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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#162101: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:11:38 AM

So I haven't heard a PEEP about Hillary's emails in the last month or so.

It's almost as if it was a non-story that honestly didn't matter.

>.<

New Survey coming this weekend!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#162102: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:14:46 AM

[up] They also finished up the Benghazi investigation recently too. Again, it's almost like it was never anything but a witch hunt. One that is no longer necessary.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#162103: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:21:00 AM

Colin Powell described it in those precise terms several months ago.

speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#162104: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:21:01 AM

Yeah but some of Trump's supporters still want her locked up anyways.

JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#162105: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:21:07 AM

If you think it's fundamentally wrong for the Left to self-police itself or to criticize its own then congrats, despite all your posturing you're not any better than the far right.

It's definitely right to criticize in saying, "I wonder if you would say that if you had relatives who directly suffered from his hands" but it's taking it too far to say that anybody who gives a contrary opinion is not any better than the Far Right. That is Black-and-White Insanity, and not truly appreciative of the Gray-and-Grey Morality of the world. Assuredly if I had relatives who suffered from communist violence I would feel the way you do, but the world shouldn't be governed on feelings alone.

By that logic, Jesse Jackson is in the same boat as Steve Bannon. As he wrote in this article on Castro's death with a mixed and nuanced assessment. Nelson Mandela is in the same boat as the Far Right.

to describe a particular brand of far left extremist in the vein of Cold War intellectuals like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who would actively whitewash Communist dictators like Stalin, Mao, Minh, and Castro simply because they wanted to stick it to the West, or who view Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as freedom fighters out to save the Middle East from the tyranny of the West.

Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have never whitewashed Communist dictators or the violence of Al Qaeda and ISIS. This is what I am talking about, in terms of this shibboleth of "anti-imperialist Left" where everyone decides that this is Chomsky and Zinn's views and don't actually read the articles they wrote. I have my own disagreements with Chomsky on a lot of issues (that guy is too much a fan of Orwell for my liking). And neither Chomsky or Zinn (who actually I don't like too much as a historian or political commentator) view anyone in the Middle East as freedom fighters. They merely see them as products of America's insane foreign policy and that's pretty irrefutable. ISIS would not exist if America had not invaded Iraq...and Iraq after all was America's ally during the iran-iraq war when Rumsfeld sold the gas that Saddam used against Kurds. In the case of Cuba, America has looted and robbed the place for 60 years before Castro came on the scene...if they wanted to make the argument that they would have been better for Cuba, they could have settled Guantamo Bay and developed it, and make some of the refugees live there and bring prosperity there...instead they make it into a Gulag.

Fact is for most people in the world, America's foreign policy is their only policy. They don't live in America after all, they do know a lot about it because American imperialism ensures its products go everywhere and anywhere.

edited 13th Dec '16 11:32:26 AM by JulianLapostat

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#162106: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:27:06 AM

Again, no one was saying that talking about the bad stuff should stop. What we were urging was an end to the "nothing will ever get better" which Crimson said explicitly and which you also said. There's a fucking balance here, and you've weighted it towards the side that says "things will never get better".

You are deliberately ignoring that. And it makes conversation with you nearly impossible.

edited 13th Dec '16 11:28:01 AM by AceofSpades

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#162107: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:30:02 AM

Saying "Castro did a lot of good things" is something I am and have always been willing to concede. The world is indeed Gray-and-Grey Morality. Hell in the early days the CCP did bring a lot of gender equality for women and push China into industrialization as did the Kims with North Korea when South Korea under capitalism was struggling to modernize. I appreciate that of them, China was utterly dreadful to women before the Communists (and still is in a lot of places). But that's not the same as saying "it's unfair to call Castro a monster because he also did good things as if it cancels out and excuses literal tyranny and mass murder and imprisonment of dissidents".

For a case of the converse as much as I respect MLK I also find it ridiculous when people apotheosize him and outright deny that he also plagiarized or at least was sloppy in how he cited part of his PhD thesis dissertation and engaged in some extramarital affairs, as if it being true and known to the mainstream somehow negates the good he also did. Or that Gandhi was racist towards Africans and that his views may have helped in the persistence of the caste system, despite all the work he did to help the Dalits.

edited 13th Dec '16 11:40:03 AM by AlleyOop

MattC Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: My own grandpa
#162108: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:37:39 AM

@Julian In regards to NATO expansion, after the fall of the USSR, Eastern European countries literally lined up to join. Nobody forced them into it at gunpoint, unlike the USSR forcing communism on them. They wanted security against any future Russian aggression, and I'd say the last couple of years have proven them right.

"What do we say to the God of Death? Sean Bean is over there."
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#162109: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:39:10 AM

You guys are right...I was overreacting, I am sorry. Fact is that anti-racism and anti-imperialism is a pet-peeve of mine. And for me seeing the words "toxic" and anti-imperialist together is an automatic Berserk Button. As I said I was going to respond last night feel asleep, and let it stew and come over.

Having said all that, I do think that this is connected to the general political discourse. The fact that the mainstream American Left, Sanders and others, don't have any concrete views on tackling the American Empire. Sanders himself was in favor of "drone strikes" because it meant no ground troops and that was Obama's attitude, yet he's against TPP even when it's essentially a means to help and enrich democratic Taiwan and other workers in that region in Vietnam and other places.

American Left is quite myopic on that issue, because it's still connected to the Cold War and the idea that America "won" it, or rather Reagan and the Conservatives won it, rather than the Keynesian-Detentists won it. So that narrative has to be tackled and attacked.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#162110: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:44:21 AM

Apology accepted, just... don't keep doing that again, please.

Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#162111: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:48:36 AM

I understand pessimism though. I think Trump is going to become a new god of the right and that will cause the next crazy entertainer with policies that negativity effect everyone not rich to become a president.

That is, unless we Millennial and Gen Xers succeed where the Baby Boomers failed.

blkwhtrbbt The Dragon of the Eastern Sea from Doesn't take orders from Vladimir Putin Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
#162112: Dec 13th 2016 at 11:48:54 AM

I'm incredibly proud of this thread, and to participate in it, really.

At the very least, we'll have this, if nothing else.

Assuming SOPA's misbegotten children don't come back on Trump's coin...

aw shit

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#162113: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:03:19 PM

Obama: If you were fine with big government until it served black people rethink your biases

I’m careful not to attribute any particular resistance or slight or opposition to race. But what I do believe is that if somebody didn’t have a problem with their daddy being employed by the federal government, and didn’t have a problem with the Tennessee Valley Authority electrifying certain communities, and didn’t have a problem with the interstate highway system being built, and didn’t have a problem with the GI Bill, and didn’t have a problem with the [Federal Housing Administration] subsidizing the suburbanization of America, and that all helped you build wealth and create a middle class — and then suddenly as soon as African Americans or Latinos are interested in availing themselves of those same mechanisms as ladders into the middle class, you now have a violent opposition to them — then I think you at least have to ask yourself the question of how consistent you are, and what’s different, and what’s changed.

LAWD. If this is a preview of Post-Presidency Obama...

Gives me life!

New Survey coming this weekend!
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#162114: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:05:11 PM

Article by a gay man about why he broke off a friendship over the election.

It's definitely a sentiment I can understand and agree with — there are a bunch of people I've known for years who voted for Trump, and I discovered that I probably never really knew them at all.

Conversely, my oldest friend, who was once a Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense Republican, who I spent years trying to bring over to the Democrats, left the party for good and voted D across the board. I had hoped his first election as a Democrat would have been one worth celebrating. He lives in Indiana these days — experiencing Mike Pence up close did more to make him a liberal than twenty years being my friend ever could.

[up]Man, that shit gives me life. [awesome]

edited 13th Dec '16 12:07:41 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#162115: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:09:48 PM

Other things that Big Government did...

ARPA and NASA.

You know what Arpa gave us, Arpanet, now known as the Internet...without that you would have no Google, no Microsoft, and no Steve Jobs, no Facebook and Twitter. Peter Thiel is a scumbag and fifth-columnist for helping Trump, after leeching of the government.

All Ayn Randians, like Thiel, like Paul Ryan and their ilk, like Ayn Rand herself are looters of the first order, very much of the kind they despise.

edited 13th Dec '16 12:11:55 PM by JulianLapostat

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#162116: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:12:31 PM

American Left is quite myopic on that issue, because it's still connected to the Cold War and the idea that America "won" it, or rather Reagan and the Conservatives won it, rather than the Keynesian-Detentists won it. So that narrative has to be tackled and attacked.

I was always under the impression that the US had "won" due to a long succession of poor Soviet leadership then anything the US actually did.

Either you are correct that it should be underestimated how lucky Reagan was and how much of his success was built on people who weren't even associated with him.

JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#162117: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:26:06 PM

I was referring more to the fact that how the end of the Cold War gave many Americans, among liberals and conservatives, a kind of retroactive justification that all of America's actions during the Cold War was right in the end. Reagan's attitude of belligerence, of nearly triggering nuclear war with the Able Archer Crisis was washed away and forgiven rather than detente or rapprochement. So that meant that America's actions was justified and correct. Interfering in Italy's elections in 1945 was correct and so on and so forth.

During the 90s, you had people trying to reconstruct Joseph Mc Carthy because apparently there were Communist spies, and that led to many even saying the Blacklist was okay, and that it was the fault of the people who got blacklisted for not "naming names". Many liberals started adopting that attitude. and the end result is that American Communists got written out of American history despite the amazing work they did in the 30s where they more or less codified the modern Left platform. But in order for that platform to work, modern liberals have to ignore that fact. Like many say that after Pinochet fell and Chile became a Democracy again that toppling Allende was the right thing after all.

Never mind that Mccarthy didn't actually get any communist spies. That in most cases, they weren't CPUSA members, they were hired hands because you get more information from people who can blend in then from open card-carrying commies...this tradecraft goes without saying but the idea was that anybody who supported communism in America during the 30s was a collaborator of Stalin's purges (which was more or less Orwell's argument) and that overshadowed all the other actions and activities they did in the union movement, in African-American enfranchisement.

Now in the 2000, we see the fruits of those short-sighted foreign policy but American Liberals still don't take it all the way to a total re-examination of the Cold War itself. Because if the one thing that Regan did perniciously was that he allowed Americans to see themselves as "good" even when they do evil. So Americans still assume categorically that we did good and behaved morally during the Cold War when in fact the opposite happened.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#162118: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:26:07 PM

@AlleyOop: It's worth noting, as far as leftists like Chomsky go, there's a (largely correct) assumption that how free and open a society is has very little correlation with how much of a threat it is to the rest of the world. Cuba for example, despite being an authoritarian dictatorship, poses no threat to anyone outside of their own borders, whereas the United States is regarded in global popular opinion the number one threat to world peace, despite being one of the most open societies in the world.

Many people here would probably have agreed with that opinion during the worst parts of the Bush era, and I can't imagine anyone would disagree that's going to be the case under a Trump administration. Before Bush II you had HW and Reagan, and before that you had Nixon. If every other Presidency the United States goes around terrorizing the world, regardless of what the intervening years look like, we still look Not So Different from any other imperial power in history.

edited 13th Dec '16 12:29:17 PM by CaptainCapsase

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#162119: Dec 13th 2016 at 12:29:25 PM

It's pretty much what I hoped for and expected: now that he isn't bound by the presidency, Obama can be much more direct about the effects of white supremacy and white resentment. He has a lot of potential to do good with his new pulpit, I'm glad to see that he's begun using it.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#162120: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:06:38 PM

PEEP

The Podesta email hack could have been avoided if it weren't for one small and crucial typo

Spoiler: When asked to double check a phishing email, another Clinton staffer wrote "legitimate" when he meant "ilegitimate"

Ow.

Geostomp In the name of the POWER, I will punish you! from Arkansas, USA Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: What is this thing you call love?
In the name of the POWER, I will punish you!
#162121: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:08:40 PM

Unrestrained Obama is one thing we'll need going forward. Without being weighed down by the presidency and the endless bullshit of the Republicans, he can be a figure that can help rally us from the despair of the coming dark era and, hopefully, get the media to stop being distracted by Trump's latest stunts for a minute or so.

The next few years will require fighting back on a level none of us have seen in our lifetimes. If we are to have any hope of protecting our nation from the forces destroying us from within, it's going to take everything we have.

[up] Once more we see that Putin and Trump are the luckiest evil bastards around. One more reason to fight hard and smart.

edited 13th Dec '16 1:10:27 PM by Geostomp

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellas
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#162122: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:12:14 PM

[up] I don't believe in luck. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Trump or at least somebody in his inner circle is making his own luck, and I'm pretty much positive that's the case with Putin.

JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#162123: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:17:14 PM

I believe luck is an empirical reality, and Trump has lots of it. Putin on the other hand...well he'd say if he were lucky he wouldn't have to annex Crimea and do something as mad as hack the US elections.

Getting back to TNC's interview. The full one is here and I love that epigraph:

“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#162124: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:17:16 PM

[up][up][up]For Want Of A Nail, or in this case, an I, the battle was lost...

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#162125: Dec 13th 2016 at 1:21:38 PM

[up]x4 A small part of me's still wondering if things could get bad enough that it'll turn into an actual fight. With bullets.tongue (Of course, I doubt things will ever get that far, but you never know...)


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