Website review: Tikkun Current Thinking: Tom Hayden...
suzukibeane discovered this in Politics
•3 reviews since May 15, 2008
politics
•files.tikkun.org/current/article.php
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suzukibeane discovered 7 weeks ago- A letter from Tom Hayden to Barack Obama from last autumn - I think it contains many good points, particularly with respect to 'turning the page' on the issues of the past. As Hayden says, I wasn't aware we'd got all that stuff sorted out, such that we COULD move on and turn the page from it all. Worth a read. From the page: "You were ten years old when the Sixties ended, so it is the formative story of your childhood. The polarizations that you want to transcend today began with life-and-death issues that were imposed on us. No one chose to be "extreme" or "militant" as a lifestyle preference. It was an extreme situation that produced us. On one side were armed segregationists, on the other peaceful black youth. On one side were the destroyers of Vietnam, on the other were those who refused to submit to orders. On the one side were those keeping women in inferior roles, on the other were those demanding an equal rights amendment. On one side were those injecting chemical poisons into our rivers, soils, air and blood streams, on the other were the defenders of the natural world. On one side were the perpetrators of big money politics, on the other were keepers of the plain democratic tradition. Does anyone believe those conflicts are behind us? I can understand, in my old age, someone wanting to dissociate from the extremes to which some of us were driven by the times. That seems to be the ticket to legitimacy in the theater of the media and cultural gatekeepers. I went through a similar process in 1982 when I ran for the legislature, reassuring voters that I wasn't "the angry young man that I used to be." I won the election, and then the Republicans objected to my being seated anyway! Holding the idea that the opposites of the Sixties were equally extreme or morally equivalent is to risk denying where you came from and what made your opportunities possible. You surely understand that you are one of the finest descendants of the whole Sixties generation, not some hybrid formed by the clashing opposites of that time. We want to be proud of the role we may have played in all you have become, and not be considered baggage to be discarded on your ascent. You recognize this primal truth when you stand on the bridge in Selma, Alabama, basking in the glory of those who were there when you were three years old. But you can't have it both ways, revering the Selma march while trying to "turn the page" on the past."
- whoneedsit rated 7 weeks ago
- Tom Hayden calls Barack Obama, on his use of Hayden's name and chosen political positions, in illustrating a (possibly wholly fabricated)intra-party discord and polarity, in order to cast himself as the centrist. This letter dates back to November, 2007, but it is terrific. Again, thank you, http://suzukibeane.stumbleupon.com, for directing me to this piece.
- sap-sandwich rated 2 months ago
- Copypasta: "More disturbing is what happens to the mind by setting up these polarities. To take a "centrist" position, one calculates the equal distance between two "extremes." It doesn't matter if one "extreme" is closer to the truth. All that matters is achieving the equidistance. This means the presumably "extreme" view is prevented from having a fair hearing, which would require abandoning the imaginary center. And it invites the "extreme" to become more "extreme" in order to pull the candidate's thinking in a more progressive direction. The process of substantive thinking is corroded by the priority of political positioning."
