Thanks to Kos commentators Pluto and Don Mikulecky for re-introducing me to a great American Socialist of the early 20th century, a woman by the name of Helen Keller.
Keller, although blind and deaf from birth, was neither blind nor deaf to the horrors of the capitalist society in which she lived. So much so that she has something in common with WikiLeaks Julian Assange.
Assange has been viciously personally attacked in the press for being a potential sexual molester, a paranoid and arrogant narcissist motivated only by self-aggrandizement. Thus does the press work to deflect the world’s attention from Assange’s exposure of video and documents showing the reality of our horrible war in Afghanistan and the dismal diplomatic machinations of the U.S. and the world’s political leaders.
Meanwhile, a hundred years ago, the American press sought to deflect attention from Keller’s socialist critique of capitalist society by attacking her solidarity with America’s socialist movement as being the product of a mind enfeebled by blindness and deafness, who was, thereby, subject to being exploited by the lawless and disreputable socialists.
