The left in the wilderness

Admittedly I haven’t been following this issue very closely, but at his site http://lhote.blogspot.com/2011/01/blindspot.html Freddy deBoer has been pounding away at the relative dearth of left-leaning bloggers. To be sure, there are plenty of liberal sites, such as the Huffington Post, Salon, and Slate, but these are not what deBoer is seeking.

This absence is part of the general occultation of the left. One could invoke Schadenfreude, and say, like the comic strip character in days of yore: “they brought it on themselves." But actually this is a serious loss. It is as if one looked for the moon on successive nights and found that it was just not there. (Of course, some leftists are “loony,” but this is not what I mean.)

In the run up to Bush’s deplorable invasion and occupation of Iraq, I attended as many protest rallies as I could, noticing that most of the participants were old folks like myself. Where were the young people.

The current leftist cause in NYC seems to be to prevent Walmart from establishing stores in Gotham City. We already have K-Mart, Target, and Ikea--so how would this ban make a difference? Moreover, the ban won’t change Walmart’s bottom line much.
It is a purely symbolic issue, and most people outside the ranks of the protesters can see that.

The result, making the left look silly, is the opposite of the one intended. But that effect has never deterred ideologues of all stripes.