Post #17,795
11/11/01 7:15:15 PM
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Sowing and weeping--
For forty years, left-liberals have been extending the powers of Government.
When people like me said that wasn't the way to do it, left-liberals said, "Oh, you just want to starve the babies," and went on from there to insults.
So now we have a nearly all-powerful Government; a Government that can break your door and take your kids (in the name of Child Welfare); a Government that can take your farm and destroy your livelihood (in the name of Environmental Protection, salaam).
And the people -- always present -- who are sure in their own hearts that all would be well if they ran the world were attracted to it in droves. Up to now the only ones hurting were us unreconstructed right-wingers, and of course we deserved it, didn't we? -- we wanted to Starve the Babies and Leave the Mentally Ill Without Means of Support. Now they're starting to encroach on your turf, and of course you bleat.
When I was a kid, if someone was doing something stupid or counterproductive or even self-destructive, onlookers would shrug and say, "It's a free country." When was the last time you heard that?
Regards,
Ric
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Post #17,825
11/12/01 3:03:16 AM
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You can do better than that
(I thought)
I know what a 'liberal education' has always meant, but have no idea what 'Liberal' means in your (apparently Y2K lexicon with '50s overlay) - since we haven't Had anything Left of [just right of Center] since Ronnie was anointed Uncle of us all. There hasn't been a functional 'Left Wing' in US since about the last assassination of '68.
Ronnie, and the Institutionalization of Greed is Good as National policy and Religion, presided over the greatest run-up of debt in history (< $T1 before his watch), the Contras as Founding Fathers yada yada.
Clinton was Right-of-Center, except for the Welfare 'reform' wherein he behaved just left of Far-Right - apparently for simple egoist One-upmanship: out-Troglodyte the folks who'd have liked to eliminate all assistance to anyone anytime. Really pissed them off bein outmaneuvered at that unholy scam (roosting just.. about.. Next, I'd predict - especially as the $-stuff gets worse and worse next).
Hell, next you'll drop the Liberal-Meeja on us (as if the grunts in the field had any power at all - given the few who own that there Libralmeeja Corp thingie) - and as if the Ollies n Rushs n Geo Wills et al: didn't outnumber about 10:1 *any* columnists, talking heads: as might be called Left of Center. Do tell us next about the meeja. Oh and PBS: count up the Right-ranters there, VS (every 3-4 years - Noam Chomsky might get a half hour). Who else? Tot up the weekly exposure of these silly 'poles' which meet at the extremes.
Sorry - got no idea whacha mean, if fixing-blame locally is the game. Your Boys (certainly the AG of Fla and Her Boys) + 5 renegade USSC Boys: Selected us the present crew.
Finally you may tell us: they aren't really Conservatives (already know that; 'Reactionaries' is closer) and that you're really a 'Libertarian': betrayed by both parties. Right.
Thing is: Muricans Love the welfare state. But love more - the euphemisms as allow them to pretend each one is a Rugged Individualist, but well protected from any actual risk.
The language of US politics has been fucked for so long - no one knows what any of the many 'sides' are saying. Which fits: since no one is listening either - just trading slogans. Like yours.
We'll probably go out with the same slogans as in McCarthy days, too (Bet).
Ashton
PS - yeah some depraved folk do find it odd that 20-25% of all US children live below the arbitrary 'poverty level' - while other countries seem to manage so much better. OK: screw the babies then. Feel better with that?
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Post #17,853
11/12/01 9:52:51 AM
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College Days.
I had this '71 VW Bug in college. I had bumper stickers all over it: "US out of Central America", "Reaganism is the Opiate of the People", "End The Pentagon Republic of Honduras", "CIA out of El Salvador", etc. The consequence, of course - in rural North Carolina, was that my car was frequently vandalized. Perhaps my favorite sticker was, "The Left Shall Rise Again".
I'm a lot more cynical now, do you think the Left will ever return to this country? I mean, assuming no revolutions. I don't see how. I've taught a couple of college classes and if my anecdotal experience w/the current crop is any indication, I don't think Murican college students can/will think about anything but getting a "good corporate job, like maybe at McDonalds."
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Post #17,937
11/12/01 4:28:19 PM
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Thou sayest..
When the mere idea of 'liberal' becomes an epithet --> implying that some imaginary opposite is Real Good: never reconsider past mistakes, but enshrine them in glass-under-Flag meringue - what does one call that opposite? The word reactionary appears also to have become hors de combat. When last did you hear anyone use (or try to define) a word for That mindset?
Nahh.. the language has become so corrupt, epitomized by any utterance from any M$ rep - it's simply impossible to engage in anything like meaningful discourse. Debate? Hah.. how many decades ago was it since 'debating' was a part of every high school curriculum? If you don't know how to argue, or why most all pat-slogans are ~Stuart Chase style 'blab' - what have you left but some pewling rote-learned ideology? Screw up language (Encarta-style + habitual misuse) and what have you left?
I don't expect to see a 'Left' rise in foreseeable - unless Ashcroft's next few Dictats finally are so blatant as to awaken even the sleepiest (?) Crap shoot there. It would have to be pretty Extreme; perhaps.. affecting seats at the ballpark.
The Big Lie (in Murica anyone can 'make it' - we be a Meritocracy) works. Via this ceaseless mantra interspersed with endless ads exhorting ever More consumption, it's just plain too noisy to think. Most workers are too stressed by meaningless Corp paperwork job-lets, both working, to have much inclination to examine their milieu - let alone coalesce into effective groups. That was over in '70s, and after the assassinations.
Not an environment to catalyze much deeper thought than, what color seats in the UAV and, how'd the Giants do? Perhaps the model-makers are right: Murican politics is just a mechanical pendulum swinging from one inane extreme to and fro (with a recent arrest of motion to redefine the center as umm 'Librul') ?
A.
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Post #18,000
11/13/01 12:19:56 AM
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wadja expect fscking heathen (a dale stcker forgives all)
tshirt front "born to die before I get old"
thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"
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Post #17,982
11/12/01 9:55:59 PM
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Sorry 'bout the spew
didn't realize at the time that I was coming down with something.
That being said, the tendency -- from both sides! -- for the last forty years (that I've seen; Dad had it another thirty before that) has been that for any problem, the Solution is to increase the power and influence of the Federal Government at the expense of that of the States or *shudder* the people.
This is just the next turn of that screw.
And yes, I know what "liberal" is supposed to mean! I also know that, up until FDR, the "liberal" party in the United States was... the Republicans. Democrats were xenophobic right-wingers. (I live, as I did when young, in Texas -- home of those great Democrats Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. At age 16 I helped campaign for Goldwater, and cried in rage over the daisy ad -- at age 16 I knew what the man really said, admired it, and was murderously angry at the distortion.)
There is no liberal party or philosophy in the United States at the moment, which is why I'm careful to hyphenate it "left-liberal". People who constantly use jealousy and envy to promote their political philosophy; whose basic thesis is, "They've got it, and you don't. Therefore they stole it." This is of course added to the professariat and the "media", primarily the TV folks. Have you noted that, on CNN, the Taliban always "report" civilian casualties, whereas the Air Force "alleges" that they're doing the best they can? Forty-eight times a day. The fundamental assumption here is that the United States is always in the wrong.
A socialist-oriented philosophy to base this on would be a relief, not an irritant. The people who irritate me use socialist jargon a lot, just as the fundie "Christians" invoke (vainly, IMO) God, and make me just as grumpy -- but in fact they have no fundamental beliefs, no unifying ideology. Just bits and scraps of phrases here and there, and a commitment to "divide and conquer" strategies -- if you can get everybody jealous and envious of everybody else, think of the learned papers and investigative specials you can do!
And no, I'm no fan of the present administration in any absolute sense. But when (just as a minor example) the proponents of the opposition continually harp on the incident with the ballot applications as an example of "voting irregularities", and fail to mention that on their side they did it sooo ethically by having the applications go directly to Party Headquarters for vetting before being passed on -- I know which one I'm likely to support better.
Argh, I'm ranting again. Peace. Keep your papers in order. You never know when the Heimatsekuritatsdienst will ask to see them.
Regards,
Ric
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Post #18,011
11/13/01 4:07:16 AM
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We seem to agree that the language is fscked.
And that there is no 'liberal' party (or by any other name). Yes the labels got switched ~ time of the Dixiecrats - before my time, to have experienced the undercurrents.
Hey.. smarmy academics will be always with us - they have their own compound anyway - protection from the anti-'llectual Murican Peepul. (They develop the advanced weapons for the jingoists: a kind of symbiosis) The rest of the time.. just get sneered at for tryin to get folks to read some of the history books and learn Ohm's law - bummer.
Perhaps the a-Corporate Party can be formed to counter the Repub- Demo- Corporate Party (with their requisite 'conservative' stick-on label, of course). Planks can deal with enforcement of anti-trust, curtailing Corp welfare to the same Draconian level as the poor-folk variety, recovering the overseas taxes unpaid by Multi-nationals. Then, elimination of the HMO, the bizness-run prison and - Prohibition - the phony War on Drugs (locking up more Muricans than any country locks up). No TV-1 in schools.
I don't look for the aCorporate party or these planks to appear, of course. 9/11 aside, Corp is too far in the driver's seat: buying enough Pols to remain there, and in full charge of Presidential Selection before anyone pretends to choose between the identical twins. 24/7 means that few have the energy and time to play at being voting, informed citizens (even if they sorta wanted to take back some of the power - on alternate Tuesdays).
Whatever it would take (since this shock doesn't seem to have been nearly enough to awaken much thought) - I have no idea, now. All is running on inertia, so.. I'll watch. To take it seriously ~ akin to playing the lottery because you need the money.
A.
Lies.. lies - a country run on daily rations of lies!
PS - get well! (Won't make the country any less sick, of course ;-) Hmmm - pentothal in the water supply would be more deadly to bizness as usual: than Anthrax
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Post #17,848
11/12/01 8:59:54 AM
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It must be pleasant to live in a world of absolutes
Never any doubts, never any shades of grey. Left = bad, right = good (even if the left hasn't existed for years). So you just go ahead and march in lockstep with the other true believers. I'll try to think for myself.
How to mangle the truth;
Have it reported by any major U.S. media outlet.
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Post #17,949
11/12/01 6:46:03 PM
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Yeah, it's pretty nifty.
Being able to reduce everything to binary absolutes comes in handy when you work with computer technology. I can even accomodate shades of grey, given enough bits of precision. But shades of grey can never quite accomodate absolutes. So which is the broader view?
I have my bad days, of course. Just like anybody else. But I know I'm having a better day than you're having. I recently found out they're not forcing me to go WIN2K after all.
Hope your tomorrow's a little less grey.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #18,261
11/14/01 12:44:32 PM
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"Be careful what you wish for" ...
Sam Spade: But I know I'm having a better day than you're having. I recently found out they're not forcing me to go WIN2K after all. Maybe they're skipping W2K just to go direct to XP? ;^> Christian R. Conrad
The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
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Post #18,318
11/14/01 5:40:15 PM
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Admin: hideous human torture advocated here <<
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