The Rush Limbaughs Of The Left

May Day should be a day of celebration for those of us on the Left. But sometimes the people with whom you are celebrating wreck the mood. That is what happened to me last week at the May Day celebration in Union Square in NYC.

An anti-war sign at NYC's May Day celebration

 Basically, the mentality displayed by the organizers and many of the speakers was similar to the mentality of Rush Limbaugh with the exception that they didn't share his ideologies. And this shows that conservative opportunistic pundits have no monopoly on appealing to simple all-or-nothing thinking or being bombastic.

And it just wasn't the organizers of the May Day celebration or many of the speakers they invited, but it was also those who joined in the 'F*@k The Police' chant that would occasionally echo through some of the crowd. It was that chant that has caused me to both leave a past march and to temporarily walk out this celebration.

Now don't get me wrong, not all of those celebrating May Day there were acting like Rush Limbaugh. Some people were friendly and rational. But for those who were content with being the Rush Limbaughs of the Left, they provided no reason for spectators to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation with them let alone to consider becoming a leftist.

What does it mean to become a Rush Limbaugh of an ideology? It means to look down on all others who hold to different ideologies. It means to discredit and even demonize those with whom one disagrees. It means to be ignorantly bombastic as Limbaugh did one time when he openly questioned whether Michael J. Fox's Parkinson symptoms were real.

To be a Rush Limbaugh of an ideology means that you look at your own group as having everything to teach and nothing to learn from others--that phraseology is borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr. And it is that mentality that so divides the nation. For when we think that one's own group has everything to teach and nothing to learn from others, then those others are seen as a threat, at least, to progress. And those we see as some threat, are those we eventually believe we need to conquer and control rather than to share society as equals.



For a Socialist like myself, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that there is the Left Forum to look forward to. There, one can engage in a number of meaningful, rational discussions with fellow Leftists. There will be a chance to listen to some interesting speakers and to give feedback to some worthwhile presentations and panel discussions.

What is the bad news? It is that the same mentality will pervade next year's May Day as did this one..