Traditions and The Future ... minding gaps ...
One of the 'games' the mainstream seems intent on playing with the election is to remove from it any 'ideological' content ... excepting the bland branded 'neo-corporatism' (or whatever else you might call it) which is the single ideology of the three main parties, and the out-and-out fascism of the BNP (as the 'enemy we can all agree to love to hate').
This 'narrowing of range' of discourse seems a form of 'thought-control'.
The Greens might get an occasional mainstream 'inclusion', but the rest of us are one way or another marginalized - either as 'dangerous radicals' or 'harmless lunatics'.
I don't think it's too much of a conceit to say that in our little small town anti-war group we actually have a broader range of good faith ideologies/belief systems than the so called 'wider mainstream' these days.
And we also have healthy ongoing traditions of real democratic debate/discussion - which isn't just cheap political point-scoring or 'opponent knocking'.
In our own forums and discussions we have often referred back to a phrase 'trenches of ideas' (which I first heard from Cuban friends visiting the area, as I seem to recall).
Sometimes it seems as if digging 'trenches of ideas' is perhaps all you can do when up against forces who are materially richer (but not necessarily culturally so) and more physically powerful.
You plant your 'ideals' like seeds in the ground ... in the belief that future generations will be able to cultivate them when conditions are more favourable for their growth ...
Among the ideas informing the ideological 'seeds' of our little small town anti-war groups are modern Marxism, in various forms, which can trace roots back to Marx and Engels and beyond (to the British 'Digger' tradition etc) ... but also non-Marxist forms of radicalism, including the anti-war anti-imperialist radical liberalism of people like John Bright (scorned and/or ignored by the modern Liberal-Democrats, most of whom have probably not even heard of him) ...
The mainstream does seem to want to exclude serious 'ideological discussion' from this election.
Fortunately the internet is there to fill in the gaps ... and is in fact already full of 'trenches of ideas' ... including completely free editions of 'classics' of political literature ...
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/61http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7080And not to mention other as yet unbanned and still read texts of a sort that might be recommended by 'quixotic' modern political characters such as Mr Charvez of South America
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2000 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/623
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