Truth Will Out
The new Wiki leaks have once again provided a test for determining how craven an organization can be and the Washington Post is rising to the occasion. You expect the State Dept. and Pentagon to lie and obfuscate, that's why they get the big bucks, but you wonder why the Post even bothers. Surely they understand that the Public is more interested in Juan Williams, that Iraq is the "old war" and that in a week ( or 10 days) the leaks will have evaporated. They needn't defend their bloodbath any more. It's yesterday.
The mid-term elections are now broadly being referred to as "the silly season" prompting mainstream pundits to begin the requisite hand wringing about "our democracy". In The Scandal of 2010, E.J.Dione worries over our "poorly developed sense of democracy" and the "inadequacy of the political system". Bob Herbert writes The Corrosion of America and Frank Rich chimes in about the money and spectacle. Robert Reich is concerned about inequality; "I'm talking about the dangers facing our democracy." These are the Big Guns in the world of dominant narrative. the usual lefties also add their two cents, for instance Rebecca Solnit writes When Corporations Ruled the Earth.
All this digital ink being spilled is designed to preclude us from asking; Do We Live In a Democracy? Are These Really Politics We Practice? That is crossing the line.
Good old Chris Hedges is willing to cross it , calling the democracy a formal and mostly illusory construction and politics a sideshow. Unfortunately, his analysis is sloppy ( I think he sometimes cranks these things out after a long night of Johnny Walker) A perfect example is when he writes that "The liberal class...failed to defend traditional liberal values."
The first problem is; what is "the liberal class"? Talking about a middle class is muddled enough but to use philosophy to delineate class boundaries opens up all sorts of nasty pits. I suggest we just stay with our relations within the system of production, although if you want to extend it to consumption or levers of political power, give it a go. But not doctrine.
Then there is the problem of "traditional liberal values" which must include value placed on the freedom of markets as an expression of human liberty.That's classic, Enlightenment liberalism extending from Locke to Rawls and in this sense liberals have actually been superb at "defending liberal values." What Hedges needs to understand is that there was always a fatal contradiction within liberalism and that what we are seeing is just this natural (though long delayed),dialectical process in motion.Democracy and capitalism are antithetical.
The entertainment lies in all the liberals- who are convinced they are the good guys- commenting on this attack on their sacred creed. Check it out.
posted by troutsky @ 7:23 AM
39 comments
39 Comments:
Unfortunately Trout, as a modern apologist for the current western-scientific hegemony, Chris Hedges fails to see beyond the prism of his own totalizing hyper-rational lenses. He is quick to point out the "fascism" inhering in the agenda of the Radical Christian Right or a similar Ur-fascism in atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Yet, he refuses to question his own scientific fundamentalism and its UR-fascism.
For example, he criticizes the Dominionists for their support of teaching creationism in the schools, on the grounds that it has no scientific validity; teaching creationism, he says, is an attempt to "destroy the possibility for dispassionate, honest, intellectual, and scientific inquiry; it is to make facts interchangeable with opinion, to make lies true..." it is a war against truth, "seeing the world around you through a distorted, ideological prism." On the other hand, he criticizes Chris Hitchens precisely for using Western rationality in the service of his atheism. Sorry, but you cannot have it both ways, Mr. Hedges. Yet, he ignores the contradiction. Hedges wants to criticize science and reason when used as a stick by those new atheists like Mr. Hitchens. Yet he fails to see the applicability of this critique to his own hyper-rational ideology.His ignorance is certainly understandable, if not offensive. For he too has been brought up on the curriculum of the West, and cannot see clearly due to the profound influences it has had on his own psyche.
Kulture-
"On the other hand, he criticizes Chris Hitchens precisely for using Western rationality in the service of his atheism."
I'm not familiar with the person you are referring to here, but could it be he is saying that Hitchens is in his own way as closed-minded and maybe even as fanatical as the most ardent fundamentalist Christian?
I've known atheists, and known of others, who are every bit as fiery and impassioned in their zeal to convert as any religious figure, and that does tend to present its own brand of orthodoxy, one which is in its own way every bit as irritating as any other.
A closed mind is not an atmosphere conducive to rational thought or scientific inquiry, regardless of what it is anchored to.
No it isn't silly season I think it is quite serious.
I don't think we'll come to our senses and if, as I think likely, the Baggers don't hit critical mass this election then we can count on President Toonces to attempt further bipartisan governance.
Train in the tunnel.
Ducky-
Why do you spend so much time hyper-ventilating about the Tea-Party? They are collectively nothing more or less than ordinary American citizens from all walks of life, though admittedly they tend to be conservative to center-right politically. Other than that, they are nothing more than the guys and gals you see at your local barber, grocery, restaurant, etc. Just every day, run-of-the-mill Americans. They aren't fascists, or Nazis, or anything like that. If the truth were known, they probably at heart aren't really all that ideological, ordinarily.
They're just everyday people who have had enough of the everyday bullshit that's put on them year after year.
Read the article, Pagan. They are part of something quite serious and while me might dodge a bullet this election (just) we are in serious trouble.
Baggers become Good Germans real quick and there is a real nasty authoritarian side to them.
Read the article, Pagan. They are part of something quite serious and while me might dodge a bullet this election (just) we are in serious trouble.
Baggers become Good Germans real quick and there is a real nasty authoritarian side to them.
I agree with Ducky on this one: Baggers = Brown Shirts!!
And ideology is exactly the problem Pagan; and I believe Hedges is as ideological about rationality, science and truth as any fundamentalist or atheist
How are people that are fed up with government and who want less of it supposed to turn into brown shirts?
You guys be sure and change your underwear on the morning of November 3rd. ROTFLMFAO!
Pagan - since you are such a fuckin expert... you figure it out!!
For the overly aggressive, but under educated among us, check this to see the Brown Shirts beginning...
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010260053
I never claimed to be an expert, but I do know that people that hate big government and want less, not more of it, aren't likely to cotton to the idea of a system that requires even more of it than we have now.
Well on this site you don't have a serious advocacy of "big government" but I think most of us understand that as state capitalism.
My perception of the right is that their end is the virtual elimination of government. What follows next will all be handled by the market and the basest appetites of the human will.
I don't have a sense of their goals. I would like:
1. A sustainable economy (which means we are going to have to radically alter our consumption, a direct conflict with Kapital)
2. A more equitable distribution of resources. Basic health care, a decent diet, housing.
3. Minority rights. Limit discrimination.
That requires government and , yes, a good deal more government than Rand Paul would advocate. It also requires a radical shift away from capitalism.
I'd like to hear something substantial from the right but all I hear is crap like, "conform to the Constitution", the liberal media, "Obama's a socialist Muslim" ... do you wonder why the right is viewed as dangerous? Try carrying on a conversation with our ersatz right winger, Beak and find out what obtuseness is really like.
You could do worse than conform to the constitution. If there is something there that a large enough majority of people view as objectionable, there's a built-in mechanism for amending it, so what's the problem?
Obama is not a socialist Muslim he's a European style Socialist Democrat, much like Bernard Sanders. That might be fine if you live in Vienna, not so much for people in Muncie.
You alter consumption by establishing policies that encourage saving.
Minority rights? How about basic rights for all, everyone across the board, without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, gender, color, creed, or sexual preference? That's what we've been aiming for years to accomplish, or were until the left managed to pervert it and turn it on its head.
You can't have government mandate winners and losers, you're always going to have both, rich and poor. You can level the playing field, but you can't have a guaranteed outcome, that's just not realistic, nor even desirable, without lowering standards of achievement and living for the top, which is what the left wants to do, and which is why they are perceived as dangerous.
I don't know how much government Rand Paul advocates, I do know some government is necessary, and most other people do as well. The only issue is what is best left to local and state governments and what to the feds.
Capitalism with all its warts is still better than anything that has come along yet. Show me something that has ever been better. No, its not fair, but it doesn't try to be. That's probably why it has worked so well for so many people and places in comparison to anything else. I'm not rich or successful but I'm not going hungry tonight.
By the way, getting back tot he subject of Wikileaks, one thing that was revealed was that they did find WMD in Iraq after all. Admittedly, not nearly as much as they were expecting to find, but they did find some. Why they kept it a secret I don't know. Trying to protect their sources, I'm guessing.
No Pagan, either they found nuclear capability or they didn't find WMD.
What did they find? Some mustard gas rounds, Pam Geller's botox treatements?
WMD is just a meaningless phrase ued to stir up the proles.
As far as Kapitalism being the best ... best at what. Tke my first two goals and it's quite deficient.
Great at pumping out flat screen TV's, not so good at supplying stimulating content.
"Tke my first two goals and it's quite deficient."
Get the government out of the way and its more than sufficient. That's including medical care.
Who says WMD has to be nuclear? Nobody ever accused Saddam of having nuclear weapons, he was accused of having chemical weapons, and maybe biological weapons. What they found was chemical weapons, and yes I think one thing they found was mustard gas. Do I take it mustard gas meets your seal of approval?
Point being-People did die, but Bush didn't lie.
Mustard gas is pretty ineffective and dissipates very quickly in the heat, making it a very poor desert weapon.
It is not a weapon of mass destruction by any means.
WMD - history has two, nuclear weapons and the Kalashnikov.
Kultur
Unlike the Duck who is a semioriginal cliche communists you can think beyond cliches
How do people protesting big government become Nazis. That is really just absurd.
Now soulless commies like the Ren are far more apt to be Nazis like Horst Mahler. We would be much improved if you can convince the commies to emulate apes.
As far as actual fascists Il Duce
was a socialist who unlike Trotsky
was not incompetent and was a better writer. Most of the actual fascists were merely former socialists who decided to try and govern functionally as opposed to communist malfeasance or criminality.
Apes unlike Commies or HG types are not super violent. Apes also have better grooming habits than commies.
Worrying about the Tea Baggers while discussing the current with political criminal Trotskyite clowns is sheer comedy.
When I get my Fox TV show Revolting America I will be sure to get you a spot. Watch as commies get tarred and feathered in Cuban enclaves, Tea party events and College Football tail gate parties.
The gig may be the only honest money Ren earns in his pathetic wasted life.
Troutsky; The bigger picture is the world economic crisis. That enlarges events that under normal times would be ignored as the Tea Party.
The speculative economy is bigger than the GDP. Billionaires like Soros are profiting big time from currency war speculation, the new big thing. Democracy is threatened, and the nation state is increasingly obsolete.
Beak: Your grandfather fought in a fascist army, and yopu know he's not socialist.
I am still struck by Pagan's insistence that government is consistently inept.
We have recent news that China has launched the fastest train in the world as well as developing the fastest supercomputer. Now, these weren't developed by private entities.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S. our government has managed to fail to build a rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York. There was plenty of private involvement here.
Ren
My Grandfather was a reluctant Polish Patriot. He understood that Commies were inherently evil and beyond redemption.
He was a big labor type who knew criminal and colostomy bag Bolsheviks were a cancer upon labor unions. Nobody calls the 1920 Polish government fascist except dimwit worshipers of the mendicant moron war criminal gadfly
ice pick catcher.
Your secular Christ had no redeeming qualities and deserved to die horribly for his crimes against humanity. The imbecilic followers of the loser follow a Disney style version of a Saddam type criminal.
You should self deport before the FBI gets around to visiting. I can assure you that an unmanly commie will be sold often and cheaply in jail. You are more Huey, Louie and Dewey than Huey Newton.
Duckie-
Christie is arguably the biggest hero in the history of New Jersey. He knew what he was doing. He knew good and well that if that tunnel project proceeded, the cost overruns would have been massive, at a time when New Jersey simply has no money.
Why does it have no money? The economy, of course, but on top of that, in his last days in office Corzine played fast and loose with state funds which found its way to many of his allies and contributors. How he thinks he'll get away with that, or how he can, remains to be seen.
Then there are the teacher's unions, otherwise known as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party. Did you or anybody else happen to see the video of the New Jersey Teachers conference. It was beyond the pale.
That's the kind of thing I've been talking about, government corruption, which always involves playing fast and loose with taxpayer funds. That's our money, not the governments to dole out and distribute as they damn well please. Where is the accountability. The bigger it gets, the worse it gets. Chris Christie and New Jersey might not have been the best example you could have used to make your point.
kultur: I agree scientism and ultra-rationality are another orthodoxy and that curriculum is a big factor.
But the guy who just found a missing link between fish and human beneath the tundra knew where to begin looking because of science. In other words, it gives us predictability because of all the records left behind (geology, genetic,etc)
Here reason and rationality are a tool. When used in the service of power they are a blunt weapon.
Ducky: Silly is the new serious. Believe me, I think it is a crisis, the global economic ( as Ren points out), ecological and political in the Greek sense of the word. We picked up a couple of lessons about totalitarianism in WW II but not the most important.
Hannah Arendt was only part right.
Those jobs and that wealth are not coming back no matter what Liberty Loving Patriot gets elected.
Pagan: Any discussion about government and the state has to begin with a definition. Capitalist governance is not democratic nor fair and rarely efficient. And it is not zero-sum, rising tide, blah blah. China is catching up on the back of Africa.
The tea people lump all governance into one liberal pot because it needs a simple, populist ideology for regular folk.
Troutsky
You are quite the comedian crying about populism in the Tea Party. For years your kind has made common alliances with every degenerate group on the planet from Nazis to religious jihadist loonies. Of course the evil you promote is on a par with Nazism and Jihadism.
Your good buddy Capo Ren can switch a Koran for a manifesto and repeat 90% of his material.
The Tea Party seeks to erase the perversion of your kind. The days where commies could play games and say they are merely progressives is over. Government will be returned to its limited role and growth will be promoted.
Commies talk of the grass roots, but when the American people speak up they don't like the message. This is the one group your kind can not subvert and it is dedicated to putting you and your kind in your place as pariahs.
The game has just started. Fortunately Tea Party types respect the law so Ren will not be handed a one way ticket to North Korea. Placing Ren in North Korea would be true social justice.
Not only aren't the jobs coming back, trout but immigrants continue to absorb a high percentage of the jobs available. Das Kapital has an insatiable appetite for low cost labor.
I've heard it call The Law of One Price. Corporations have the same tech, worldwide access to Kapital (or lack thereof), access to raw materials (rape Africa, spot on there) so what's left? Labor costs.
S let's go back to the labor theory of value. Odd that we've come back to Marx (Cue the Beak in 1, 2, ...).
So Beak, you keep harping about Obama (D - But an R in drag) and jobs. To even et jobs at a replacement value we'd need GDP growth of about 6%, rarely experienced in the contemporary west. So how would you go about generating that kind of growth?
Bonus if you can answer without using insults or resorting to failed supply side voodoo.
Pagan, we have enormous sums of money to spend expanding prisons, fighting wars we can't possibly win even if we could define what winning entails but we can't improve the transportation infrastructure in the densest transportation corridor in the nation?
Now why is that?
The dig at teacher's unions seems to have come out of the blue. Remember, I'm in Massachusetts and our public schools are world class. I have little beef with the union.
I don't know what you're talking about Ducky. Our current wars are being fought on borrowed money, which I for one don't like and never did. As for prisons, I don't know of any federal prisons being constructed, while state prisons here in Kentucky are underfunded. One of the first things Kentucky did to cut back on costs was to release non-violent offenders, though that was a controversial move too.
The problem with the tunnel is cost overruns. Christie doesn't want to end up with another Big Dig on his hands, and its hard to find fault with that position. This is New Jersey we're talking about, remember, arguably the most corrupt, crime-ridden state in the union, where union and mafia is to all intents and purposes synonymous.
I can't speak to the teachers unions in Massachusetts in particular, I just know in general they are corrupt, and unyielding on even the most basic, commonsense approach to education reform. They're out for themselves and to protect their tenure. A natural human reaction, to be sure, but its not the job government to look out for them above and beyond the needs of students. Watch the video I told you about of the New Jersey teachers union meeting.
Fair warning, its by James O'Keefe, but watch it with an open mind anyway.
By the way, to get consistent job growth, that would remain steady through the years (minus the unavoidable temporary downturns of one or two years duration every decade or so), you'd have to adopt an economic program much like what I've been touting.
In other words, a flat tax of no more than thirty percent tops, preferably more like twenty eight percent, slash regulations to the bare nuts and bolts, and a significant increase in minimum wage of just under thirteen dollars an hour.
Then, after so long, maybe after ten years or so, gradually lower taxes even more, to maybe to the point where you're at about twenty-one percent flat rate.
I wouldn't recommend this big a drop all at once, maybe a gradual phase in over a seven year period.
Business would boom and economic growth would be considerable, and consistent.
Duncy
The Obama Bolshevik hatchet job on the economy is coming to an end. The greatest drag on the economy is education and health care costs controlled by Bolshevik lackeys.
The days of Marxist malfeasance are over. Obama's inept rule has killed the left for a decade.
Beak-
Not really. Most of the seats Republicans are going to win are in swing districts. Some of them are even in districts that are generally Democratic seats. What that means is, in a good many of these seats, people who win today aren't necessarily going to win tomorrow by playing Tea-Party politics. It all depends on how things go after Tuesday.
The thing that are drawing independents to the GOP today is the economy and jobs. The minute the job situation improves, they will revert to type. That means they will go back to wanting government spending for the things they care about, and cuts for everything and everybody else.
The proof is in the pudding. A real Tea-Party person is first and foremost against big government, taxes, regulation, and debt. The argument that without the stimulus a million more jobs would have been lost leaves them cold, even if that happens to be true.
The problem is, I'm very much afraid that most of the independents voting for Republicans today aren't going to give much of a shit about the debt and taxes tomorrow. All they care about is the jobs.
Remember when Ren used to crow after Obama won that it was the end of the Republican Party. Well, I'll tell you the same thing. The Democrats are going to get their asses handed to them, but they aren't going to go away quietly. This shit is just another chapter in a never ending vicious circle.
@Pagan:
Christie is arguably the biggest hero in the history of New Jersey. He knew what he was doing. ...
Why does it have no money? ... in his last days in office Corzine played fast and loose with state funds
Don't know where you live, but I've lived in NJ for the last sixteen years. Blaming the budget woes of the state on Corzine is absurd and totally a partisan maneuver. Not that he didn't do stupid or bad things, but what he did was no worse, and actually less severe, than what governors before him had done, including Republicans like Christie Whitman, who played games with the budget that had never been dreamed of before. Of course, Democrat, or Republican, they all want to be reelected, and so nobody will tell the truth about what has to be done - everyone gets to believe they'll get what they want.
Then there's Florio, a Democrat, the most reviled governor of recent NJ history. What was his great sin? He told the truth. He said the only way to provide the services that everyone wants, the constitution requires (public schools), and every pol promises, was to reform and raise the income tax. He was promptly dumped, and property taxes have soared ever since.
As for the tunnel, I don't understand why NY doesn't have to help pay for it, or why it isn't a federal project since it is intended to modernize the biggest regional economic engine of the entire country, so Christie has a point. But it's a point he's never raised! Like most pols, he has no understanding of the function and importance of regional infrastructure.
@Kultur
Hedges despises Hitchens (and Hitchens probably returns the favor.) I think Pagan may be on to something in his intepretation, because to me, Hitchens seems like an arrogant, polemical, unprincipled journalist who uses ideas, what passes for wit, and a facility with language to bludgeon those who don't worship him. Even if I agree with him, I wouldn't welcome him on my side.
Pagan
The Democrats will learn that unless they move to the center they are going extinct. For every Code Pinko vote they get the same crew pushes three people into the GOP.
Pagan, I can't make your numbers add up. Essentially what you are advocating is a flat tax of 25%+ and a rise in the minimum wage.
But he flat tax will wipe out most of the low earners increase and the wealthiest will still be experiencing reduced taxes. So we have a continued revenue transfer upwards (conservatives are okay with transfers in that direction) and we continue to weaken the nation.
Ever been to Vienna? Believe me, you wouldn't mind living there.
Beak, you have been shoveling your usual crud but you haven't even approached my question of how you would generate sufficient growth to lower the unemployment rate.
Ducky
But, Hedges also is a bit of an elitist ideologue!!
Lichanos, sorry; my last post was at you not Ducky
28% Ducky, not 25. I know that doesn't sound like a big difference, but when you are dealing with the amounts of money we're talking about, even one percent is a big deal, three percent is a hell of a difference.
And its not just the revenue stream, its the cut in regulations. Remember, a great percentage of taxes, if not most of them, are simply going to fund the cost of regulations. Do away with them, and you cut the need for higher taxes.
Plus, business would boom, actually due more or at least as much because of the cut in regulations as the tax cuts. That means more people employed at those vastly improved wages and paying taxes, while businesses would actually be paying more as well.
And by the way, many really large businesses aren't paying taxes anyway. The higher tax rates was a Roosevelt carrot-and-stick scam. That's why the tax code is so complicated. Do you honestly think Standard Oil EVER paid eighty percent?
Give them a friendlier environment and they won't feel the need to offshore so much of their accounts.
Did you ever wonder how many people are going to decide maybe medical school isn't such a great career choice after all? Regulations poisons everything they touch. I know there have to be some, but damn, this is ridiculous.
And its nothing against Vienna, the point was, its not us. Never will be.
@PAGAN:
Did you ever wonder how many people are going to decide maybe medical school isn't such a great career choice after all?
Where have you been for the last, oh, twenty years? Medical schools are still competitive - there aren't many slots. Increasingly, students opt for specialties, leaving a tremendous shortage of general practitioners, especially in rural areas. They are seeking to maximize their return. Rats are coming down...why?
PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANIES. The endless paperwork generated by our PRESENT system and the HUGE overhead it imposes.
If you were serious about eliminating regulation of doctors, you would opt for a single payer system. After all, you like the flat tax, don't you? Same idea. Very simple...
@KULTUR:
I read one of Hedges' books, and was not taken by it. Just because his criticisms of Hitchens are good doesn't mean he has much to offer...
There never has been a successful capitalist experience, without a strong state sector.
Ducky: The right has no program, and whatever positions they have they are denying. Abolishing Social Security, overtime laws, and union busting is their program.
The Democrats are the main enemy. Pressure needs to be on them.
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