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There was a presidential debate where the candidates actually discussed the important policy issues that the corporate Republican and Republican Lite parties– aka R & D parties– assiduously avoid because they don’t want you thinking about them. Issues like:
Do we really need to spend as much on “defense” as the next 19 largest countries in the world combined– mostly to protect tax dodging multinational oil companies with no allegiance to America? (Obama and Romney agree we do.) Should presidential candidates take millions in contributions/bribes from the very entities they are charged with regulating? (Obama and Romney are both more than happy to.) Is outright killing and indefinitely detaining even American citizens with no legal process or judicial oversight in direct violation of the Bill of Rights a good idea? (Obama and Romney both agree this is a good policy.) Is locking up more Americans for non-violent drug crimes than are held in Europe, with a similar population, for all reasons combined a good idea, and should we double and triple down on this failed and racist policy? (Obama and Romney are both completely convinced this is a good plan.) How do you feel about not only failing to prosecute the ringleaders of the largest systemic financial fraud in world history but rewarding the perps with multi-trillion dollar bailouts? Seem like a good idea? (Obama and Romney are both fine with this.) Or maybe protecting sadistic torturers and unapologetic war criminals unambiguously guilty of violating both international law and treaties we have signed and bound by our pledge to enforce? Is that good politics or complicity after the fact? (Obama and Romney vote good policy!)
I obviously could go on but we don’t need to put up with this dismal standard from our politicians. Doing so in fact makes we who support these policies by voting for the politicians and parties that promote them part of the problem.
We cannot fix any of this voting for Democrats and Republicans. They are both unapologetically and implacably opposed to fixing any of this. They are in fact the problem we must get past to fix any of these issues, most of which outright majorities of Americans agree they are wrong on. Lesser evils get us nowhere but into greater evil more slowly. This D & R thing, people, ain’t working.
45 Comments
I’m with you, Kurt Sperry, and the rest of the list is too much to contemplate in full most days.
But my stars, I was just reading bmaz’s post on the OBomba administration inhumanly trashing John Kiriakou. Down the comment thread, in response to someone who said that he/she couldn’t vote for OBomba, and would probably not vote for a presidential candidate (not a soul rememinded him/her there are other candidates), bmaz said:
That’t the kind of disconnect that we face today. I could hear the sound of my crest falling. Sigh.
Rec’d.
Kurt, you are so right. Recommended, of course.
Obama took the status quo left by bush and made it worse for us and better, much better, as a matter of fact, for those that exploit us.
Others can take their Romney as anti-christ scare stories, swing-state strategies, and the latest fad of imposing activist benchmarks on people who simply wish to exercise their right to vote, and stick them in that ACA starter home they allowed themselves to be conned with.
BTW, thanks for the thanks
This piece by Glen Ford just came in with BAR’s newsletter. It’s packed full of good stuff, but this one is on point here. ‘Brothers of the same Imperial Lodge’. Wish I’d said that.
Glen Ford seems to always be unstinting with the uncomfortable truth.
Re the foreign policy lovefest:
How sadly true. WTF are the people singing Obama’s praises thinking? That they are better or more enlightened than the crazies across the aisle? Because if that’s what they are thinking they are deluding themselves and putting both the country and the world at terrible risk by so doing. Wake up, wake the fuck up and smell the evil stench of collusion.
We can’t say we weren’t warned:
–George Washington, from his Farewell Address to the nation.
These parties are run like NFL franchises. We put on our fan gear and scream “go team” while they’re making a deal with another city that will make them even fatter at the fanatics expense.
It’s a game for chumps. But, hey, you get to wear all that cool gear and feel like you’re part of team that really cares about us!
…barf
Most of them at this site can’t even agree that we need to put aside some of the social and cultural wedge issues and create a coalition in aid of massive uprisings. I hear the arguments against it every day here, and I think in many ways it’s a serious inability to look toward the future of what further depradations, fascism, massive hunger, and and eventual blowback from our Imperial misadventures. The windows are closing so quickly now…
The artist in New York who sends me his work to use, Anthony Freda, sent this one today after (incomprehensibly to me) watching the debate Monday. I may or not use it, but I thought you might want to see it, so I just uploaded it. ‘Bad Boys‘. He’s a very in-your-face (Dada-esque) artist. Fair warning: it’s very hard to look away from the face that stands for all those we are murdering around the world.
For many, it seems to boil down to “If I could only give daddy the love he deserves, he wouldn’t beat me” and “Hahaha, look at that stinky, weird kid over there, his daddy beats him, and he deserves it, ’cause he’s a moron”.
Thank you, Kurt, much appreciated.
Recommended, of course, to the RATIONAL consideration of everyone whom the current “$Y$TEM” is failing, even if they don’t realize it … yet.
As the Old Cuss once said:
“You can direct people toward better candidates, but you can’t make them think.”
(He had a way with horses and jackasses, you see, but allowed as how many of them weren’t bright enough to take a drink … some, he alleged, even got “upsot” at the very idea … he was a bit of a philosopher, the Old Cuss was, and told me, when I was very young and, obviously, impressionable, something which I never forgot. He said, “You’ll find, young fella, that, young men and women, if they develop a relationship, will approach it like this; The woman will figure that that the rough-edged young man will change, as he gets older and wiser, and the man figures that the young woman will stay just as she is … however, in all likelihood, they will both be disappointed”…)
He also said, “Nothing like politics to bring out the mean, low-down, and unpleasant in folks and, mostly, for damned little benefit.”
DW
Highly recommended.
Recommended. Indeed.
Highly recommended by me as well. You said it all. People don’t want to wake up just yet, but they will have to sooner or later.
Wendy, you now, we are so unfamiliar with straight talk like the BAR article, that the actual words are shocking. I know what you mean . . . I think that all the time but don’t dare say it, especially in print. But I wish I had.
You fix this by protesting, informing etc. … Voting or not voting is irrelevant.
It’s also absurd to claim that there is no difference between the candidates. Romney’s position will kill an additional 72,000 per year that Obamacare won’t. Romney’s position on pollution will kill additional people from the environment. Romney’s position on civil rights will disinfranchise more people. Romney’s position on the banks will increase bank power and lack of regulation. Romney’s position on territorial taxes and other policies will increase unemployment, lower wages and increase the debt. Romney’s foreign policy position are more likely to increase the chances for future wars. Romney’s will increase defense spending by $2 trillion more than Obama. Romney’s will cut 10% of Fed workforce especially relating to oversight of corruption so that will cause more corruption. Romney will also lower Fed wages so that will give us a lower quality government. Romney policies will create greater wealth inequality that Obama’s. Romney will cut more education program (e.g., Pell grants).
A person’s behavior is the best indicator of their true intentions. Your intentions are clear. You want to see Romney as our next President. That’s your goal whether your willing to admit it or not.
On point and valid observation based myFDL diary KS…recommended…
The current R vs. D lineup of plot devices and script outlines went into syndication during the Reign of RayGun Ronny back in the 1980′s and so much like the fare of TVLand or similar rerun/high repeat playback format franchise practitioners is all about not creating but repeat/same groove surfing. For some or for many running or following American national politics it has been working quite well. It is safe,keeps the real scrimmage plays in the back rooms and inside ball game venues. We get the election fluff junk every six or four years on schedule. The insiders get the piles of chips laying on the table. Post 2008 Obama WH,Congress and Wall St./Big Banks playouts illustrate this very well.
The Rs and Ds are both peddling political junk. At this point anyone who still thinks Barack Obama was a change up from G.W.Bush or that W.J.Clinton was a step up from G.H.W.Bush are being played as rubes with the R vs. D BS. Lots of Americans sadly want it sold this way too.
Good diary KS…thank you…like your demonstrated positions here at FDL…I posted a comment on the sebastianbennett myFDLdiary earlier this evening — that comments thread devolved into a miniTboggs cross fire pro D/Obama excercise. I avoid TBoggs digs here at FDL on principle but find it amusing when TBogg and/or the miniTboggs show up on other FDL comment threads…they must tire of telling each other how right they are and how the Ds and Obamarama suck less or least…:-)
I am reminded of why I do not go to DkosLand whenever I come across a TBogg FDL front page piece or come across TBogg comments or tirades on non TBogg blog FDL comment threads. I get and understand TBogg serves a function here at FDL and that is cool…clearly the DKos D mob needs to be pandered to…TBogg and loyal,devoted miniTboggs fit that need well enough so it seems…I do hope FDL benefits from this being so too.
Barack Obama deserves to be voted out of the WH next month and failing to do that is going to open upon some very real political consequences.
It is incredible to see how this is all going down with Barack Obama here in 2012. The Rs and Ds both deserve to be politically exiled.
The R vs. D politics gig has become terribly contaminated with toxic money politics and revolving door/elevator politics/justice that serve the insiders only.
D vs. R rerun politics we now see being done are failing non-stop at policy formation,policy discussion,policy choice and implementation.The phoney non-issue austerity and warmongering about Iran being two prime examples of this being so. As are incessant attacks on SS by both the Ds and Rs or how Medicare For All was sabotaged by both Ds and Rs.
This R vs. D puppetry has become and is useless. Pointless. Stale. Comatose. Dead.
Sorry wont buy it. Good try though.
By now, it must be abundantly clear to everyone that this election “season” is one of the most divisive, nasty, and unpleasant in recent memory.
It is, if we are honest about, part of a “pattern”.
A pattern deliberately inculcated, hoped for, and much applauded by the ruling classes who ALWAYS benefit from the confusions and in-fighting of the many.
Rational and adult human beings, living in America, where the majority of those human beings, whatever their difference, hold the right to vote to be centrally important, even sacred. Especially when, increasingly, there is widespread concern that the results of the vote will not be honestly counted or reported.
One of the reasons that voting is secret, that despite what people may be told, harangued, or threatened “to do”, is that human beings have determined that each person’s vote (and here I speak of flesh and blood people, of human beings) is worthy of such protection is that it is always, at best, this process of voting, an act of conscience.
Being that, an act of conscience, and being that we all claim to be conscientious in our concerns and convictions, it follows that, if we each wish to be treated fairly, and with respect, that we must treat everyone else fairly and with equal respect, even if, and especially even if we might disagree with how or for whom others may choose or decide to vote.
Among mature, rational human beings, that should not only be readily apparent, but also … understood as necessary, reasonable, and evidence of support for both civil behavior and civil society.
Of late, it may be observed that both behavior and society are becoming rather less than civil and that fact, that reality, has consequence for everyone.
Clearly, society and community cannot set bounds on behavior, for ultimately such bounds as may be set, must come from the members of society and community themselves. Each of us must decide whether it matters to us, how we, ourselves, behave, whether our behavior appears to, or actually does, affect others … and whether that matters to each of us, separately, or together. I hold that it does, and choose to seek to act accordingly, which does NOT mean that I shall not point out behaviors which i consider destructive to civil discourse or to the trust which civil society requires of its members … of … each other, of the process of jointly seeking to decide our collective fate and choosing to embrace those methods and means which seem mostly likely to secure, for all and for each of us, the best possible outcomes.
Indeed, that is why governments are instituted among human beings, to secure those best outcomes by using the best practices and understandings available, which may well change over time, but must even over the passage of great amounts of time be tied, it seems to me, to the considered and conscientious behavior of those engaged in making use of those methods and means.
No doubt what I say will be scoffed at and derided by some.
So be it.
I am not diminished, in the least, in my humanity or purpose by the words of others, but only by my own words and deeds … a fact which applies equally to every one of us through all time and in every situation.
I do not consider that others who choose a different CANDIDATE are stupid, are retarded, are nitwits or assholes and I shall never feel the need or “efficacy” of calling anyone else those things …
Others may do as they choose, obviously, and, as each of us does, so we reveal ourselves to the understanding of others.
Some may regard my perspective as weak or ineffectual, and applaud those who belittle and assault others as strong, forceful, and commanding, that is their right, that is their privilege, and it reveals the sort of world that they feel comfortable with, indeed, they may claim that such is “human nature”.
It is up to each of us to decide the nature of how we shall behave and act, and to the extent that we are not re-acting with roiled emotion, with invigorated wrath and derision, so far as I am concerned, the better.
This then is the “nature” of the yawning divide (“yawn …”) which I perceive we are caught in … where appeals not to reason, but to fear, to despair, and unreason have brought our society, our community, to the place where fear is palpable, where paralysis and confusion are widespread, especially in the larger society and community of this nation, and I see the ruling classes, the political class, which includes the media and the corporate, monied class as glorying in that fear, that paralysis, and that despair.
In the face of that, I propose that it is not “in God” that we should “trust”, but that it is up to us to rekindle and cherish the trust which we must have if we are to move beyond, fear, paralysis, despair and mistrust.
Thank you all, for the lend of your ears.
DW
There is a lot of difference between the candidates. Just not those two candidates. Romney will kill an additional 72,000 a year over Obama, but there are candidates out there who want that to be a zero figure with Medicare for All.
You essentially concede there is no real difference:
Romney will lower federal wages, but Obama got there first: he already unilaterally frozen federal wages and hiring. Romney will create “greater” wealth inequality, which assumes that Obama will be creating at least some wealth inequality. Romney will cut “more” education programs – “more” being a word than can be used only if Obama will already be making some education cuts.
As long as we keep thinking our choices are only two candidates, we never make it any better, because we have no chance of improving anything through either of those guys. If the answer is that nobody else is electable, that is true only because the game is already rigged.
It has already been made plain that whoever wins, I will not have the same Medicare my parents had, and it will be even worse for my kids. I will get less in Social Security benefits than I’ve been paying for my entire working life, which, technically, started in the Ford administration. This is not a difference of substance but a difference of degree only. Banks will continue to foreclose on people whose mortgages are current because, well, they can. Romney will do nothing to stop it, but if there is such a difference, well, what’s Obama’s plan? Wait. Right.
And on and on.
That’s a powerful image you linked to. It’s wonderful that you know such a talented artist who sends you his work to use. Thanks for that and the link to Ford. Gotta love how his mind works:
http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-and-romney-brothers-same-imperial-lodge
…have left a comment for you on the still current FDL donkeytale myFDL diary/comments thread…liked your comment you had made there…
The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem. Now that we have made the first step, “WE” must believe that we can solve the problem.
If I wanted Romney for President, I would just give him my volunteer time, my money, and my vote instead of Jill Stein.
Kurt, this is a great post.
It’s especially heady when clear-headed blacks call out a black president, and can avoid being called racists. BAR has a whole cadre of good writers, and Bruce Dixon wrote recently that he’ll be voting for Stein and Honkala. ;o) One of the Treble Army videos they keep on the right side of the page skewering OBomba would likely get taken down here, but context is everything, really, so…I dunno. Watch if you get a chance.
@ leftown at #18:
We’re only virtual friends, but yeppers, it’s wonderful Freda does so. He said once that he considers us collaborators, and it was a pretty surprising thing to hear for a gurl (well, okay…a crone) from Bumfuck, CO. We disagree on a few issues, so some pieces I don’t use. But his pieces always add so much to my posts. They speak volumes more than the words I type.
I should have linked to the lightbox version; it’s way more badass.
I’ll go look, arrow, and thank you. As ever, when I went to that thread this morning, I started at the bottom, and saw Donkey had answered me in a pretty toxic manner, so I took some time to respond, then went somewhere else. And yes, I avoided using any obscenities in my response. ;o)
I guess he’ll be happier when OBomba (Can I use that too? Thanks!) replaces Ginsburg with his proto-fascist buddy Cass Sunstein.
Arrg on the Sunstein.
And of course you can use; I…er…
jacked it offaappropriated it from Anthony Freda. And I’ve found it useful on many of my posts, of course.I did not, however, write up the last eight children he drone-killed last week in Pakistan. Apparently in the face of the clear information that his drone kills and ‘bugsplat’ are creating ever-increasing anti-American fervor in the ME, it must be that to him every drone needs a target. Hard for people of either conscience or pragmatism to understand, leaving us with Permanent War and its various underpinnings and explanations/agendas…as what’s left.
Morning, wendy.
I thought the use of the simile that using drones was like “mowing the lawn” to be most interesting, for ” … once you start, you can’t stop…” or things will quickly get out of hand (“invisible” or otherwise).
The world as a well-manicured lawn, clipped short under the “blades” of the “one indispensable nation” as Obama has begun to term the “Homeland”.
Which thought causes me recall that book, “The Revenge of the Lawn”, short stories by Richard Brautigan …
DW
It was only *primary season*, not Presidential season, but the fights over Hillary and Barack got pretty vicious, as I remember it. (Some still haven’t given up those battles.) ;o)
To your point on not calling each other assholes, etc., downthread I mentioned not using the term this morning, but…imagining doing so was a whole ‘nother matter (she grinned).
Voting may be *at best* a matter of conscience, and I wish that seemed more evident here and out in the world. But too often it seems to me that imagined self-interest rules, as does the imagined freakout that “this is the most election ever”, which may be why so often we’re asked, for instance, “How would a Romney presidency be for YOU”, which is always and forever the wrong question and too shortsighted, imo. Hard to get more people to look to the future if we continue to submit to rule by one of two corporate, war-mongering, life and soul-stealing, planet-killing parties.
But, hell, there are plenty of ballot issues to keep us interested this year, big doings in many states.
Now you have me laughing with the Brautigan title reference, David! I’m pinging that the Steppenwolfe might have been right, too, and that we can imagine making war not just on automobiles, but on all the weapons of war…which then, curse my undisciplined mind, it swerves to Bruce Cockburn‘s song as (only imaginably, of course) relevant. ;o)
By now, Minds, such as they are, are mostly “made up”, wendy, and there is little likelihood that people will change their minds because of the “reasoned discourse” of others, such minds as “change” will do so quite on their own. It is the hardening of Hearts which, I consider, and you allude to, that shall inflict the most grievous of wounds, wounds unnecessary and counterproductive to the vitally important concept of “common ground” which takes on a rather important “meaning” if we consider that we all occupy planet Earth, and if we cannot, all of humanity, survive with each other, if we cannot all thrive and appreciate being alive, well then … a far more stark and appalling truth awaits.
It really is up to us, to what we can imagine, embrace, tolerate and celebrate, not as victors nor as victims, but as human beings … as beings whose “tenure” is, most emphatically, not guaranteed.
The only “thing” at stake is the future, (“everything” “beyond” this moment, to be precise)and the “nature” of what that future shall be … and that, whether we like it or not … is up to us, all of us.
DW
Yeah, that version is definitely more badass!
(This is somewhat off-topic. I’m only going to mention this once, and then I’ll shut up about it forever….I still wonder what would have happened if the left had gotten together with Libertarians and voted for Ron Paul, warts and all, in the primaries and caucuses. We would all be having an entirely different discussion, and the debates would have been worth watching. Maybe the PTB wouldn’t have allowed that to happen, but it would have been nice if people would have tried. There. Done. I feel better now.)
I don’t think voting is irrelevant, Todd – even if, as we suspect, rigging is going on beneath the surface, even if history will prove that this is the case. I just posted on another thread that with George McGovern’s death I saw many posts from oldsters remembering how they had campaigned or voted in his defeated electoral bid against Nixon. They had voted. It’s important in ways we don’t immediately see.
When there are so few such opportunities given to us these days as citizens to stand up for what we believe, we need to be able to say in future that we did this – to ourselves and to our children’s children. Winning isn’t everything; it’s how you play the game.
Indeed.
With respect to the nature of the future, DW, (and it is much to be hoped we have one) It seemed to me we had a clear indication of what it might hold should one or the other of the duopoly be selected by fate, when our beloved Senator McGovern passed away on the very brink of these happenings. We remember, some of us, having voted for him, and we remember it with tangible pride. That vote meant something. And I think too that it had positive effects.
That might be an important legacy for people to consider this time around. Will they remember with pride having voted as they intend to vote? It is an important consideration.
Not only that, but I think that also something goes forward for democracy when people simply do what is right in the best sense that isn’t measurable but is real, even when it is hidden. I’m a great believer in mystery, in ongoing purposeful changes for the good.
Maybe it’s just these glorious aspen and oak and cottonwood flameries this time of year – what right have leaves that are dying to flame? And yet they do.
I went to Donkey’s, snagged and pasted your comment into a word.doc I had open, shootthatarrow, but I forgot to check which comment you were responding to. ;o) I’m glad that you liked it, anway. Given I don’t care to go back, I hope it’s okay with the good Kurt Sperry that I answer it here.
First, yes, the election can’t be over soon enough, and then we can get back to work on stuff that we’ll need to live, survive and thrive…and massively protest.
But my stars, what a wonderful son you’ve been, and I’m so glad to hear that your companion was so supportive of your decision, but how hard to hear that you had to be apart for so long (I hope there were periodic visits, at least).
It seems I’m slightly older than you, but both my parents died in the seventies not long after they separated, my pop of a heart attack, and my mum of suicide. I’d spent years taking care of them off and on, and finally brought my mum here to live for a few years before she flipped her own clogs. Mr. wd was a godsend through all of it. I can’t quite imagine how the ends of their lives might have gone, but it may have been for them as it was for your folks. But in many ways, after watching Mr.wd go through the loooong death of his mum to Alzheimer’s, and helping his father move into senior digs (he wouldn’t leave his hometown to live with any of his kids), and always faced with disappearing funds and seeing what’s available for Medicaid recipients for different care levels…I’m glad my parents didn’t live until those choices might have been necessary.
Yes, our futures seem very uncertain, and I often quip that we should get our shopping trolleys and trash bags early. But seriously, maybe we’ll invent some communal living situations and help each other as we’re able. But hell, mebbe that revolutionary spark will ignite the fire we need, and everything will change for the better in time.
Yeppers, we’ll do our best, and really the reason I’m here at FDL is what you say. Rather than try to write better for publication, I reckoned it might be wiser to be an unpaid professional blogger, no matter how absurd the idea is, lol!
Is there something to the ‘inflicting wounds’ that makes some folks feel better about themselves? I spend too much time on that, I think. But it seems studies hilariously find that most people think that what they believe...is true. Never mind, that just slays me, as if we hadn’t figured it out long ago…
What humans perceive, though, is so varied (even at this gin joint), and if our comfort zones require allowing that some truths just don’t make it into our noggins (or god forbid, our hearts and souls…) then maintaining alliances to institutions or parties is the only evident fall-back position. Kinda like not really having a choice, no? I dunno, maybe I’m just whistlin’ Dixie here.
Now I gotta go work on my bread and my diary; be back later on.
I do not disagree (to put it in the political vernacular) juliannia.
Having the courage to do what must be done requires steps of understanding, conscience, and courage to get “there” … and daring to choose, to stand for, to “vote” for a better and sustainable future is to invest effort and thought IN that future.
This election serves several purposes, that I see, it affords opportunity for that investment and it reveals quite a number of things.
I think that I can assume that you, and many others, on this thread and elsewhere, well understand what I am saying without the need of much more being said, at the moment, juliannia?
Suffice it so say that these times provide a “measure”, a clear “reflection” … an opportunity of observing how people deal with things and thinks …
All useful, and necessary, to what may be shared, and depended upon as sweat, tears, and other things might be shed, upon future endeavors, and … who understands what …
DW
I rather like your whistlin’, lass, for it is a tune which “carries” well and is harmonious with me own caterwauling, “form” …
Which reminds me how much I appreciate your musical links … and thank ye for sharing.
My comment to juliannia, just above, might resonate a bit wi’ ye?
Baking bread and writing diaries … and both deliciously served up to them lucky enough to sup at the table of your wisdom and wit.
Fortunate be we whom you invite to the feasts …
;~DW
Are you kidding, Comrade Bartoo? You assess the capability of humankind to survive based on their blog tenor in election season? This ceremony of deceit is not a test of people’s virtue, it is an invitation to hector and shaft; it is a reflection of their long-running abuse. It is a reflection of their denied potential.
Capitalism is dead. I will call fools its faithful preachers and addicts those who hearken back to their salad days, for they elevate them as heaven because they cannot admit they are what has damned us.
Where is your anger, comrade? The fear which divides us is exploited yet you lecture on decorum? Decorum in prison is what the warden says it is.
Only have a minute, but my take was that DW reckons that the assholes who call us assholes for not voting for Obomba just make solidarity later more difficult. Yes, he often tries way harder than I would to heal the afflicted asshole-callers, and sometimes tries to call out their wonderfulness in aid of that. Myownself, there’s encouragement toward our better and more perceptive angels, and then there’s enabling. Hard to know where the line is, and we all have our own takes on that in any given moment.
Yes, this is a class war we’re in the midst of, and capitalism itself will soon be on trial, even for those of us slow to recognize it. But for now, as some have said, the ‘cannot vote for Obomba’ folks seem to have more in common with the fringe right folks on the Big Ticket Items we consider at emergency level in a way, and that’s very strange to notice.
@ leftown at #31: So glad ya cleared yer pipes, darlin’, and I’ve been in those conversations aplenty, or at least watched them. On the Big Four, yeppers, but ain’t.gonna.happen. And I couldn’t fill in the little square for him myself, but I loved how he opened up the Overton Window. ;o)
@ juliania at #36: You have the soul of a saint, and the heart of a poet. It’s such a pleasure to know you and read you.
Anger is not in it, Ludwig, but sadness and disappointment are …
All we have to “work” with is ourselves … and such “each others” with whom we might align in understanding, from which alingment MIGHT, possibly, rise the courage to do what we must, together, do …
Capitalism is not yet dead, it is vicious and relentless.lashing about in its deat-throes.
Mayhap, I did not sufficiently describe the inculcated, wholesale fear with which the masters intentionally seek to divide us? The utter shame of “our” embracing it and striking out at each other?
I have neither the time nor do I desire to waste necessary good will in petty and childish endeavor, in seeking to make others angry, in desiring to make them feel small, bitter, and assaulted …
I do not suggest “decorum” but merely simple respect among EQUALS … the “warden” does not consider us, nor do the guards, to be “equal”, the compradors, as you rightly describe them, loathe and wholly detest any who would challenge their enforced “superiority”, their ability to use the legal and economic systems to punish and stymie the aspirations of humanity.
How do you imagine, Ludwig, that we may, you and I, or anyone else ,may dare to work together, to sweat, to bleed, to weep together, as weep, sweat, and bleed we very likely shall … UNLESS we may trust one another?
This election has shown us some things which relate to that concern of mine.
And it is a genuine concern, that I know, from personal experience, is central to ANY possibility of successful resistance, initially, to the madness, to the mayhem, and to the destruction, for if resistance is broken, through mistrust or betrayal, then the next steps will be all the more difficult, not to mention that the loss of sane heads is always a serious set-back.
As you say, we witness a reflection of potential denied, and if there is any way of retrieving that potential, that possibility, it will come ONLY from a shared sense of respect and mutual encouragement.
These public threads permit only a portion of what must be said … to be said … and you Ludwig, are far too valuable to the future, to become wrapped up in the pettifog of a mere spitball exchange.
You have demonstrated capacity, wisdom, humanity, humor, and compassion, even in your just and proper exposure of both the larger predations of capitalism, and nastiness of its hangers-on and enforcers, just as you bristle at, and with good reason, the predations of the shout-down crowd.
However, they cannot be reached, if indeed they may be, by means of their own “tactics” … for their purpose is to further fear and confusion, to shut down conversation and thought, by engaging in outrageous assault and deliberate derision, such acts revealing the paucity of their “positions”. Such ones NEVER engage with the issues, they always attack the person. Which is an old, even an ancient, rhetorical “trick” … a form of false argument, for they who make use of it, have no rational, no reasonable “position” to espouse or to defend.
Frankly, they are not worth any rise in your blood pressure or increased stress to your heart … they are like buzzing, irritating gnats, and such small things as that.
You shall have to contend, someday, with far more clever and devious falsities, with abundant and clever deceits … Forget the small fry, even as you point out their false and misleading ways, but do not succumb to invective or fouls lashings-out yourself, instead allow them, “provoke” them, “gently” and as if you have not a clue, to exceed themselves, to make plain to others how weak and bombastic their attacks really are.
Encourage them to expose themselves.
Some will understand.
Perhaps many will not, initially, but when they feel the lash of the tongue, the applied pressure to “conform” and “go along”, then they will know the extortion and the blackmail, the fear card, the hate card, and the race card, for what they are, bludgeons of perceived “power”, of implied, entitled “permission” to do or say whatever they wish.
You may well not agree with what I say, Ludwig, and that is all right.
But do consider that your energies and understandings are held, in my sensibility of you and of who you are, of the powers you already, well-honed possess, are not really, yet, fully challenged … indeed, I shall, likely, be long gone when you make full, appropriate, and devastatingly precise use of them.
That you will do so, I have not the slightest doubt.
You have the tools, all of them, consider now the timely and masterful use of them.
DW
Thank you for the inspiration, comrade Bartoo. You demonstrate that necessary talent which I have avoided.
Those in the Bogg lash their “inferiors” because that is the way they are accustomed to build consensus; they are mired in their liberal “rationality”. They don’t want to pay an increment more due to the conscience of third partiers and will beat them instead accepting, nay anticipating, their judgment. They are entangled in bourgeois irresponsibility, in blaming their inferiors, when, low, those rise up and threaten the creaky foundations of their status.
But those with conscience are getting ready to pay, as it always is. When we hear pleading from the privileged, and not the whip, that is when their consciences will be freed.
Is my moral calculus more delusional than their rationality is mad?
So many wounds to heal from this empire of capital. Or perhaps too many.
While I agree this skirmish is pathological, I do not hope to cure the symptoms. We need a higher rallying which many are yet unwilling or unable to find.
So, my wonder is that, in this chaos, you expect respect to obtain. I would instead rage, “Look what has become of your pathetic lot, turned upon each other under contemptuous threat”.
We all must admit there are borders to our respect. The question is, under what circumstances can we extend it, and then universally?
Yeah, but my version was far shorter, and much funnier. ;o)
” I hope it’s okay with the good Kurt Sperry that I answer it here.”
I love reading the conversation that followed my post, say whatever you want!
I’d hoped you’d say that, dear; thank you. Lotsa good stuff here, no? ;o)