A parable is defined as “a short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.” In a world of fine shading, it is difficult to find the broad strokes that paint such enduring tales. That’s particularly true in politics—many legislative and electoral moves are part of a bigger game, where seeming capitulation could be part… return to article
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Reader Comments (11)Page 1 of 1 pagesI love reading Sirota’s stuff. He is such a fucking idiot. With all due respect, of course.
A Party With No Punch? How can you say that? In nine short months, the Obama Progressives have utterly wasted over a trillion dollars on a stimulus package and other financial nonsense that has only stimulated the unemployment rolls, as planned. Their domestic and foreign agendae are doing exceedingly well, by Marxist standards. They will get a wasteful, corrupt, destructive, ineffectual health care bill and call it victory, but the recent global cooling has proven global warming to be a fraud and a deceit, so the energy outcome is in doubt. But Progressives still can give our energy dollars to the Arabs, Russia, and Venezuela instead of investing them productively in America’s own abundant energy resources. Obama has betrayed our friends in Eastern Europe, ignored our Allies everywhere, and toadied up to our enemies. From a Marxist stand-point, this is quite a good record for a party with no punch.
The Obama Progressives are ahead in comparison to Lenin in Russia in 1919 in destroying the American economy now. At least Obama has so far resisted the urge to kill the peasants who stand in his way. But other than genocide, Obama is at least as corrupt and inefficient as the Soviet Union ever was.
So, Sirota draws lessons from a “Ralph Nader treatise, Michael Moore documentary or Saturday Night Live sketch”, as well as The Communist Manifesto for his philosophy. This is an excellent explaination of the intellectual arrogance, degeneration, and corruption of Progressive thought.
Old Holier-than-Thou Sirota should have gotten himself elected as president. Then he could have done it his way, and we could have seen how much more corrupt and ineffectual he could have made the American Republic.
Posted by scorp on Oct 29, 2009 at 1:20 PM The left needs to put forward its own progressive agenda based upon what will unite working people:
Peace.
Real health care reform.
Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.
A real living minimum wage.
If we can’t get real peace and real health care reform out of Obama and these Democrats we should dump them by with holding our votes… it is called “accountability” which is central to democracy.
It is time to explain to the American people what socialism really is… then the right-wing will have something to really cry and yell about.
Posted by alanmaki on Oct 30, 2009 at 3:37 AM So, scorp, the global warming is a fraud and a deceit. Thank you for saying so, it must have been a rumor spread by those nasty people called “leftists”. Long live Wall Street and corporations, which have contributed to make this peaceful, just and equalitarian world. Congratulations for your good manners on calling Sirota “a fucking idiot” but adding “with all due respect”, that shows you are a true gentleman.
Posted by Maria on Oct 30, 2009 at 5:00 AM Mr. Sirota,
Your post triggers two quite conflicting points in me: at once I agree with what you have stated here, and I feel that you are perhaps too rash in judgement.
My initial gut reaction is- the only the that the Left has in common with Liberals is the letter L. Once upon a time, prior to my 40 year life, the Left actually had some minuscule effect on the Democratic Liberals, if not in name, in spirit. But alas to expect wholehearted courageous embracement of that which is abundantly obvious to those of the Left by our elected Liberal Democrat politicians is-comment dit- premature. Perhaps a better phrase would be untimely. On the one hand a scathing reproach of the Democrats is far beyond past due, yet on the other hand such absolutely justified and necessary critique is best served once the Liberal Democrats have conquered the discourse, by the Right, which branded liberalism as the “dreaded L word”.
Most of my life has been a witnessing of the utter marginalization of Liberal voices(Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.). The societal consensi (consensus pl.?) which reigned during my childhood years were systematically destroyed over the last 30 years, leaving a political discourse where anything left of utter of the Right wing fringe was considered virtually unamerican. Though the Left did not cease to exist, the voices of the Left remained unheard by the vast majority of Americans. Privatization, deregulation, “free-trade”, market-solves-all-ills, became common sense for the masses. The suffering caused by such policies was held to be an individual affair, a personal shortcoming, not something fundamentally wrong with society.
The effective silencing of Left, weakened the Lefts’ moral and ethical pull on the Liberals, depriving them of the, shall we say, gumption, to be able to withstand the tidal wave of Neo-con discourse, which was just as prominent under Clinton as it was under Bush Jr. If it weren’t for the utter and abysmal failures of Bush Jr.‘s policies, If yet another Right wing reactionary had become President instead of Obama, It might have been another 50 years before someone like Obama could have been elected. So close were we to the utter vanquishing of sensitivities and sensibilities that the Left has brought to our body politic.
I do not wish to sound like an apologist. And I know that I am skirting such in posting this. But it will take time for the seeds which are now being sown to bear fruit. I do not wish to admonish you, in any sense, for anger and disappointment are more than justified- but these are the product of a hope, a glimmer of not-so-far-off horizon, which Obama has symbolized, whether rightly or wrongly, which renders possible having the sensitivities and sensibilities of the Left become something once again perceivable, audible to the masses. Only as the masses begin to unlearn personal shame and begin to rightly attribute their malaise to the forces at work will our political discourse be informed by the spirit of the Left. As time progresses the urgency of scathing critique of the Liberal Democratic party will surge and Liberals will have to fear being labelled the “the dreaded L word” by the Left, instead of by Neo-con Right wing reactionaries.
continued….
Posted by Karl Zollner on Oct 30, 2009 at 6:40 AM continued….
If we are preaching to the choir then scathing critique is par for course. If we are participating in a broader discourse we might wish to mix recognition of palpable shifts while highlighting the gulf between that which has seemed promised and that which they are actually saying and doing. Given our still current context, a context in which a radically weak Democratic party, which still does not have the chutzpah to OWN the influences of Left, which inspire them, from whence they draw their strengths: how can we lambast them for being other than what they are- representatives and elected officials who only share in common with the Left the still sullied L.Perhaps I am far too optimistic. Perhaps I am far too willing to tolerate that which in the last instance should be intolerable. Perhaps I am too grateful to see a government for once in my life where the word “Left” is not exclusively seen as something antithetical to our cultural identity, even if in MSM parlance “Left” only signifies economic neo-liberalism. Beyond that which the MSM wishes to signify using the word “Left”, the Left is being spoken too, and at no point in my Life has their been more bountiful opportunity for the Left to speak to the world.
omg did I really just drag myself into meta-discourse, someone put me out to pasture ;)
Posted by Karl Zollner on Oct 30, 2009 at 6:41 AM Maria -
Welcome back, lady. Long time, no hear.
The original well-recognized AGW fraud was the hockey stick curve, wherein global temperatures were depicted as stable for a thousand years until recently when temperatures suddenly began rising. Marxists attributed this temperature rise to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. The fraud was perpetuated in many computer-generated climate models that consistently showed temperature rising indefinitely from 1980 forward.
But the hockey stick curve ignored the Medieval Warm Period. An accurate temperature graph of the last millenium shows that the temperature curve looks more like a roller coaster track or a sine wave than a hockey stick. And then the global warming stopped in 1998, a scant twenty years after it was recognized. (In the mid-1970s, climate scientists were confidently predicting a new ice age.) The atmosphere is now cooling at an accelerating rate, the 1970 scientists may have been correct after all. Or not.
[If you are capable of and interested in perspective on this, see http://newsbusters.org/node/11640. This site summarizes 150 years of NYT articles on global warming and coolng, with six distinct reversals of polarity by my count. Some of the headlines are quite alarmist; alarm sells newspapers.]
So, why would Marxists ignore their frigid digits to perpetuate a dishonest and disproven climatic scenario? As always with Marxists, any tool, regardless of how dishonest, fraudulent, destructive or murderous, will be employed to create a Marxist future. Seizing industrial policy is a necessary step to Marxism, climate alarmism was the chosen method. Seizing domestic policy is also necessary, and the chosen path for this is the fake health care “crisis”. Marxists are not concerned about your health, your comfort, or your financial or social well-being, they are concerned about their power.
Marxists cannot now acknowledge the obvious about their global warming fakery without blowing their cover. Marxists are closer to worldside dominance now than at anytime since Lenin in 1918. To admit they are lying about global warming now would disclose their totalitarian agenda, so they continue to try to bluff their way through until they can consolidate power. But the electorate is now getting wise.
Long live Wall Street and corporations, which have contributed to make this peaceful, just and equalitarian world.
Sarcasm does not become you.
Without a doubt, the United States of America has been the strongest force for good, for health, and for human well-being in the world for the last hundred years, at least if you are not a Marxist or a fascist (same thing). The least damaging alternative is Social-Democratic Old Europe that suffered twenty years of stagnation and depression-level unemployment before the recent crash. And it is rapidly downhill from there: Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, Iraq under Saddam, Iran now, Sudan, NorK and Zimbabwe.
I utterly fail to comprehend your sad lack of appreciation for “Wall Street and corporations”. The Soviet Union had everything the USA has in the way of people and resources except Wall Street and corporations. Wall Street and corporations provide investment capital and entrepreneurial spirit, not to mention millions of jobs. Without Wall Street and corporations, we would be as poorly as Old Europe at best, or the Soviet Union. You do not appreciate what the American free-market, rule-of-law system has done for you. The only thing you appreciate is dishonest Marxist bullshit.
Posted by scorp on Oct 30, 2009 at 6:11 PM Scorp, I will be answering your question on Monday, once I have finished some translations I am working on. My answer will perhaps explain why I think what I think. I would appreciate you to stop calling me “marxist”. I don’t go for any “ism”, I am a free-thinker and let me tell you you sound just like good old George Bush, when he said “you are either with us or against us”, meaning you have to accewpt all the dirty rules of savage capitalism or else…
Posted by Maria on Oct 30, 2009 at 7:28 PM Maria -
During the Great Depression, Marxists loudly and proudly proclaimed themselves as Communists and Socialists. In this they were following Marx’s own injunction in the last sentences of The Communist Manifesto: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.” Norman Thomas was prominent among those Marxists, running for president on the Socialist ticket numerous times. (Evan Thomas, Newsweek editor and Norman’s grandson, was the one that said that Obama was “like God”, )
The Great Depression was a time of social and economic turmoil, and one might think that Marxists would have attracted many followers. But no one was buying what they were selling. So they repackaged their product and called themselves Progressives. But as always with Marxists, this was an act of dishonesty. The Progressive movement in America was a more-or-less honorable effort during the early Twentieth Century (Theodore Roosevelt was a leading Progressive) and the Marxists hi-jacked the label because they could not win election as Marxists, Communists, or Socialists.
But then they could not win as Progressives, either. Henry Wallace, Communist sympathizer, removed from the Vice-Presidency and replaced by Harry Truman, ran for president on the Progressive ticket in 1948. He lost as badly as Norman Thomas and Gus Hall ever did.
So then the Marxists, in a blatant act of political piracy, began calling themselves Liberals. The Bill of Rights is liberal. Freedom of speech and religion is liberal. The right ot keep and bear arms is liberal. Marxists calling themselves Liberals are lying. But that is what Marxists do, and are: liars. Dishonesty is a sacrament among Marxists.
And to conceal their roots and beliefs, Marxists often use other terms for themselves: Leftist, free-thinker, and, most amazing of all, in an act of political amnesia, Progressives, again. Anything but Marxists, that would be political suicide.
I am looking forward to your response on Monday.
Posted by scorp on Oct 31, 2009 at 3:35 PM I have no idea where some of the comments posted originate. They sound almost like the incoherent ramblings of a schizophrenic in the middle of a psychotic episode!
The Democratic Party is NOT the party of the left. Yes, there are “liberals” who are democrats, however real leftists realize that the democratic party is not set up to be our true voice or the party for much needed REAL change!
Both parties are controlled by corporate money. Subsequently neither party is about changing anything that is going to cost the corporate monster and it’s wealthy class any dent in their profit margins!
That said the left in the U.S. must come together and heal. We must unite labor, environmentalists, civil rights activists, feminists, gays and lesbians, civil liberty activists, populists and other progressives. Our differences must be put aside. Past sins must be forgiven as the future of our nation far outweighs any one organization’s or indivdual’s hurt sentiments! A viable third party free from corporate funding must emerge so that WE THE PEOPLE will have a genuine voice in the electoral process! Corporate America does NOT own us!
Posted by Frank (Pancho) Valdez on Nov 3, 2009 at 8:39 PM Maria -
Are you still with us?
I am looking forward to your input, particularly your justification for your use of the “savage capitalism” meme.
Posted by scorp on Nov 6, 2009 at 2:44 AM Sorry, Scorp, for not having kept my promise to answer you on Monday. Anyway, you will have to waste no more time on my ideas which obviously irritate you. To make it short, I believe accumulation brings about pain and I can’t stand the sight of armed people, I admire Gandhi and can’t help crying at the sight of nature being destroyed, I don’t believe in frontiers and nationalities, so as you may have guessed by now I am a total “loser”. Forget you ever heard of me, you won.
Posted by Maria on Nov 6, 2009 at 5:08 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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