Takeshi

Takeshi, Yannick and Karl

Greetings from Australia

I apologise for including colloquial  (slang) expressions in the article. I will try to explain what I meant.

George Monbiot (when he wrote):

rightwing movements thrive on their contradictions, the leftwing movements drown in them. Tea Party members who proclaim their rugged individualism will follow a bucket on a broomstick if it has the right label … Instead of coming together to fight common causes, leftwing meetings today consist of dozens of people promoting their own ideas, and proposing that everyone else should adopt them.

What he meant was that rightwing movements such as the Tea Party in the United States have no difficulty putting forward a number of contradictory statements simultaneously and then find no difficulty believing that two or more contradictory statements are simultaneously true – for example illegal migrants will destroy our economy, illegal migrants are lazy, illegal migrants with take white peoples’ jobs because they will work for very low wages, illegal migrants undermine our social structures etc.

Whereas leftwing activists will squabble over subtle nuances in interpretation of quite similar ideas; that is leftwing movements often split over minor points of interpretation.

Monboit makes the point that rightwing Tea Party members proclaim their individualism yet will line up in large numbers in support of uninspiring political candidates providing that those candidates appear to proclaim ultra conservative political positions, that is the correct political label.

On the other hand leftwing activists (despite all their talk of unity, solidarity commonality) are frequently too busy pushing their individual idiosyncratic narrow interpretation of public policy to join with others in the common struggle.

Please feel free to get back to me if there is anything else which is confusing in the article

Happy christmas and may 2012 be a good year for you all

john