"Appeasement" Meme Jumps The Shark

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat May 17, 2008 at 10:32


Many [most? all?] of you have already seen this.  But have you savored it?  Here is Chris Matthews--a bear of very little spine as well as brains--turning on the BushCo/McSame appeasement meme with a ferocity previously reserved only for Democratic girlie men.  Of course he's got the ultimate dufus pushing it--dude has no idea what Neville Chamberlain actually did at Munich--but still... the worm has turned:




One thing that James managed to do was spout out the name of Robert Malley, yet another campaign advisor who has been thrown to the wolves.  Malley's big sin was to have talked to Hamas.  It's his job to do that.  He's a Mideast expert, see.  And you can't really be an expert if you don't talk to people on all sides so you understand their thinking, and thus can advise people on how they are likely to view something and react to it.  More on that on the flip...
Paul Rosenberg :: "Appeasement" Meme Jumps The Shark
At Huffington Post, Daniel Levy explains:

Much has been made of the role or lack thereof of Robert Malley in the Obama campaign. The Malley association was being used by various groups to misrepresent Obama and Malley has now stepped down from what was anyway an informal association with the campaign. Malley is the director of the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group and a former Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs (full disclosure: he is also a friend and former colleague).

In his professional role, it is Malley's job to understand the Middle East, the major players and forces, their considerations and the backdrop against which decisions and policy options can be evaluated. As such, Malley has met with the Hamas leadership as well as with leaderships and opposition in a range of countries across the region, including Israel. That is called expertise and a deep, first-hand understanding. It is what you have in the room if you do not want to be Chalabied time and again when you make foreign policy. Not setting oneself up to be Chalabied by filling a room with ignorance and ideological groupthink is part of the change that is required in November. The Robert Malley's should be in the room. US and Israeli officials frequently seek his counsel. By the way, the under-attack Robert Malley's impeccable credentials have also been defended in this letter from his former colleagues and the most respected Israel policy-hands.

What letter?

Oh, this letter:

[New York Review of Books]
Volume 55, Number 4 ยท March 20, 2008
In Defense of Robert Malley
By Samuel Berger, Mickey Bergman, Martin Indyk, Daniel C. Kurtzer, Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross

To the Editors:

Your readers may be interested in the following statement.

Mickey Bergman
President, Soleil Strategic Group

Over the past several weeks, a series of vicious, personal attacks have been launched against one of our colleagues, Robert Malley, who served as President Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs. They claim that he harbors an anti-Israeli agenda and has sought to undermine Israel's security. These attacks are unfair, inappropriate, and wrong. They are an effort to undermine the credibility of a talented public servant who has worked tirelessly over the years to promote Arab-Israeli peace and US national interests. They must stop.

We have real differences among us about how best to conduct US policy toward the Middle East and what is the right way to build a lasting two-state solution that protects Israel's security. But whatever differences do exist, there is no disagreement among us on one core issue that transcends partisan or other divides: that the US should not and will not do anything to undermine Israel's safety or the special relationship between our two nations. We have worked with Rob closely over the years and have no doubt he shares this view and has acted consistent with it.

We face a critical period in the Middle East that demands sustained, determined, and far-sighted engagement by the United States. It is not a time for scurrilous attacks against someone who deserves our respect.

Samuel (Sandy) Berger, Former National Security Adviser; Ambassador Martin Indyk, Former Ambassador to Israel and Egypt and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs; Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer, Former Ambassador to Israel; Aaron David Miller, Former Senior Adviser for Arab-Israeli Negotiations, Department of State; Ambassador Dennis Ross, Former Special Envoy of the President to the Middle East

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the reassertion of minimal levels of sanity in our conduct of foreign policy.  You may not recognize it--some of the younger ones among you may have never seen it before.  Others will be rubbing your eyes in disbelief, as if you were staring face-to-face with a Dodo bird.  "Surely," you must have thought, "this was entirely extinct.  I will never see it again."

And yet... and yet.... And yet, it seems as if John McSame has just run off that proverbial cartoon mountain cliff.  Matthews hasn't turned on him personally yet.  No one in the press has.  And yet, though his legs are still spinning furiously, he isn't going anywhere.  He has yet to look down.  In fact, he has yet to realize he's lost traction, which is what will eventually cause him to look down.  But he has lost traction.  This video is his legs, furiouisly spinning, not going anywhere at all.  And once he looks down....  
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"Appeasement" Meme Jumps The Shark | 112 comments
What shocks me is that Tweedy understood the definition (4.00 / 7)
 of appeasement,a nd for once, rather than having the ball being moved by the GOP hack, he used the definition as it is understood. So, yes, he was enforcing a  reasoned discourse standard. That's all I want from the press. Not that they agree with us. But,t hat, as Tweedy did here they raise the level of discourse. This is what we should be pushing in media reform. The reasoned discourse standard-- ie, no false equivalencies, no hiding the ball by changing definitions , no relying on the historical ignorance of low information voters, etc. It's great this helps politically in the short term, but in the long what would really help is just this sort of forcing everyone to raise the discourse.  
No Fair Making Us Do Homework! Bwwwaaahhhhh! (4.00 / 2)
There's a reason they hate us nerds.

They can't handle the truth.

[ Parent ]
You should also savor Tweety's follow-up appearance... (0.00 / 0)
... on Friday's Countdown, with Rachel Maddow filling in for KO.

Unfortunately, the blog software won't let me imbed it, so you'll have to go here to see it.

Generalist.

[ Parent ]
yeah Tweety raised the discourse all right (4.00 / 1)
.. all the way from nursery school to about sixth grade.
[ Parent ]
Would you prefer it remains at nusery or that they start moving in the (4.00 / 5)
right direction? I am all for pushing for more, but I also a big believer in recognizing when things are moving in the right direction.
[ Parent ]
Bits bites bytes (0.00 / 0)
Ignorance is endemic and so are blinders
but some are construed
if these dudes (chosen word) can see
enuff to give us all this
bs-ing bs - what
are they hiding behind
the skirt.shirt
of their Big Boss?

Or

are we wrong

do they have NO BOSS

like us?

It all reminds me of onions

There's a slow train comin'

[ Parent ]
"Why are you yelling?" (4.00 / 2)
was the other great moment in that. the yelling on these shows prevents listeners from taking in comments and thinking about them. stopping the yelling would help people realize just how much bull is being spewed.

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare
[ Parent ]
Don't jump too far ahead (4.00 / 1)
What I've learned after years of watching Matthews is that he'll be spot-on one moment, then resume being a duche bag the next. I'm sure he'll be spending all of Tuesday wondering why Obama can't win with the "regular folks" in Kentucky, as opposed to the elites and latte-sippers in Oregon.

So I wouldn't call this "jumping the shark" - yet.  Only when a majority of the pundits question McCain's statements will this really jump the shark. I'm guessing that won't be until sometime immediately after the conventions, or after the debates, if McCain blunders somehow. Until then, most will take a "he said, she said" approach. It's not gonna be gas tax redux where all of the pundits agree that a stated policy is a moronic idea.

For the next few months, pundits will mainly be happy to accept McCain's wacky ideas (2013 wish list - wtf?). They will only press hard questions to Obama, just as they did to Kerry, just as they did to Gore.

Old Man McCain - The best anti-McCain blog on the web!

2013 (4.00 / 1)
I love that. I think the Dem response to that should be: "2013, what is that? the lucky number of the week?"

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare
[ Parent ]
This COULD Happen, Of Course (4.00 / 2)
But I don't think so.  The very fact that the Dem push-back has been so unprecedented, while McCain has been so flat-footed is indicative of a fundamental shift.

The rest of the press may be slow to catch on, but I think they all realize at some level that they're not going to be able to win this one for the flipper.  And I think that Matthews is just savvy enough to be ahead of the curve on this.

[ Parent ]
But it is the point of .. (4.00 / 2)
acknowledging when guys like Tweety do something right ...  because they'll never listen if all you do is bash them 24/7 ... yet don't give them their due .. even if it is once or twice a year
[ Parent ]
no calvin (0.00 / 0)
They are not as right as a broken clock

They calculate and choose to be wrong

I mean: don't confuse one "right" event, or thought with confluence.  Ask yourself, WHY?

Why has the conduit of conventional wisdumb portrayed itself as a friend?

Can a career of right-wing capitulation truly be undone by a single interview?


There's a slow train comin'

[ Parent ]
I'll take it (4.00 / 1)
Listen, if Matthews gets a bee in his bonnet about how stupid the level of discourse has become in this country (regardless of how he helps shape that discourse), and wants to devote on-air time to ranting about it, that's okay with me.  

He gets points for making me laugh my ass off every time I see this clip.  And also, since it's just so outrageous, it's been getting a lot of play, which is great -- people are talking about this exchange rather than calling Obama an appeaser, changing the media narrative.

If Matthews decides he wants to become the Bullshit Caller and rake talking heads over the coals over whether they know what they are taking about or not, in general that's probably a plus for Dems.  Matthews is still an arrogant jerkwad, but he's correct on this issue and I'm grateful for the coverage this is getting.

He'a An Arrogant Jerkwad, But He's OUR Arrogant Jerkwad... At Least For The Moment (4.00 / 1)
Agreed 100%.  It is true that he's had flashes of semi-sanity before that lasted all of ten seconds.  But I really do think that this is quite likely to go deeper.

I think Matthews is smarter than most of the crowd he runs with, in that he's more sensitive to the undercurrents that drive them all.  And I think they all sense at some level that they're not going to be able to push their beloved McCain over the top.  Matthews is just more astute in picking up on this, while the rest are still in denial.

[ Parent ]
bizzaro world (4.00 / 2)
last night Rachel Maddow was filling in for Obermann and she interviewed Matthews about the "appeasement" interview w/idiot guy.

They both started going off on the use of talking points and propoganda slogans being fed to everyone by the Bush admin.....like "cut & run" "appeasement" "fight them over there so we don't have to over here" etc.  Matthews even brought up his disgust for the label "homeland security".  

Finally after all this time, the truth and rational thinking are making a comeback.  I am sure Matthews wants to run for office eventually and sees how the tide has turned in politics.

the "Chris Matthews: appease this" video can be found here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30...

What weird times.  Bill Moyers summed it up last night at the end of his show after he mentioned Bush and his idiotic golf pledge

"I am not making this up"

[ Parent ]
Yes Matthews Wants To Run For Office (0.00 / 0)
I've read this several times.  It seems absurd, really, which is to say, perfectly in character.

I think it's a very good explanation.  And with someone like Matthews, it's about the only motivation I'd trust--his blind lust for power, influence and significance in the eyes of others.

[ Parent ]
Paul .. (0.00 / 0)
being a PA'er .. and living close .. but not in Tweety's brother's area .. can you expound on why Tweety would jump into politics? .. Do you really think he wants to run against Specter in 2 years? ..  He gets enough attention as it is .. how much more could he really get in the Senate?
[ Parent ]
something he wanted "his whole life" (0.00 / 0)
check out this interview w/ Stephen Colbert

http://www.comedycentral.com/c...

to cut to the chase it go to about 4:20 (heehee) in.....but I can't imagine anyone purposely skipping any part of the wisdom that is Stephen Colbert!

[ Parent ]
I Didn't Say It Made ANY Sense (0.00 / 0)
That's just the point.  Since when did Matthews have anyting to do with making sense?
[ Parent ]
This no-talking meme from them is ultimate hypocrisy (4.00 / 2)
I wish someone would point out that on one hand the Neocons proudly state that they don't care what the international community thinks.  They'll do what they think is best to further America's interests (actually they mean their interests) despite the objections from the international community.  This is exemplified in their Iraq policy.  Yet, when someone mentions opening a dialogue with our enemies. It suddenly results in hang wringing over what the international community will think.  They suddenly become "wimps" who care what others think about us (actually them). To summarize their view, belligerent disregard of the international community when invading Iraq equals good while talking to Iran equals failure in the eyes of the international community.  George Orwell couldn't have written it better.
And not to mention tha they're happy to talk to a myriad of horrible dictators (0.00 / 0)
Seriously, I would like a calm, rational explanation of why the Iranian Ayatollahs are less scary than the Saudi Royal family
[ Parent ]
It's the failed "Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend" approach (0.00 / 0)
This Arab saying has driven our foreign policy throughout the cold war.  When the cold war was waning, Democrats like Carter shunned this policy.  However, the previously isolationist Republicans embraced it.  Reagan and the Bushes carried this approach to its extreme.

The problem with this approach is that an enemy is defined not by their actions but by their favoritism to a country or group in opposition to us.  It is a black and white grainy John Wayne view of the world. Unfortunately, the adherence to a saying as foreign policy has resulted in many of the problems we face in the world.  The supporters of this policy use it as justification to support brutal dictators.  

I first supported Gov Richardson because he clearly rejected this approach.  When he dropped out, it was obvious to me that Sen Obama also rejects this approach.  The difficulty is convincing the American public that this policy has failed us in easy to swallow sound bites.  The entertainment and news media has indoctrinated the public into seeing the world as good guys in white hats versus bad guys in black hats riding into a show down at the OK corral.

When someone says, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend to me", I usually reply, "It's an old Arab saying.  How has that worked out for the Middle East over the last several centuries?"

[ Parent ]
What Worries Me Is Obama's Apparent Willingness To Appease The Rightards (0.00 / 0)
by 'compromising' on Social Security, which he signalled his willingness to do last year...

Appeasement occurs when you enter negotiations already willing to give away what is in dispute. Nothing about Obama inspires in me the SLIGHTEST confidence that he'd NOT give up the farm in the name of 'Unity' or some other spurious "bipartisanship" appeal...

Can somebody please disabuse me of this notion??? Cuz otherwise I will have to vote for Nader (again)...

Unfortunately, Your Reputation Preceeds You (4.00 / 2)
So I won't waste my breath.
[ Parent ]
Yeah- there are a couple of screen name (4.00 / 4)
ie, sayloud below, that I now just ignore. I assume that whatever they say will be an attack against Obama. At this point, he's our candidate, and more than that, we need to win this because we can't afford McCain.  And absolutely more important than even that- its not in the subject matter of the diary. They just like throwing shit against the wall to see which part of their poo-throwing fest will stick.
[ Parent ]
What could anyone say? (4.00 / 3)
Can somebody please disabuse me of this notion??? Cuz otherwise I will have to vote for Nader (again)...

If the past 8 years haven't taught you the folly of that course of action, I'd have to conclude that you are immune to  reason.  

[ Parent ]
Voting one's conscience (0.00 / 0)
is never folly - unless you play on an unfair, undemocratic field.

In my humble opinion, voting "abstain" (or Art Temple) in 2004 has worked pretty well. Do you REALLY believe that Kerry/Edwards would NOT be tagged as the reason the US lost Iraq at this point?

Without a second Bush/Cheney admin. the GOP would not be as toxic a label as it is today.


There's a slow train comin'

[ Parent ]
I just can't get over that this breaking point came over (4.00 / 1)
their old hobby horse of appeasement, of all of the things in the world, I can't believe that the thing that broke for them is the one that they've been riding since the days of McCarthy.  But I guess when you keep chanting a word over and over, using it to stifle debate, you would eventually forget what the hell it means.
Didn't You Used To Do That As A Kid? (0.00 / 0)
Repeat a word over and over again until it came to sound meaningless?

Yeah, that was before they had Nintendo.

How did you guess?

[ Parent ]
well, it would usually take me less than seventy years to lose interest! (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Maybe, but you weren't dealing with ADHD (0.00 / 0)
like most Americans seem to have when it comes to politics.  
[ Parent ]
Echo-Box Diplomacy (0.00 / 0)
This is part of a comprehensive pattern I've been seeing lately, most pronounced on the right but infecting the left as well.

If you don't understand your opposition, if you can't gauge the sincerity of their claims or the roots of their motivations, you can't deal with them in any effective way, and they can't deal with you.

Matt Taibi touches on the edges of this in his "The Great Derangement".  We no longer have a common dialog in society, people are withdrawing into echo-boxes, where nobody challanges their beliefs, but rather reinforces them.  Even when those beliefs are flat-out delusional.  In fact, the beliefs nearly always become delusional.

The right sees the left as doing this, and the left vice-versa.  To an extent both are correct.  There are truths on the right the left doesn't want to talk about ("demographic winter" for example).  But there is a whole range of truths on the left the right has closed themselves off from.

It was once the news media's job to have this dialog.  Maybe they'll start doing it again.  One thing is for certain, the "new media" is largely an excercise in creating new and improved echo boxes, not piercing them.

what's the problem with 'demographic winter'? (4.00 / 1)
Overpopulation is a huge worldwide problem.  
[ Parent ]
Self-Selection (0.00 / 0)
Overpopulation is a huge problem, yes.  But people aren't choosing to have fewer children based on that awareness on any large scale.  They're choosing it based on socio-economic and cultural factors.  Which means that those that don't choose it are having more children, who are having more children, who....

We're selecting, through the back door, for cultural environments that encourage having more children.  Let's say that you have two cultures, one is 20% of the population having 4 children each, the other is 80% having 2 children each.  In two generations, the minority population will have the same number of children as the majority.  On the next generation, the former minority will become the majority.  And this is pretty much the case in many European countries right now with Muslim immigrants.  And these populations are not assimilating.

On the left, we don't like the implications of this, because there are no obvious answers that don't go to some very ugly places.  But the facts remain, there's a ticking demographic time bomb at work where cultures that encourage higher childbirth rates are going to overwhelm those that don't (unless we hit a malthusian wall, then all bets are off).

Keep in mind, I'm not trying to "concern troll" on this particular issue, or any other.  I'm only pointing out that the left is just as capable of ignoring things contrary to its ideology as the right.  The ideological commitments to multi-culturism and the dangers of population growth create a cognitive dissonance that it just won't confront.  I could just as easily (and probably with less push-back) point to the recent primary and the way it fractured the left political activist blogosphere into two different camps, both trying to ignore arguments they couldn't refute.  But that situation is recent, and probably temporary.

The point is that we're not talking about the particular cases here.  It's the echo-box, and the intellectual aphasia it creates.  The left's attachment to the "reality based community" is not anything inherent, under the right conditions it can go just as loopy as what we see on the right at RedState or Free Republic.

[ Parent ]
All I really have to say is that (0.00 / 0)
when an effort to be reasonable and open to other cultures is made, then most of these problems are averted.  Note that Marseilles, by far the most multicultural city in France, with the largest Muslim minority, had no riots in the wake the of the cartoon fiasco.

But I understand your point about the echo chamber effect.  You see people doing it, especially when our candidates are concerned.

[ Parent ]
Same Old Balance Crap! (4.00 / 1)
The left's attachment to the "reality based community" is not anything inherent, under the right conditions it can go just as loopy as what we see on the right at RedState or Free Republic.

This is just a flat-out lie.  The left is the left because of generations of critical thought.  It has been paying attention to reality--in the form of scientific societies, educational movements, concentration in technological professions, etc, etc, etc, for several hundred years now.

This doesn't make us gods.  It doesn't even make us immune to mistakes.  But it's no accident that when folks on the left do go crazy they generally head over to rightyland, pronto!  See, for example, Christopher Hitchens, Joe lieberman, David Horowitz, etc.

Now, there are, of course, general human traits that we all share, and flaws in reasoning are one of them.  But as Robert Altemeyer has repeatedly shown, the concentration of high-RWAs, who have much higher levels of flawed reasoning, goes up substantially among those on the right who are politically engaged.  It's among the more politically apathetic that left and right are most similar.

Thus, the danger of more politicized folks on the left coming to resemble those on the right is remote at best.

In fact, what's been much more prominently observed is that rightwing memes are introduced as "progressive" to relatively unsophisticated, politically un-inolved people, and they are seduced into believing it--not because they're surrounded by a knowledge progressive community, but precisely because they're not.

The so-called "9/11 truthers" are a classic example of this.

[ Parent ]
"Balance" is crap? (0.00 / 0)
You're arguing a tautology.  The left is truth, the right is lies, therefore a self-identified "leftist" who loses their grip on truth has slipped over to the right.

Facts do not have an ideology.  And ideology is not particularly concerned with facts.

You yourself have written at length about how the right, through support of think-tanks and the massaging and marketing of ideas, took control of the social consensus.  They didn't do that just by telling lies, but by incorporating truths that the left denied the existence of.

"Reality has a known liberal bias" is not a fact, but a result of a generation where the social filters of reality have been pushed to the right.  They are now disengaging from reality, but they didn't start out that way.

"Right" and "left" are arbitrary labels, and not always very useful.  The whole possibility space of motivations, methods, and perceptions can not be reduced to a simple one-dimensional continuum.

Ideological purity is a trap, regardless of where it stems from.  As soon as you declare that your way of interpreting facts is the only right way, you blind yourself to reality.  You become Mr. A. Square of Flatland, trying to reduce the world to the only "logical" framework.  Sooner or later, multi-dimensional reality shatters your delusions.

[ Parent ]
An actual informed balance is not crap (0.00 / 0)
but the 'balance' meme in the media very much is.  Two disagreeing heads yelling at each other advances nothing.  
[ Parent ]
Speak for yourself (0.00 / 0)
I, for one, think it advances the notion that these dipshits don't think before they speak.


There's a slow train comin'
[ Parent ]
You Can't Read At A High School Level (0.00 / 0)
Me:

This doesn't make us gods.  It doesn't even make us immune to mistakes.

You:

You're arguing a tautology.  The left is truth, the right is lies

There's really little point in arguing with someone so deeply impared, except for the sake of others looking on.

In fact, the left is wrong far more often than it's right.  In science there are a thousand failures for every success.  Ditto in technology.  Failure is a way of life.  The difference between left and right is that the left both feeds into and grows out of a culture that knows this, and knowing this it accepts certain kinds of fruitful failure as an integral aspect of success.

And it's not just our techie wonk contingent that thinks that way.  Our artists, poets and playwrights have the exact same attitude:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
    -- Samuel Beckett

We are a people of process, of become, of perpetual imperfection.  We glory in our finitude, our uncertainty, our struggle, our humanity.  We are all children of Renaissance humanism, after all.  And our greatest strength is that we do not agree with one another--but we have found ways to make disagreements far more productive than agreement ever was.  Out of our disagreements, we have created a succession of new worlds, a process that continues every day.

And what of the right?  William F. Buckley, the father of modern conservatism, put it quite succinctly, describing more specifically the role of his baby, the National Review:  "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

We are progress.  They are its denial.  Simple as that.  And it was ever thus, as far back into history as we can read--at least to the pre-Socratics.

[ Parent ]
Oversimplification (0.00 / 0)
You can't simply claim science and engineering for the Left by assertion.  Right now the political Right is engaged in a war against inconvenient science, but the Left is hardly paragons of truth-seekers in that area.  Even leaving aside historical examples (such as Lysenkoism), researchers in many "hard science" fields complain about how inconvenient results of their research can get them put on the hit list of politically correct leftist organizations.

There's a reason why the population of leftist ideologues in an academic discipline varies in almost inverse proportion to its connection to traditional Enlightenment scientific method.  Atoms and cells do not have an ideology.  The academic left has been engaged in a war against "reductionism" longer than either of us has been alive.  One that they lose, everywhere that reductionism can be effectively applied.

[ Parent ]
Oh, please (4.00 / 1)
I'm a researcher in the hard sciences, and out of a few hundred people that I know in my professional life, only one voted for Bush in either 2000 or 2004, and there is another who is a Ron Paul guy.  

They get hit from the left due to an objectively true sexism, and often are in denial about that particular problem in the hard sciences, but come on.  

[ Parent ]
Voting Democrat Makes You A Leftist? (0.00 / 0)
They are not "Leftist" the way that Paul R. is.  It's not an ideology to them, in most cases.  They are not a refutation of what I'm saying, but an example.

You win elections by capturing the center.  You lose the center, you lose the elections.  The Left is not gaining them right now as much as the Right is losing them.  There's not a great ideological debate occurring in the living rooms of America and everyone is deciding the Left was right all along.  The Right is doing things the center doesn't like.

Most people are not ideologues.  They might spend a great deal of time arguing politics, but they spend very little thinking about ideology.

[ Parent ]
no. (4.00 / 1)
My entire peer group in the scientific community is pro-gay marraige, deeply skeptical of christian conservatism, in favor of UHC, antiwar from the beginning, and generally open to paying higher taxes if they are efficiently spent.  On all of these issues, they are way to the left of the Democratic delegation in Congress.
[ Parent ]
Good for them (0.00 / 0)
I'm with you on all of that, as well.  The "center" of US politics has gotten yanked way too far to the right.

But none of that makes us leftist ideologues.  How many of them are to the left of Paul (Paul R. here, not R. Paul)?  Or even anywhere close?

[ Parent ]
In terms of rejecting Republicanism? (4.00 / 1)
Quite a few.  And I don't exactly see Paul posting manifestos anywhere, or arguing from a hardcore Marxist perspective.  
[ Parent ]
Marxist (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Among The Countless Things You've Missed: (0.00 / 0)
The fact that Rush Limbaugh cited Gramsci approvingly in his 1992 book, See, I Told You So!, and argued that the right needed to take up Gramsci's blueprint.

I have made it abundantly clear that I don't share Gramsci's Marxist assumptions.  The hegemonic struggle I am describing is not between bourgoise and proletarian culture.  I defy you to find a single shred of evidence to support such an interpretation.

The hegemonic struggle that I describe is between authoritarian movement conservatism and progressive, reality-based, egalitarian, liberal democratic-republicanism.

Do I want to see a much more egalitarian society than the one we have today?  Yes, absolutely.  But that doesn't mean a demand for a classless society, much less a "dictorship of the proletariat."  The Hebrew prophets called for much the same thing, more than two millenia before Marx.  I am with them.  I am with the Jubilee.

This may be radical, but it's the same sort of radical that Adam Smith was, who railed against monopolists and manipulators even as he championed the market.

[ Parent ]
My Apologies (0.00 / 0)
I'm not sure your characterization of the sides of this struggle is accurate (it's assuming a monolithic structure on both sides that just doesn't exist).  But if you find the characterization as a "Marxist" offensive, then I withdraw it.

I assume you don't mind being labelled a "leftist"?  Not that I actually care about either the label, or the dichotomy it assumes.

If I had to take a label, it would be "libertarian".  But that one has been hijacked by nut-case ideologues and Objectivists.  I'm in favor of any freedom that doesn't infringe on the freedom of others.  I just don't think that government is neccessarily inimical to freedom, or that the "market" is the best way to decide who gets what in all cases.  Poverty enslaves you to subsistance, concentrated wealth delivers true "privilege", private law, the ability to bend the law to your own needs and thereby infringe on the freedom of others with impunity.

Aside from labels, and my penchant for thinking in parallel tracks, I don't think we're all that far apart, politically.  Something about my refusal of dogma seems to set you off, though.

[ Parent ]
It's Not About Dogma (4.00 / 1)
I'm a radical empiricist ala William James.

You, OTOH, spout all manner of sweeping historical claims that are simply false.

I find it most amusing that you rely on such sweeping historical misrepresentations in the name of an argument against monolithic views on my part.

But I never made any such claim.  Indeed, that's precisely why the left is not like the right.  The left is and always has been a great deal messier and full of internal conflicts.  It's the reality of those conflicts that means really don't need to open ourselves fully to the folly of the right in order to keep from ossifying.

Evolutionary theory can continue to evolve just fine without debating with Creationists.

[ Parent ]
Or as my genetics professor used to say (0.00 / 0)
genetics has nothing do with religion. one askes how. the others asks why.  
[ Parent ]
You are projecting (0.00 / 0)


There's a slow train comin'
[ Parent ]
This is what I refer to above as false equalencies (4.00 / 2)
You never really prove your point. You simply state that it is the case that it is because two sides exist. Therefore, since two sides exist, they are equivalent with regard to historical, logical and other actual measures. Yet, this isn't the case in America. I can't speak of other countries. I can only speak of here as to the falsity of your claims by the actual data we have. This is what was good about Tweedy's admonishment of the GOP hack. No attempt at false equivalency, no attempt to ignore definitions. It was simply taking on an objective standard, and holding both sides to that standard. That standard in this case was the definition of appeasement. Historically, in the US the problem has bee on the right because America has never had a strong left. So your argument on its face is false. We've had a relatively weak left that when we gain any traction at all is treated as if it's equivalent of McCarthy or the failed economic policies of the right or the racism/prejudcies or any number other things that actual factual occurences. What do you have as an example on the left? What the so called "radicalism" of the 60s and 70s? Were those forces in actual seats of governmental power in the US or were they simply cultural and social? If the later, how they relevant other than as symbolic fodder to folks who want to argue as you do? Substantively, what is the legacy of the 60s and 70s in terms of political outcomes? Does anyone question the leftward values of the environmental movement? What about civil rights? What about the great society? What about the medicare development? And on and on and on, please explain to me how even in terms of actual outcome the left as far as there is one in the US is equivalent to the power that the right has displayed.  You talk about people going off the rails- but let's let them actually go off the rails before we start attacking people who are actually in power for going "to far to the left." Name one President in recent American history. One Congress in American history that has been at fault for what you describe. If you can't realistically name a real one- then you need to look in the mirror and consider maybe just maybe you have bought into the right's propaganda. I can't even imagine a real left President of the equivalence of what George Bush has done to this country? I wouldn't want it. But I couldn't imagine it at all. Can you?
[ Parent ]
Yes (4.00 / 1)
any tiem one argues taht the Democrats should move to the left, there are just screames of McGovern! McGovern!, ignoring the fact that:

1) Nixon won that election using his full playbook of dirty tricks

2)McGovern wasn't really a radical--he in fact, supported military intervention in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge started mass murder (which is obviously a seperate debate, but clearly incompatible with crazy dove-ism)

3) The world in general, and America in particular, have changed radically since 1972.  

and last but not least,

4), we've done nothing but lose elections and legislative battles with Libermanism/DLCism.

[ Parent ]
I'm Not Haunted By McGovern (0.00 / 0)
See, I just don't get it.  Why are we still discussing the minutiae of a campaign that happened 32 years ago?  Sure, Nixon cheated, fine.  But why were things close enough that cheating was an option?  It's pretty obvious to a disinterested observer that the 1960 campaign wasn't exactly kosher, either.

Bush was "appointed" by a very odd SC decision, not going to argue that.  But why was the election close enough that was a possibility?  2004, it was probably stolen by electoral shenanigans in Ohio.  But why was one state able to make much of a difference?

None of this justifies election fraud.  It's a bad thing, no matter where it comes from, or what end it is pursuing.  But why is it bad, regardless of motivation?  Because the social function of elections is to make government responsive to the "wisdom of crowds".  Frustrate that, for any purpose, and you create feedback loops that by their nature cause out of control oscillations in governance.

Push on gun control, and you create a push back.  Push on environmental safeguards, and you create a push back.  Push all from one "side", and the tension bound in the system grows.  The American "left", sure of it's righteousness, pushed too hard on too many fronts, and the "right" pushed back.

[ Parent ]
Is the entirety of America based on what you feel? (4.00 / 1)
What fraud at you talking about? And what you define as 'push' is actually doing anything at all. Because that is how the right defines the debate. Again the weirdness is your post. This isn't about you, but instead about the environment in which you and others operate. This isn't say France where one have a right leaning leader and still have left of center outcomes because this is the disposition of the political environment. This is a rightward country or it has been because of frankly folks like yourself with no understanding from what I'm reading of what you are talking about. I mean- honestly- by your thought process the reason why there was a "push' against black people was because there was Brown v Board
[ Parent ]
"Red" States (0.00 / 0)
Ask yourself the most painfully obvious of questions: Why are "Red" states red?  Because the majority of people in those states like the GOP platform (or at least their perception of it) more than that of the Democrats.

In the South, that's a result of race, and civil rights.  When he signed the Civil Rights Act, LBJ prophesied that he was delivering the South to the Republicans, and he was right.  That's push-back.

In the West, it was mostly about guns.  People who want to keep their guns looked at the gun-control plank of the Democratic platform that came out of the assassinations in the 60's, and didn't like it at all.  Environmental policy was a piece of it, but not as much as people think.

The point is, when a political force uses law to change society in a democratic setting, it generates a pushback.  Just as foreign relations "blowback" can cause international actions of diplomacy, espionage, or military efforts to neutralize or even defeat themselves, political pushback can cause the exact opposite effect you were trying for.  And this force can outlast the initial impetus.

In the 70's, all kinds of things that were really tangential to "leftist" goals got inextricably tied to the Democratic label.  The American middle delivered a judgement: Too far.  It wasn't any one thing, it was the whole assemblage of things, and the unwillingness of the Left to budge on any of it.  And from that emerged the Reagan Revolution.

Now, that process was hijacked for a whole agenda of things that the American middle didn't sign up for, and now those are generating a different pushback.  But it's not the rightness or wrongness of any particular part of the agenda that applies.  It's the overall perception of the whole of it.

[ Parent ]
This is perception, and MSM common wisdom, but not reality (4.00 / 1)
The Left, at least as it was represented by the Republicans budged on nearly everything in the seventies, and really did so in the eighties and nineties.  

Also, it doesn't change the fact that the civil rights laws of the sixties were the right thing to do, and that Republicans have used insinuation and dog whistle nonsense without making any real arguments.

It also ignores the fact that a lot of legislation in the sixties was pushed through on a coalition of Rockefeller Republicans and Northern Democrats, against the opposition of your far right guys and Dixiecrats.  And that the Dixiecrats were happy to jump ship at the presidential level both in 1948 and in 1968 before they decided to vote for Reagan, and then decided to just become Republicans in 1994.  

[ Parent ]
Moral Righteousness Is Not Inevitable (0.00 / 0)
Do I agree that Civil Right was the right thing to do?  Yes, I do.  But that doesn't change what the effects were.  Would it have been the right thing to do a generation earlier?  Of course.  Two generations, three?  Equally, of course.  But if FDR had rammed through the Civil Rights Act as part of his "100 Days", what would the consequences have been?

Moral arguments have a place in politics.  But if we're trying to examine the meta-questions of why politics works the way it does, we have to become morally agnostic.

Was "gun control" morally right?  Certainly it's proponents think so.  I'm not so sure.  Many people are absolutely convinced it isn't.  But what's relevant is that all the Democrats have to show for 3 generations of trying to remove guns from the public's hands is a handful of measures the advocates of Gun Control consider totally inadequate (because they do nothing to keep an ordinary person from buying a gun if they want to), and a bunch of EV's that line up solidly Republican.  In the end, the moral calculus of gun control must include the costs, and share a piece of the blame for the Bush presidency.

Agendas create opposition, action must take some of the blame for reaction.  What the Left is so comfortable applying to foreign policy, they reject for domestic policy.  It's outside of how they want to perceive the world, and themselves, so they deny reality, and engage in behaviour that viewed objectively, looks either hypocritical or insane.

[ Parent ]
How can you equate the civil rights movement and gun control? (4.00 / 1)
Gun control hasn't been aggressively pushed by the DNC.  There were some local measures, the federal assault weapons ban, and that most unreasonable of measures, the Brady Bill, but seriously, who is the massive left-wing pro-gun control lobby?  

You're equating the conservative characterization of gun control (namely, all gun control = banning hunting rifles) with what the Democrats actually pushed historically.  And then equating THAT with the segregationist pushback against something that actually was a major policy position of the Democratic party, and was something that real, actual Democrats actually ran on as one of their central goals.

[ Parent ]
Oh, Come Now (0.00 / 0)
Haven't you figured out yet that you're not fighting against what you think you stand for, but what the center believes you stand for?

The Democrats did nothing to disabuse people of the notion that they were trying to remove guns from the hands of common citizens, and in fact until very recently the official platform of the Democratic party was very emphatic on that point.  The NRA didn't become one of the most powerful lobbies in DC, and almost exclusively GOP in membership, by chance.

In the final calculation, I'm arguing for the equivalency of result.  Both cost the Democratic party EV's, and presidential as well as local elections.  Were both equally worth the cost?

[ Parent ]
Then your problem is 100% about messaging (4.00 / 1)
because no one has ever seriously threatened the ownership of hunting rifles.  If you want to just make this a conversation about framing, however, perhaps you'd be best served by dropping all the gobbeltygook about how the left and the right has been equally bad on issues, which you KNOW is going to be controversial, and is completely ancillary to your point.
[ Parent ]
Moving The Goalposts Much? (0.00 / 0)
No.

More like switching from football to basketball in the middle of the game.

Your original claim was that the left is dishonest just like the right is.

Now your argument is that we aren't good enough at combatting their lies.

The first argument was itself a lie.

The second falls into the category of "Well, duh!"

[ Parent ]
Goalposts (0.00 / 0)
Matt Taibi touches on the edges of this in his "The Great Derangement".  We no longer have a common dialog in society, people are withdrawing into echo-boxes, where nobody challanges their beliefs, but rather reinforces them.  Even when those beliefs are flat-out delusional.  In fact, the beliefs nearly always become delusional.

The right sees the left as doing this, and the left vice-versa.  To an extent both are correct.  There are truths on the right the left doesn't want to talk about ("demographic winter" for example).  But there is a whole range of truths on the left the right has closed themselves off from.


I hate when things get indented so far the posts are about an inch wide.

Anyway, there's my assertion.  Not that the left is just as dishonest as the right, but that it has no inherent immunity from dishonesty.  Both are equally capable of self-deception, equally capable of lying for advantage.  The right is currently much more guilty of both, however.

[ Parent ]
You Haven't The Faintest Idea What You're Talking About! (0.00 / 0)
But what's relevant is that all the Democrats have to show for 3 generations of trying to remove guns from the public's hands is a handful of measures the advocates of Gun Control consider totally inadequate (because they do nothing to keep an ordinary person from buying a gun if they want to), and a bunch of EV's that line up solidly Republican.

Let me put it very simply: The Democrats are interested in harm reduction.  Reducing the availability of guns that are used to shot and kill people.

The overwhelming focus of this attention is on handguns and assault rifles.  It has zero overlap with traditional hunting culture, and I am unaware of any effort whatsoever to remove hunting guns from the public's hands.  Yet, the overwhelming majority of pro-gun rhetoric is heard in rural states or regions, and has virtually nothing to do with the actual laws that gun-control advocates are seeking.

The super-majority support for the assault weapons ban was entirely typical of the real balance of attitudes when it comes to specific laws.

That is why the politics of gun control is entirely devoted to misdirection, misinformation and outright lies.

Which, come to think of it, perfect fits my original thesis: there is no balance whatsoever between the left and the right.

[ Parent ]
Not Currently (0.00 / 0)
No, there's no balance at the moment.  But surely you're not going to claim that there wasn't a vociferous element of the left that will argue there's no good reason for a private citizen to own any kind of gun?  Because I can point you to a few dKos threads....

The "loony left" is not hard to find, and I'm not arguing that OpenLeft is one of their bastions.  But I am pointing to their existence as evidence that the left is not particularly rooted in the "reality based community".  Look how quickly TalkLeft moved from the mainstream of the netroots to the fantasyland dead-enders of hardcore Hillary partisans.  And how reluctant it is to return.

[ Parent ]
This Is Precisely Your Problem (0.00 / 0)
As I said before, the left realizes that we are human, and therefore prone to error.  What distinguishes left from right in this regard is not the actions of individuals, but the social context.  Your use of rightwing memes like "looney left" indicates to me that you are just as close-minded as the people your describing.

The only difference is that they have to live in a social environment that constantly challenges their certitude, and says, "prove it!" But you can simply retreat into the smug self-satisied complacency of the center, and never be bothered by anything at all.  

[ Parent ]
Yeah, that's why I'm here (0.00 / 0)
The title is snark, BTW.

I think you've touched on something fundamental, though.  The Religious Right correctly identifies their greatest threat as humanism, the idea that humans are the judges of their own behaviour.  They want the certainty that comes with absolutes, handed down from God.

Many people find that certainty assuring and comforting.  Many who would not be comfortable with the idea of a theocracy still find the charge to disestablish moral certainty equally discomforting.

Anyway, that's all tangential to the question at hand.  How much time do you spend researching the contrarian view?  Read any right-wing blogs?  Do you understand why the right is flying apart, and what opportunities that creates (for both the right and the left)?  Because inside the social context of that fracturing lay the seeds for reinvigoration of both.  Forces on the right, some of them even worse than what we've seen lately, do see those opportunities.

[ Parent ]
This Mangled Version of History Is A Perfect Example of Centrist "Political Correctness" (0.00 / 0)
In the 70's, all kinds of things that were really tangential to "leftist" goals got inextricably tied to the Democratic label.  The American middle delivered a judgement: Too far.  It wasn't any one thing, it was the whole assemblage of things, and the unwillingness of the Left to budge on any of it.  And from that emerged the Reagan Revolution.

Quite ignoring the fact that it was white supremacy, pure and simple that was the driving cause of rightwing backlash--though, of course, misogyny played a substantial role as well.

Your embrace of and blindness to centrist "political correctness" is one of the bigger blindspots in your grand scheme of things.

[ Parent ]
Beams, Motes, Yada-yada (4.00 / 1)
What about athiestic efforts to remove God from the public square by outlawing nativity scenes on public land?  What about the spotted owl, the snail darter, the California pupfish?

You will wave these aside as irrelevancies, and that's the point: They were not irrelevant to the people who decided the Democrats were responsible for them and started voting against them because of that.  You declare that what somewhat else sees as important is not relevant, and then are surprised when they make it relevant, by voting against your party.

What is this entire thread but an excercise in the very "echo chamber" effect that I started on.  There are arguments that you cannot respond rationally to, so you declare them irrelevant and attack the person presenting them.

[ Parent ]
Once again, you're taking the actions of (4.00 / 1)
some person, somewhere, and equating it with the central goals of mainline conservatisim, and then saying "THERE HAVE BEEN EXCESSES ON BOTH SIDES"

Obama has Reverend Wright and the Republicans have Pat Buchanan, see, both sides have crazy ministers associated with them, and are completely equivalent!!  Never mind that the latter managed to win Iowa as a Presidential candidate.  

[ Parent ]
Not Really (0.00 / 0)
I think you mean Pat Robertson (Buchanan was never a minister).

Once again, you miss the point.  Remember what we started on here?  "Echo Chambers"?  You can't even handle the presentation of a centrist viewpoint without degenerating into ad hominem.  Even Paul R., who really ought to know better, ignores the message and attacks the messenger.

Echo chambers.  Excercises in reality-denial.  Trying to actually grasp a truly oppositional viewpoint would make your heads explode.

[ Parent ]
You Are Arguing Against Yourself, Ouroboros Style (0.00 / 0)
On the one hand you make the valid point that the right has been successful in brainwashing/hoodwinking a lot of folks in the center.

Then you turn around and make a rightwing argument that the left is just like the right, and we're bigoted if we don't believe you, because you represent the center.... which has been brainwashed by the right!

[ Parent ]
Not Brainwashed (0.00 / 0)
Deceived, yes.  Become uncritically accepting of right-wing "frames" that have been marketed to them like running shoes or golf clubs, yes.  Brainwashed, not yet.

I'm not saying you're bigoted if you don't believe me.  I'm saying there's something wrong when things so quickly degenerate into ad hominem in the face of a contrarian view.  This isn't an attack on the left, or on you, but an illustration of an apparently universal human process.

[ Parent ]
You don't get it do you? (0.00 / 0)
We aren't calling you names  because we are descending into name calling. It's becuase your arguments are shit. Do you get this?
[ Parent ]
The Same Laws of Physics Apply To Liquid And Gas (0.00 / 0)
but that doesn't make a liquid a gas.

Your basic argument is that the laws of physics are the same for everyone, so therefore the left must be a gas if the right is a gas.

But it just doesn't follow.

Your argument is based on assumptions of equivilence that are actually a matter for empirical investigation.  And your assumption to the contrary is what you share in common with rightwing thinking.

[ Parent ]
Basically his core argument is that they are two idealogical (4.00 / 1)
perpective, and thefore, they are the same. If he had even said- you know at present this isn't something that happened in America, but it's a concern that we should know can happen to the left as well as the right- then maybe there would be some basis in the analysis. As it is- it's pretty much circular. They are the same because they are the same. Not because he provides any evidence.  
[ Parent ]
I happen to believe (0.00 / 0)
that a serpent biting its tail is an accurate description of humanity - although, I'd also contend that the snake has more than one mouth and tail.

I try not to be brain washed by the right or the left.


There's a slow train comin'

[ Parent ]
It's called the Southern strategy- look it up. (0.00 / 0)
Unlike the other poster Iam not even going to pretend you are someone who knows what he's talking about enough to tell you more than what I just wrote.
[ Parent ]
Your Homeostatic Arguments Ignore The Big Questions (0.00 / 0)
Who sets the homeostatic balance?

How?

Why?

For example: "Why is America a white supremacist nation?"

Or, more specifically: "Why are poor whites (not all of them, by a long shot, to be sure, but millions, nonetheless) willing to vote for rich whites who screw them 24/7, rather than join forces with blacks who are even more screwed than they are?"

In your antiseptic world, all forces on all sides are equal.  There is no moral right or wrong.  It's pure zero-sum physics, and you fancy yourself enlightened.

A moral idiot.

[ Parent ]
It isn't "Set" (0.00 / 0)
A homeostatic balance is not "set".  It emerges as the result of the interplay of the elements of the system.

I'm not a moral idiot, I'm just not projecting my moral desires of how things "ought" to be into my picture of how they are.

The "why" of poor whites voting their racial prejudices instead of their economic interests is not the question at hand.  It's whether the fact of it was unforeseen by leftists who viewed everything in terms of class and just assumed they could ignore the implication of race on votes.  Because they did, they assumed if they just educated the poor whites about their class status and commonality with poor blacks, they'd change their votes.  But wishing didn't make it so.  Ideology could not trump facts.

The reality was that LBJ was right, the South was lost to the Democrats in 1964, and trying to wish away that inconvenient fact led the Democratic party to tie itself in knots, sacrificing both ideology and success.

[ Parent ]
The Democrats lost post-1968 (0.00 / 0)
BECAUSE OF THEIR ENDLESS QUIXOTIC QUEST TO GET SOUTHERN VOTES, NOT BECAUSE THEIR FUNDAMENTAL IDEOLOGY WAS FLAWED.  THEY WERE TOO CENTRIST AND ARGUED A MUSHY MIDDLE VIEW THAT MADE NO SENSE

What is so hard to understand about this?  

[ Parent ]
Also, (0.00 / 0)
as I said above, the real 1960s coalition was between Northern Republicans and Northern Democrats against the William F. Buckleys of the world and Dixiecrats.
[ Parent ]
It's not hard to understand (4.00 / 1)
you are talking to a poster with a vested interest in the bs he's peddling. Facts, social dynamics, policy coalitions, and everything else be damned. He's right. We are wrong. That's the basis of this discussion.
[ Parent ]
By the way- note also the context of this conversation (4.00 / 1)
we are in a diary in which the GOP hack was obviously doing the exact things we talk about, and the "leftist" was merely asking him to be reasonable, and use the definitions that society understands of the word appeasement. I believe the post to whom you are speaking is an appeaser in his own fashion. It's not merely enough that we disagree or that we come to compromise, but we are suppose to accept wholesale the position of the right or else we are own equal footing. Someone put it best- to some of these people their definition of compromise is capitulation. They aren't the same thing. But the poster to whom we are both wasting our time seems to think that it is. Hence, he can't get how the civil rights movement was  in fact the right decision even if it cost in the short term. The reason why is because it lead to ultimate gains in the long term.  
[ Parent ]
Your Temperature Is SET By Your Genetic Inheretence (0.00 / 0)
With minor tinkering from environmental and behavioral factors.

You're at your worst when you're most pendantic.

[ Parent ]
Show me the morality in the natural world (0.00 / 0)
and I might start to take your pseudo-scientific arguments at face value.  

There's a slow train comin'
[ Parent ]
Paragraphs, please (0.00 / 0)
At some point, you have to ask yourself why, if the left is truth, does it keep losing?  Maybe because every time it starts to make headway, it fractures into a million pieces, each arguing a different version of "truth"?  Maybe because there is no such thing as a "left", there are only various elements and drives of society?  And there is no such thing as the "right", but other forces, pushed into common cause by their resistance to the equally nebulous "left"?

Ideology is not destiny.  There is no inevitable dialectic of history.  There are just people, and the emergent result of their efforts to live their lives and make the world the kind of place they want to live in.

[ Parent ]
This is actually an argument against the right (4.00 / 1)
The left fractures precisely because they aren't being forced into ideological lockstep by powerful cultural and institutional factors in the way that the right is.  In particular, this is hastened by the way that the right has exerted tremendous influence over the 'centrist' portion of the Democratic party.
[ Parent ]
Ahh, but it goes both ways (0.00 / 0)
The right went into ideological lockstep with the "Reagan Revolution".  The religious right, the corporate right, and the militarists, all found themselves on the same side and did a little mutual backscratching.  Hence the "three legged stool" of conservatives, the trio of litmus tests they have been applying.  They took over the GOP of the "paleo-conservatives", which is now represented by the Ron Paul "libertarian lite" wing of the party (which is either going to take over, or bolt for the Dem side).

That alliance is fracturing.  It's not so much that the "left" is winning, as that the right is losing.  And that pretty much describes what happened to the Democrats in the last swing of the cycle.

[ Parent ]
The funny part of each of your post (4.00 / 1)
and that's why I am going to stop wasting time on idiots like you is that you spend a great deal of time telling us about factual events about the right, but then if you look at your own post, you provide no factual back up for your position about the left. This is why at base its a false equivalent- you confuse idealogical differences with facts about how the two idealogies have acted and been allowed to act in this country. It's as I said a waste o fbreathe, because you lack your ignorance. And before you say it- yes, that's meant as a personal attack on you. As a acquiantance of mine- a Republican- said to me of my chatting with folks like you on line- if you wallow to long with pigs in shit- you only end up with shit on you.
[ Parent ]
Who the hell do you think you are talking to? (4.00 / 1)
I am actually a moderate. Do you even know that? The difference is that I am one who understand history, and am not moved as easily as some of you by rhectoric or propaganda from the right. I actually had some rather good history, political science and legal professors. Many of them conservatives, but fair one's who actually taught history. I am basing my analysis on what they taught  me without the idealogical crap in place. That's why I am able to read a post claiming equivalency, and call it false. Again, assert history, fact, economic outcomes, etc, or stop wasting my time.  
[ Parent ]
By the way, as a moderate my goal is to (0.00 / 0)
shift the country to left of center, rather than to where it is now- essentially right. What's yours?
[ Parent ]
Make the stupid stop (0.00 / 0)
That's my goal.  There are elements of both sides that strike me as stupid.  But the "left's" stupid is currently marginalized, while the "right's" is in charge.  Let's get rid of the stupid.  Short of that, let's stop the particular brand of stupid that can currently do the most damage.
[ Parent ]
"Stupid" Means Someone Disagrees With You (0.00 / 0)
A very englightened perspective.
[ Parent ]
Don't know about that, but (0.00 / 0)
my goal is quite biological.

More genes in the pool = more chance to survive.

To the extent that politics increases the gene pool, I'm for it.  When folks try to limit thought and expression by declaring others as "idiots" and similar terms - they represent a movement to restrict the "gene" pool. Thus, I'll confront them.

At one point, the notion that the earth was not the center of the universe was considered idiotic - if we took your path, we'd still be wrong.


There's a slow train comin'

[ Parent ]
"Appeasement" Meme Jumps The Shark | 112 comments
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