a consummation devoutly to be hoped

Post #181,595 by rcareaga 10/28/04 9:56:55 PM Reply	a consummation devoutly to be hoped I've been saying for a while that victory over these dimestormtroopers depended on the regime's being less unscrupulous than we suppose (cf Diebold). I'll modify this, and suggest that we will prevail because they were less competent than we supposed, and that this ineptitude proves to be as bound up with giddy overconfidence on the campaign trail as the Debacle in the Desert is grounded in the visionary fantasies of the Pentagon neocoms who thought that we could subdue Mesopotamia on the cheap and transform Hussein's two-bit Stalinist state into a docile satrap adorned with ornamental totems of popular mandate, to be resold here labelled "Made in Philadelphia, 1787." In each case they were unprepared for the ferocity of the resistance that tardily coalesced behind their initial triumphs. That there was no "Plan B" in Iraq is now painfully apparent even to many of last year's cheerleaders. It is heartening to see that the Great and Powerful Rove is perhaps likewise caught unprepared by late reverses, without a rabbit to pull out of his ass at the eleventh hour. So we might win big on Tuesday night. The oppo may have assumed for too long that they would not have to exert themselves, if at all, beyond a bit of discreet Diebold-tweaking in selected precincts, virtually undetectable behind the signal-to-noise wall o' static. Certainly the eleventh-hour feints and tactics have about them a whiff or more of desperate improvisation, a casting about, a grasping at topical straws difficult to reconcile with a confident controlling intelligence. I think it possible that a tsunami of elevated turnout will swamp the RNC's strategems and cheats. This will not stop them from screaming fraud in the wake of the defeat, nor from falling back on the tried-and-true 1992 playbook of attempting in opposition to make the country ungovernable from next year forward. Still, we know more than we did 12 years ago. Previous fantasies of a fascist takeover of the US of A generally framed it in terms of a third force muscling in rather than what we have seen over the past generation: the stealthy takeover of one of the existing major parties, with all its institutions and apparatus intact, and with the reflexive and unreflective loyalty à la Hoffer's True Believer of a large portion of its installed base. These people will remain out there, hostile, largely uninformed save by the criminal conspiracy the GOP has become, and ready to make mischief in their small and, we may hope, largely ineffectual ways. We for our part must, alas, remain politically engaged, resisting the temptation of factionalism, extending the hand of reconciliation to such Bush supporters as might eventually come to their senses and beating the others like redheaded stepchildren. Thank you. cordially, Cthulhu for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?
Post #181,620 by deSitter 10/29/04 4:59:52 AM Reply	Re: a consummation devoutly to be hoped The fascinating thing to me - all the left's most paranoid fears regarding the right in the 60s turned out to be real, but 40 years removed! Who would have believed that? -drl
Post #181,626 by Ashton 10/29/04 6:07:00 AM Reply	Can think of one group - readers. It Can't Happen Here described a basic Murican acculturation. (I may have mentioned this before.) Those '60's fears were as sensible then as now, to anyone acquainted with a few of the millions of My Grammas (and especially anyone who remembers how easily McCarthy was able to setup his scam, "I hold in my hand the names of X Communists in the ___ Department"). That's all it took to A) Create and magnify the Fear. B) Consolidate his Power. Then leverage that precisely as did J. Edgar (and his dossiers). Hoover managed to play Robespierre.. forever. McCarthy was more like Shrub, but a wet-drunk. Tee Vee + his innate hubris was his undoing. But 'twas inherent Vileness (as with Roy Cohn) that actually killed him: a mercy killing. Then and now. (We should be grateful for Shrub's complete conversion to Messiah-complex + the evidence all around - of not merely how far he would go: but Has Gone.) And STILL! it remains iffy. THAT is Who 'We' Are. Scaredy-kat consuming sheep, Owned-by our stuff and with burglar alarms on the Rolex to the Hummer. As mentioned in that other thread: I too associate the valuing of Property over People with your idealized "Confederates" -- you got your simile Backwards. Again. Unity and self-sacrifice, of themselves, even when fostered by the most noble means, produce a facility for hating. Even when men league themselves mightily together to promote tolerance and peace on earth, they are likely to be violently intolerant toward those not of a like mind. The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other's throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason and his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached. \ufffd Eric Hoffer, The True Believer via Rand "To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are." Eric Hoffer via Owl!
Post #181,627 by deSitter 10/29/04 6:12:33 AM 10/29/04 6:30:32 AM Reply	Re: Can think of one group - readers. In some sense it is the final victory of the miserable Yankee worldview that has become our near undoing, that their sworn enemy must now wear the tyrannical mantle. Chances are slim you've ever read any works by Confederate participants, but if you choose to, you'll see that what they are concerned with is protecting individual rights against government intrustion. (edit: Ash and tango - you have company. Read this: [link\|http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_5525.shtml\|http://www.michnews....rticle_5525.shtml] You see, even the so-called "reconstructionists" have the wrong idea completely. Here is a toothless inbred Bubba defending the ultimate Yankee, Shrub. Do you need more examples?) -drl Edited by deSitter Oct. 29, 2004, 06:30:32 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #181,786 by Ashton 10/30/04 1:36:32 AM Reply	I doubt we disagree at 'core' And this chunk of idiot-level sloganeering is, as you note - just a contemporary example of language murder. With extreme prejudice. Following the evanescent 'meanings' of democrat/republican/Dixiecrat across the years.. strikes me as akin to parsing the hearsay editings, fanciful musings of the committees who assembled the various 'Bible' editions (+ Constantine and minus the ever-elided St. Thomas, whose insight would have proved fatal to priestly hierarchies - by definition). We See why he was omitted. Why.. imagine the Congress actually reforming its own financing! ..me neither. Yes, I'll concede that one can find the writings of Southerners who were prescient about the gradual/inevitable encroachment of the bureaucrat mind - into all personal matters. And surely the Carpetbaggers/Yankees were identical to today's Armani-suited (en-tre-pre-neurs in Shrubspeak). But there's too much overlap in ideologies and slogans to reduce the entire civil war to polar opposites; I'd aver that the majority of homo-saps in any era emulate the effete, ignorant and uninvolved consumer, with or without today's plethora of shiny (transistorized) beads. Democracy ergo - is a will-o'the-wisp feel-good idea whose time came, passed for being unworkable --> precisely as predicted by Ben F. and ratified by Ronnie's Greed is Good (full circle). ie We're Fucked, we're Damn Proud of our Fuckedness and -- the Future Lies Ahead (while we Lie.. incessantly) Screw regime change; the planet needs Species Change, or it'll look like Venus a few Hummer-generations from now. Ashton - and that's the Good News (can't handle the Bad News till December, or whenever the 'election' is finished / the troops arrive.) Hey.. it's just a Play, y'know?

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