Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments Of Thee I Sing : a response to What IS leadership and what kind of leader do WE want? Ah, another Jaynesian! I need to reread him ( and read the anthology, what is it, Reflections on the dawn of consciousness? ), but if I could summarise, it would be : I find meme theory very persuasive and explanatory, too. Religions have caused a great deal of havoc. It is dreadful to contemplate that the ancient Greeks were at the same technological level as we were in about 1600 – in other words, progress literally stopped dead for 1500 years. There was no psychology before Freud, because of the myths dictated about human nature by deterministic ideology. It is dreadful to contemplate, too, that the first piece of literature with a psychologically realistic first-person narrator ever written was Jane Eyre – in the lifetime of my great-great-grandparents ( or maybe great-great-great ), after 5,000-6,000 years of recorded history. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 20, 2011 @ 5:58 pm Welcome, and thank you, and welcome! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 20, 2011 @ 9:23 am “ people are acting like this current UN action against Libya is “just like Bush” ” Are they really? How do I combine a yawn with eyes rolling? But really, that is just amazing – it is very much just unlike Bush in every particular, most conspicuously in being by international initiative and under international leadership. File under “ Bush III ”, “ Lawrence Summers makes Richard Cheney look like Benjamin Franklin ”, and “ hey guys, maybe Bernie Saunders can mount a primary challenge! ”. It really is tedious. I don’t know if the Left is really more Left, but I do wonder how many Progresso Blameobamabots ( or left baggers, if you prefer ) were / are Clinton I or Clinton II supporters ( not all, but doubtlessly some ), and what that says about exactly what those “ principles ” of theirs are. I also know I would have never believed in any Right / Left equivalence before I started observing someone of the ridiculous hysteria over at HuffPo in the past year. There may be differences in spelling ability and propensity for violence, but I’ve learned a good segment of the Left can be just as fact-free and hysterical. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 20, 2011 @ 9:22 am An important part of my experience is when I went to the President’s pre-election rally at USC last October – the first and only rally I have ever gone to! While waiting in line, I read in the newspaper that Bank of America had to lower their valuation by $10 billion – because of debit card fee reform. As someone else in line put it, “ that’s how much they were screwing us for ”. Ralph Nader and the Summers-is-worse-than-Cheney crowd may scoff, but that is real change ; and the financial reform, whatever its shortcomings, is still the greatest since Roosevelt ( if it’s good enough for Rachel, it’s good enough for me ). Later, when the President spoke, he reaffirmed his commitment to repealing DADT. At this time, many were skeptical, but, hearing his reaffirmation, it was clear he meant it – and two months later, it was done. Back when I was trapped in Queen Bee’s Mad Nightmare Realm, I was especially vexed by “ progressives ” talking about staying home and not voting or voting third party – that is, about going in exactly the opposite direction that has seemed so evident and urgent to me over these last years. What is hopeful is that we are gaining some insight into the, ahem, forces in media that have possibly driven a great deal of that ( if not most, I wouldn’t be surprised ) and are now in a better position to fight it. ( Especially now that Keith seems to be coming over to our side. ) » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 9:50 pm Thank you. My cheerful thought is – it’s only been two years, we can’t even imagine what it’ll be by the end of the second term. And think what it would have been otherwise. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 8:29 pm Good bumper stickers! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 6:22 pm Oh, *golly*! I’ll have to make some coffee and have a look at this! Thank you, Ad Lib! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 6:07 pm Friday Music Thread – Comedy Tonight Comedy – and Music! The Supreme Pinnacle of Art : The Nonsense Song from Modern Times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_du8fjUN0Kg The first time Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin used his voice, nine years after the commercial introduction of sound, and greater than the Sistine Chapel. Unapproachable. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 18, 2011 @ 7:48 pm Invite For Collaboration Part 4 Well, I did come up with the phrase “ left baggers ” . . 🙂 My most recent HP phase was just in the past year, but I definitely did see things that were quite disturbing – at times, such as during what I call the Affaire Sherrod Breitbart-Progressive Coalition Blame Obama Bandwagon, it was a real nightmare world for days on end. And the recurring orgies of “ Bush III ” are, yes, every bit as reality-free as » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 23, 2011 @ 9:26 am I’ve found Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform criteria to be useful, and they can be generalised – it’s pretty easy to see how they apply to Glenn Beck, for example. I’m not sure how they would fit HP, but you might find something – I can already see how their slantings could loosely be “ Loading the Language ”, and the whole cockeyed world of the site a sort of “ Sacred Science ”. In retrospect, it is definitely a strangely closed and often reality-free place – which strongly suggests to me that the cult idea can’t be too far off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism Lifton is one of my favorites, though I’ve only read The Nazi doctors and Hiroshima in America ; the latter is in some respects one of the best books I’ve ever read. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 23, 2011 @ 8:30 am Hello, I looked at that and also the Rashomon series, which was rather hair-raising. It’s sort of like the feeling of leaving a cult – anger that that garbage affected my life for the time that it did. You remarked on changes in their coverage of the President ; I wonder if there’s a correlation with poll numbers – I noticed late last year / early this year they dropped the insulting depictions for awhile after his poll numbers went up and the productive lame duck session, then started them again about as soon as the glow was over. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 23, 2011 @ 7:32 am Something that shouldn’t be overlooked ( but might be, because we had to learn to overlook it to stay sane ( or pretend we were ) when we were there )– is just what an absolute freakshow the whole thing of 9 out of 10 articles being in some way on religion, about how religion and science are finding common ground with respect to the topic at hand, etc. etc. I mean, that was / is just absolutely flipping BIZARRE for what is supposedly a major news site. Or does that go under the “ cult ” topic? » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 8:55 pm Feel free to use this – I came across a thumbnail in my Safari browser recently which is one particularly sickening memory – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/obamas-budget-2012-president-vs-life-story_n_823152.html – and there was a positive story on the budget posted by Sam Stein on the same day. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/plouffe-obama-social-security-benefits_n_823247.html It could not have been more obvious that an agenda was being filled. I was going to start screen-capturing all of the obviously racist incidences of unflattering photos of the President, unfortunately ( or fortunately for my mental health ) I never got anywhere on that. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 19, 2011 @ 8:22 pm TAKE ACTION – How To Help Those In Japan Ouch, I got it from a White House or Barackobama.com email today ( not personal ones 🙂 ), no commentary intended! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 17, 2011 @ 4:13 pm http://blog.usaid.gov/2011/03/how-you-can-help-japan-give-cash-not-goods/ » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 17, 2011 @ 1:43 pm I posted this earlier in OT, it comes from The Petition Site. International Medical Corps has a 93.4% efficiency rating from charitynavigator.org ( I checked ). https://www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=1972 » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 17, 2011 @ 12:30 am What IS leadership and what kind of leader do WE want? OK . . . it’ll be under serious consideration today . . . 🙂 » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 16, 2011 @ 11:03 am OK, I’ll have a go at it today . . . » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 16, 2011 @ 11:00 am Seeing Russia from America’s doorstep, Contribute your Sarah Palin shart acrostic today! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 16, 2011 @ 10:57 am Thank you again. I had not consciously thought of the connection of the Business Plot to the Family, though it makes perfect and there is the Bush family connection. The union of Business and Fundamentalism – explicitly on display in today’s teabaggy union of Libertarianism and outright Dominionism and even Reconstructionism ( and, gee, we always thought Libertarians were sort of, like, cool Republicans or something, didn’t we? ) – is something that always seems counterintuitive, although the interest of Business in wielding ideological oppression and the innate cynicism of Fundamentalism are self-evidently complementary. There is some very interesting material in Garry Wills’ Head and heart : American Christianities about how Evangelicalism was promoted in the Robber Baron Era – the whole book is a fascinating and enlightening overview of our sociopolitical history since the Wierdos, er, Pilgrims, and I recommend it highly if you haven’t come across it. I cannot imagine a better six-word definition of Führerprinzip than “ Unitary Executive with unlimited extralegal power ”; and it is indeed chilling that there was a contigency plan to suspend the 2004 election, and that it was the first U. S. election ever to have international monitors. We did indeed have a very close call – and the fact that the real American Hitler ( potentially very much so at the time, although fortunately the threat seems to be receding now ) came within 7% of being a heartbeat away from the Presidency in 2008 was arguably even closer. George Wallace was apparently a rather decent and moderate man before he became Governor; and on a couple of occasions since he left office George Walker Bush has seemed like a fairly decent and thoughtful man unrecognisable as the grotesque buffoon who occupied the Presidency – I have an undeveloped thought about there possibly being a specific type of profound and fundamental corruption of character by political power in both cases. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 6:21 pm “ Community organizer ” means “ you know, those people ”. It’s the new version of “ welfare queen ”. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 3:33 pm I enjoyed reading your post, thank you again! » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 3:18 pm Why thank you, I’m not quite ready for my official debut yet, though! The thought has been crossing my mind since I discovered the Planet, however, and I might even get around to it one of these days ( either before or after I get organizized ). I do admittedly wave the banner and play the apologist, precisely because opinion is so divided. This was pretty off-the-cuff, and points that might be contentious could certainly be better argued, given some qualification ( or a lot ), or put in broader context to clarify the viewpoint or approach; I plead guilty wherever lacking in those regards, and agreement to disagree accepted. 🙂 » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 3:17 pm Oh, of course, it’s KQuark! I’m starting to notice we agree a lot. 🙂 I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 2:48 pm Thank you, choicelady, for mentioning something I think may be insufficiently known. Conservatives explicitly view the end of the Robber Baron Era as an historic catastrophe – it is a central point of their topsy-turvy view of history, along with all the other nonsense about Woodrow Wilson, the gold standard, Austrian economics, and slavery being freedom of labor. My own upbringing included my father talking about how he was chased around the schoolyard for voting for Norman Thomas in the mock election, and how his father ( the town’s leading banker )said at the dinner table that he had voted for Roosevelt, as if it were a guilty confession. There have been two major attempts to overthrow the Government of the United States of America. The first was the Civil War, which the aggressors fought on behalf of the entitlement of a privileged class to hold unlimited economic power over other human beings. The second was the Business Plot of 1933 ( which is something which is definitely insufficiently known ). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plot The Whitehouse [ sic ] Coup In three parts. This is a BBC radio program with added visual images ( documentary material ). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXGUgFXoRu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGPb6ulVEK0&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mav69K2zkgw&feature=related The Plot to Overthrow FDR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvyXuANtSH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxh4kVnBkFI&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOOgZBXkSs&feature=related
» Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 3:36 am Thank you, Abbyrose86, for raising an important subject – one frequently invoked, but rarely, if ever, with any clarity – in a subtle and thoughtful manner. A few ( rather disconnected, circuitous, and not necessarily consistent ) thoughts – The concept of “ leadership ” is not only difficult to define, but is in itself open to some question. I recall early in the President’s Administration an occasion where he did not have an immediate statement on something because ( word to the effect that ) “ he wanted to know what he was talking about first ”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNyVq-K3x18&feature=fvst I find this admirable. Those in the ideology-based, non-reality-based, non-cognitive community do not. In their view, value is accorded to producing the ideologically-determined “ correct ” statement as quickly as possible; consideration of such things as questions of fact, uncertain outcomes, the nuances of a particular unique situation, and so on, are indications of stupidity, incompetence, and moral turpitude. This is a concept of “ leadership ” which we may reject, with no small amount of justified smug self-satisfaction; however we should consider to what extent its presumptions colour our notions of “ leadership ”, or are indeed intrinsic to the concept ( given the obvious connections of leadership, authoritarianism, and the ideological mentality ). … A frequent criticism of the President from the Left is along the lines of – and this is a crude simplification ( or maybe not ) – why doesn’t he just wave the magic wand, why doesn’t he “ take a stand ” on this or that, why isn’t he doing this particular thing in this particular way that I think it should be done, etc. etc. Often this in basic disregard of the plain facts – how many votes there were in the Senate; that laws ( such as DADT ) cannot be repealed by executive order; that there are certain issues of institutional prestige and authority around the Government of the United States of America which tend to disincline against facilitating foreign prosecutions of government officials, whether we like or not; that it is normally the obligation of the government to uphold existing laws; and so on and so on. Related to this is the brute fact, often ignored, that the inescapable duty of government is to represent the populace – or, more accurately, interests, of which the populace is one; and the populace, furthermore, is one divided into segments swayed by various interests. The other side is part of our nation: they cannot be saturation bombed, nuked, or gassed into nonexistence; they must be accomodated – and that accomodation can be done with varying degrees of skillfulness, with varying degrees of capitulation or noncapitulation, with varying degrees of compromising in the right places or the wrong places. I believe that the judgement of history will be that our current Administration is doing this job very well. The onerous and loathsome bailouts have been about as successful as they could have been – the Soviet Revolution may have been more admirable on principle on this point, but they were less successful in the long run ( to grossly oversimplify a complex historical subject ); pragmatism, alas, reigns. Also related is the notion referred to of “ why isn’t he doing this particular thing in this particular way that I think it should be done ”. Earlier this evening, I momentarily reflected upon the cliché “ Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. ” – it would be accurate, I think, if the word “ conservative ” were replaced by the word “ pragmatic ”. With the passing of some years, the unthinkable moral obscenity, “ compromise ”, becomes the very foundation of existence – in political terms, it is the essence of democracy, the accomadation described above; and what become essential are the concepts of “ politics as the art of the possible ” and of “ incremental change ”. Prior to, perhaps, mid- or late October 2008, I was not someone for whom political pragmatism or compromise were virtues. My only prior vote for a Presidential candidate was for H. Ross Perot in 1992 – never for a major party candidate ( curiously similar to my father, a Roosevelt-era American Socialist and McCarthy victim – I remember him voting for John Anderson in 1980, and saying he had almost never voted in a Presidential election ). On the other hand, and at about the same time, in the early 1990s, I found myself herbally incapacitated in front of the TV and watched the PBS American Experience program on President Johnson, and subsequent read ( and even mostly re-read ) the volumes to date of Robert Caro’s biography ( which is shorter than Proust – so far ); and came to have a gleefully idiosyncratic reverence for Johnson – the first President who I actively admired ( as distinct from sentimental received notions of Roosevelt or Kennedy ), and the down-and-dirty compromiser and deal-maker par excellence. To fast-forward a little bit, a little over two years later, BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, Forty-fourth President of the United States of America ( as I like to refer to him ), is the historic LGBT Rights President in the history of our nation. There are some notable loose ends to tie up, but it is essentially done. It has happened. I did not expect that. No-one did. And it is only a small part of the accomplishment. … And that brings me around to the idea of leadership defined as accomplishment, and of how greatly my early, decidedly non-Obamabot hopes that we might have another Johnson have been exceeded. I will not argue this Administration’s record of accomplishment; that is a plain matter of record, and I put the responsibility on the skeptic to make a cursory internet search. ( I won’t pass up the chance to post one of my favorite videos, though. ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ALSi9B71xg And it is, specifically, accomplishment. It is not about such-and-such policy being executed in perfect accordance with someone else’s set of points. It is not about pronouncements being made before we can know what we are talking about ( as with Libya at present ). It is not about counter-productive trumpetings of ideologically pure policy – one notes that the then-controversial concessions on offshore drilling have duly fallen by the wayside, and one expects that the same will eventually occur with the inclusion of nuclear energy in energy policy, for an example or two. Another part of leadership is in conduct and character – the reason why there will always be certain ironic qualifier to the achievements of Johnson; the reason why the essential humanism and potential for greatness of Nixon will always be deeply overshadowed; why the myths of Reagan will always be belied by the stark facts; why all conceivable apologies for George Walker Bush are controverted by the ineradicable spectacle of the truly grotesque and appalling buffoon who trampled the world stage for eight long years ( and to whom, curiously, the George Walker Bush of today bears little resemblance – I suspect there may be a parallel with Governor George Corley Wallace, as a person who was profoundly corrupted by political power ). In conduct and character, President Obama is truly extraordinary, given the open, disloyal, and not infrequently seditious hostility with which he has been received. His perennial forbearance, even temper, dignity, confidence, and good cheer does, indeed, make a profound impression on those who choose to see it, and it indicates someone who attention and energy it directed where it matters most, in a way few of us can hope to acheive – towards actual accomplishment; and it is integral to his continued popularity and, more importantly, the restoration of standing of our nation in the world. It is merely crude to mistake his graciousness for weakness. … So, where has President Obama led? In his most recent State of the Union Address, the President stated: “ American leadership has been renewed and America’s standing has been restored. ” That is true. It has happened. And that, to paraphrase the finest Vice-President since, I don’t know who, is a Big Effing Deal. On a more trivial level, I can testify that he has transformed one American’s understanding of and involvement in politics. For me today, while I might prefer some advantages in other systems, the two major parties are not the same, and it makes a difference if and how I vote; and, if of the two major parties, there is one that I have come to unambiguously and emphatically support, I am still free to identify as independent, and expect to continue to do so. Most personally, and most importantly, today I have a President. There is not the endless, grim, grey alternation of the Mild Embarassment and the Acute Embarassment in the White House. ( I regret that I was in my early teens when President James Earl Carter left office and was unable to appreciate his Administration. ) For me today, I am invested and have an active role to play, even it is only voting and preaching to the choir on the internet – that is a fundamental difference from alienation and apathy. For me today, This Matters. “ His name was Harvey Milk, and he was here to recruit us — ALL of us — to join a movement, and change a nation. For much of his life, he had silenced himself. In the prime of his life, he was silenced by the act of another. But in the brief time in which he spoke, and ran, and led, his voice stirred the aspirations of millions of people. He would become, after several attempts, one of the first openly gay Americans elected to public office ; and his message of hope — hope unashamed, hope unafraid — could not ever be silenced. It was Harvey who said it best : ‘ You gotta give ’em hope. ’ ” President Obama Honors Harvey Milk With Presidential Medal of Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKOv8HA76o Anybody heard of Jackie Robinson? Who was Jackie Robinson? He was a famous baseball player. When Jackie Robinson was a young man, you didn’t have African Americans – black people weren’t allowed to play baseball in the major leagues, and he was the first African American to play in major league baseball. So I said, “Have I told you that you are brave?”, is what I’m saying to my daughters, and I talk about Jackie Robinson. I say, “A man named Jackie Robinson played baseball and showed us all how to turn fear into respect, and respect into love. He swung his bat, with the grace and strength of a lion, and gave brave dreams to other dreamers.” Now, when he starting playing baseball, a lot of other people didn’t want black people to play baseball, and so they were being mean to him, and booing him, and throwing things at him; but, he was so brave that he was willing to go ahead and play anyway. President Obama Reads to Schoolchildren https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWOLc_DYKk4 http://www.obamafoodorama.com/2010/12/holiday-storytime-with-president.html WE DON’T QUIT. I DON’T QUIT. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA THE FUTURE IS OURS TO WIN. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA … And for those seeking more information, how about some lovely spam? I can’t do it by myself. No president can. Remember: Change doesn’t happen from the top. It happens because of you. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA http://www.theobamadiary.com/ http://www.whitehouse.gov/ The Best Possible President We Could Possibly Have “ Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now ” http://www.thenation.com/article/37165/kabuki-democracy-why-progressive-presidency-impossible-now Obama in Command: The Rolling Stone Interview http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-in-command-br-the-rolling-stone-interview-20100928 … 2012. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Official_portrait_of_Barack_Obama.jpg Sí, se puede. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 2:35 am It’s Official: Huffington Post Is Now Out-Drudging Drudge Wow. And it is completely, absolutely, one hundred percent unsurprising. Double wow. Comment is superfluous. Is there any sign the liberal mainstream is noticing yet? She really, really does need to lose her credibility, now. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 15, 2011 @ 3:30 pm A Little Truth About Business and Taxes Something not-so-unrelated that is bugging me slightly is that the L.A. Times is running a whopping six-part exposé on the *tens of millions* of dollars wasted by those evil California community colleges . . . out of a $5.7 billion dollar bond . . . of which, say, $50 million ( that’s tens of millions, isn’t it? ) would be a whopping . . . *1 percent* . . . but this is such a good time for the major newspaper of a major liberal city to attack public spending, isn’t it? Something seems very strange about it . . . But I became suspicious of business rhetoric years and years ago, with the endless “ business creates jobs ” line – common sense says that the interest of business is to eliminate jobs, not create them – and, of course, the legal requirement that corporations maximise profits *requires* business to eliminate jobs. I’ve come to view business as just part of the same unholy trinity with social reactionism ( I like the word “ conservative ” less and less, it sounds like dignifying thuggery with the label of a philosophy ) and religious fundamentalism – things which have the same old completely false, self-righteous, self-justifying slogans But yes, I have major issues with business degrees as such, I suspect them of being largely right-wing handout degrees, and having something to do with the right getting a foothold in academia. ( Plus the MBA, Public Relations, whatever-type people I’ve encountered were have been spectacularly incompetent as a rule. ) This is a topic I haven’t come across anything about. Remember the reports about teabaggers being supposedly of above-average education? I don’t think they were talking about degrees in philosophy, or French literature, for some reason . .. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 7, 2011 @ 8:05 pm Arianna’s Marie Antoinette Moment He did have a post on HP last year in which he all but called for the President to resign. I definitely describe that as “ shit ”. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 8, 2011 @ 8:35 pm Sorry, cut myself off mid-comment somehow – I left, not because of the O deal, not because of unpaid bloggers, not because of moderation, but because, in the week or two before I left, the HP ran – – an attack on the First Lady ( because saying women should wear what they want is an attack on American industry, you know ) in a “ blog post ” linking ONLY to a **Newsmax** item — and — this makes my blood boil — A HATCHET JOB ON SHIRLEY SHERROD BY A ***BREITBART “ FILMMAKER ”*** – and this after the endless months of MLK-desecrating gunnut Dennis Santiago, hatemongers Shmuley Botulism and Ken Blackwell and all of the other gutter scum infesting HP. HP **IS** an extreme-right site masquerading as a liberal site. It gets linked to by Yahoo, and I guess is now similarly featured by AOL, as the obligatory “ liberal ” site when it is nothing of the kind. And thus, another blow against legitimacy itself in the MSM. And, of course, while I realise some may still have sentimental ties, continuing to frequent the site is something to seriously examine from a moral standpoint. I have not been, and will not be back. » Posted By For America and Roosevelt On March 8, 2011 @ 7:54 pmComments Posted By For America and Roosevelt
“ consciousness is learned ” explains Beckheads. ( And dittoheads, and creationists, and teabaggers, and so on. It explains a lot. ) Well, that’s not really it. 🙂 I guess I could say : bicameralism-broadly-speaking ( unquestionable acceptance of the “ approved ” information / information source, without regard to, uh, plain reality that you and I see around us ) explains the Right.
I guess it is hard to summarise, but, yes, it was my big “ Aha! ” for everything that had always puzzled me in human society. As far as Obama, I guess the relevance is that a lot of opposition could be reduced to “ look, he isn’t obeying the god-idol, therefore he’s an alien threat ”; also with his being basically a cognitive-intellectual-pragmatic leader ( which really needs a word other than “ leader ” ) rather than an authoritarian-ideological leader ( which apparently a segment of the Left wants him to be, too ).
I’m inclined to agree with your evolution take, but realistically it’s probably mostly cultural – look how much of bicameralism is still with us, simply on a cultural level. Add to that, that so much of our scientific knowledge is only a century or two old, we can see that society still has a lot of digging out from under the muck to do.
Some stuff I forgot to put it : more about realpolitik, real-world economics ( in the broadest sense ), and realism in general – in an imperfect world, imperfect decisions about the nation’s interest, prestige, and security have to be made ; there is a cost-benefit analysis for everything, which for this administration includes everything up to incurring the risk of civil war ; and for every questionable policy decision, there are literally a million other things in play, maybe some of which are ameliorating, but that’s never apparent when someone shouts “ but such-and-such!! ” . . . and so on and so on . . .
. . . for next time . . .
“ Kenyan Socialist Manchurian
Candidate ”. It was clear to me that there was something very wrong about it.
Although I wasn’t nearly as clued in at the time, I am glad I made a point of not reading her book. 🙂
That and the divorce section. And the other 1 out of 10 articles being about Arianna. Oh, never mind . . .
this Sam Stein story was the lead :
Hearing Real America singing,
Alaska’s North Star is
Restoring freedom – a
Triumph of the Will!
Thank you again.
I have made the same comparison with Lincoln for the past year – it is one I find rather, er, deeply uplifting and moving. The letter to the New York Tribune, 22 August 1862, is one of my favourite items in my cut-and-paste Obamabox – I think every word of it is as true of our current President as of Lincoln.
In four parts. History Channel program, poor video quality.
In the run-up to 2008, the candidates I was considering were Cynthia McKinney ( I saw her 9-11 Truthism as just one facet, and have a very different view of conspiracy thinking in general today ), Ralph Nader, and Mike Gravel. I contributed $25 to McKinney; voted for Gravel in the Democratic primary; and was skeptical of the then-Senator Obama, who struck me as too right-wing ( and Hillary Clinton was *way* out there ). ( I continue to be amused, at best, at talk of how he ran as a “ progressive ” and has since betrayed his “ base ” with every move of a finger. )
As the election approached, I began to think of the critical state of the nation; of how the two major parties really were crucially different under the circumstances; of how it was perhaps important – at least morally, as I live in a safe state – to vote for the Democratic candidate; and moreover that is seemed that the Democratic candidate would perhaps just possibly be someone like Johnson, who would be able to play the game, keep the country from collapse, maybe accomplish a good thing here or there, and — most importantly — lean the country in a direction which would be preferable to the then-current one.
What is crucial about this is that, in doing so, I made a conscious decision to entirely disregard the notion of “ agreeing ” on policy – on any policy. I accepted that some things would be good, some would be bad, that there was a good chance that overall things would be better than they might be otherwise, and that what good might be achieved could not be micro-predicted from advertised policy points.
The outcome has radically transformed my understanding of, and involvement in, politics, towards belief in pragmatism, compromise and incremental change. ( I saw it pointed out somewhere that the Civil Rights struggle was incremental – in fact, it was. ) I suppose that could seem convenient – it would have been a bummer if it hadn’t, wouldn’t it? – but I believe it is justified. I can only suggest from my own experience that I was not motivated to take that chance on Bill Clinton, nor did his Administration persuade me to such views, nor would have the present Administration ( or one of Hillary Clinton ) if it had been similar.
I do find it striking, in retrospect, that my only previous vote for a Presidential candidate was for a right-leaning one who would arguably have been a fine pragmatist. I can only assert my leftist credentials, and will supply recollections of how I grew up watching Battleship Potemkin on PBS on request.
Forty-fourth President of the United States of America
State of the Union Address, 2010
Forty-fourth President of the United States of America
State of the Union Address, 2011
Forty-fourth President of the United States of America
http://www.blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/
http://www.obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/
http://www.whattheheckhasobamadonesofar.com/
http://www.obamaachievements.org/
http://www.propresobama.org/
http://www.republicansforobama.org/
http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse
http://www.my.barackobama.com
http://www.democrats.org/
by Eric Alterman
mindlessly repeated year after year and decade after decade ( for example, I discovered recently that the “ socialism ” is literally over a century old – Al Smith tried to use it against Roosevelt, and Roosevelt called him out by digging a 1928 Al Smith quote where he complained about its having been used as a smear for “ over a quarter of a century ” ( in 1928 ) ).
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( yes, you read that right ) ( in which, on top of it, he personally responded to each of the few critical comments
he chose to post is classic rightthug fashion )
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