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apogee
climber
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bluering, for your convenience, an excerpt from my post at #8858:
I don't really give a f*ck what side of the fence you are on- express your view in a cogent, meaningful, respectful, well-thought out manner, and I'll do my very best to listen to you. If you can't do that, you can expect me to either respond (at least) as dysfunctionally as you, or better yet, ignore you completely.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Blue, et al.
Many will tell us that life IS change, and that our survival has always hinged on our ability to adapt to an ever changing landscape, making hundreds of little course corrections along the way, much as we do when driving a car, feathering the steering wheel this way and that, never truly on course for more than a second before having to make adjustements yet again. In short, so long as we are en transit (alive), we never get to quit steering and course correcting if we ever hope to drive our car without crashing.
Now there is no doubt that the passage I quoted earlier is accurate. It's a sociological, rater than a political observation. That is, "progressive arguments are in the ascendancy, and demographic and geographic trends are taking America down a very different road than has been traveled in the last eight years. A new progressive America is on the rise."
So much is obvious and manifest in today's world. That's the direction the parade is taking regardless of how you or I feel about it. The question is, given that that is the very nature of the "ever shifting terrain," how are you and I adapting to it, what course corections are we taking to account for the aforementioned changes in the world, and are our responses indicitive of our capacity to adapt and evolve, or instances of our underlying terror of change and our inflexibility to course correct as the road curves this way and that beneath us.
JL
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Jeremy Handren
climber
NV
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I'm no expert apogee, just read a few books recently.
I guess there was a certain element of Germany society...around 30%..that didn't need much convincing prior to 1933...the Nazi's core constituency..and that was all the Nazis needed.
It was really after Hitler came to power that the rhetoric came into play. Though from what I can tell coercion and fear were just as important as the propaganda in bringing the rest of the German population to heal.
Having said that, rabid nationalism and virulent antisematism seems to have been very common in Germany prior to the Nazi's. And a lot of germans were strongly opposed certain elements of Nazi policy while being strongly in favor of the others.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Change can be good as well as bad. Little changes are safer than big ones, easier to reverse.
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Bamm_Bamm
Social climber
Out in the Wilderness looking for Dr. F
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JL,
I would agree that life can be change.
So, when are you going to be backing President Bush?
? What's that you say? You didn't mean change like that?
Oh, you mean the non-changy type of change.
Get a grip Largo, you are looking foolish.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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m Bam sez: "JL,
I would agree that life can be change.
So, when are you going to be backing President Bush?
? What's that you say? You didn't mean change like that?
Oh, you mean the non-changy type of change.
Get a grip Largo, you are looking foolish."
Exactly what part of George W. Bush's magnificent opus are you asking me to "back," and is said idea/thought/belief/policy actually still in play this very minute?
You're not grasping the trust of the conversation here Bam Bam. A little time in the corner is indicated - don't bother with the pointy hat this time around.
But ponder this: The "change" I mention can be transposed to mean "flexibility and adaptibility to current reality."
My sense of it is that you are watching and listening to a parade with seven rubes in it, all stumbling over each other and shouting and waving their arms as the real procession, thousands strong, is marching in the opposite direction several streets over.
My feeling when listening to the extreme right or left is that they are fashioning a kind of virtual world, a kind of adult version of cowboys and indians, where the heros are clear bearers of inflexible values and the foes are just plain bad. The actual parade, however, is made up of all us hackers trying to find our way.
JL
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Nice take on the current level of debate from Bill Moyers...
BILL MOYERS:
The editors of THE ECONOMIST magazine say America's health care
debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being
evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American.
Well, that's charitable.
I would say it's more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American.
Those crackpots on the right praying for Obama to die and be sent to hell ?
they're the warp and woof of home-grown nuttiness. So is the creature from the
Second Amendment who showed up at the President's rally armed to the teeth. He's
certainly one of us. Red, white, and blue kooks are as American as apple pie and
conspiracy theories.
Bill Maher asked me on his show last week if America is still a great nation. I
should have said it's the greatest show on earth. Forget what you learned in
civics about the Founding Fathers-- we're the children of Barnum and Bailey, our
founding con men. Their freak show was the forerunner of today's talk radio.
Speaking of which: we've posted on our website an essay by the media scholar
Henry Giroux. He describes the growing domination of hate radio as one of the
crucial elements in a "culture of cruelty" increasingly marked by overt racism,
hostility and disdain for others, coupled with a simmering threat of mob violence
toward any political figure who believes health care reform is the most vital of
safety nets, especially now that the central issue of life and politics is no
longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive.
So here we are, wallowing in our dysfunction. Governed-- if you listen to the
rabble rousers-- by a black nationalist from Kenya smuggled into the United
States to kill Sarah Palin's baby. And yes, I could almost buy their belief that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, only I think he shipped them to
Washington, where they've been recycled as lobbyists and trained in the alchemy
of money laundering, which turns an old-fashioned bribe into a First Amendment
right.
Only in a fantasy capital like Washington could Sunday morning talk shows become
the high church of conventional wisdom, with partisan shills treated as holy men
whose gospel of prosperity always seems to boil down to lower taxes for the rich.
Poor Obama. He came to town preaching the religion of nice. But every time he
bows politely, the harder the Republicans kick him.
No one's ever conquered Washington politics by constantly saying "pretty please"
to the guys trying to cut your throat.
Let's get on with it, Mr. President. We're up the proverbial creek with spaghetti
as our paddle. This health care thing could have been the crossing of the
Delaware, the turning point in the next American Revolution ? the moment we put
the mercenaries to rout, as General Washington did the Hessians at Trenton. We
could have stamped our victory "Made in the USA." We could have said to the
world, "Look what we did!" And we could have turned to each other and said,
"Thank you."
As it is, we're about to get health care reform that measures human beings only
in corporate terms of a cost-benefit analysis. I mean this is topsy-turvy --we
should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.
As we speak, Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, has been fined a record $2.3
billion dollars as a civil and criminal-- yes, that's criminal, as in fraud--
penalty for promoting prescription drugs with the subtlety of the Russian mafia.
It's the fourth time in a decade Pfizer's been called on the carpet. And these
are the people into whose tender mercies Congress and the White House would
deliver us?
Come on, Mr. President. Show us America is more than a circus or a market. Remind
us of our greatness as a democracy. When you speak to Congress next week, just
come out and say it. We thought we heard you say during the campaign last year
that you want a government run insurance plan alongside private insurance--
mostly premium-based, with subsidies for low-and-moderate income people. Open to all individuals and employees who want to join and with everyone free to choose
the doctors we want. We thought you said Uncle Sam would sign on as our tough,
cost-minded negotiator standing up to the cartel of drug and insurance companies
and Wall Street investors whose only interest is a company's share price and
profits.
Here's a suggestion, Mr. President: ask Josh Marshall to draft your speech. Josh
is the founder of the website talkingpointsmemo.com. He's a journalist and
historian, not a politician. He doesn't split things down the middle and call it
a victory for the masses. He's offered the simplest and most accurate description
yet of a public insurance plan --one that essentially asks people: would you like the option ? the voluntary option --of buying into Medicare before you're 65?
Check it out, Mr. President.
This health care thing is make or break for your leadership, but for us, it's
life and death. No more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. President. We need a fighter.
That's it for the Journal. I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Great commentary from the best center-right blog -- Powerline:
The defining accomplishment of Van Jones's life was his founding of the Ella Baker Freedom Center. While the controversy over his appointment was going on I meant to look into who she was, but didn't get it done. Ron Radosh, an expert on the hard left of which he was once a member, has the answer:
[T]he name of Jones' Oakland group, The Ella Baker Freedom Center, is most appropriate. Most people have referred to the late Baker as simply a civil rights activist. I am writing from vacation in Nantucket, without benefit of my files at home. But in my book, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996, I point out that the late civil rights lawyer Joe Rauh had noted that everything Baker said in the 60's might as well have been taken verbatim from The Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. Baker was so pro-Communist that she attacked Hubert Humphrey and other liberal anti-Communists as ultra reactionaries. Known as the "grandmother of SNCC," Baker was aligned with those in the movement who were trying to push the organization to the far left.
I think that sums up the Obama administration pretty well. If you think Hubert Humphrey was an ultra-reactionary, this administration's for you!
UPDATE: At The Corner, Andy McCarthy takes Charles Krauthammer to task for suggesting that the demise of the Soviet Union means that Communism is no longer a threat. Andy's post is well worth reading in its entirety, but this paragraph fits well with the topic of this post:
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that "we had a communist in the U.S. government." [Quoting Krauthammer.] To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the "green jobs czar." Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss. There's nothing covert about him. He didn't snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that's why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the "green jobs" initiative is an important part of the hard Left's agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
"Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss." Brilliant.
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shut up and pull
climber
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"Green jobs" = "Green movement" = "Social justice" = "Economic justice" = "Socialism/Communism".
Wake up folks -- the entire "green" agenda is a cover for radical socialism. Even ol Van Jones admitted this, as can be seen on YouTube.
This is why I quit calling myself an environmentalist years ago -- they are a front for socialism.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I wonder how suap expalins the fact that the US national parks system was started under Abraham Lincoln (a Republican) and vigorously expanded under Theodore Roosevelt (another Republican). Both greeny socialists, of course.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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I'm a Democrat. I don't care about Republicans. I don't reply to this post.
BUT: I'm going to get the ten thousandth post. Just you watch.
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apogee
climber
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"but you have to admit the basic tenant of "faith" precludes any form of rational thought."
Precludes? No, I wouldn't say that, necessarily. I do believe it is possible for faith and rational thought to co-exist. But faith will certainly compete with, and, if one chooses, allow it to overshadow rationality and objective, critical thinking. Then you got problems.
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shut up and pull
climber
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Mighty -- the "green" movement of yore is completely different than the one today. You need to watch the videos of Van Jones explain it -- you can tell he doesnt give a rats *** about being green -- rather, the green enviro thing is just a stepping stone to overthrowing capitalism.
Watch his videos, and then you will understand.
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apogee
climber
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"-the source of all that is true, Wikipedia"
Hahhaha...I'll take your word for it, though, Wes.
Don't get me wrong- it would be pretty hard to describe me as following any kind of organized religion, but I do believe it is possible (not at all common, mind you) for one to set aside one's religious beliefs and consider a problem or issue objectively and critically.
Whether one is talking about religion and faith, science, or being a SCOTUS justice, the individual who is considering the matter or problem at hand has a bias based on their life experience, whereever that came from. It takes real will to set aside preconceptions and move towards true objectivity- sadly, this doesn't happen much, since it is so much easier (read: lazy) to simply revert to your preconceptions.
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dirtbag
climber
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"Mighty -- the "green" movement of yore is completely different than the one today. You need to watch the videos of Van Jones explain it -- you can tell he doesnt give a rats *** about being green -- rather, the green enviro thing is just a stepping stone to overthrowing capitalism.
Watch his videos, and then you will understand. "
What f*#king nonsense.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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. . . environmentalism. . . . is the guiding principle of those devoted to the health of the planet. But it is not yet a general worldview, evidently not yet compelling enough to distract many people away from the primal diversions of sport, politics, religion, and private wealth. . . . The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. . . . We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage
E.O Wilson
SUP...you are a fool.
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apogee
climber
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"the view that an economic aristrocracy benefits the working class because wealth will "trickle down" from above to below"
What is truly amazing and mind-boggling is how many middle & lower class Repugs continue to believe that (secretly or outwardly), one day, if they just stay true to free-market GOP corporatocracy principles, that wealth is gonna trickle on down to them. Talk about being a deluded sucker- the only trickle you are ever gonna get from above ain't gonna be the golden shower you were hoping for.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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They also believe that although they may not have a lot of property and income, somehow a modest estate tax aimed at those with substantial net worth will affect them.
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