You Wouldn’t
Have To Knock People Off Their Pedestal If You Didn’t
Put Them There In The First PlaceBy
Caitlin Johnstone
April 20, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Whenever I see someone online repeatedly gushing
with enthusiastic praise about me and my writing, I
don’t get flattered by it. I don’t get any kind of ego
tickle out of it at all; I just quietly say to myself,
“Ah shit. You’re gonna get so pissed off when I
inevitably say something you disagree with.”
And
without fail they always do. It happens over and over
again; someone decides I’m the greatest thing since
sliced bread and decides to elevate me in their minds to
some kind of trustworthy authority figure over what they
should be thinking, then eventually I’ll say say
something they disagree with because I don’t fall neatly
into any reliable ideological box they can trust to
remain predictable from day to day, and they have a
catastrophic meltdown about it online acting like I just
betrayed them.
And in their minds, I did betray them. They trusted
me to always show up in their inbox every day saying
things that align with their worldview in an articulate
and interesting way, and then I betrayed that trust.
It’s not a trust I ever wanted and frequently advise
against, but I haven’t been able to find an effective
way to deter it.
I see this same kind of betrayal reaction from
progressives today about Bernie Sanders and Noam
Chomsky, Sanders for dropping out and endorsing Biden
without first ensuring some “concessions” from his
campaign and Chomsky for sharing the same “lesser evil
voting” policy he’s been voicing for decades.
I personally don’t get this desire progressives feel
to receive “concessions” from the Biden campaign in the
first place. Like, what is the motive here? You want
Biden’s handlers to lie to you and add some more fake
progressive agendas to his platform that have a zero
percent chance of ever being enacted if he makes it to
the White House? It’s so undignified. It’s undignified
for the progressives, and in a sense it’s undignified
for the Biden camp as well. Trying to make a lifelong
corporate whore do a fake leftist song and dance is like
trying to make a cat wear a dress. Stop trying to get
Biden’s handlers to write down some lefty talking points
for him to struggle to read on camera and just let him
campaign honestly as the corporate whore he’s always
been.
And of course the odious Mehdi Hasan
trotted out Chomsky to have him recite his famous
“lesser of two evils” spiel (except of course in this
case it’s the lesser of two right wing dementia patients
who’ve been credibly accused of rape). What did you
think was going to happen? They
did it in 2016, they
did it in 2012, of course they’re going to
do it again. You’ll never see Noam Chomsky more visible
than when the US political establishment needs to keep
national momentum from shifting toward actual leftist
movements.
