Barbarians at the Helm

Test.

Moulitsas’ blog, DailyKos, gets 600,000 page views a day; Democratic congressmen regularly post on his blog and Armstrong’s, MyDD; and original netroots hero Howard Dean now runs the Democratic National Committee. The barbarians, then, are already well inside the gates. Hell, they’re practically picking out drapes for the palace.

So, with 600,000 hits a day, why couldn’t they generate 60,000 lousy votes in Ohio?

The sub-title of CtG includes the phrase People-Powered Politics but where are the people?  Out voting for Republicans, of course. 

Nutroots is not powered by “people”, but by a new set of special interests that have replaced the old set of special interests such as NARAL and NOW, that the article describes as a “sclerotic, clueless old guard”. 

The new special interests include George Soros and his friends, who spends millions of their own money on losing elections, and who say they are going to keep up the good work. 

Then there is Howard Dean, who has a principal function to raise money for the Democratic Party in his role as DNC Chairman.  Dean can’t raise much money and has exhausted the Democratic Party treasury going into the ‘06 election campaign.  In the 2006 election cycle, Dean has raised a little over $67 million and has nearly $9 million on hand as of the end of February 2006.  Meanwhile, for the same period of time, the RNC has raised over $130 million and has over $40 million on hand. 

And of course there is Kos himself.  It’s a good thing Kos can attract hits to his website and can raise money, because Kos cannot pick a candidate or win an election for the life of him.  Starting with the 2004 campaign, of the nineteen candidates that Kos has recommended, raised money for, and campaigned for, EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. lost, a notable record of futility in an electorate that is more or less evenly divided. 

The other members in the new special interest groups include the NY Times (losing readers and money), Air America (losing listeners and stations, and running on borrowed money), Michael Moron (Jimmeh Carter’s buddy), and Ward Churchill and the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences..

How the Democrats expect to produce a winner out of a collection of misfits and losers like that surpasses all understanding and the laws of physics.  Maybe NOW and NARAL will take the Democrats back after their next election disaster.  Then the enthusiastic, clueless new guard can turn things back over to the sclerotic, clueless old guard and close this progressive farce.

Quite apart from the abysmally poor quality of the Democratic Party leadership, DEMOCRATS ARE NOT POPULAR.  Democrats raise taxes and damage the American economy.  Democrats refuse to defend the USA when it is under attack.  Democrats dishonestly and willingly criticize the country and its elected leaders for narrow political advantage. 

Losers.  Make sure you keep the receipt for the drapes.

Funny that the Dems focused on Ohio after the 2004 election, but not Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes
Kerry won Minnesota by 100,000 votes
Kerry won Wisconsin by only 11,000 votes

You libs will get smoked again in 06’ and 08’ and I can’t wait to say this:

HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?

lol…

PS: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder

scorp and tina1 - You can feel it surrounding you, can’t you?  It’s like a cold shadow, an icy blanket of doom.  It is your death.

“He or she who learns how to die unlearns slavery.”
- Seneca

“They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards."--Creighton W. Abrams.

Creighton W. Abrams is dead.

Incidentally, the first army Chief-of-Staff to die in office.  Lung cancer...how inglorious for a tank commander.

It doesn’t come like you want it to, Scorp.  Those who lack compassion usually go kicking and screaming...Republicans are so often bad at dying.

In the Phaedo, Socrates describes life as nothing more than preparation for death, and philosophy as practice on how to properly die. 

Try it out.  It may loosen up your back.  You know how tight your disks are…

i have a reoccurring nightmare:  Howard Dean will be fired as DNC chair, MoveOn will go bankrupt, and Nancy Pelosi will be deposed in favor of some leader who has actually lived in a normal American community and understands normal people.  Oh yes, and the Democrats will realize that the welfare of the working class is more important than made-up constitutional rights to sodomy and abortion.

Whew!  I woke up.  That was a bad dream.  Good thing most nightmares aren’t predictors.

Keep doin what your doin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rocco -

What is with you leftists and your fascination with death?  You kill the innocent and celebrate, and worship the killers: Stalin, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Che, Tookie, abortionists.

Now you are getting philosophical about your murderous perversity?  What IS your problem?

They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards—George Armstrong Custer.

scorp: Interesting take - crazy, too, might I add. 

I understand why my line of comments disturb you so.  You could never be at peace with your own death and write as you do. 

And most of us practice non-violence.  To link Stalin and Mao to the progressive movement is disingenuous.  But I guess that’s never stopped you before. 

As you’re reading this, do you feel the buzzard atop your shoulder?  The sands draining from your hourglass?  How does it make you feel, scorp?  To know you’ve wasted these last decades?

Fascination with death?  How could one not be?

Rocco -

Fascination with death?  How could one not be?

And you think I’m disturbed???

This is the projection defense mechanism.  You are projecting your fears onto me.  After two combat tours and working in a mortuary for a year when I was younger, I am quite comfortable with dead bodies, thank you, and I have handled a lot more of them than you have ever seen. 

What I am not comfortable with you leftist’s disdain for innocent lives.  Stalin and Mao are the progressive movement; leftists in Europe and the USA would apply Stalin’s progressivism if they could but are constrained by the democracies they are stuck in.  So, leftists can’t just kill us outright like Uncle Joe and Mousy Dung would have done. 

Regardless, leftists affect attitudes, and everywhere leftists have power, life dies out.  Russia is losing population at an astounding rate; in 2005, for every twenty births in Russia, slightly more than twenty-nine people died.  Every generation in Russia is just two-thirds as big as the previous generation, because Russian women are averaging only 1.27 children each.  Some of the socialist Old Europe nations have an even lower birth rate than Russia.  Even Blue States have a lower birth rate than Red States; forty million aborted fetuses in the last forty years may have contributed to that. 

I am fascinated with life, and celebrate life, unlike yourself.  And I am opposed to you murdering bastards, progressive, socialist, communist, whatever you call yourselves.

They say that death and taxes are the only two sure things, but why do leftists want to increase both of them?  I know you are desperate to win an election, but you have a losing program: Vote for me, I’ll kill you and raise your taxes, whichever comes first.

scorp, respectlessly, you ignorant fuck. you sad delusional yammerer. you don’t have a clue what you are talking about do you. you’re kinda funny, kinda cute.

Tina -

Careful, Tina.  The quality of the opposition has improved.

Where we first saw Rocco’a irrational fears, we are now seeing MM’s plagiarism and Doug’s ignorant obscenities.  These guys are getting good.  At the rate they are improving, conscious thought might actually emerge among the leftists in another 10,000 generations or so, if they don’t die from irrelevance first.

ah, dear scorp:  wherefore thy vitriol? 

I never said you were disturbed.  I never said you were anything.  Though I did say some of your responses sounded insane.  This may seem paradoxical, but one can have ideas which do not represent a being’s whole persona.  I pray this is the case for you.

It is a common belief in the school of comparative religion that all religion began with the awareness of death.  To not be curious about the apparent disappearing of consciousness strikes me as either the sign of an incurious mind, or just fear-based.

You assume much in your assessment of my experiences.  This is not only a tactical misstep, it’s bad form.  I recommend reading something from our intellectual history, like Greek debate, or even Lincoln-Douglas.  Civility is the subtle lubricant which allows for friction without harm.  Only one who wishes to inflict harm would abandon etiquette.  I know that is not the case with you, because you cherish life and abhor violence in all its forms.

Quick historical reference: ‘leftists’ are those who favor democracy; ‘rightists’ are those who favor totalitarianism.  These terms have their roots in the French Revolution, where those who were against monarchical rule sat on the left of the congress, while those loyal to the crown sat on the right.

Therefore, anyone who aligns themselves with the right of the spectrum aligns themselves with totalitarians.  Mao and Stalin were dictators, thus not leftists, regardless of their socialist rhetoric.  This should be apparent.  Democrats (in the true sense of the word) would never kill, because they believe in popular rule.  As do I. 

And I’ve never killed anyone.  Have you?

scorp, tina, and any other neocon who thinks that ad hominems make for a good argument,

I am really puzzled by the amount of hate and venom that you are spewing.  You are either looking for attention (here it is — enjoy, and fill yourselves with it like pufferfish), or you are truly the hatemongers that some make you out to be.  If you have not noticed, it is the “leftists” who are concerned with your civil rights (remember those?), your rights to choose how you conduct your lives (within reason) — and it is the people on the “right” who want to tell us what to do, what to watch (or not watch), how to procreate (and not), whom to love (and whom not to love)....and, oh, yeah, you lovers of life and freedom tend to support the death penalty.  Yeah.  A culture of life you certainly are....

And please do not waste your time or my time calling me a “communist,” a “socialist,” or whatever term you dredge up from your junior high history classes:  My family and I escaped the USSR when it was still dangerous and when the real KGB (not the one in your addled minds) could come after you.  And no, we did not do this out of an overabundance of love for Stalin, Brezhnev, or any other of the tyrants who brough terror and suffering to millions of people.  To suggest that any person (who is not a raving lunatic — and no, the “liberals” are not such lunatics, and if you suggest otherwise, you are either projecting, or suffering from a particularly sever case of cognitive disfunction).

As far as the kinds of terms you use toward those that you disagree with politically — “killers,” “murdering bastards,” etc. — way to represent your “side”!  I only hope that among those who hold truly conservative views (you know, fiscal responsibliity, the government staying out of our personal lives, etc.) have a chance to read this sometime.  I think they ought to know who is using the “conservative” banner to peddle filth, lies, and the lowest kind of hateful propaganda.

Shame on you.  But then again, you would not know shame if it danced a jig on stage in the middle of an RNC convention.

correction:

To suggest that any person (who is not a raving lunatic — and no, the “liberals” are not such lunatics, and if you suggest otherwise, you are either projecting, or suffering from a particularly sever case of cognitive disfunction).  SHOULD HAVE READ:

To suggest that any person (who is not a raving lunatic — and no, the “liberals” are not such lunatics) supports history’s worst tyrants is either a case of projection, or indeed of suffering from a particularly severe case of cognitive dysfunction.

They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards—Typically Paranoid Delusions of an American Fascist

You’ve done it again, Daffy.  You and your courageous neoconservative colleagues continue to parrot the party line: it’s us against the hostile hordes who threaten to disturb our racial and political supremacy.  It’s the same old tired narrative which terrified the original colonists four hundred years ago.  Yesterday, we were surrounded by the savage Indians.  Today, we’re surrounded by the savage Iraqis.  Tomorrow, we’ll be surrounded by the savage Chinese.  Thank God for the military.  They’ll protect us from the savages who want to kill us, and we’ll send them to any part of the world where we can kill them before they try to kill us.

Look in the mirror, Dude.  You’ll see the Savage who terrifies you.

scorp i don’t know what you are, is it an anagram of corps or a near one of corpse, at any rate you are a lively one, and probably not as stupid as you sound, hell, you may be the only one of us being paid for this.

Oh, I think that whatever “intelligence” scorp possesses is so well hidden that even scorp cannot seem to locate it.  As far as him being paid for this — I hope not, because if someone is actually paying him, they better ask for their money back.

You know, invoke the “lemon law.”

by the way, corpse, a well chosen epithet does not an ignoramus make. your spelling seems to have improved, or is that just the mask slipping. i’d be curious to know what you really feel, i mean deep down inside, but at the same time i suspect you are a cipher.  whether you are being payed or not, thanks for being a good sport and a fun target.

they make a lot of lemonade from such bitter lemons. look at the puerile little puppet they have dragging his knuckles around calling himself king of democracy.  they may be evolutionary rejects, but they are god’s executioners.

I think they are exactly what they allow themselves to be — and what we tolerate.  And I think that the “toleration” part of this little dance is over.

stranger i hope you are right. i think as long as there s something to kill for they’ll be killing, and we’ll be paying for it while they consolidate the scarcified resourses and wealth. but something is building, apart from burger king and wallmart in little americas dotting the middle east.

I think it has to build.  We have no other choice.  Or, of course, there is always the alternative....but you know, having seen one totalitarian regime, I am prepared to fight the hordes.  I know what they look like.

the war on drugs, the war on terror, massive deadly smokescreens while they pumped the drugs into the cities, while they visited terror on people. i think the building is engagement person to person to community. rural farms taking disused land, fighting off developers.

I agree.  And I think it has to start in the schools, in the colleges and in the universities.  So many of the undergraduates that I teach come from middle and upper-middle-class families, and are neither really liberal (although some are), or really conservative (although some are)....many are either apathetic, or else they just unthinkingly follow their families’ political beliefs and habits.  What too many are really interested in is making as much money as possible, and whatever system helps them do so, they will support (or at least not oppose very much).

This apathy, greed, and complacency — and not the crazed neocon zealots — are the real danger, in my opinion.  Apathy, greed, and complacency can be manipulated, used, and formed to fit whatever political objectives the zealot might have.  Hey, give them big cars, nice offices, a big steak, along with a pat on the back for being a “good American consumer,” and you can get them to vote for whatever heinous law that you want.  Screw civil rights and liberties — if you are not doing anything “‘wrong,” you have nothing to worry about, right?

It is the less loud. the less obvios things that can lead to a nation’s collapse into a totalitarian cattle farm — especially if the cattle are well-fed and watered.

MM -

You got to the party late, so you don’t know what is going on, as usual. 

Rocco said:

You can feel it surrounding you, can’t you?  It’s like a cold shadow, an icy blanket of doom.  It is your death.

To which I replied, quite appropriately, with the Abrams quote, in that you leftists can’t come up with campaign program, much less win an election.

I would have to agree that Rocco’s statement reflects a “paranoid delusion”, but what do you want me to do about it?

We have little to fear from your “savage Iraqis” or your “savage Chinese”.  We have slightly more to fear from your progressive/ socialist/ communist cadres and useless idiots (you), based on solid empirical evidence; leftists are killers (Stalin, Mao) and promoters of death (declining Europe, declining Blue States, abortion) and leftists are destroyers of wealth (confiscation in Soviet Union, taxation in Europe and USA). 

The welfare program was a key part of President Johnson’s Great Society.  In thirty years it cost $6.6 trillion, and substantially destroyed black families in America.  Even Bill Clinton was smart enough to see that it had to stop, but the damage will last for generations.  And Rocco thinks we don’t care about “civil rights”?

In addition to advocating death and destruction, leftists are corrupt and inefficient; the Soviets collapsed from corruption and inefficiency, and Old Europe will do the same thing if they do not adopt free-market capitalism, the best political and economic generator of wealth, freedom, and opportunity yet devised.

If you are serious about these things, The Brussels Journal had an article recently, Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/933

But if you are like Strange, whose only function in life is to shoot his mouth off, never mind.

“if they do not adopt free-market capitalism, the best political and economic generator of wealth, freedom, and opportunity yet devised.”

Free market capitalism, in it’s current incarnation, is hardly a triumph of humanity, and I am skeptical that it is the best at producing anything but a gradually declining ethical standard.  The pursuit of material gain at the expense of anything and everything else is not a trait to be admired.

Scorp - I was referring to the ‘death’ of conservative representation, as per the article.  Then I just got prosaic...I’m really full of whimsy. 

But, even taken literally, your eventual death is not a ‘paranoid delusion.’ You’re really going to die. 

Also, way to completely ignore the evidence that Stalin and Mao were actually rightists.  But it’s okay.  Your purpose here is only as a foil, like the villain in a bad movie.  I appreciate your inability to absorb new info, as it allows others to learn from you indirectly.

scorp, apparently, we have met before....

You seem so knowledgeable about my “function in life,” as well as my gender.  But then again, since you offer no substantive responses to what I said, I suppose that all you have are more ad hominem attacks (look it up).  Yawn.

“Strange”?  Interesting interpretation of my name.  Read much?

You still don’t get it, do you?  Listening to you lecture us about “the (literally) poor bastards” who surround us is a lot like listening to Hitler complain about the Jews and communists who corrupt the heart of German culture, the subhumans who surround the supermen who deserve to rule the world.  Our modern, professional, volunteer military has assumed the collective social attributes of a shark, which has to keep killing in order to keep from starving to death.  The Soviet Union didn’t simply collapse from inefficiency and corruption.  Like the Germans, the Russians were transformed from a feudal to an industrial state, and the medium of transformation was communism, just as the medium of German transformation was fascism.  It’s one thing to understand the social dynamics on an academic, abstract level, but to encourage it, as our leadership does, is obscene.  Sooner or later, the sharks will exhaust the supply, and begin to feed on each other.

Btw....

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/ is a semi-well-known, right-wing European rag.  You know, scorp, you might want to check your sources before you embarrass yourself again.  Posting cleary biased information and acting like you are posting “facts” does not present you in a very good light.

Sucker.

etranger, this business of indoctrination is so very metastisized that the regime pretty much runs itself. memes like “soft on terror” are hardly uttered before they are epidemic, and the very second automaton that dribbles the word has not even processed what if anything it means. meanwhile the best of us wait for this regime to pass and are satisfied it will, but they just change clothes and bush and clinton and bin laden make a sandwich and smoke some opium. i wonder if enough people will ever wake up.

People have, historically, woken up from collective nightmares....most of the time slowly, and often with a rather forceful “push.” What separates some past instances of this from the current American situation is that too many Americans who support the current regime are still too comfortable — both physically and morally — in their day-to-day lives.  Ask scorp how much deprivation he feels....probably not much, if you ignore his obvious intellectual poverty.

Maybe if big macs started costing ten dollars a piece or Walmart, Target, as well as the local accountant have outsourced all of their jobs the average “American Idol” and “Fox News” watcher will pull his or her head out of the trough, and wonder what the fuck is happening to a country which used to be known as “America.”

Rocco -

I’m really full of whimsy.

You’re full, all right, but it is not whimsy.

Also, way to completely ignore the evidence that Stalin and Mao were actually rightists.

I had this same argument many months ago on a different site.  That useless idiot was arguing that Stalin was in reality a “state capitalist” and that consequently the ~ forty million innocent dead in the Soviet Union were all victims of capitalism.  He was full of whimsy (or whatever) just like you. 

So, why is it that every government that identifies itself as collectivist (communist/ socialist/ progressive) achieves bad-to-catastrophic results, as we saw in SU and as we see now in Old Europe, not to mention NoKo?  There must be some reason that the wonderful Marxist theory always produces such pig-ugly results.

scorp, I will only tell you this once....After this, I encourage you to open a....book,

First of all:

— Hitler was part of the extreme right.  Historical revisionists in recent years have claimed the Nazis were actually leftists, however the National Socialist Party was simply a party label and it was a party that existed before Hitler took it over and turned it into a fascist party.

— Hitler was opposed to Marxism and demonstrated by his writings. Communists were among those he persecuted.  Why do some on the right feel the need to deny historical fact?

— The philosophy of the Nazis and fascism in general is an extreme form of nationalism which in fact is a right wing ideology.

The Nazi philosophy was not based on any kind of economic philosophy, but on on racism with the Germans being the “master race”. That is indeed is right wing ideology.

— Let’s not forget that many American capitalists at the time were pro-Hitler” (Ford and grandpappy Bush, anyone?)

...Stalin was a totalitarian dictator, and not accepting of Lenin’s more capitalist-friendly NEP policies.  However, what makes Stalin more or a right-wing tyrant seems to be the apparent admiration that current right-wing zealots have for his rhetoric and ways of thought.  The words “treason,” “traitors,” “unity,” and “patriotism” are a good place to start in understanding this.  Stalin was a great patriot and hunter of “traitors.” Accusing political opponents of treason, lack of patriotism, or lack of resolution in the face of an external threat is quintessentially Stalinist.  It has become a staple of Republican rhetoric since the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda massacre.  On right-wing talk radio and conservative websites, and in publications of such commentators as Ann Coulter it is routine to accuse the entire Democratic party of treason.  These accusations erode the assumption, essential for a functioning democracy, that there can be a patriotic “loyal opposition” to the party in power.

Oh, and one more thing, scorp:

Please define “Old Europe,” how it differs from “New Europe,” and whether or not you just blindly borrowed Rummy’s tired, ignorant terminology.  Or did you come up with this all by yourself?

You’re full, all right, but it is not whimsy.

Ah, clever to the end.  Your sitcom watching has served you well.

So, why is it that every government that identifies itself as collectivist (communist/ socialist/ progressive) achieves bad-to-catastrophic results, as we saw in SU and as we see now in Old Europe, not to mention NoKo?  There must be some reason that the wonderful Marxist theory always produces such pig-ugly results.

Socialist theory is often appealing to populations with large numbers of poor/working class.  Therefore it’s a way to galvanize large groups of people who are being screwed by oligarchic systems (like pre-1917 Russia).  Unfortunately, socialism can be easily subverted, since it places the wealth into the hands of the state.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the left/right spectrum is political, not economic.  You seem to be confusing the two.  You can have a communist dictatorship, like North Korea - and it is rightist.  You can have a capitalist democracy, which is leftist...like America. 

Conservative/liberal is a bit more correct, but in today’s world, all these terms are rather meaningless.  In any case, please be more precise in your terminology.

I am not a socialist, nor a communist, but a capitalist.  An entrepeneur.  I’m living the American dream.  Yeehaw.

And I’m a democrat.  Again, scorp, you do yourself a disservice by writing so vituperatively.  Why are reactionaries so emotional?  Logic, please.

Last point, scorp: a lot of popular leftist movements were crushed by the United States or by US clients (see Nicaragua, Guatemala, East Timor, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Viet Nam . . .)

Perhaps they would have denigrated into Cuban-like dictatorships, but we’ll never know, because we subverted the popular process.  So much for isolationist policy, huh?

There is no painless transition from feudalism to industrialism.  The English fought a civil war (Cromwell’s revolution) and created a world-wide empire to dispose of their surplus population.  The French had their own revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic wars to shed their surplus peasants, and incidentally made the American revolution possible (some genius decided that the best way to crush the French revolution was to ship off the revolutionaries to the New World in opposition to the English loyalists in the colonies).  The Spanish, Germans, Japanese and Italians had their fascist revolutions and the Russians and Chinese had their communist revolutions.  The Americans had their Civil War and the liberal revolution which followed from the destruction of Southern neofeudalism.  All of the conflicts can be included to describe a world-wide, five-hundred year catastrophy called the Industrial revolution.  What’s common to all of these conflicts is the wholesale slaughter of millions of people who were otherwise unable to proccupy themselves with “less efficient” means of production.

We just have to keep in mind that homo economicus is not all we are....

etranger, maybe when they actually run out of gas and have to abandon their sacral vehicles in the streets, folks will recognize “peak oil” was not a hollow meme like “soft on terror”. maybe they will wake when the internal combustion dies and they have to face the real terror of living outside the wickedly abstract bubble.

corps, pig-ugly huh, as compared to what? the raving beauty of “free trade”. our glorious state terrorism masquerading as democracy?

etranger the only thing in your “stalin” note to corps i wanted to take issue with was the characterization of the twin towers attack as an al queda operation. if we call it that we must acknowledge that it was conducted by the u.s. under the direction of dick cheney and that if an organization or members of an organization so called al queda were involved it was at the behest of the american dictators.

hey rock-head, if all these terms are rather meaningless why do you apply the erroneous term leftist to america. everything else in your comments is really too garbled to comment on. you need to see a psychologist and help yourself.

Rocco -

Socialist theory is often appealing to populations with large numbers of poor/working class.  Therefore it’s a way to galvanize large groups of people who are being screwed by oligarchic systems (like pre-1917 Russia).  Unfortunately, socialism can be easily subverted, since it places the wealth into the hands of the state.

What a perfectly absurd statement.  Can you give me a single instance where workers and peasants initiated a socialist movement?  (No, you cannot.) Oppressed people are often manipulated by socialists, but the screwing that Russians got before 1917 was not 1% of the screwing they got after 1917, when owning a cow was a capital crime and 40 million innocents died.  And in 1917, Russia was not capitalist but feudal.  Lenin claimed that Russia went through two hundred years of capitalist development in a few months in order to satisfy the fremework of Marxist theory, but that was nonsense, of course.  Only a socialist intellectual could come up with crap like that.

The people who start, or try to start, socialist revolutions are not workers and peasants.  On the contrary: Lenin was a lawyer, Stalin studied to be a priest, Bukharin was an intellectual and politician, Mao was a scholar and a warlord, Castro was a lawyer, Che was a doctor, Chavez is a soldier, Sulzburger is a publisher, and Streisand is a dingbat.

Socialism is not “easily” subverted, it is “universally” subverted, which does not recommend it, except to those who stand to benefit from the subversion (all of the above).

But, as I mentioned earlier, the left/right spectrum is political, not economic.  You seem to be confusing the two.  You can have a communist dictatorship, like North Korea - and it is rightist.  You can have a capitalist democracy, which is leftist...like America.

So, according to you and George Orwell:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
LEFT IS RIGHT
COMMUNISM IS CAPITALISM

The difference is that Orwell was being satyrical and you are being serious.  Which makes you very unserious indeed.

dougshaeffer, I apologize if my writing seems to you as ‘garbled.’ This comes from a habit of writing for those with a cursory knowledge of English syntax. 

And yes, by the true essence of the left/right spectrum, the fact that America is a republic makes it center-left.  Look it up. 

And never trust anyone who tells you to see a shrin, yet doesn’t use question marks.  That’s crazy.  How do you ever know if you’re asking something or telling something?

scorp, scorp, scorp...always so abusive. 

First of all, you proved my point, so I shall thank you, instead of insult you.  Small groups of socialists can often galvanize the poor and oppressed. 

I won’t bother to tell you of peasant uprisings in detail, since you probably don’t grant them the intelligence to think for themselves without being manipulated.  However if you’re interested in doing some research, check into the popular movements of Guatemala after 1944, East Timor, Chile, Nicaragua, Viet Nam.

It may be more convenient to believe that Ho Chih Minh et al. brainwashed millions singlehandedly, but it’s more efficiently logical to conclude that socialist principles - equal distribution of wealth, guaranteed health care, education, etc. - are appealing to the poor.  It the economic version of Christianity: a pleasant fantasy.

But apparently, since you think the Czars were good folk, you could have told them to let the poor eat cake circa 1916.

Your last point loses all meaning.  You once again did not address the validity of my point.  I assume that we then agree, but you just wanted to call me ‘unserious,’ (by quoting a socialist! That’s funny).

That’s fine....I am so full of whimsy.  But my delineation of terminology is correct.  Sorry.

scorp, you are yet to enlighten us as to the difference between “Old Europe” and “New Europe”....

You know, so we do not get lost or something....

etrangere_001:

Perhaps I can answer for our dear friend, scorp.  ‘Old Europe’ are those who believe in multilateralism or, god forbid, multipolarism. France, Germany, now Spain, and, come April, probably Italy.  Che sorpresa!  Signor Prodi, non ci piace? 

‘New Europe’ is comprised of 2nd world countries dependent on IMF loans, which we have veto power over.  They pretty much do what we ask them to.  Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, etc.  Signers to the Vilnius Statement. 

Of course, since we’ve pissed off the economic powerhouses of the EU states, multipolarism is on the rise.  Not good for us.  If we lose European obsequiousness, we may have to actually abide by UN resolutions.  Can you imagine the backlash from all the militia isolationists?  Yikes…

Scorp:
(Let’s see if this works...)

<quote>"Can you give me a single instance where workers and peasants initiated a socialist movement?"</quote>

I could point out that no political movement has ever been initiated by the workers and peasants.  As a general rule, a small group of educated and concerned (or perhaps ambitious) people will be the source of any and every political change, and will be responsible for motivating the masses to fall in line with their vision of the future.

However, the ideological version of Communism is very appealing to the underpriviledged, oppressed, and poor, and does tend to ‘galvanize’ the downtrodden masses.  It is true that historical examples of Communism have almost universally been catastrophic failures due to a lack of a self-policing infrastructure to combat encroaching corruption, but to say that our own system is, or ever has been, free of corruption…

Republicans, Democrats, NGOs… no side can make that claim.  *ahem* Not that you made that claim.  Just saying.

On a side note, I would like to point out something about Che.  While the usual person with his face emblazoned on their shirts has no clue who he was, or what he stood for, there was a great deal to admire about him in his early years - perhaps before idealism burned out, and cynicism took it’s place?

Blah.  I’d assumed that the quote boxes were the usual tag.  My bad.

rocco, you can’t look everything up. definitions change. i meant to reiterate your comment that the terms were rather meaningless. and if you persist in using the term leftist for america you are simply wrong in terms of lived life. i don’t give a damn what your historians say. this is not a leftist country by any working definition. it’s a country where money makes right. i know whether it’s a question or not. the mark is for those who don’t. don’t concern yourself. by the way what is a shrin? and who is this lowly readership you write for to whom youy need to condescend? do you write for the newspaper?

dougshaeffer:  A shrin is Gaelic for ‘shrink’.  For that matter, what’s a ‘youy’?  Typos happen, my little snowflake.  Am I being too condescending?  Then perhaps you should quell your ire, and ask questions with respect, lest you open yourself up for ridicule.

Yes, some may say that popular usage has altered the terms ‘left’ and ‘right.’ But I think the etymology grounds the terms.  Otherwise they are indeed without context, hence without real meaning. 

Who is further to the right: Donald Rumsfeld or Jerry Fallwell?  Who is further to the left: Hugo Chavez or the Dalai Lama?  What do you base these on?  Is there a list of attributes that make one ‘leftist’, without contextual stabilization?  Or are leftists people who more or less agree with you?

America has a very complex system of government, and of economics.  It is - on a global scale - economically arch-conservative and socially diversive, ranging from conservative to liberal. 

Politically, it is a pluralistic form of republicanism, not dictatorial, so it is center-left.  Leftist would be a popular democracy, far left would be anarchistic.  Rightist would be oligarchic or polyarchic; far-right is totalitarian.

I stand by that.  If you don’t think so, go to almost anywhere else in the world and dissent in a manner in which you do here.  If you bring up Europe, try and recall two things: 1) we are an extension of Europe, 2) we rebuilt Europe in our image (Marshall Plan), and saved them the trouble of creating a real defense program.

And please don’t say that ‘you can’t look everything up.’ It’s too depressing to acknowledge.  I already have a low enough opinion of American reading habits.

PS I write for the American people...so they’ll buy my shit.  I bet you have.

A codicil: since the corporations are taking over, we are descending into oligarchy.  That would make us center-right.

rocco, a youy is an ersatz intellectual puffball. if you were being condescending i didn’t notice, that must be why you are so good with the masses, we eat that shit up and think its fritters. i like the snowflake endearment but alas i am not so crystalline nor perfect. but i do melt under some rhetoric. my you are a fatuous one. don’t say you can’t look everything up? you already have a low enough opinion of american reading habits? you include yourself as american, you write for americans, you denigrate americans. i speak for one not american but earthling and aside from the shit you put out here i’m quite sure i haven’t read you, certainly not for a dime.
the etymology does not ground the terms. etymology is the history of the terms. your usage is moribund and not at all utile in a new paradigm which you cannot yet envision being secured to the great pendulum right-left, just where they want you. so keep writing your shit man, the compost heap awaits.

Rocco:

We became an oligarchy years ago.  Didn’t you get the memo?

yeah rocco. i reckon the oligarchy may actually be near it’s last gasp grasp. it’s that ol.
thanks harrower.

dougschaeffer:  Who told you I was an American? 

Even still, I didn’t insult Americans.  I bemoaned their educational levels.  You on the other hand are acting quite rude.  That’s not very becoming of a ‘world citizen’. 

If you just want to rant and insult, I’m sure www.redstate.com will be to your liking.  Fascists dislike rational, intelligent arguments.  They just want you to agree with them or die.

your usage is moribund and not at all utile in a new paradigm which you cannot yet envision being secured to the great pendulum right-left, just where they want you.

Who wants me secured to this pendulum?  ‘They’?  Are ‘They’ Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, or anyone else who analyzes via dialectic due to its clarity?  One may be of a non-dualistic mindset, but silent meditation is hardly the most effective arguing tool in a comment section. 

Please, instead of telling me what shit I’m writing, counter it with valid criticism.  Oh, wait, that would be dialectic.  That’s just what they’d want you to do…

Harrower: while I agree in sentiment, it is still technically possible for the people to change the system, even if our consent is manufactured, as the fella says.  We can elect politicians who can change laws, yada yada.  It is still achievable, and marks our system as at least nominally egalitarian.

Sadly, I fear that we are slipping into Caesarism.  Maybe that’s just the way the cookie crumbles…

yeah rocco. i reckon the oligarchy may actually be near it’s last gasp grasp. it’s that ol.

Clarification please.

Rocco-

First of all, you proved my point, so I shall thank you, instead of insult you.  Small groups of socialists can often galvanize the poor and oppressed.

Ummm, no, as a matter of fact.  “Small groups of socialists” have nothing to do with anything.  Marx said that the proletariat would galvanize itself.  Seminarians, soldiers, lawyers, intellectuals, publishers, and dingbat singers are the bourgeoisie; nothing in socialist theory anticipates that the bourgeoisie would or could ever lead a socialist revolution. 

This is a source of much error.  Lenin, to make reality fit the theory, compressed two hundred years of capitalist development into a few short months in 1917.  Mao, to make reality fit the theory, decide that subsistent agricultural peasants were wage-earning industrial workers.  These “bright lights” of international “socialism” were in error because they not only had to distort reality to fit theory, but, as bourgeoisie, they were not qualified to lead anything.  Lenin and Mao were followed by a bunch of lesser lights: Kim Il-Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez.  Dim bulbs all, along with their useless idiots.  Just look at the death and destruction they created.

So how did all these misfits manage to achieve such prominent roles in world history?  Ambition.  Socialism had zero importance except as a vehicle for their personal aggrandizement.  You said as much above when you said, “Unfortunately, socialism can be easily subverted, since it places the wealth into the hands of the state.” No shot, Sheer Luck.  But the wealth did not go into the hands of the state so much as into the hands of the totalitarians that took possession of the states.

I won’t bother to tell you of peasant uprisings in detail, since you probably don’t grant them the intelligence to think for themselves without being manipulated.

On the contrary.  I have a great deal of respect for all people except totalitarians and their useless idiots.  I KNOW that poor and oppressed peoples are capable to build, produce, earn, and establish freedom and dignity for themselves.  That is the whole purpose of democracy and free-market capitalism, and it is working in China and India, just as it worked in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.  We may not have always done it perfectly, but we are getting better.  We certainly did not fill any mass graves.  But we do have to suppress the ambitious totalitarians that do fill mass graves and steal the peoples’ future.

If China is a democratic state in anything but name, I’m the King of France.

i leave you and your dialectic with the corps.

roc, your arguments are not rational or intelligent. you have digested a large bulk of material but you have not digested it. your insult in calling me a fascist shows you in your own light.

dougshaeffer,

You since you haven’t addressed a single point, I’m going to assume you can’t.  Thanks for playing.

Harrower, I think where we agree is in the level of control.  Where we may disagree is in the ability to change things.  In a republic such as ours, I agree with Chomsky’s conclusion that the media must manipulate the population in order to achieve the goals of the powerful. 

I also agree with Chomsky that internal change is easier here than possibly anywhere else in the world.  I’ll give you a local, if quaint, example.  In my district, we held a runoff election yesterday.  The 50 year- old business man, who boasted near $100,000 in campaign money, lost to a 29 year-old anarchist.  Could that happen in China?

That is, regardless of what scorp has written, could the candidate favored by the elite lose to a young idealist in anywhere but a democratic society?  The problem isn’t them, it’s us. 

Things are bad, but it takes action and dedication to change them.  I hope everyone who stops by these rooms is going to their city council meetings, and their congressional representatives, and their Senators with the same level of passion that they come here. 

Democrats of the world, unite!

scorp We agree.  Shocking.

rock, i didn’t realize we were “playing”; it wasn’t fun. i addressed what i wanted to. you are quite arrogant and not nearly as bright as you wish to portray yourself.

Harrower -

I could point out that no political movement has ever been initiated by the workers and peasants.

WHAT???

But, but, but, but .... Marx said that the revolution would be led by the workers (not peasants, that was one of Lenin’s perversions of an otherwise perfect system).

You are telling me that Marx LIED???  Socialism is not a perfect system???  It is not ordained by history???  Is that why it has never worked as advertised???  After 100 million innocent dead, corruption, inefficiency, economic collapse, now you casually inform us that, ”no political movement has ever been initiated by the workers and peasants”.

I am shocked, shocked!  I don’t know what to do with myself!  I think I will go have a beer.

dougshaeffer,

Ah.  On the contrary, I do believe you are exactly as bright as you’ve protrayed yourself.

scorp,

Now that we’ve had our fun with tearing down the straw man of communism, what options are you proffering?  Are you honestly satisfied with the direction the country has gone in?  Do you not also used and lied to? 

Or are you continuing to hold on to a sinking ship, like Jeffrey Skilling or Ken Lay, which can only end in a few winners and a lot of losers?  In less freedom?  Aren’t you worried about fascism, too?

I’m still holding out hope for you.

Scorp

You have me confused with someone else.  I’ve never made any such claims, nor even voiced any support for a socialist state of any kind.

Democrat, Republican… to quote a video game: “I’ve seen both extremes, and quite frankly they both annoy me.”

Rocco

My hope for the future resides not in the possibility of grassroots candidates somehow gaining enough strength to dislodge the dominant political forces, but in the emerging class divide leading to a politically-conscious, intelligent, malcontent lower class that drastically outnumbers it’s upper class counterpart.

That kind of situation is never stable, and the United States could use some good, old fashioned volatility to remind it of it’s fallibility.

But who knows?  Maybe a charismatic, capable, and truly sincere leader will actually emerge from the cesspool our government has become.  We’ll see.

Harrower

I meant (d)emocrat, not Democrat.  Besides, what’s extreme about a Democrat? 

In response: I was heartened by the victory of that 29 year-old who won in my city (see link here. 

it’s not much, but it’s something.  That’s why I’m very excited about the potential put forth by Kos & gang.  There are ways still provided for by our system, but they have to be utilized.  And it takes work.

Harrower -

Did you hear the one about the guy who made an appointment with his doctor?

Doctor:  “ What seems to be the problem?”

Guy:  “Oh, doc, it’s terrible!  I can’t remember anything any more.  I forget what I’m doing.  I forget where I’m going. I can’t remember names, or faces, or appointments.  You have to help me!”

Doctor:  “ I see.  And how long have you had this problem?”

Guy:  “What problem?”

Seriously, short-term memory loss can be a serious sign, and you should get yourself checked out.

The conversation went like this:

“Can you give me a single instance where workers and peasants initiated a socialist movement?”

Posted by scorp on Mar 28, 2006 at 11:56 AM

“I could point out that no political movement has ever been initiated by the workers and peasants.”

Posted by Harrower on Mar 28, 2006 at 1:13 PM

“WHAT???

But, but, but, but .... Marx said that the revolution would be led by the workers (not peasants, that was one of Lenin’s perversions of an otherwise perfect system).  ..........”

Posted by scorp on Mar 29, 2006 at 2:46 PM

“You have me confused with someone else.”

Posted by Harrower on Mar 29, 2006 at 4:59 PM

Alternatively, perhaps there are two Harrowers posting on this site.

Naaaah.

Scorp

Your response (Mar 29, 2006 at 2:46 PM) seemed to imply that you were mistaking me for a rabid supporter of pure Marxism.  I assume there’s someone else who’s the archtypal s00p3r-socialist, but it surely isn’t me.

Marx was fallible, so what?  Where you expecting someone to say otherwise?

Harrower -

My apologies.  I thought you were forgetful, but I see now that the problem is your lack of reading comprehension and lack of appreciation for satire.  After all, you entered into the conversation about “workers and peasants”.  Whom did you think we were talking about, the Essenes?  The Albigenses?  The Wobblies?

“Pure Marxism” is an oxymoron.  You have to say, “Impure Marxism” or “Pure Bullshit”, your choice, if you don’t want to be accused of forgetfullness, lack of comprehension, or worse.

It’s not “Impure Marxism”, you d(u)ckhead, it’s “vulgar Marxism”.  If you insist on misquoting the socialists, then at least get it right and misquote them correctly.

The people who start, or try to start, socialist revolutions are not workers and peasants.  On the contrary: Lenin was a lawyer, Stalin studied to be a priest, Bukharin was an intellectual and politician, Mao was a scholar and a warlord, Castro was a lawyer, Che was a doctor, Chavez is a soldier, Sulzburger is a publisher, and Streisand is a dingbat.

I"m surprised you haven’t accused the socialists of starting, or trying to start, the English, French and American revolutions.  No one person, or any group of people, can start, or try to start, a revolution, socialist or otherwise, without the support (or opposition) of the people who actually constitute the revolution.  In fact, all of the revolutions since the eighteenth century were industrial revolutions, and the people who started them were the capitalists who owned the factories which produced the machines which displaced the “less productive” peasants who previously produced the “less efficient” products of feudal agriculture.  The natural response to so much mass unemployment was to ship off the surplus labor to the colonies as settlers or soldiers, or both.  Those countries which possessed a more viable colonial system more easilly disposed of their surplus labor, namely, England, France, the Netherlands and Spain, which gradually lost its colonies to the English and the Americans.  Those countries which did not were forced to dispose their surplus labor, produced by the industrial revolution, through warfare (fascism) and revolution (socialism).  Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan sought to create a neocolonial market system through warfare and the conquest of established colonies.  Russia and China sought to create its neocolonial market system through revolution.  But the people who set the entire train in motion were the capitalists who displaced, and continue to displace, the peasants who lost their livelihood to industrial development.

majormajor, i like the cut of your jib. what do you think is coming? can we expect the past to be prologue, or are we indeed facing a crux whereafter a new paradigm must obtain? i’m 47 and have seen and read a lot, yet something about now feels different. i know it is naiive to imagine we are at the apogee of anything, yet it feels that way with regards to this ridiculous abhorent and appalling regime. their mad plans can’t succeed, can they?

MM -

If you insist on misquoting the socialists, then at least get it right and misquote them correctly.

I was neither quoting nor misquoting the socialists, I was commenting on Harrower’s absurd juxtaposition of a perfectly good adjective with a foul, malodorous political movement which, for all its good (stated) intentions, has killed millions and destroyed wealth wherever it has been tried.

Marx would have had a fit if he had been around to see Lenin’s attempted application of socialist theory to feudal Russia; the idea was absurd in 1917, and it is absurd today.  And there is still no basis within Marxist theory for a bunch of bourgeois misfits to go launch a socialist revolution, nor for the bourgeois misfits to start the revolution by killing peasants, as in Russia in the 1920s, or killing regime opponents, as in Cuba and Venezuela today.  The proletariat workers were to have their own revolution, it was not supposed to be imposed on them, as we have repeatedly seen happen. 

The natural response to so much mass unemployment was to ship off the surplus labor to the colonies as settlers or soldiers, or both.

Thank you for sharing that little irrelevant history lesson with us.  Are we still doing this?  Well, no.  The dynamics of capitalism are such that there is so much demand for goods that we are now exporting jobs (few soldiers, no colonists) to places such as the formerly communist China and the formerly socialist India.  The Indian people and the Chinese people need jobs, and socialism, in any and all of its manifestations, does not produce jobs.  (At least it does not create productive jobs.  The root of the universally observed socialist bureaucracy is the creation of unneeded, unproductive, inefficient jobs.) The French apparently do not need jobs, judging by the way they are acting.

And you may think that the USA is in dire straits because we stopped exporting people and started exporting jobs.  This is a common leftist complaint, utterly unjustified.  The only recent problems in the USA economy followed Johnson’s Great Society programs, when trillions of dollars were wasted on unproductive, destructive welfare and such.  President Reagan solved that, big time.  Then there were Clinton’s tax hikes and asset bubble that led directly to the recession after the NASDAQ collapsed in Clinton’s last year.  President Bush fils solved that, big time. 

Continue .....

But the people who set the entire train in motion were the capitalists who displaced, and continue to displace, the peasants who lost their livelihood to industrial development.

This basic statement is weird and partly accurate, but you socialists are totally ignorant of its meaning and implications.  In the first place, peasants had no role or function in socialism.  Peasants were the product of a pre-industrial society, and Lenin incorporated peasants into the structure to make the reality fit the theory, as I (and others, I’m sure) have previously stated. 

In every single attempt to install socialism, socialists take the wealth that capitalism created, and seek to redistribute it.  The result is the destruction of wealth.  Not only is (or because) socialism (is) corrupt and inefficient, everybody ends up with less: Russia, China, India, Old Europe.  In trying to make everybody equal, everybody becomes impoverished, hardly the desired outcome. 

If you are going to feed, clothe, and house six billion people, you need to create a lot of wealth and socialism destroys wealth.  All economic discussions must start from this position, or you are wasting time and money, when the world’s poor desperately needs both time and money. 

And all these plutocrat industrialists who supposedly disinherited the workers, what do they do with all the wealth they create?  Sit on it?  Well, no.  Productivity creates goods for the consumers and jobs for the workers, a win-win situation that is just the opposite of socialist corruption and inefficiency.

scorp, you are so twisted.

Rocco -

The “straw man of communism” is alive and well under old management in Belarus, Uzbekistan, NoKo, Cuba, and, increasingly, in Russia itself, and Chavez in Venezuela is lusting after associate status.

The straw man of socialism is alive and well also, particularly in Old Europe, meaning that Europe is corrupt and inefficient on a related but somewhat smaller scale than the Old Soviet Union.

Fascism?  Famed Nazi hunter Senator Durbin says that he sees nazis under every Bush and in the USA military, but he is lying, of course. 

After 09/11, the USA passed the Patriot Act in a bipartisan effort.  Immediatly after, the leftists claimed that the Patriot Act impinged on civil liberties and therefore President Bush was a fascist.  The Dimocrats that voted for the Patriot Act, were they fascist also?  President Bush is too much of a gentleman to point out the obvious, and the Dims aren’t saying. 

At any rate, Senator Reid said he had killed the Patriot Act, when all he meant was that he had made some minor cosmetic changes and went ahead and voted to renew.  Was Senator Reid lying?

For some strange reason, attention was focused on the Patriot Act’s provision to authorize search warrants for library records, in case terrorists were checking out books on explosives or weapons, which they had indeed done.  But in case of criminal activity, warrants could be gotten for library records before and/or after and/or without regard for the Patriot Act; inclusion of the library records was merely a formality recognizing a known hazard.  In fact, not a single instance has developed of a warrant for library records under the provisions of the Patriot Act.  Maybe the terrorists were inhibited by all the publicity. 

The whole exercise was a Dim ideological pursuit of partisan advantage, by attaching an emotional label (fascist!) to a sane, sensible, and legal activity (fighting terrorists).  You do remember the terrorists, don’t you?  The Marine Barracks, the African Embassies, Bali, USS Cole, Khobar, 09/11, Madrid, London, surely you remember.  Or maybe not.

But there are few regimes still around that have a tie to fascism.  In fact, there is only Syria.  The Ba’ath Party was specifically modeled after the fascist system, and it held power in Iraq and Syria.  We just took out Iraq like we took out nazi Germany and we will take out nazi Syria soon. 

Since you are opposed to fascism, and we just took out the biggest remaining fascist regime in the world, you must surely be pleased with President Bush’s efforts.  Yes?  No?  Don’t strain your brain trying to formulate a Dim answer.

scorp,

All of the facts you listed did indeed happen. I think where our seemingly irrevocable split lies is in the conclusion from the facts at hand. 

I would point to Major Major‘s last post as a summation more closely aligned with my own.  It is, to me, a logical breakdown of cause and effect on a large scale, irrespective of ideology.  Follow the money, in effect.  I think that fits nicely with the peculiar warrior-monkey composition of our genetic nature.

Your points have a ring of truth, in my opinion, if we clarified the use of the term ‘fascist.’ Fascism is the name of a particular party which more or less invented modern corporatism.  Mussolini was lauded by Western power:

The American Ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, was so impressed with “corporatism” that he wrote in the preface to Mussolini’s 1928 autobiography that “it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent greatness equal to Mussolini. . . . The Duce is now the greatest figure of this sphere and time.” Winston Churchill wrote in 1927 that “If I had been an Italian I am sure I would have been entirely with you” and “don the Fascist black shirt.” As late as 1940, Churchill was still describing Mussolini as “a great man.”

(For more on this, click here.)

So, the use of the term fascist, for me, represents small groups of wealth which dominate public and private policy through the blurring of government and money.  In that sense: for any Democrat representing the people who acts in thoughtless self-interest and protects their position of gross imbalance of power, ‘fascist’ would be the short definition.  At any rate, the beleaguered terms ‘democrat’ and ‘republican’ and the cynical use of them should not apply. 

As regards the terrorists, which do you think is more of a motivating factor: Allah, or that imbalance?

Last point, re Bush: true that in the fall of Hussein, a fascist regime was toppled.  But that doesn’t mean it was nobly intended, nor does it impede upon the possibility that the aggression itself was fascist in nature.

Rocco -

One of the less endearing traits of leftists is your total focus on the past.  You can talk a good fight about what Marx said, and Lenin said, and Mussolini said, none of which makes a shittin’ bit of difference at this point.  The only enduring lesson of the mid-Twentieth Century was that appeasement got a very large number of people killed needlessly.  And whatever theoretical basis (words, words, and more words) existed for communism and fascism, the operational principles of the two ideologies were identical: blood, blood, and more blood.

You are blithely unaware and unconcerned about what is going on now , because it does not fit into your hoary old theoretical models.

AL-QA’EDA NOW SAYS THAT THEY WILL ESTABLISH A WORLDWIDE CALIPHATE AND EVERYONE WILL BECOME MUSLIM OR WILL BECOME DEAD.  IRAN IS BALLS OUT TO PRODUCE NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND HAS STATED IT WILL USE THEM.  PEOPLE ARE MARCHING IN THE STREETS OF LONDON CARRYING SIGNS THREATEN TO BEHEAD ANYONE WHO OPPOSES ISLAM.  IN EUROPE AND THE USA, POLITICIANS AND CITIZENS ARE RUSHING TO APPEASE THE MUSLIMS WHO ARE THREATENING OUR LIVES AND IDEALS. 

Can you hear the voices?  Do you think they mean what they say?  Do you give a shit?

Last point, re Bush: true that in the fall of Hussein, a fascist regime was toppled.  But that doesn’t mean it was nobly intended, nor does it impede upon the possibility that the aggression itself was fascist in nature.

You are weird, Rocco.

scorp,

If we are in the dangerous position which you describe, and I’m inclined to agree that we are, short of Bay of Pigs, as close to nuclear war as we have ever been.  And so the worst course of action would be to send a clear message to small states which oppose our policies that they will be dealt with in preemptive attacks.  Lesson: if you can hurt the giant, you’re less likely to get invaded.  See North Korea, Saudi dictatorship (they wired all their oil fields in the ‘70s).

Our invasion of Iraq was such a message.  And today Iran is testing underwater missiles. 

I believe that you are as worried as I am about WWIII.  We apparently disagree on how to avoid it, since you would up the ante, which, in my mind, would accomplish the very thing you fear. 

The number one cause for unrest is privation, usually coupled with ignorance.  And it’s not just Muslims who oppose us; look at the Catholic South - Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil.  Maybe Mexico is next to go (Obrador is leading in the polls).  And atheist North Korea, China.  Maybe they hate us ‘because we are good,’ as Bush says, though I find that a bit unlikely. 

The only enduring lesson of the mid-Twentieth Century was that appeasement got a very large number of people killed needlessly.  And whatever theoretical basis (words, words, and more words) existed for communism and fascism, the operational principles of the two ideologies were identical: blood, blood, and more blood.

My interpretation differs.  The lessons of the mid-Twentieth Century for me is that blind patriotism creates monsters, and a single bomb can destroy a city.  Why should we follow the pattern of the empire - chauvinistic, greedy, and violent - when, history has shown, the pattern ends in disaster?  Is this as creative as we get?

corpse, the the number one terrorist organization is the u.s. and you are a very long, and wrong, -winded boy.

foolish corpse, the enemy is not muslim, he is u.s. you will spin yourself into the ground with this sickly twisted rhetoric. oddly you vever mention the blood we spill al lover the world for your beloved capitalism, your pathetic light of the world. capitalism is every bit as pernicious and bloody as any other killing machine you can mention.

the only ones to my knowledge to have used and continue to use nuclear bombs are the u.s. and israel. are you really foolish enough to think iran would mess with the most ruthless, criminal, conscienceless organization on earth, the u.s.? our thugs attacked manhattan, our thugs attacked afghanistan, our thugs attacked iraq, for drugs and oil and to control the remaining oil resources. simply follow the money as you say. this religious crap, this political crap is just a smokescreen.

WOW ! After a very brief read wondered why rocco and doug are fighting, but see that scorp is on form.

scorpion have you read any Howard Zinn ? (eg --Peoples History of the United States. ) Plenty of details on how US workers’ grassroots movements were crushed before Hitler started putting Communist and other trade unionists in Dachau, 1933.

I haven’t seen the WORLDWIDE CALIPHATE promulgated anywhere, and Iranian mullahs have pronounced WMD to be unIslamic, similar to american bishops who should pronounce them to be unChristian--- but we don’t hear much from those guys.

You repeat stuff about the Ahmadinejihad bloke threatening to use nukes against Israel, but that is just slave-like repetition of something ‘heard’ somewhere. I tried to re-find the original Reuters translation of what he actually said to a bunch of students, and failed. ( if I remember right, he more or less said “Israel was a blot on the bloody landscape, and why should german war-guilt be expiated by the Palestinians ? Which is a valid question.)

IF you think for three consecutive seconds, you must realise that a nuclear attack on Israel would ensure MAD. Ahmed-etc may be out of his depth, but he ain’t GWB.

People marching in the streets of London with silly slogans swiftly recant before the magistrates!

APPEASEMENT is a favourite buzzword for those who know bugger-all about History.  When Chamberlain realised his error , he supported Churchill as Prime Minister, with magnanimity on both sides..

Herbert Morrison from wikipedia--
“"Neville Chamberlain was a sad and to me pathetic man. He appeared to have but little love for his fellow men. The coldness of his character encompassed him like an aura. If he had little heart he certainly had a brain. He was a first-class administrator, probably one of the most capable Ministers of Health of this century. When he became prime minister his personal tragedy was that he was genuinely aghast at the possibility of war and he adopted the role of a man of peace because he was convinced that he had the political acumen to achieve it. But he hadn’t. He would not drive for collective security which could have held Hitler, and Hitler would not make a genuine peace."”

No American, or anyone else in this world, apart from scorp and a handful of others, could ever say that George Walker Bush was “genuinely aghast at the possibility of war.” So Chamberlain had a heart after all, and the knuckle-dragger is just that..

Rocco, takes a stretch to see Saddam as a fascist..  The USA isn’t ‘moving towards’ oligarchy, been there for ages, so the Mussolini-definition of fascism applies.

Rocco -

Bay of Pigs?

Ummmm, no.  The Bay of Pigs was in April 1961; JFK made a hash of it, but it had nothing to do with a nuclear threat.  The USA had unquestioned nuclear superiority, and, at the time, the Soviets were not able to reach the USA with their missile capability. 

The nuclear threat came in October 1962, when the Soviets introduced intermediate range nuclear missiles (IRBM) into Cuba.  Now that was a threat, because the Soviets could now reach a substantial portion of the USA with nukes

I have basically zero respect for JFK as a man or as a leader, but he did get a couple of very important things right.  One thing he got right was his refusal to appease the Soviets over the missiles in Cuba, a lesson that is lost upon today’s leftist Dimocrats, as you yourself profess.  (JFK also initiated planned deficit spending to stimulate the economy.  Counterintuitive, the plan worked to perfection for JFK, Reagan, and Bush fils, but is held in low esteem by leftist Dims, in spite of spectacular results.)

France and Great Britain could have squashed Hitler like the vermin he was at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland or Sudetenland.  Every aggressive move by Hitler was marked by the reluctance and opposition of the German military, who collectively realized that Germany was still weak and ineffectual, and who were fully expecting intervention from France and Great Britain.  But France and Great Britain did nothing, Hitler got away with his aggressive behavior, some of the Germans came to believe that Hitler was something akin to genius, and Hitler developed an unshakable conviction in his own invincibility.  Chamberlain announced, “Peace in our time!”, but our time was just a matter of months before the biggest, deadliest war in history was launched by the vermin.  Sort of like Iran now, that plays the UN, the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese like a fine violin, while they continue to work on nuclear weapons.

Lesson: if you can hurt the giant, you’re less likely to get invaded.

I.  Don’t.  Think.  So.  But you might want to check with bin Laden and Saddam on that one.  North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela continue to exist in their present form because they really are not that much of a threat.  If the threat becomes unmanagable, “Bye, bye, vermin”, a point at which Iran is now definitely flirting. 

And today Iran is testing underwater missiles.

Gollygeewhiz.  Really?  The Irani underwater missile is based on the Russian Shkval supercavitating sub launched weapons system, for which we have limited defense.  The best defense is the weapon’s short range of about ten miles.  And you think we ought ot roll over for the Shkval and leave the Iranis with nuclear weapons?  Are you nuts?  You like terrorist regimes dictating terms to democracies because democracies decline to defend themselves and, in this case, the oil of the Arab states around the Arabian Gulf?

Iran has exactly three Russian Kilo class submarines.  Kilos have notorious operational difficulties, and Iranians are notoriously poor at maintenance.  Globalsecurity credits the Irani Kilos with a capability “limited to laying mines in undefended waters”.  Having so few Irani submarines to watch, you can bet that the USA knows exactly where every one is at all times.  Iran might try to adapt the Shkval to a surface vessel, but that makes it easier to defend against.  Iran’s only hope for a military statement is its nukes.  Never.  Happen.

So, tell me, what is it about the leftist mentality that wants to pursue a failed and dangerous policy like appeasement?  Is it related to the need to pursue failed and destructive socialist policies?  Help me on this, you people make absolutely no sense.

“"IRAQ: The Fatal Divide at the Heart of the Coalition

US security contractors and regular US soldiers who are evangelical Christians,” writes John Geddes, the ex-SAS soldier “see themselves in a crusade against the Muslim hordes. In my view, they’re not much different to the Iraqi militiamen and foreign fighters who see themselves at the heart of a jihad against the Christian crusaders.”

by Max Hastings, The Telegraph
March 12th, 2006


Here is a quote from a British security contractor in Iraq about his American counterparts: “I hate those bastards more than the scumbag insurgents.” A British colonel recently returned from a tour in the country said that, in our next war, he would sooner fight alongside the Russians than the US.  “”

Scorpy the Yanqui Jihadi, your diatribes remind me of a certain rabid bat on this site, exposed as a LTC(ret ). The same shill ?

I enjoyed your vermin-theory of history, and that keynesian economics are still considered counter-intuitive by the Extreme Right your side..Shit, I already knew you were behind the times, but really !

Good to inow that OBL was ‘invaded’, and that Saddam was a real threat to the giant..

If you want to see vermin with WMD, look in the mirror.

Scorp,

The only country I can see invading and threatening other countries at the moment is ours.  The question then is how long will China, India, Russia and Europe appease us?

The conservative use of the word appeasement is often very inaccurate.  You appease an aggressor, and Iraq posed no threat to us whatsoever, none, nothing, nil.

Conservatives use the word appeasement in the context of Iraq because they want to constantly suggest that it was some kind of imminent threat.  Those of us who could see that there was no threat and said so, loudly, were inaccurately accused of ‘appeasement’.  Once again, you can only appease someone or something if they are actually threatening you.  Liberals will never genuinely appease any true aggressor, but neither will we support a war of aggression instigated for political reasons solely.

Finally, if leaders like Saddam are that distasteful to the right-wing palette why then did Reagan and Rumsfeld provide substantial support to the Iraqi regime in the eighties? The same goes for Osama Bin Laden.  The support both these men got from US republicans would have made Hitler blush.

scorp, darling, if you only had a brain.

MAX
Point well made. The word ‘appeasement’ in this context has been grossly misused for TV soundbitery.

When will… europe… stop appeasing us ?

I forget who made the earlier point about a multipolar world --- but I am deeply concerned that Europe has not become more independent.

The continued existence of NATO does not contribute to peace.

I close with some common sense from rachel a survivor of the london bombing---

“""What is so frustrating to me is that BLAIR DOES seem to get the link between unstable states and terrorism, and with Iraq being attacked and subsequently al Qaeda’ ‘coming together’ with Iraq to support its struggles. But he gets it totally wrong.

It is not about Saddam and WMD and al Qaeda all ‘coming together’ like James Bond super-baddies to take over the world with nuclear weapons, with Bin Laden cackling evilly down the batphone in his secret mountain lair to the strutting swivel-eyed Saddam in his palace, planning ‘world domination by TERROR! mwah hahahah!…

Such nonsense is the stuff of stupid movies, and macho fantasies.

The reality was - and Blair was warned of this - that a chaotic, post-invasion Iraq is somewhere that al Qaeda sympathisers and hardline jihadi fighters will swarm to, keen to struggle to set up a hardline theocracy, using whatever weapons they can. Including suicide bombs. And not just in Iraq, but in the U.K too. It becomes an idealogical war, that we call a ‘war on terror’ - and they call ‘a war on Muslims’.

A ‘jihad’, a ‘righteous war’ to both sides. And the way this ‘war’ is being fought is disgraceful: both sides lie, both sides bomb civilians, both sides glorify criminal acts and use a poisonous ideology to justify murderous acts, spin propoganda to recruit young soldiers to their cause. Both sides are careless of international law and agreements about torture and the Geneva convention. Both sides are now locked down for the long run, with deadly consequences, because of stupid bloody arrogance, because they will not see what fools they are. “"”

well said, frog

Max -

You learn the darndest things on ITT:

The conservative use of the word appeasement is often very inaccurate.  You appease an aggressor, and Iraq posed no threat to us whatsoever, none, nothing, nil.

Can you tell me when was the last time a Conservative appeased an aggressor?  Jimmeh Carter was the all time champion American President appeaser, and that got us an ongoing disaster in Iran dating back over twenty-five years.  Now Iran has a mentally and politically unstable leadership attempting to build nuclear weapons.  Is Iran a threat that must be dealt with, or would you give them a pass?  In what circumstances does Iran become a threat?  If you give them a pass now, when will the Irani threat be sufficient to take action?  After Iran nukes Israel?  After Iran loads a nuke IRBM on a ship and moves it to the East Coast of the USA?  Tell me at what point we can safely regard Iran as a threat.

Bill Clinton enjoyed make inexpensive, ineffective, futile gestures against known terrorists.  That got us the African Embassies, the USS Cole, the