Yoshie Furuhashi's Critical Montages is my favorite web journal these days. I have read Yoshie's posts for years on LBO-Talk, because they are always well-written, calm, and correct, as well as a fountain of information and connection.

Yoshie's report on Bill O'Reilly's shift on Iraq (and some interesting commentary on Nader and other candidates) fits well with a montage of my own. For the last several weeks I have written posts attempting to describe, in a self-consciously fragmented way, the fragmentation of bourgeois politics; the ruthlessness of their bulldogs, the transitive nature of their arguments.

But Yoshie's article identifies another area of focus at least as important as watching the ruling class bumble around.

the very fact that O'Reilly arrived at the conclusion that "[t]he faster we get out of there, the better" based on his own conservative premise and reasoning -- America went to war with "very good intentions," and "[w]e gave them a chance like we gave the South Vietnamese people a chance," but "[t]he majority of the Iraqi people do not appreciate what we've done for them" -- is quite significant. It's an index of how unpopular the occupation of Iraq has become.
The John Kerry camp should take heart from the conclusion of the O'Reilly speech at the Economic Club -- O'Reilly all but endorsed Kerry

And we should learn from why it's possible that O'Reilly would endorse Kerry. It's time to ask some questions about what we're voting for, why we're voting, what we hope to get out of it; and, given whatever imperfect answers to those questions, we need a conversation about Kerry, Nader, and anti-imperialist struggle.

Does Kerry get a free pass like so many Nader-Haters were eager to give Gore in 2000?

Does Nader get a free pass on immigration, as Yoshie implies? Do we forgive his conservatizing, nationalist rhetoric? What about Nader and sexual orientation issues?

I think Nader has been unwarrantedly maligned. I fundamentally deny that he cost Gore the election, and I am not sure what Gore would have gotten us beyond better-engineered and more well-hidden warfare. But I also agree with Yoshie, who writes:

Now that the tide of public opinion has turned against the occupation of Iraq, as O'Reilly's remarks demonstrate, leftists should turn up the heat on Nader as well, not just on Bush and Kerry, holding the only anti-occupation candidate in the race to a higher moral and political standard.

So in the weeks to come I'll be seeking input, and writing my thoughts on Eugene Debs's immortal wager: "It's better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it."

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire