Middle-class precariat pseudo-leftist?

I wrote the following poem last month, and posted it on my second blog, since I discuss issues of aesthetics there, including some of my own poems, as well as philosophy, critical religion and general critical thinking.

Middle-class precariat pseudo-leftist

I know that I am the first and the second
And that they are intertwined.
Does this make me a pseudo-leftist as well?
Am I too afraid
Of giving up the scraps of security
In a bank account and elsewhere
That I have scraped for
To put myself in that middle class
And to try to avoid that precariat
(Even in a precariat career)
To be a "real leftist"?

As I get older
Maybe I'll know the answer
Or at least know it in larger part than now,
And as I learn it,
Maybe I'll be honest with myself.

It's easy to make excuses
But, in a dysfunctional life,
It's also easy to blame oneself,
Or to use the vocabulary of blaming oneself
To avoid deeper thought in general.

At the same time, where is there a dictionary
That can authoritatively, and unambiguously,
Define the term "real leftist"?
"If it feels leftist, then do it"?

Per old Idries Shah, sometimes overquoted
If there are more than two sides to this issue,
There's also a continuum of some sort.
And, I'm on that, and not at the zero point.
Real leftist in progress, or simpatico fellow traveler.

But, I wanted to offer some comments on it, so I reposted it here, with comment to follow.

I'm not Noam Chomsky, who has said that every president since World War II, not exempting Jimmy Carter, would swing from the gibbet if they were given a Nuremberg war crimes trial, but then continues to vote Democrat-only instead of moving outside the box. Ditto for the Adolph Reeds and Doug Henwoods of the world, and even self-proclaimed communist Angela Davis.

At the same time, I acknowledge, as an ex-Green, that too many Greens not only accept the unlikelihood of major Green Party candidates being elected, but perceive the party's ultimate role as nudging the Democrats leftward.

Ain't happening, and you're AccommoGreens, as I have called you, the Green equivalent of ConservaDems.

I also note the GP is not necessarily a "left" political party, unlike, say, the Socialist Party USA. Sorry, Greens, but the amount of "libertarian Greens" in the party, many "libertarian" on US terms, not European ones, and the anarchist Greens to somewhat lesser but not insignificant degree, negate the leftist claims for the party. (As if AccommoGreens don't.)

So, no, ultimately, I'm not a pseudo-leftist. I'm not a radical leftist, and I'm not an anarchist, but, in American terms (always a qualifier) per my header, I am a leftist. And more than some who are part of the problem, not solution, if they're voting Democrat only.

What I also am, as an ex-Green for now and probably through 2024, at least, someone who becomes ever more tired of electoral politics, even as I know the duopolists like seeing people like me drop out.

What the defenders of Robert Gibbs don’t get

While I like a lot of what Gene Lyons has to say as a columnist, his defense of Robert Gibbs is something I just don’t get, even after exchanging e-mails on his recent Salon column to that end.

The Politico column I do get, because it’s an “inside baseball” piece.

Let’s set aside, as I told Lyons, Obama the Snooper being possibly worse than Bush, and focus just on domestic policy.

1. Lyons defends Obama on not doing more for gay marriage, while ignoring Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
2. He ignores the Obama Administration’s apparent post-Deepwater collusion with BP to hide how bad the spill was, and more.
3. He ignores that, not in 9 months, but in 16 months, Obama’s not-so-totally-environmentalist Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, had not done a lot to clean house not only in Minerals Management Service, but in the Bureau of Land Management and elsewhere.
4. He ignores the question of whether Obama ever really wanted a public option on the health care bill, and whether the legislation we actually got isn’t calculated to raise 2012 campaign dollars.
5. He ignores similar questions on the financial ‘reform’ legislation.
6. Finally, defenders of Obama in general overlook the question of whether his personality, even more than Bill Clinton’s, is simply not that of a “fighter.” And that’s the key to all of this. Especially when combined with Shirley Sherrod’s lament that he needs to get to know some real people.

I'm taking Lyons as symptomatic of the professional class of neoliberals, quasiliberals, diluted liberals, once-upon-a-time liberals, compromise liberals, Kumbaya liberals, infected-by-political-correctness liberals and more who all feel this way.

And, they too are part of the reason, as I told Lyons, that we need more people to vote Green, Socialist, or whatever. Stop enabling Barack Obama and his ... ilk.

Stop enabling a Democratic Party that keeps tacking right; eventually, we'll have another Grover Cleveland.

Stop getting breathless over Obama's accomplishments, especially if there's white liberal guilt still in the background.

Finally, admit that plenty of Dems were in on the bills/actions that led to the financial precipice that Obama allegedly has reformed, but in actuality hasn't, and along with that, stop enabling the two-party duopoly.

Next test on how "liberal" Obama is, or is not, and how liberal his blanket defenders are?

Whether or not he appoints Elizabeth Warren to run the new consumer protection agency AND what sort of freedom she has, if she is appointed.