are to be a just, moral superpower...
And it's just another ruse...another absorption.
Things haven't really changed all that much.
Obama is a part of the machine...otherwise he'd not be where he is.
( remember a coulpla dudes named "Kennedy"?)
Machine wins, again.
And if anyone reads this, I'll be consigned to "TinFoil Hat Land" and marginalised.
Really, kinda hope I do...
I don't care for sharks.