Here’s a YouTube video of Bill Ayers describing his educational philosophy to Luis Bonilla-Molina, President of the Centro Internacional Miranda, a foundation created by Venezuelan decree. Nº 3.81 to be exact. Bonilla-Molina’s blog is at luisbonilla-molina.blogspot.com. Here are more videos starring Bill Ayers and you can hear what he thinks about education for yourself. I wonder what the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, whose records are now unavailable to researchers, reveal? And you thought education was all about the ABCs. It’s about politics. As one poster at the Daily Kos once wrote:
My health care? political.
My privacy? political.
My food and its safety? political.
My car’s efficiency? political.
My kids’ public education? political.
My bank’s security? political.
It’s ALL politics.
So it’s not surprising an article in Slate described Chicago educational controversies in terms of politics: the control of schools and in particular the ability to hire and fire principals. There was apparently a long and inconclusive struggle between the Chicago Board of Education and the local school councils over who had the power over management. Which side Obama was on depended on calculation.
In reality, Obama never really championed the local councils. He supported them behind the scenes and only eventually came out publicly on their behalf. When he did weigh in, he came down on the wrong side of the debate—against protecting principals from unwarranted dismissals and in favor of keeping councils independent, no matter what. In the end, the resolution of the conflict between the two sides didn’t alleviate anyone’s concerns. Instead, it prolonged a turf battle that seems to have dragged down academic progress in the years since.
It’s been observed that everything about modern childhood has been sexualized. That would be only half-right: everything about it has been politicized. But the personal is political, and the sexual is political. Round and round it goes. That adage was one of the intellectual touchstones of Ayers’ generation. The Lord of the Flies was the Peter Pan of the Days of Rage generation.
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the french I tookBut I do know ideology
And if you know ideology
What a wonderful world this would be
The font of all things Ayers and education is the Global Labor and Politics blog (http://globallabor.blogspot.com/) which is doing more than the entire MSM put together times a hundred to get at what happened at the Annenberg Challenge, where BHO and Ayers worked together hammer and tongs (but he’s just this guy from the neighborhood).
I don’t have the time or interest to delve into every little bit of it,but it seems clear enough to me that Ayers and Obam were attempting to hijack the Chicago public education system in a rather bald-faced attempt to turn it into a kind of Maoist indoctrination camp (even more so than it probably already is). Along the way they greased many a palm with the endless millions of dollars in contributions they received.
Now the Sainted One has more in his sights, of course. Why not put ALL of America’s youth into mind-shaping camps? And by gum, he’s proposed exactly that already, along with a Citizens Brigade with ALL THE POWER OF THE MILITARY, I reckon to keep the proles in line if they get a bit snippy when Junior comes home and rats out mom and dad for leaving a can out of the recycling.
This guy is so radical it belies belief. He’s exactly like the crazies that prattle on at Pacifica Radio and other outlets of hard-core Marxism. But the soft Left won’t even admit the possibility of this. In a recent New York magazine, Kurt Andersen was writing about the candidates. Kurt is a great barometer of soft Leftie opinion. Always ignorant, always blissfully sure of himself and not even remotely aware that there could even BE another opinion on something. And he writes the following:
Half the anti-Obama e-mails I received from readers last spring earnestly referred to him as a “Marxist.” On the ridiculousness scale, this seemed somewhere between Colbert’s “secret Muslim” mock-slur and the idea that the Bushes are shape-shifting reptoids…
Ahh yes, BHO being a Marxist is as likely as the Bushes being space aliens. And he really believes this!
How do you combat this kind of ignorance?
How do you combat this kind of ignorance?
You provide links and let people judge for themselves. Personally I have no beef with a Marxist running for President, so long as he’s not so much a Marxist that he denies he is one. That’s a short definition of Leninism BTW. Marxism is a belief. Leninism is the method of conspiracy. CS Lewis said, the Devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.
The neatest trick of the Leninist is to regard being called a Marxist a calumny. Once past that stage, he descends into a world of code. Everyone can read the code, but if you decipher the code and call him a Marxist, you are a bigot. They have specially coded religions which are really atheisms which are empty of any religious content but their own worship of power; special versions of Democracy in which free speech is not allowed.
The real offense of a Leninist is not belief, but deceit. Their ideas are secondary. Their game is about power and in pursuit of that dishonesty, scheming and outright contempt for their audience is par for the course. Leninism is to politics what scams are to commerce. Ayers is a scammer in my opinion. You may draw your own conclusions about Obama.
Real wretchard or fake wretchard? Can’t you disallow that username somehow?
I have a beef with a marxist running for President, as they want to overthrown the constitutional order of things. Same with the muzzies, who seem to have a lot in common with the Lenin lovers.
real wretchard.
Fascinating.
The Ayers videos are a treasure trove of post affluence American tropes.
My personal favorite is the meme of revolution as self improvement.
But, what interests me most is the incipient phase transition of radical resistence to tenuous rule.
The Bolsheviks were a select group of highly educated intellectuals, indeed, the *vanguard* of the proletariat. They were quite capable of speaking in pleasing tones and inspiring hope of transcending received human nature to a higher plane of kindness and reason.
For 74 years the Bolsheviks and their heirs ruled Russia, and for 74 years the crown rested uneasily. The Soviet Republic was threatened from its birth by counterrevolutionaries and by reactionary great powers, it was threatened by opportunists and back sliders, it was threatened by saboteurs and wreckers, it was threatened by sentimentalists and egoists.
Once power is attained, the imperative becomes to maintain power.
At some point, the handsome young prince himself becomes the evil dragon. So it has always been.
The eternally youthful Che Guevara becomes the jailor. This is the ghost in the machine.
Gotta agree, wretchard. In the early to mid 1970s, “Philippine Society and Revolution” was necessary reading for me.
Came to the rather inescapable conclusion that JOMA was out to perpetuate every thing that ailed the Philippines. Perpetuate and escalate in fact. And that he had all this in common with what I mistakenly called hard-core Marxists. I learned what a Leninist was a bit later.
Populists, such as Dante, really would have liked to see corrective actions. And could even be talked into helping undertake them.
The Leninists though were lost causes. Their sole purpose was to live in comfort BECAUSE
they made everybody else miserable.
These principles/insights are as valid today in the USA as they were in the PI back then.
A couple of years ago an Assistant Minister of the Tajik government visited us to discuss a possible joint research project. He was rather taken aback by our informal work culture, but seemed to accept it in the end. On the way to airport for his return flight he told us: “America is a very great country. America has achieved the first stage of communism.”
Obviously, this man had worked his way through Leninism and was thinking deeply about Marx.
We have indeed implemented most of the items in the Communist Manifesto, without recourse to political violence, or even Ayeresque consciousness raising.
Yup, the Youthful Hero, having secured the circulation of the energy of the universe, becomes the Tyrant Holdfast, unless he slays himself, and if he doesn’t, the energy stagnates, and the kingdom becomes a wasteland.
It might not have been such a bad idea, in those early cities, when, upon the completion of the revolution of Jupiter or Saturn, the king and court, all, went voluntarily to the grave.
Happily, in our democracy, we can kick the bums out, as long as we can keep the system working.
I’m with Wretchard entirely on his point about Leninism as a method of conspiracy. Systematic deceit. I’ve sensed it in that man Obama from the beginning. Those were my suspicions about him. They were confirmed when I learned about who his mentor was, what his mother was all about, who his biological father was all about and especially how young Obama admired his father’s ideals and values. At that point, I knew without a doubt that Obama was a Marxist through and through. I didn’t need the Rev. Wright/Fr. Pfleger thing to seal the deal. The Ayers and Dohrn connection is only the frosting on the cake, and is entirely consistent with a man on a mission to remake the country into a socialist country.
And I despise him because he is a deceiver.
This man must be opposed with all of our energies and cunning, because he is full of cunning and his enablers, many of who DO know what this is all about, will fight furiously to fend off the attacks.
Not to put to fine of a line on it, but wouldn’t he (Obama) be a Marxist? His writings (well, some of them anyway), voting record, speeches and agitprop art seem to be there for anyone willing to judge it rationally.
The issue is how much you have to dig to find it. A free and fair press would have been helpful.
But then again, a person stating he was a Marxist, would be a Marxist… Obama doesn’t claim to be a Marxist, so he’s a Leninist… Circular on my part….
Or, is this the Democrats finally showing their true belief system?
Spelling errors are going to make me stop posting…. to=too
“Ayers Rocks”
Wretchard, you sly Aussie punster!
we have one, too!
This blog makes an interesting connection between Obama, Ayres, Annenberg, and ACORN:
Obama paid ACORN $800,000 in THIS campaign to get out the vote!
Obama to amend report on $800,000 in spending –
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to ACORN an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat’s campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.
An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.
FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said it is not unusual for campaigns to amend reports, even regarding large sums of money.
But, said Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: “Barack Obama’s failure to accurately report his campaign’s financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign’s interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud. For a candidate who claims to be practicing ‘new’ politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the ‘old-style’ Chicago politics of yesterday.”
What is most remarkable about Ayres Rock is that some three and one half miles of it extend into the earth’s crust.
Of the known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns, I would place “OH” beneath the surface in the “known unknowns” category which has the effect of making it an “unknown known”. Sorta like the difference between stating you are a Marxist and being thought a Leninist. Or is that closer to the choice between remaining silent and being thought a fool and opening ones mouth and removing all doubt.
Cedarford, we agree on something, “Wretchard, you sly Aussie punster!”
Hoot hoot.
This whole multiple personality or hijacked nic thing is getting disturbing. Who posts for or is the Blog owner? Why are there two nics Wretchard and Richard Fernandez each linking to the blog or homepage? It makes me feel like my time is being played with.
Charles, thanks for the link to the Texas Darlin’ blog. It points to an even more interesting study of the massive Obama fraud in the caucus process.
http://www.lynettelong.com/caucusfraud/
There is some devastating stuff here. (My god, BHO has NEVER won an election straight up! He has only and always won by trickery.) If the MSM picked it up, it could sink the Good Ship Obama. So is Hillary planning a last minute jujitsu move? If Hillary calls a press conference a few days before the Dem Convention, I think we’re going to see a host of shoes dropping. No wonder she won’t release her delegates just yet.
Now, if Hill does spill, and Obama is forced out as the nominee, then the Obama Kids are going to scream bloody murder and run riot in Denver. The rest of the country will see just what the Democrats are really all about, and McCain wins in a landslide.
The really tricky bit is that McCain can’t bring this stuff out, because that will be seen as a Rovian BushHitler Rethuglican conspiracy against the Sainted One, and McCain will be trashed by the media like no one has ever been trashed.
It’s all in Hillary’s hands right now.
The problem with Lynette Long’s argument is that it depends on asserting the existence of a pattern of fraud. That isn’t something that the voter on the street can visualize. Patterns of this sort can only be visualized through mathematics, not through human sight. So the voters will remain unmoved. But the Democratic factions — led by politicians who do understand polling and statistics, and probably know something about cheating, too — will understand Long’s argument perfectly. So if they are convinced they have been had we should see the knives come out in the dark.
That tells us where to look for data. Some Hillary watchers have been interpreting her actions as evidence that something is in the works. I’m not sure, but there is something a little unusual about the apparent atmosphere in the Democratic Party. But I don’t want the wish to be the father of the idea. So let’s keep the data coming. If a dinosaur is going to loom out of the mist maybe we can recognize it just a little quicker than the rest.
Acorn is a thinly disguised Democrat Front Organization(TM)
When one of the two parties is the ”gov’t party”, expect taxpayer money to be siphoned into political actions –legal and otherwise (ACORN). Just wait ’til these people get a ten percent better hold on the judicial branch. We ain’t seen nuthin yet.
Life of the mind,
Richard has a cat, that makes three!
No worries, I would hazard to guess he has two computers in play.
I don’t think Hillary will do anything overt to challenge Obama. For one thing, she’s out of money and would need lots of cash in the bank to challenge him.
She’ll put her name in nomination, be defeated and say and do almost nothing in support or opposition to Obama.
What is interesting, is that the WSJ reports that Congressional Republicans are looking more optimistic about holding back a deluge of Democrats that would give them veto proof majorities (along with filibuster proof majorities) in both Houses. The key being drilling (and lower gas prices). Republicans for, Democrats lock-step against. Along with, probably, the deep unpopularity among swing-state voters for Obama.
Obama’s Denver coronation promises to be an empty celebrity-fest of adoring crowds chanting his name, waving red flags, like a Communist cult of personality fest. Making McCain’s point over and over for him.
Obama’s hard-left leanings, over twenty years of Ayers and Wright and (likely) Farrakhan, with hard-left abortion/eugenics positions (even Barbara Boxer voted for the Born Alive act) are now fair game as McCain defines Obama, and Obama has no recourse.
Hillary was known, any attacks to define her would bump up against her well known, public persona. Which was cold, icy, steely, self-centered, but essentially apolitical calculation for personal benefit. Obama is really unknown to most voters except as a fad, and for older voters (America is an older nation where Seniors outnumber youth vote by 8 million) that is a huge negative.
Obama is the “Republican Miracle” that can allow the Republicans to recover from the near-death experience of GWB’s Presidency and political incompetence. Obama is also the NutRoots candidate, and shows how the hard-left has essentially taken over the Democratic Party. This takeover is unlikely to ever be reversed, because the Hard Left is the result of the elites of this country being opposed to the people.
Domestic oil, gas, mining, real estate, and industrial elites have at least a few areas of common interests with the people. For domestic production, it’s using a high skilled workforce efficiently with cheap land to win in the domestic and global marketplace. That’s the traditional basis of the American Economy.
The current financial, entertainment, legal, governmental, and media elites are completely different. [Which is why they are Marxist/Leninist and back Obama.] They are not “sunk” into the nation, they are trans-national and make much/most of their money abroad. They depend often on government control of the marketplace and extracting monopoly rents, ala Carlos Slim, world’s richest man, who leveraged political control of Mexico’s phone and cell-phone market into the world’s greatest fortune. The fortunes of the Kennedy’s, the Boxer’s, the Feinstein’s, the Obama’s, the Daily Kos’s, etc. are tied up into this political control. As is the Entertainment, Media, and Legal industries. All of which use various government-assisted monopolies to retain monopoly rents that are hostile to populist interests.
This is why environmentalism is not about protecting wild lands from abuse, but controlling the populace to keep them poor (and retaining the apparatchik relative advantage in wealth and power). It’s why Dems hate oil drilling and want to keep gas high [so everyone else is poor.] These elites control the Dem Party and won’t change any time soon, unless their economic position is destroyed (so they have little money).
It is frightening how quickly an elite can change to Chavez-style dependency on absolute state control.
Checked in here and caught up with Wretch’s distinctions between Leninism and Marxism which took me back to my original posts here back on Feb 27 – In a thread led by Wretch’s boost for Jonah Golderg’s best-seller, I’d cited the German Marxist Rosa Luxembourg’s early critique of the anti-democratic nature of Leninism from back in the 20s…Anyone who wants to can check that quote – it’s a striking passage that suggests how truth sets you free whether you’re on the right or left! – can check the Belmont Archives. There were a couple other graphs from one of the posts in that thread that also seemed on point – thoughI wish they were out of time – so I’ll cut and paste below…
Lux wasn’t complaining about Lenin (or Trot) as bad personalities, but about their concept which RULED for decades. It has a name – Leninism – As in Marxist-Leninism…The break that matters in this world is the divide between democrats (small d) and EVERYBODY else. Leninists may claim to be on the Left. But I don’t see them as being on my “side” to use your language. If you believe in Demos we can talk, if not…
Obama clearly believes in Democracy in America. Read his books and observe his career in the State Senate and U.S. Senate. There’s a reason why those republican senators in Illinois (and the Chicago Tribune, a Republican paper since the dawn of time) grew to respect him. It wasn’t that they were under any illusions about his politics. He was candid with them. He was NOT personally contemptuous of them. Same deal when he deals with folks in the Senate. Or with people in the Bush Administration. Here’s a straight up question: Have you read his books? If the answer is no. Maybe that should give you pause for a moment. This is a guy who wrote a 400 page memoir BEFORE he was in politics. If you’re offering opinions about his ESSENCE, maybe you should have taken a look at it?…
Well Wretch did take a look at pieces of “Dreams” – guided by Hugh Hewitt and Goldberg who traduced passages in the book – treating attitudes and world-views that Obama had sublated (and was, in fact, gently mocking) as his core beliefs. It’s seven months on – I’m wondering if Wretch has read Obama’s “Dreams” on his own yet. Dream on?
And while I’m at it – be nice if you would say what you think a Marxist is? We don’t seem to disagree much on Lenin. But it would be helpful to know what you think you mean when you use Marxist – Or is it just a scare-word?…Really do hope you get around to reading “Dreams” for yourself one of these days. Seems only right if you mean to continue offering unillusioned angles on O’s persona. Unless, of course, you don’t really care to know…Obliviousness rules? On the right and the left?
On that score – wondering if anyone has checked Bing West’s new book on Iraq? Barely lets Bush off the hook because he did do the right thing (re the Surge) finally. But West’s book seems pretty definitive re Bush’s & Rummy’s & Rice’s fecklessness over the YEARS, even allowing that war is always messy and that Dems were seriously creepy. Wade – After reading – doubt you’ll have an impulse to blame Rummy’s failings on pre-Petreaus generals.
Benj,
Spend an hour and a half listening to this interview, and you will have the opportuninty to stop retelling Obama’s Self-aggrandizing LIES, and start dealing with the TRUTH of who this corrupt crook really is.
Most of it well-documented in the CHICAGO MSM, but nowhere else.
Please!
—
Audio, Hewitt Interviews David Freddosso
Author,
The Case Against Barack Obama
David Freddoso, Part 1
—
David Freddoso, Part 2
One could say that Rummy’s “small footprint” was a gamble that America would not divide quite so quickly and drastically over the war, and thus humongously encourage the enemy’s Vietnam template.
I spent the last quarter of a century of my academic career in an English Department that was increasingly hiring women–can’t say no, that’s discrimination–and for the pains of our hiring committees these people began to revise the syllabi of the department’s American and English Lit programs so that they would include more female authors. Most of these people were second- and third-rate writers (the best were already in the syllabus, like the best of the males). The pressure point was the continual barrage of anti-heterosexual hate speech that said in essence “You guys need to get your faces shoved in piles of various noxious stuff because, you see, your patriarchy has dominated us females since the dawn of time. This is payback time.”
From that point the tone and professional quality of the department, which was a Ph.D-granting unit, BTW, steadily disintegrated into political infighting and snark.
I mention this particular experience to give some three-dimension to the presence of Ayers on the faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago (not to be confused with the University of Chicago, which does have a significant reputation unlike UIC). The simple fact of the matter is that the whole program of humanistic education in the liberal arts which has been in the process of being born and flourishing ever since the 15th century, is simply dead. There is left only the exploitation of literary texts as platforms for repetitious attacks on people who are heterosexual, white, male, middle-class. (That department BTW after I left elected one of the worst of these people as chair. I voted against her tenure but got nowhere–the rest of the male faculty was astounded at my temerity, so it’s no surprise that they put her in her feminist spike heels and gave her the whip.)
Ayers’ politics is simply business-as-usual in American colleges and universities in America. Michelle Obama is such a cliche as a product of this sort of education as hardly to be worth the comment. That is arguably the single most dire set of circumstances threatening America’s continual intellectual and political well-being. By the time the general public recognizes the thorough trashing these people are in the business of doing, it may well be too late to recover. Academic professionalism is a slow-growing plant, but without protection, it can wither with astounding speed.
The problem, among other things, is that your typical college professor is a timid soul, and has no taste for a fight. That’s why he went into academe in the first place. It’s still possible to save this biz, but it will take a willingness to endure screaming matches with feminist harridans and the Ayers types of intellectuals. And David Horowitz’ experience on American campuses give us a taste of what that sort of thing is capable of.
I’ve met Bill Ayers. He doesn’t give off the impression of a person who tried to kill people. He’s polite and follows academic decorum. He generally uses rational argument, and acts as an intellectual. Were you to meet with him on the street, you would not think of him as a terrorist. Honestly, I think Obama was just too oblivious to actually care about Ayers beyond a professional relationship. I doubt he ever bothered to ask, much like many of the UIC students who go through their academic career without knowing of the unrepentant terrorist on campus.
It’s ironic that he became such a hater of capitalism and America. His father, T. G. Ayers, was head of Commonwealth Edison, the major electric power company for Northern Illinois. It is now listed as ComEd, and its nuclear plants now run under the name Exelon. My father actually won the T. G. Ayers award while at Edison.
I have to admit that I knew nothing about Ayers before reading
the “Library” item earlier this week. I had heard of the
Weathermen somewhere, but that was about it.
Therefore, I did try to watch the Conversacion con Bill Ayers,
parte 1, but found that he really gave me the creeps, so I
flipped to Red Uakari Monkey, which sounded as if it might be
on the same topic, but was not. An ugly bald primate yes, but
a completely innocent one.
Voltimand – you’re not way wrong re Identity politics and the slow death of the humanities. I had a niece who got out of a “good” school not knowing the difference between Dostoevsky and Ira Levin. Truth to tell, though, the humanities have never been all that alive in (what I’m guessing you think was)the Golden Age. New Critics weren’t much more responsive to humanity than post-structuralists. And, btw, if you’d been to English Dept gathering in the 50s/60s you would (I believe) been appalled by the sexism on diplay. Context counts for something – the Decline may be real but the rot was within as well as without..In any case, David H. isn’t the answer. He was a third-rate New Left historian back in the day and he’s a blowhard now – Check this respone to one of his PR moves –
http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2000/08/horowitz_list.html
Please please don’t pollute a defence of the Liberal Arts with an apology for happy reactionary like Horo…
Buddy – I hear you re the Left’s failings – but fecklessness does seem to be the word to describe the Admin’s conflicted approach…What’s striking to me is not that Rummy was wrong – Anybody can be mistaken – what’s appalling is that no-one on top was willing to hash things through and deal with the apparent contradictions though the ship was sinking
Benj.
I got my Ph.D. in 1964, so I know the landscape you’re referring to. New Critics vs. post-structuralists? “Responsive to Humanity”?
This is not where the battle is at all. You don’t sound like you give much of a hoot about literary studies, which is fine with me.
That’s not the point here, in any case: the people I’m talking about are terminally raging with self-hatred, resentment, malice, and have the mentality of spoiled tantrum-prone three-year-olds imprisoned in the sagging bodies of middle-aged women. They are not pretty. They are, IOW, typical lefties who are determined to project their rage on anyone who comes along. I’m talking sociopathic symptoms here, as well as simply not very bright.
Omega-Paladin:
Ayers’ father was–don’t tell me–a rich, important, wealthy capitalist? And Ayers is angry at rich, important, wealthy capitalists?
Check out one of the major discursive ticks of lefties and feminists: sooner or later they’re going to regale you with the story of either (1) their lousy childhoods and how they hate their parents; (2) some really terrible thing that happened when they were adolescents, like (this is a true story) not winning an academic prize in high school, a non-win which was, of course, clearly unjust. And she never got over it–been raging at the “injustices” of capitalist society ever since.
The academic literature has made a literary sub-sub-genre of the dire childhood/adolescent stories of these people. Just read the prefaces to their books. The woman who is now chair of my former department includes–where are these peoples’ self-knowledge?–a story about how her mother doesn’t appreciate the fact that she has a Ph.D., and daughter is still raging about that. That’s in the preface to her first and only book-length piece of scholarship. It’s pathetic.
This is one reason why it’s so impossible to reason with them on the particular gripes they throw in your face–because these gripes are only displacements of something that happened when they were ten.
Yes, it really is that absurd, that ridiculous.
Ayers talks in a calm, reasoned way? Acts like an intellectual? And that impresses you? Been there, done that for almost half a century.
Great stuff, Voltimand, keep it up!
—
Benj,
I take it from your non-response that you are not going to let Freddoso’s well-documented truths into your cranium to interfere with the Obama fantasies that now reside there?
i second doug re voltimand –he’s going where angels fear to tread, the psychology of a certain sort of identity so in need of affirmation that it constructs a parallel world where the first order of reality is the reality of emotion, where the more emotion, the more affirmation, the more affirmation, the less important the non-self part of the universe.
Reading about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge goals SOOO reminds me of the Port Huron Statement.
I’m on the same page with Whiskey about what I call the “Bulls@t Elite.” They maintain their power by their ability to convince other Americans that their self interest is not their self interest.
The big advantage of American democracy over the years has been that we can replace our elites without having to kill them. We’re seeing that replacement process playout today with the demise of the NYT and network TV. Next to bastion to storm – the tenure system!
Voltimand, bravo! Bracing posts, like a fresh wind. You are so right about those personalities. Most people on the Left are mentally sick, and adolescent through and through. Except for the hard-cores, who are stone cold killers. Brings to mind perhaps the finest political one-liner of all time, from the great James Burnham: “The difference between a Liberal and a Communist is that the Communist knows what he’s doing.”
Now on which side of that fault line do we find Soros and Ayers and BHO? Dem hacks like Pelosi and Kerry are on the other side.
As for Benj. Nice to see him back, but about this:
Obama clearly believes in Democracy in America. Read his books and observe his career in the State Senate and U.S. Senate.
Dude, believes in democracy??? He has not won a single election legitimately. They were won by stealth and deceit and quasi-legal tactics (Alinsky, ya’ll). And he has apparently done quite the same thing with his caucus “victories.” He’s a schemer, not a dreamer.
ot, but riveting reading, reminiscent of
“Gates of Fire”
-My Long War – Dexter Filkins -
Benj,
I am looking forward to sitting down to Captain West’s writings. His perspective, given where he has been and what he has been, should prove a worthwhile comparison to say General Pace’s observations. And a breath of fresh air, opposed to observations which may not be so worthy of the time or effort required to read them.
Just an observation…,
Marx is descriptive, Lenin (and Stalin and Trotsky) are prescriptive. Alas no patient can survive such quackery, and unlike the plague, there has been found no useful application for it, either as a benign or invasive agent. What SDS evolved from I am unsure, what it was turned into was a violent Leninist effort. The effort failed, the reasons had less to do with the application as they did with the efforts of those who sought to apply the prescription. The patient’s condition was unchanged.
The result was the determined effort to erect a non violent application of Marxist philosophy using a revolutionary model. It is the Code Pink’s and the Soros’, and Clinton’s and resurrected Ayres’ of that movement that have wrested control of the Democratic party taking it in directions that would have FDR (he of the “temporary” Social Security plan, and a Lend Lease act that armed nations Allied in a fight against tyranny) calling foul.
I see not even a hint of FDR in Obama, but quite a generous amount of Leninism potentially in the mix. His pronouncements (and your well stated defense of them) do little to assuage my fears of his talking calmly like a College Professor, while acting recklessly (like a Bolshevik). His Father’s Dreams are not at all the Dreams of my forefathers, and forebears. His version of Democracy as practiced by Acorn in Washington State, and by the DNC in determining a “presumptive” candidate, is not my vision of Democracy in action. “OH”s version of the land of opportunity appears to be a spoils abetting, favors spreading machine abetting arrangement to me. It may not even be a fact, but it has not been disproved only ignored. Objections are not faced but rather they are sidestepped. In point of fact even more questions are raised in the act of running the things down. How am I to ask my representatives, the military, my children, or my wife to trust the policies of the man, when I do not find him worthy of my nations trust?
Why is it so difficult to make the case successfully that Barack Obama is a socialist/Marxist? The influences in his life are there which establish that he was exposed to it. His first book, “Dreams of My Father,” is full of praise and approval of that ideology. He received several years of mentoring in Communist ideology from Frank Marshall Davis. He admits that in college he deliberately chose to stick close to Marxist professors. And the list goes on and on. There is so much there.
Yet, it is difficult to make the case that he is one. Why?
DENIAL
In pursuit for my own publication purposes, I have discovered some ideological components of left-wing rapaciousness that generally stay–deservedly–b/t the covers of some standard sociology texts.
(1) “Relative Deprivation”: The notion that whatever you have that I don’t have I desire because you have it and I don’t, and therefore I believe that I don’t have it because you have taken it from me, and so that means that in justice (as in “social justice”) I deserve that it should be taken from you and given to me.
Sociologists who write “RD” analysis, which includes academic feminists (Faye Crosby is the main maven) as well as avowedly marxist and marxoid propagandists, take the justice claims of RD quite seriously, i.e., uncritically.
(2) Anthropological studies of envy by way of study of the cultural occurrence of “fear of the evil eye.” This fear is the projected fear of the well-off onto the not-so-well-off (RD we might say in reverse), and this fear of expropriation. The “evil eye” has a firmly-established history in anthropological studies, and as far as I know was first applied sociologically by German sociologist Helmut Shoeck, who argued that envy is the main thing which marxism/socialism are designed to prevent. It is prevented by making sure that everyone is “equal” by being made equally poverty-stricken.
My own wrinkle, not discovered so far in studies of envy in either field, is the voyeurism inherent in the “evil eye” syndrome. Can people blind from birth be envious? I don’t know; maybe.
In any case, feminism’s envy and resentment are right out there in plain sight. They are pathetic people, and as one early (1950s) sociological article on envy pointed out, medieval representations of envy are pictures of people with elongated skinny necks. They are people who can never get enough nourishment, and consequently are continually hungry. Envy as one deadly sin is thus a version of another, namely gluttony: eating, i.e., desiring possessions the appetite for which is never sated.
Much of the anger of lefties is the unappeasable rage of the envious. as shown by
(3) French literary critic and philosopher, Rene Girard (who may still be alive). He invented the notion of “mimetic” (i.e., imitative) desire”: a major theme in all French fiction from De Sade to Sartre. People who only desire what someone else desires, because it is the latter’s desire that makes the desired object desireable. That means that the other’s desire puts him in the position of a rival for possession.
All of this comes back to relative deprivation again. The “relatively deprived” exist mentally in a world of scarcity, where the pies are always small, and anyone who gets a piece does so at someone else’s expense.
Feminists make a point of saying that the power and prestige that males possess they possess because females don’t possess it. And so: the logic is impeccable–the only way to get what males possess that feminists desire is to take it from males.
And, oh: did I mention that feminists are psychologically enclaved to males?
Yet, it is difficult to make the case that he is one. Why?
For the same reason that other things can hide in plain sight. Examples of similar objects include “Don’t question my patriotism”. “Criticizing radical Islam is hurtful hate speech.” “Asking me these questions is a form of McCarthyism”. “Anyone who questions this is climate criminal.” The procedure is simple: you disconnect discourse from reason. Evidence plays no part because everything is political. And once everything is political then it is all a matter of who shouts the loudest; who has the biggest gang; who owns the streets.
My own misgivings about Obama arise precisely from the type of defense he employs: they are fascistic and antidemocratic. Now some will say it’s just his overenthusiastic followers, but if so, what sort of leader is he if he follows his followers?
According to the AP, the UIC library documents re: Ayers are going to be releasesd:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Obama-Records.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
wretchard,
Good points made in answer to my question. I raised the question because in real life during the last few weeks several people have either mocked my claim or dismissed me out of hand. Won’t even give me a chance to defend my assertion with facts that, taken as a whole, create the gestalt of Obama’s intellectual formation and policy preferences. And I think I have some credibility because I used to be a Marxist, so I know ‘em when I see ‘em. Lots of people miss the clues.
“Hiding in plain sight.” It can be done in the kind of culture we now live in.
Benj: anyone who writes a 400-page memoir when he is an unknown is….. an egomaniac.
When Ayers talks in a calm, reasoned way about he has no regrets about bombing buildings and causing people to be killed, you think that makes him….rational?
Does Achmedinajad seem rational to you?
@voltimand: “My own wrinkle, not discovered so far in studies of envy in either field, is the voyeurism inherent in the “evil eye” syndrome. Can people blind from birth be envious? I don’t know; maybe.”
–bet the plot lines of tv penetration and new dissatisfaction would match like railroad tracks.
Another catch phrase:
“This discussion isn’t helping my kids.”
It’s hard to say what the average American pictures as a “Marxist”. The heavy -handed thuggery of Soviet Russia? The ant-like obedience of Communist China under Mao? The bombastic rhetoric of Fidel?
These were all primitive variations on a theme. But whenever the true Marxist appears, they usually promise utopia on earth, “progressive” economic reforms (aggressive wealth re-distribution), some variation on the fight agains ‘fascism’ (whatever the patriarchal authority stucture is at the given moment), “social justice” (my favorite; what is social justice?), and equal rights for all. Really? Equal rights for the people you just heavily taxed to pay off the left side of the economic bell-curve for voting you in? How do you impose “social justice” on people that don’t want it without messing with their “inalienable rights” ?
My children are impressed by Obama. He’s cool, hip and handsome. Me, not so much.
maybe an egomaniac, but at the age, for sure a platform builder establishing an identity. this is a real machine.
It’s announced, Biden
I found the secret tape of Obama and Ayers deciding what to do about press inquiries about the files at the University of Illinois, see 4:55 on.
Biden, and Romney. One guy with great hair, the other with a bungled cabbage patch/chia pet implant.
E Nigma – First post that seems to speak to my little point re what is a “Marxist” (other than a term of abuse used lazily by too many posters here). Folks are really hanging loose on this front. Wade – Calling the Clintons “Marxists” just empties the term of any hint of meaning. Robert Rubin was his key economic advisor, no? His best buds are billionaires and he was the guy who (famously) finished off the New Deal. Clinton was a status quoer – era of big gov is over – not a radical newbie like Roosevelt. It’s also hard to see how you can turn Soros into Marx’s bedfellow. Soros is an echt rep of (late) finance capital. He surely has a Karl for a hero. But it’s Popper not Narx. That’s the source of his faith in “Open Societies” and his constant celebration of the method of “falsification”…One more – You mention the origins of SDS – THe Port Huron Statement (founding doc of SDS) wasn’t close to being a Marxist document if (as seems to be the case here) one assumes that Marxism means some version of economic determinism…Tom Hayden et al could be abused for their lack of class consciousness. (And their socialist elders in the labor movement did just that – along with unsuccessfully guilting them for not taking a harder line against Communism.) Down the line many SDSers would be played – and play themselves – for being too bourgie. So a guy like Ayers ended up trying to go macho since he couldn’t be prole-ier than thou – BTW – noticed a couple of posters mixed me up with someone who noted that Ayers now seems polite and professorial. Didn’t say that myself though it’s all true. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of abuse from academic leftists. A lot censorious types out there (as Voltiman will affirm). Ayers isn’t one of them – he doesn’t come on as a quasher or someone who assumes everyone who disagrees with him is a sell-out…He was once a little Totalitarian – His politics still suck but at this point, his democratic instints beat those of many folks on the left (and right)…
I notice that Wretch is still affirming that OBama is “hiding in plain sight” – but – 6 months down the line – still no indication the Cat has bothered to read the guy’s memoir. O is not hiding – He is a liberal in a great tradition. (That reminds me – Wade – you remember FDR’s phrase – “economic royalists” – Who is their candidate? – It ain’t OBama!) Modern liberals have never have been contemptuous of Marx’s insights though they know the Old Moor’s writing is so powerful that it’s dangerous. Fools rush in…
And on that front – Re Wretch assertions about O’s “fascistic” behavior – Thought Mr. R. Reilly had put paid to the Hitler = Obama equations here a while back but it don’t stop – BTW – Hope they release those Foundation reoords – But if you guys want a Foundation horror story, might read the opening of Tom Frank’s new book – Lovely bit about how the Apartheid era South AFrican gov financed an important right wing Foundation that gave us Jack Abramowitz (among others).
Voltiman – You’re right I’ve never been committed to literary scholarship (though Auerbach’s Mimesis is still It for me). I do know a little about the modern history of the humanities – and English in particular – both in the U.S. and in the UK. If you try this piece http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2006/09/late_in_his_lif.html, you’ll see I really had no choice in the matter. Family business…Osmosis…W.E.
Doubt I should back-off entirely on my line re the rot within adademic Old Boys’ networks – Here’s a graph by a REAL feminist – not one of the careerist ones – that might speak to you…It comes near the end of a piece about a hagiographic film treatment of NEw York intellectuals – THe author – Ellen Willis (originary radical feminist and New Journalist – wrote ..
I found myself wishing I could have talked to Dorman about my experience as a student at Barnard in the early 60s. ONe of the attractions of Barnard was suppposed to be the opportunity to take courses at Columbia, and I, as an English major, was naturally eager to take courses with such giants in the earth as Lionel Trilling and F. W. Dupee. I was told, however, that the English Dept faculty had a policy of not allowing women in their classes because our presence would distract from the seriousness of the learning that went on there. The shameless bluntness of the assertion – the absence of any impulse to obscure with euphemism – still strikes me as breathtakingly rude, even in a pre-feminist context. Nearly as much as the discriminatory policy itself , it gets at what was corrupt about the authority to which the Trillings and their collegagues felt entitled, and why their horror of the student rebels’ incivility rang so false. Any honest account of the New York Intellectuals must acknowledge that corruption and give the ’60s cultural radicals their due…
Willis was no ressentiment-monger – She didn’t roll with all post-60s assaults on Authority in the classroom. But history is a, ah, bitch. Simplistic Decline of Culturalism won’t quite do…Hey – Does this pudding have a theme? Not enough of one…
PS Glad to hear Peter isn’t cursing me for showing my face again – For real!
Tried to submit a post a few mintues ago – no go…Too long to retype so…wondering wha’happen…
“Yet, it is difficult to make the case that he is one. Why?”
Because the DNC calls it ‘progressive’.
On the “real wretchard” question above, it was evident to me by reading the post that the writer is Wretchard (not the cat). I’ve even saved it in a little cribsheet for such a concise definition of Leninism and the so-called Progressives.
“My health care? political.
My privacy? political.
My food and its safety? political.
My car’s efficiency? political.
My kids’ public education? political.
My bank’s security? political.
It’s ALL politics.”
How about exchanging the word “political” for the words “state violence“.
Well Wade – since you guys seem to be stuck on words – have to say the notion that the Clinton – who finished off the New Deal legacy – or George Soros – echt representative (of late) finance capital -are “Marxist” empties all meaning from the word. Soros has a fave Karl – but it’s Popper not Marx. That’s why he bows to the “Open Society” and repeatedly invokes the the “method” of falsification. Popper, as it happens, was one of the best critics of Marx’s historical materialism. Mash-ups sometimes get you somewhere – but conflation is not comprehension. RE FDR – Occurs to me I should pass on one mix-up that might give you a useful angle on the past – Back in the 70′s there was n Italian Red sect who held there was one dictatorship of the proletariat in history – FDR’s. That’s crazy, of course. But might be closer to the truth than your vision – Do you know the phrase “Clear it with Sidney.” That’s what FDR used to say after discussions of domestic policy matters – That Sid was Hillman. Labor leader and straight-up socialist…BTW – I’d LOVE it if I could pretend Marx was simply descriptive rather than prescriptive (to use your terms) – Fits my heavy anti-Leninism. Unfortunately it’s not true. Marx should turn your world-view upside down (unless you are a working class boy/girl) – and it’s good to see things through his eyes(dangerous too). But he wasn’t a natural-bron democrat. It’s amazing how few there are actually…
Notice a couple folks assuming that I was the one who said Ayers was polite and professorial – Not in this thread – but it’s probably true. THough I got under his skin at a public occasion a few years back. WE had sharp back and forths about the movie “The Deerhunter” – an American classic (in my mind) and pretty Marxist too. Ayers (as you can imagine) hated the film. But. Unlike many leftist academics, he was not way censorious – And, though it was his turf, he didn’t engage in anti-democratic modes of rhetoric. He actually seemed to enjoy the argufying – Even/Especially because he’s not used to it…Ayers was a little Hitler at one point in his life – but I think his moral instincts are better now. World-view is still way wack. But then so is Cedarforth’s. My experience is is that sometimes folks with extreme political opinions are not unworthy adversaries…Don’t mean to bring it all back to O – but he knows that too…
RE – “Hiding in plain site.” But O isn’t hiding. Wretch just doesn’t want to know – Still ain’t read the guy’s memoir, right? There’s no mystery here. O isn’t a “Marxist” – or even a Socialist (I think that’s what ya’ll mean)…He’s a liberal in the grand tradition – Like the oldies but goodies – Trilling etc. – He knows no-one can dismiss insights of “radicals” though only fools rush in…
Voltimand – You’re right I’m not heavy into lit scolarship etc.( though I’ll always be locked on Auerbach’s Mimesis.) – But I do know a little about the history of Humanities and “English” in the US and UK as you’ll see if you make glance at this piece – http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2006/09/late_in_his_lif.html – No choice really – Family business – Osmosis…
Don’t think I”ll back off m y point re the rot from within the Old Boys’ networks back in the day – Since you remember the 60′s, see if this remembrance by a true feminist – Ellen Willis – speaks to you. Willis was talking back to a hagiographic film treatment of New York Intellectuals…
“I found myself wishing I could have talked back to [filmmaker] Dorman about my own experience as a student at Barnard in the early ’60s. One of the attractions of Barnard was supposed to be the opportunity to take courses at Columbia, and I, as an English major, was naturally eager to take courses with such giants in the earth as Lionel Trilling and F. W. Dupee. I was told, however, that the English Department faculty had a policy of not allowing women in their classes because our presence would distract from the seriousness of the learning that went on there. The shameless bluntness of this assertion -= the absence of any impulse to obscure it with euphemism – still strikes me as breathtakingly rude, even in a pre-feminist context. Nearly as much as the disciminatory policy itself. It gets at what what was corrupt about the authority to which the Trillings and their colleagues felt entitled, and why their horror of the student rebels’s t inciviliy rang so false. Any honest account of the New York intellectuals’ must acknowledge that corruption and give the ’60s radicals their due…”
History is a, ah, bitch.
history i’d say is first a snitch and only later perhaps a bitch. The snitch is, the golden fleece that keeps Marxism alive even in the face of the fairly numerous crashed experiments (crashed experiments that’ve already added untold human misery to the debit side of the ledger, with zero prospect of accumulating sufficient assets to ever balance, even in the fullness of infinity), is “so far it has always been anti-democratic, thus not really ever tested”. Accepting en arguendo that premise, skipping over the giant “why izzat?” question, and assuming the USA is a perfect democratic socialist Marxist state (stipulating consent of the governed evidenced by regular open elections and no secret police breaking the Constitution and Bill of Rights), how ya gonna get re-elected with a crappy eceonomy, and how ya gonna have a good one without incentive to produce? How ya gonna have a classless society without upward mobility? What merit system will replace the capitalist merit system? Without these forces producing wealth, how ya gonna make the system care for the people?
You know, America is the best Marxism yet on the planet, already, as is –and would be even better at it without the constant attack of “marxists” (really, false marxists) who in degrading capitalism first destroy Marx’s fundamental principle: a proletariate that owns the means of production. USA does this via an incentive system (free to join or not) which creates upward wealth mobility with which workers can choose to buy in ownership incrementally via the public corporate organization of the means of production (property).
Now THAT’s a system, brother!
Seriously unimpressed with the demonstrated sexism of Trilling and Dupee, for Christ’s sake. So what? You honestly think complaints like this one is where people like Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, the NOW people, Brownmiller, et al. their little carbon-copy munchkins are? MacKinnon is on record saying that all heterosexual males are sadomasochists b/c all heterosexual sex is sadomasochism. I was personally read the riot act by a feminist “professional colleague” when way back when some looney shot up some women with an automatic weapon in Montreal and said he did it because they were “feminists.” I was personally responsible, of course, because I was a heterosexual male. We’re talking about people who are terminally (literally) POed.
These women don’t give a damn about “sexism” though they use the word a lot because they’re mentally lazy. As per my post above on envy, these people are psychologically enslaved to males because whatever you envy your desire and whatever you desire controls you.
They talk about “equality” and “power” and “dominance” and “hierarchy” because they believe that they have been seriously deprived of what is their right by way of their having been “relatively deprived” (q.v.). It isn’t a question of withheld equality,it’s a question of desire. And consistent with the history of envy ever since Rousseau articulated the notion of “having more than others” is a bad thing in his essay on inequality, relative deprivation has been mistaken for denial of political equality.
The trouble with current 2nd and 3rd-wave feminists is they are only deprived of what they don’t possess (we both and all of us know, of course, that all males have it all), and the only things they desire is what they don’t possess. As Rene Girard showed in “Deceit and Desire in the Novel” apropros Stendhal and Proust (should have mentioned his unacknowledged mentor Sartre as well–Being and Neant holds that relative deprivation is the heart of all human relationships-) the characters in these novels only value and desire things and people which are out of their reach. Gain them, they fall instantly in value, ennui sets in, and you have nothing left to do if you’re a woman but become a feminist. This is the secret doctrine of Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique”: bored housewives think that if they’re “liberated” they’ll be happier. As Friedan unwittingly shows, bored housewives are constitutionally incapable of happiness.
So this young lady goes to a snob school and discovers–wow!–that it’s full of snobs, part of whose snobbism is manifested by not allowing females in specific classes. I wouldn’t call that “sexism”. I’d call that poetic justice.
Buddy – we touched on these issues in the past and I don’t entirely disagree – Key thing though re Marx – He got there first when it comes to explaining the sheer wierdness of a system founded on the selling of labor power rather than on a specific skill or a crafted product. That’s why his stuff will ALWAYS have something to teach folks who have no choice but offer up human TIME for sale… History may not simply be the history of class struggle – But Time is Tough. And if you’re on the line dealing with a speed-up – Marx will have more to say to you in that minute than any other dismal scientist…
Volt – you’re well-named! Look – I had my run-ins with bourgie academic feminists too. But – unlike you – the hurt is not so fresh. Maybe because I realized academe was not for me 25 years ago. (Not that I really had a shot at it anyway – there were no jobs when I came out of school…) The “young lady” – in question – Ellen Willis – was one of the inventors of second wave feminism. Her “sex-positive” stance was always at odds with Cathy Mac and Dworkin – She stayed radical – (and didn’t envy anyone – in part because she was smarter than just about everyone) – I’ll cut and paste a short piece she wrote about Rushdie from the 70′s…If you check it, I’m guessing you’ll see she was a wise and prophetic writer who probably doesn’t deserve your condescension. Oh yeah – re all the Frogs you mention. Had to rearrange their faces – Stendhal? Proust? the Divine Marquis? – Maybe Sartre might fit (barely) into a discussion of the origins of identity politics in the American Academy. But there’s no need to go to the West Bank…Just go directly to the Bank. In the 60s there were more working class kids in (relatively) toney schools. They were disproportinately involved in radical activties – The Ivies certainly shut that down – Class dismissed. Show us the Money if you’re getting into a “snob” school. Class-bound Identity politics became the only “radical” game …Might read Tom Frank (who’s a fine critic of ID politics himself) and you’ll see that the rise of the Reaganism which happened on the watch of the identitarians was a rather more consequential event in the history of monied human meanness than the emergence of Take Back the Night Rallies…Here’s the Willis piece.
Before the War
This piece first appeared in 1989 in the Village Voice.
By Ellen Willis
Make no mistake: Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for Salman Rushdie’s execution is not simply a piece of lunatic demagogy directed at an individual, but a serious act of political intimidation with far-reaching consequences. The Iranian head of state has declared war – quite literally – on Western secular, democratic institutions. He has rallied his international troops in his most daring bid yet to extend the power of Islamic theocracy beyond his own country, even beyond the Moslem world, by force. Do the people and the governments supposedly committed to democratic values have the will to fight back?
Already Khomeini has won a few battles. Rushdie can hardly be blamed for going into hiding, and perhaps it’s too much to expect of his publishers that they go on with his book tour as a protest, with a video or audio tape of Rushdie taking his place. But Vikings’ craven statement that they never intended to offend anyone by publishing Rushdie’s book and “very much regret the distress the book has caused” is inexcusable. So is the action of the Waldenbooks, the country’s largest books chain in taking Satanic Verses off the shelves. (As the company’s executive vice-president, Bonnie Predd, sententiously put it: “We’ve fought long and hard against censorship. But when it comes to the safety of our employees, one sometimes has to compromise.” (How about simply offering any nervous employee a few days off.?) In France, Presses de la Cite, Rushdie’s publisher, has ‘postponed’ publication of the French edition (you remember France, home of Voltaire, but more recently the drug company that tried to scuttle the abortifacient RU 486 under pressure from anti-abortion activists). Nor will the West German house Keipenheuer and Witsch publish Rushdie’s book as scheduled.
There is no indication that the world’s governments are taking Khomeini’s move as seriously as it deserves. Britain has made the strongest statement, which nonetheless falls short of declaring that officially putting a price on the head of a British author exercising the right to free speech in his own country is an act of war against Britain and will be viewed as such. The United States has confined itself to a routine condemnation of terrorism. Canada gets the prize for moral oafishness. Revenue Canada, a government customs and taxation agency, has temporarily banned further imports of the Rushdie book, pending an investigation of the possibility that it contains “hate literature” (the ban was announced the first day of Canada’s National Freedom To Read Week). Will Britain, the U.S., or anyone else move to bring this issue before the United Nations? If they do, is there any chance the UN will vote for meaningful sanctions against Iran? And if not, will those Western nations that call themselves democracies get together to impose sanctions on their own, The last two questions are, I’m afraid, rhetorical.
The attack on Rushdie and the anemic response to it are not occurring in a vacuum. Democratic secularism is increasingly vulnerable to a religious fundamentalism that in all its forms – Christian, and Jewish as well as Islamic – is increasingly feeling its power. And Western governments, far from resisting anti-democratic absolutism, have been abetting it. The Thatcher government has enthusiastically pursued its own censorship of books and other media. The U.S. has, of course, been in bed with fundamentalist Christianity since the election of Jimmy Carter. The Reagan administration never got too exercised about violent attacks on abortion clinics, refusing to include them in its antiterrorist rhetoric, the political climate surrounding abortion has become so intimidating that no American drug company has been willing to test RU 486, must less market it. Our government also supports, on the grounds of the right to freedom and self-determination, the fundamentalist guerrillas in Afghanistan, who – if, as now seems likely, they end up in power – may make Khomeini look mellow. Is there anything left of the West’s loudly proclaimed commitment to freedom that goes beyond such ironies? More and more that question, too, begins to seem rhetorical.
“Well Wade – since you guys seem to be stuck on words -”
It is a communication device sort of thing, and tend to be more precise than plain old un-refined feeling.
On Marxism, It is my observation having waded through Hegel and Marx in my youth, that Marx even in his “interventions” was descriptive of a philosophical socialism and economic approach opposed to what we call capitalism. Revolutionary application does not necessitate violence, hence the description of the weathermen’s and Lenin’s, etc., application of socialism as violent. But I cannot agree with socialism in any event, be it German Humanistic Hegelianism, be it the prescriptive as in the violent Stalinist approach or manipulative as is more descriptive of the style of Lenin, yada, yada, yada, all the other variations of the theme none of which work as they are not practical applications nor well reasoned approaches to individual human needs or yearning and not only can they not anticipate (what model can) they are incapable of adjusting to changing technological or societal conditions. Like Joe Biden and for that matter like Sid Hillman, it gets stuck on itself while humanity must move on.
Lenin being prescriptive would not allow society to reach that progression, Marx would. Stalin (and Saddam too) would just murder everyone who objected.
BTW, I don’t believe Clinton ended the FDR Legacy, although he presided over a part of that Legacy’s reversal. An honest appraisal of benefits (demanded and orchestrated by Newt G. and the contract) did put an end to excesses of one portion of his legacy, and that enacted mainly by LBJ and a democratic majority in the house and senate.
As for Soros and his embrace of Popper, I’d say the odor has been falsified, too. While I think I mainly get Popper, I don’t know if I can or want to understand what kind of kick ol’ George is on. Seems neo-cons were roasted (deservedly so) for similar, but more blatantly stupid statements about means of progress. I would equate his application of Open society to more of a Leninist manipulation. Yeah, I am sure there are great and grand differences to be dissected, but I don’t believe the result of Soros approach would be much different from the result Lenin ended up with. Human nature trumps them both.
benj, my friend, if the boss speeds up the production line, it either helps or hurts the enterprise. If it helps, and you own some share, you have incentive to requite your grievance. If it hurts the company, than it is you and the owner (or other the owners if you own a share) against the manager responsible for the damage. If it helps the company but you find no stake in that, then you need to resign and seek other employment.
a production line exists to make a profit, so that it can have started up in the first place, and so it can run again tomorrow.
It is nice when commercial life and spiritual life integrate. An integrated life is a worthy ambition for any and all. The preparing of oneself for such, and the application of oneself to such a goal, is the way of living that gives a person a feeling of accomplishment.
A feeling of accomplishment is central to dignity & self-esteem because it is yours, it has come to you from inside you, it is your creation, you created it, control it, & maintain it with your being.
What can be bestowed upon you from outside, great tho it may be for many reasons, will be an artifact of the fear, greed, or love of others –yours by whim or threat or luck –and it can never generate that same feeling.
I’m not going anywhere with that –except to say that any philosophy that doesn’t incorporate the spirit –substitutes say the material dialectic –can’t be a philosophy, can be only a political system –a weaponized political system.
“Rights” are rights to act (or not act), not rights to property. If you have a right to someone else’s property, you have a right to the person himself, and someone else has a right to what’s yours –and YOU.
Now, given the fact of ‘time’ (as you have introduced it) and the fact that a 20 year old will be a 60 year old, what except private property law –or a secret police operating per strongman’s whim –will let that 20 year old keep what he needs to make a family with, rather than giving it up to the 60 year old (see ‘social security’) who has the superior right to it by law –but morally, having already raised his family, will soon –very soon –be killing the nation by taking it?
Is this why the collective has always in the end needed truncheons and dungeons and capos and gulags, and alchohol, and early death, and low birth, and high suicide rates?
How does this reflect on our entitlement spending? Isn’t ‘time’ –thru Social Security and Medicare –going to collectivize us?
Isn’t the in-progress doubling (possibly –check Fan Fred books) of the national debt to rescue social-justice Depression-era Democratic party fortresses such as Fannie & Freddie, not to mention Sallie (which has acted to raise college costs at twice the CPI for decades now) already socialist enough? Can USA go any further without becoming a state which owns its people, rather than a people who own their state?
Social justice? Ever less upward mobility? Ever less true security? Ever fewer jobs? ever less hope for a better future? Ever less ability to finance a new family? This is social justice?
What happened to the truer democratic state we used to have? Beat to its knees by Progressives? “Progress” toward what?
Yes, the state can do very much of what the private does –but generally at about twice the cost. Look it up –you get on average about fifty cents worth of services for the dollar you send to DC. What nation can prosper –or even maintain itself –in the no-more-cheap-energy future, with that big a drag on its growth margins? We’re on the fast track to the third world if our socialists don’t quit posing as the result rather than the cause of our fade.
Hey Wade – Check the Open Society’s line on its founder Soros at the bottom of this email – Sure it’s self-promotion but – for real – Is there ANY way to get to Lenin from there…And just so we’re clear I read the posts here re Soros’ morally problematic actions as a 13 year old who may have put other refugee Jews at risk – He is not a hero of mine – Chiefly because I’m not big on currency manipulators – Nor do I think epistemlogy is the root of all good – but making over Soros into a Leninist (or Marxist or Socialist) is just willful. It’s like Jonah and that whale of BS – “Liberal Fascism.”…
Quickie Buddy – Hear you re dangers of statism but I don’t share you libertarian assumptions. That GOP famtasy the government is necesarily Bad and the Market-Is-Kingdom gave us Brownie, Alphonso, Iraq Reconstruction and K-Street lobbyists writing non-regulations (and Delay’s earmarks)…Hear you re the call of the spirit – but that doesn’t obviate Marx’s Truth and Time. Check the great essay on “Factory Work” by Simone Weil – Mystic (and Marxist of a sort)…Very DEEP thinker. Not someone who would have let you slip the following sentence re the speedup past her (or yourself) – - “If it helps the company but you find no stake in that, then you need to resign and seek other employment.” Buddy – can you spare a dime? I’m reminded of a passage from a black comic advice manual for the unemployed –
1. Maximize your employment. Bargain from a position of strength.
Follow the plan (precisely) and you will eventually get a job. But how do you capitalize on the moment and get that really good salary you deserve. THe secret is to get multiple offers. Don’t hop on the first taxi headed your way. Wait till you see a bunch of taxis barreling down the street before you stick your hand out. Competition lets you set the tone. It’s a supply and demand thing. OF course if only one potential employer is interested, then this simply won’t work and neither should you.
PS Buddy – If Weil hasn’t been on your wavelength – there’s a pretty good Wiki entry on her – GREAT mind/soul/writer…A head capable of reconciling Marx and Catholicism/Judaism and more…
George Soros
Founder and Chairman
A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler’s Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country’s Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank.
Philosophy
At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Specifically, Soros’s experience of Nazi and Communist rule attracted him to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in which he maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.
Finance
In 1956, Soros immigrated to the United States. He worked as a trader and analyst until 1963. During this period, Soros adapted Popper’s ideas to develop his own “theory of reflexivity,” a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.
Philanthropy
As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to help foster the development of open societies. In 1979, Soros provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Soon he created a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and the country’s transition to democracy. (One of his projects imported photocopy machines that allowed citizens and activists in Hungary to spread information and publish censored materials.) Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe. Bolstered by the success of these projects, Soros created more programs to assist the free flow of information. He supported educational radio programs in Mongolia and later contributed $100 million to provide Internet access to every regional university in Russia.
The magnitude and geographical scope of his philanthropic commitments, coupled with the core principle of fostering open societies, has allowed Soros to transcend the limitations of many national governments and international institutions. During the 1980s, Soros financed a trip by young economists at a reform-minded think tank in China to a business university in Budapest; he also established a grantmaking foundation in China to foster civil society and transparency. In 1991, he helped found the Central European University, a graduate institution in Budapest that focuses on social and political development. Soros spent $50 million to help the citizens of Sarajevo endure the city’s siege during the Bosnian war, funding among other projects a water-filtration plant that allowed residents to avoid having to draw water from distribution points targeted by Serb snipers. Most recently, he has provided $50 million to support the Millennium Villages initiative, which seeks to lift some of the least developed villages in Africa out of poverty.
In 1993, Soros created the Open Society Institute, which supports the Soros foundations working to develop democratic institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Despite the breadth of his endeavors, Soros is personally involved in planning and implementing many of the foundation network’s projects. His visionary efforts have produced a remarkable record of successful philanthropy, including efforts to free developmentally challenged people from life-long confinement in state institutions, to provide palliative care to the dying, to win release for prisoners held without legal grounds in penitentiaries in Nigeria, to halt the spread of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, to create debate societies, to promote freedom of the press, and to help resource-rich countries establish mechanisms to manage their revenues in a way that will promote economic growth and good governance rather than poverty and instability.
In 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was one of his main priorities. During the 2004 campaign, he donated significant funds to various groups dedicated to defeating the president.
Publications
In 2006, Mr. Soros published The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of The War on Terror (Public Affairs, 2006). His previous books include The Bubble of American Supremacy (2005); George Soros on Globalization (2002); Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Opening the Soviet System (1990); and The Alchemy of Finance (1987). His essays on politics, society, and economics appear frequently in major periodicals around the world.
Soros has received honorary degrees from the New School for Social Research, Oxford University, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world.
George Soros’s political activities are wholly separate from the Open Society Institute. Read an official OSI statement on this subject.
For more information about George Soros’s activities that are separate from the Open Society Institute, visit http://www.georgesoros.com.
You can access this page at the following URL:
http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros
©2008 Open Society Institute. All rights reserved. 400 West 59th Street | New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. | Tel 212 548-0600
Hey Wade – Got to push back on the Soros – Check the account of his career below from the OSI home-page – Self-promo aside – how the hell can you get to Lenin from there? Run that line by folks who know from Charter 77! And look, I read the posts here a while back re Soros’s problematic actions as a 12 year old that may have hurt fellow refugee Jews. He’s no hero of mine. Chiefly because I’m not a big fan of currency traders. But it’s just willful to hook him up with Leninisn, Marxism, Socialism. You’re floating out there with Jacob and that whale of BS – “Liberal Fascism” – But now I’m thinking you shouldn’s waste your material – Fox and Regnery (sp?) could come calling…”The Real George Soros – The Leninist Within” – What the Hey – Whiskey & Doug would buy it!
Buddy – hear you re dangers of statism – though I don’t share your libertarian, ah, ethos. The faith (cultivated by a hundred right-wing think tanks/foundations) that gov is necessarily bad and Market-is-Kingdom gave us Brownie, Alphonso, Iraq Reconstruction and K-Street lobbyists writing regulations and Delay’s legislation/earmarks…No illusions re the failings of the Great Society but I’d take it over government designed to protect the powerful from the powerless…
Re: the Call of the Spirit – Doesn’t obviate Marx’s Truth and Time – Might check Simone Weil’s great essay on factory work from the 30s. Weil was a Soul/mind/writer for the Ages. Mystic & some kind of Marxist which she managed to reconcile with her own brand of Catholicism/Judaism – Weil was very deep thinker – And there’s one line of yours re the speed-up she wouldn’t let you slip by her (or yourself): “If it helps the company but you find no stake in that, then you need to resign and seek other employment.” Buddy can you spare me a dime? Reminds me of a passage from a Black Comic riff on Advice for the Unemployed:
1. Maximize your employment: Bargain from a position of strength.
Follow the plan (precisely) and you will eventually get a job, which is a good thing. but how do you capitalize on the moment and get a really good salary that you deserve? The secret is to get multiple job offers. Don’t hop on the first taxi headed your way. Wait till you see a bunch of taxis barreling down the street before you stick your hand out.
Competition will let you set the tone. It’s a supply and demand thing. OF course if only one potential employer is interested, then this simply won’t work and neither should you.”
PS Buddy – THere’s a pretty good Wiki entry on Weil if you’re interested.(Maybe Volt will agree to agree with me about the worth of this French woman writer!) Here’s the Soros stuff for Wade…
George Soros
Founder and Chairman
A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler’s Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country’s Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank.
Philosophy
At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Specifically, Soros’s experience of Nazi and Communist rule attracted him to Popper’s critique of totalitarianism, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in which he maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.
Finance
In 1956, Soros immigrated to the United States. He worked as a trader and analyst until 1963. During this period, Soros adapted Popper’s ideas to develop his own “theory of reflexivity,” a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.
Philanthropy
As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to help foster the development of open societies. In 1979, Soros provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Soon he created a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and the country’s transition to democracy. (One of his projects imported photocopy machines that allowed citizens and activists in Hungary to spread information and publish censored materials.) Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe. Bolstered by the success of these projects, Soros created more programs to assist the free flow of information. He supported educational radio programs in Mongolia and later contributed $100 million to provide Internet access to every regional university in Russia.
The magnitude and geographical scope of his philanthropic commitments, coupled with the core principle of fostering open societies, has allowed Soros to transcend the limitations of many national governments and international institutions. During the 1980s, Soros financed a trip by young economists at a reform-minded think tank in China to a business university in Budapest; he also established a grantmaking foundation in China to foster civil society and transparency. In 1991, he helped found the Central European University, a graduate institution in Budapest that focuses on social and political development. Soros spent $50 million to help the citizens of Sarajevo endure the city’s siege during the Bosnian war, funding among other projects a water-filtration plant that allowed residents to avoid having to draw water from distribution points targeted by Serb snipers. Most recently, he has provided $50 million to support the Millennium Villages initiative, which seeks to lift some of the least developed villages in Africa out of poverty.
In 1993, Soros created the Open Society Institute, which supports the Soros foundations working to develop democratic institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Despite the breadth of his endeavors, Soros is personally involved in planning and implementing many of the foundation network’s projects. His visionary efforts have produced a remarkable record of successful philanthropy, including efforts to free developmentally challenged people from life-long confinement in state institutions, to provide palliative care to the dying, to win release for prisoners held without legal grounds in penitentiaries in Nigeria, to halt the spread of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, to create debate societies, to promote freedom of the press, and to help resource-rich countries establish mechanisms to manage their revenues in a way that will promote economic growth and good governance rather than poverty and instability.
In 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was one of his main priorities. During the 2004 campaign, he donated significant funds to various groups dedicated to defeating the president.
Publications
In 2006, Mr. Soros published The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of The War on Terror (Public Affairs, 2006). His previous books include The Bubble of American Supremacy (2005); George Soros on Globalization (2002); Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Opening the Soviet System (1990); and The Alchemy of Finance (1987). His essays on politics, society, and economics appear frequently in major periodicals around the world.
Soros has received honorary degrees from the New School for Social Research, Oxford University, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world.
George Soros’s political activities are wholly separate from the Open Society Institute. Read an official OSI statement on this subject.
For more information about George Soros’s activities that are separate from the Open Society Institute, visit http://www.georgesoros.com.
You can access this page at the following URL:
http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros
©2008 Open Society Institute. All rights reserved. 400 West 59th Street | New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. | Tel 212 548-0600
PS – Occured to me that Wretch came up with an Orwellian equation earlier in this thread that tops hooking up Soros – funder of Charter 77, Solindarnosc, Hungarian civil Society – w/ Lenin. I’m thinking of when he called Obama – an exemplar (for better or worse) of liberal mindedness “fascistic”…Think about it. He’s repeatedly defamed and spreat rumors about a andidate whose done more to revivify interest in Demos in America among young folks and (see Race Speech) heighten the character of our political discourse than any pol since Bobby K. Could it be that Wretch is the One who’s traducing American democracy?
benj, just a quickie, i’d say re soros that so complete a laudatory list, which lists every detail otherwise, but avoids the barest mention of Mr. Soros’ two most grandiose & historic achievements, that is, breaking the Pound Sterling and the Bank of England and costing millions of little savers large chunks of their working lives, and the Asian Financial Crisis which ditto’d even greater global damage to real people large & small, or his felony conviction in France for manipulating the stock of a large bank to force its sale to his own secret agent, to his great profit and many innocents’ irreplaceable loss, or his relentless advocacy of steeply higher taxation & regulation for the citizens & enterprise of America while personally conducting his own business (which trades in American assets) tax-free from Carribean tax havens, is along the same general line of crippled credibility that is your own mention above, of cases where capitalism has slopped over the legal and/or moral levee, without any allusion at all to the mighty river itself, or of the life and wealth and freedom and hope and fulfillment that it alone creates, net of course of that immeasurably tiny fraction of slop.
Slop which in any system is a byproduct of the animating dynamism and our ‘fallen’ human nature. Slop which in our open system is an anomaly, and which in closed systems IS the system –or will be soon enough.
If Soros is calling Obama names, something is misdirecting something, because the two figures share the allegiance and distribute the once and future employment of the same cast of Democratic party foreign policy heavyweights, Holbrooke, Brezinski, and Albright (among i’m sure others).
Could it be that Wretch is the One who’s traducing American democracy?
I’m not running for President.
…but, y’know, neither is Soros.
from benj’s paste:
George Soros’s political activities are wholly separate from the Open Society Institute. Read an official OSI statement on this subject.
ha ha ha — yeah –if you say so –ha ha har –jeeeeeezzzzzzz…….
that’s just too rich and SO emblematic –picture the person writing that –OSI says blah blah, right here in this OFFICIAL statement from OSI
–mercy sakes, OFFICIAL!
somebody notify the press!
Benj,
I was referring to his manipulation of the Democrat Party, not his trading performance–hence the don’t know what kind of kick he’s on. Megalomania? Perhaps. Which dovetails nicely with the DNC and the current presidential candidate… But digress, we’ve been there already, and it was determined that most of us were not waiting for anyone. Most of us in fact are too busy getting past the obstacles to progress set up by those who claim to be “progressive”(?) But that gets into that whole notion of social justice, which is IMO, truly a ridiculous way to measure progress.
I figure socialists just haven’t asked the right questions. Leninist don’t care for the answer they got and the rest of them don’t care if there is an answer or not so long as they get their way. IOW, Soros doesn’t need to run for President.
“Feminists make a point of saying that the power and prestige that males possess they possess because females don’t possess it.”
Beats havin’ to admit that they are weak, illogical and dependent. It fascinates me that they should believe that power and prestige are commodities freely exisiting, like bags of sand at the local Home Depot, rather than intangible attributes learned and earned.
the nature of reality, the reality of nature, is offensive to Superperson.
Masculinists could protest angrily that women have a monopoly on femininity. “well it’s TRUE isn’t it?”
Thanks for the links to Ayers…first time I’ve seen the wanker talk. For what it’s worth, didn’t Eric Hoffer say that many revolutionary leaders were former teachers? I wonder why; something to do with information control and manipulation, and controlling people’s thinking?…Let’s set the curriculum!
Make no mistake, fascism is a socialist phenomenon, and in their time, Mussolini and other fascists were looked up to and admired (by many people in many countries) for what they did for their societies and what they could accomplish. Obama lacks the nationalistic streak that seems to be a big part of what fascism is (something thats really kind of hard to define accurately), yet a fascist society is where he is headed.
I find it disturbing that when Obama really means something, he claims he believes it right down to his DNA (how scientific! what identity politics drech)…where’s his heart and soul? (It bespeaks a lack of imagination and intestinal/intellectual fortitude) I think, in spite of the disavowals (which ones?) and denials, his heart and soul are easily identifiable, to be found in relative plain sight (Ayers et al). For example, among other things, the rapper Ludicris, and his recent song in praise of the messiah; that was “the dark side” of fascism.
I personally don’t feel like being “mobilized” to serve his vision of what the world should be. And yes, Obama is a change agent all right…he’s going to take this 10-dollar bill in my hand and change it into a 1! ….
Buddy – Glad to have YOU push back on Soros. But (as I said) he’s not my guy – And he’s much closer to YOUR side than to Reds! For better and worse, as your eloquent – no irony – apology for Open Capitalist Societies underscores…
Appreciate your concern for those “millions of little savers” – Might consider pressing yourself a little harder there – Go back to that speed-up and realize some – Millions! – of workers you blithely advise to “resign” if they don’t like their time-on-the-cross might not have other options (even if as per Dick they might LIKE to have “other priorities”). I smiled when I read your response there. But, for real, it was heartless…Marx found more than a few folks who offered up your sort of sentiments back in the day – He made them pay for all time in his fierce footnotes. Somewhere in China right now, I bet there’s a guy sneaking a peak at one of the Old Moor’s hard lines and thinking ahead…
Wretch – you offered that “I’m not running for office” defense about 7 months ago. It was weak then – Weaker now. Be as HARD as you want on OBama. Hell, he almost made me, ah, retch, when I heard tell of cozying up to some lame tv newsman who was having a birthday – O came into the studio avec cupcake and candle. I don’t feature bow downing to suck-ups…
But when you ratchet up fears of Obama’s “fascistic” tendencies here, you’re amping up many Clubbers who are already locked on paranoid styles of politics. It’s, to use your phrase, anti-democratic.
Wretchs fascism line reminds me of a Leslie Fiedler story – Fiedler was a cultural critic who was way ahead of his time…Said/wrote many outrageously sharp things that pissed off P.C. types AND cultural conservatives..Anyway he was musing one time about how badly Germans responded to one of his lectures/panel performances. Fiedler “performed” when he was on stage – Never confused being entertaining/interesting with dumbing dowm. After the gig – one Hun explained to him – “Germans don’t like charisma.” They got an excuse…But Americans aren’t Germans. No reason to piss on a pol BECAUSE he has a gift (from God as my wife would say).
Binj
One of my favorite quotes is “Politics is a game of elegant ideas played by bullies.” That seems to be true to a significant degree, but I’d like to think that it’s not true of all political leaders (not MY guy), but I really don’t know.
The song says “I swear there ain’t no heaven but I pray there ain’t no hell.” Fear and fervency are two poles between which swings personal judgment; too close to either one tells me to check the facts. Mythology as metaphor is important, but I don’t confuse mythology as FACT.
That loud sucking sound I hear from a dearth of facts is not comforting, and facts I want to look for. Posing is still just….posing.
Between fear and fervency – That’s nice – A fam member once said he hated the political season because it turned him into a “fan” …
“…election time is self-simplification time. The temptation grows to stop being a person who thinks – a thinking being as distinguished from a fan. Somebody sustained by the habit of trying to talk back to pseudo-thought wherever it originates, in political season and out the stuff that paves the world with con.
I’m venting, of course. When you feel yourself being not so gradually massified back into the natural human mediocre state, you vent. The case is that I can’t wait for the day after Election Day and the chance to aspire to a better self.”
I’ll admit this time around I think O’s aspirational side means I won’t have to wait. But, no lies, my guy’s BS will stink as much as Mac’s. The Wind Will Carry them – With Joe – “literally” – Biden by their side. Just hope it don’t smell too bad!!!
yup – fear/fervency – two sides of a coin in a currency I would rather not trade in.
What galls the heck out of me is the willful support of grandiose actions that do not live up to their billing (OSI), have long term debilitating effect on social and cultural institutions and extremely detrimental consequences on people’s lives. Yet these schemes are lauded based on titles and reports, with out applying the same transparency to that effort which the effort asks, no demands, of its targets. Whats up with that? The OSI reads like the Immigration reform bill, and provides more opportunity for fraud than a Tax Exempt Foundation.
If you haven’t figured out what questions to ask, much less answer then perhaps you ought to be used to venting.
You fear being “massified”? And think the natural human state is mediocrity? That says a great deal about your perspective.
I don’t believe Mr. Soros methods of political manipulation, as demonstrated in his support for the activities of Code Pink and organizations of similar style, land far from the Soviet Socialist style. Yet while I recognize the struggle some would have in believing an accusation was made, the similarities as well as the differences are there. Additionally, there are fundamental differences between what Chapter 77 accomplished and OSI funded initiatives state they strive to attain. There is demonstrably more to it…than mere slop.
Wade – My bad? – Folks don’t seem to be reading too closely – course that’s probably my fault…But you’re right to notice what you noticed. Cut out another phrase re the “uses of solidarity” that separated me from the poster, my pops, who was lways more singular than moi – Better mind…less at ease with communal impulses…There are exemplare soundtracks here that are (mildly) telling – He played jazz (well) – all about cultivating his un-massified voice. I had to go disco (at a certain point). Post-60s – More fervor – and less fear – in my head/house re the collective experience…I’d have been easier, for example, than my pop in black churches…