TWO FROM ZNET

First, an essay on how the left might rise again:

The Specter Of The Working Class

That Frank doesn't draw out these implications isn't surprising, given his liberal viewpoint. Mostly what he has to say in this regard is to knock the Democrats for abandoning their traditional working class base in favor of yuppies and exurbanites. While this isn't wrong, it doesn't go very deep. If class anger is the key to electoral politics, then surely class is also key to understanding the Democrats. Since the New Deal they've been the capitalist party of reform, except that with the onset of globalization in the last few decades the room for reform within capitalism has narrowed almost to nothing.

That's the real reason the Democrats have abandoned their base - not out of some misguided election strategy but because they've had to abandon their reformism. It was either that or abandon capitalism, which is as unthinkable to Democrats as to Republicans. Hence the growing convergence of the two parties, to the point where they become almost indistinguishable. Clinton ran a Republican administration in all but rhetoric and Kerry ran a Republican ('Bush-lite') campaign in all but name. It's a pipedream to hope this trend will change. Class matters - even more than winning elections.

But beyond the Democrats there is a wide spectrum of progressive politics all the way to the radical left. Why have these elements been unable to tap into class anger?

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Next, an essay providing some insight into the irrational Jewish support of Palestinian oppression:

The Wrath of the Jews

I'm in the living room of a family friend. The subject changes from yoga to Israel-Palestine, and I tell her that I think Americans need to change their foreign policy towards Israel. She says, "in what way, so that the Arabs will throw the Jews into the sea?" It takes four minutes of back and forth for the conversation to degenerate. She finally says, "Look, what I have to say isn't pretty, but I'm not afraid. I'm going to say it anyways. The Palestinians are nothing but vermin. They make trouble in every country they live in. Even the other Arab countries don't want them." I take a deep breath. Then I realize, I've heard that sentence, only with "Jews" instead of "Palestinians." "Jews are vermin. They make trouble in every country they live in." I've heard that before. And it's breaking my heart that it's coming out of her mouth.

And

Americans are listening to the story that they are being sold, one that serves the interests of a militant US foreign policy towards Israel. And that story isn't my story, and it isn't my family's story, or my family's friend's story. In my story, there is no moral to the story of the annihilation of six million Jews and the millions of Roma, Poles, homosexuals, disabled, and others who perished. Our story isn't one with the happy endings of Hollywood Holocaust blockbusters, where we all end up in Israel. The history of the Holocaust in my family isn't over yet. As a grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, I am still living that history. Even though the Holocaust or my family's experience of anti-Semitism was hardly mentioned, I grew up in a house with the ghosts of my murdered family, with parents and grandparents who lived in absolute fear.

Click here for the rest.

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