To Dream the Implausible Dream
The problem with pretending to like something when you don’t — no let us put it more strongly — the problem with lying with a straight face is forgetting the last vestiges of your own self respect. Frederick Forsyth’s hero in the Dogs of War describes his inability to adapt to civilian life. The problem was simple. He couldn’t stomach it.
The real problem was being able to stick it out, to sit in an office under the orders of a wee man in a dark gray suit and look out of the window and recall the bush country, the waving palms, the smell of sweat and cordite, the grunts of men hauling the jeeps over the river crossings, the copper-tasting fears just before the attack, and the wild cruel joy of being alive afterward. To remember, and then to go back to the ledgers and the commuter train, that was what was impossible.
All the more reason to admire those who can stomach anything; who can put aside logic and every feeling for self in the performance of the job. Take the New York Times’ account of the second attack on State Department personnel in Benghazi.
The survivors of the assault on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, thought they were safe. They had retreated to a villa not far from the main building where the surprise attack had occurred, and a State Department team had arrived to evacuate them. The eruption of violence had ended, and now they were surrounded by friendly Libyan brigades in what seemed to be a dark, uneasy calm.
Then, shortly after 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, just as they were assembling to be taken to the airport, gunfire erupted, followed by the thunderous blasts of falling mortar rounds. Two of the mission’s guards — Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed just outside the villa’s front gate. A mortar round struck the roof of the building where the Americans had scrambled for cover.
The attackers had lain in wait, silently observing as the rescuers, including eight State Department civilians who had just landed at the airport in Benghazi, arrived in large convoys. This second attack was shorter in duration than the first, but more complex and sophisticated. It was an ambush.
“It was really accurate,” Fathi al-Obeidi, commander of special operations for a militia called Libyan Shield, who was there that night, said of the mortar fire. “The people who were shooting at us knew what they were doing.”
They also escaped, apparently uninjured.
Interviews with Libyan witnesses and American officials provide new details on the assault on American diplomatic facilities and the initial moblike attack, set off by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, that transformed into what the Obama administration now, after initial hesitation, describes as a terrorist attack …
Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that the authorities believe “this was an opportunistic attack” that “evolved and escalated over several hours.”
How do you “evolve” from a mob to a combined arms team in a few hours? How? It takes real professionalism to characterize a coordinated attack with mortars and automatic weapons involving the complex surveillance of a secret facility and the ambush of a convoy from the Benghazi airport as something that grew out of “moblike attack, set off by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad” with a straight face. And a great deal of contempt for the readers too. But the NYT is up to the job.
Yet the Gray Lady’s astounding efforts far are surpassed by the truly prodigious Andrew Sullivan who describes what President Obama will do in his second term even before he formally wins it. Obama he says, will be a second, greater but Democratic Ronald Reagan.
he will become the Democrats’ Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al-Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery …
And unlike Clinton’s constant triangulating improvisation, Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left.
Sullivan’s paragraphs are destined for greatness. It leaves one slack-jawed, unable to credit the words on the page. You have to read it twice to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. It may be quoted decades from now as a truly astonishing sample of what happens when a writer is either a scoundrel or mad — possibly both — involuntarily perhaps, in the corrosive atmosphere marking the end of the post World War 2 cultural elite which we now inhabit. The article is almost provocative in its implausibility. Yet Sullivan does it with a straight face. Maybe not because he believes it himself; but simply because it is time for the new phase.
In the past the media played favorites by shading the percentages, by adjusting and subtly manipulating the imagery to advantage their preferred candidate. This was in recognition of the fact that the American public had some hold on common sense and therefore it was inadvisable to lie to them blatantly. It was necessary to persuade them by fact, albeit shaded. But recent efforts have all the subtlety of a North Korean poster. If so the new style marks a transition from the older form of ‘news’ to straight out barking-mad propaganda.
To write propaganda you are the “wee man in a dark gray suit” hoping you don’t have to leave via the window. In classic propaganda there is no attempt at logical coherence. There is no effort to make cogent argument. It simply treats the public like cattle or a bunch of Pavlovian dogs; it dins a lie into the audience’s head until they are conditioned by repetition to accept it, even though they don’t even realize why.
Propaganda is generally an appeal to emotion, not intellect … Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political or religious agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.
Luxurious Life in the Soviet Union
See the USSR in Your ZAZ Car
The Democratic Ronald Reagan
Propaganda is often the fanfare of fascism: a loud, brassy flourish of music intended to introduce a Great Man or Event. It does not bode well, nor is it a healthy accompaniment of everyday life. And neither are the puff pieces that have proliferated in the last stages of this campaign. Propaganda is not how discourse between equals is conducted.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
If you want to colonize and take land these days you have to adopt the Israeli approach
1-Provoke
2-Provoke
3-Provoke
4-When you get a reaction then massively retaliate
-it works for them
Sullivan has been a socialist mole for a long time among conservatives and Catholics-now he is out of the closet and showing his true colors-good.
The social/economic issues are defined by Gall’s law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%27s_law
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
The inverse proposition also appears to be true:
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
The problem that I see for the current round of propaganda from the left is timing. It reeks of desperation right now. It has gone from “Let’s run this up the flag pole and see who salutes it,” to “Let’s throw this shit up against the wall and see if it sticks.”
– also thought Arnold was a great Governor.
Why go all in, as the Left has?
1. They believe that 50 years of Progressive education have prepared the field.
2. They have committed so many offenses that they cannot face an inquiry after a defeat.
3. If they lose the commanding heights then they cannot survive the implosion they engineered.
Their future is either Victory to rule in Hell over impoverished Green chattel or Defeat, meaning defunding disestablishment and dispatch to serve in Hell, or jail or a menial job. They cannot even hope to serve in Heaven. That bridge is burned for them.
If you are a Democratic operative in Ohio why not stuff the ballot boxes? What do they gain at this point by obeying the law? What do they have to lose? Who will secure our election? The NBP in 2008 were a taste of things to come.
Our cultural elite having nothing left but propaganda now. They bet the farm on Obama. They have volunteered to be Pravda. If Obama wins then the LSM and the rest of the pathetic miasma of the left will become ever more noxious vapours. They have already become a 24 hour propaganda production industry. All that remains is for the propaganda to become increasingly lunatic.
This is a truly remarkable and fascinating turn of events. It’s like watching the Titanic sink.
I don’t believe they can do this for very long because there are so many other ways for people to communicate news, opinion and thoughts. Those ways cannot be shut down over the whole world. It looks like the end of days for the LSM to me. Apparently LSM now stands for “Lunatic Sycophantic Mouthpieces”.
Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get worse:
http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/24/us-intelligence-suffers-major-compromise-in-libya/
bftp @ 4: Why go all in, as the Left has?
No resistance.
Romney’s campaign so far has been 100% no resistance. For that matter he’s the RINO ex-governor of Romneycare.
The MSM is entirely conquered.
Every day the left presses forward.
It’s quite astonishing, different universe, different America, than the one I grew up in.
Please Victor, tell us some more about how it’s all Da Jooooooooooooooos Fault, because God knows we don’t get a large enough diet of that in every other channel of
propagandamedia. Feeling a little frisky since A’jad is here for the annual pilgrimage to pray for Israel’s destruction in front of a complicit flock of self-styled elites?Apparently “Never Again” is now just a bland suggestion that’s discarded by the wayside lest we upset some retarded head-chopping goatherders. I’m sick of this bullshit and I’m going to call it out when it fouls up a place like BC.
Debbie Washerman-Schlitz can be interviewed on tape watching herself on a screen being interviewed on tape an hour before while wearing the same top and
‘do and necklace and earrings against the same background auditorium (short for ‘audit memorium’?) in the newer interview as in the older, and look the newer interviewer in the camera eye and say, “I didn’t say what she said”.
And if that don’t take the cake, the news will report the incident as ”controversial” –and truth is, it will BE controversial, because she DID say she didn’t say what she said, and, maybe, she believes herself on that or the other count, or on both counts, impossibly but possibly, depending on the breaks, or brakes.
Blast From the Past @4
No worries…If the Republican establishment manages to regain the throne, they will allow them to keep their loot and their positions, and even throw in a stack of stay out of jail free cards.
After all, the propaganda has been progressively worming its ‘inevitable’ way into their hearts and minds too.
We the people must recapture the Republican party for America…Or replace them with others who would guard our Liberty.
The problem is, what isn’t propaganda? The driest books have a look-and-feel meant to seem academic. These can be scientific papers, or unread volumes of constitutional law that sit on a judge’s shelf. One may as well replace everything with porn or with plastic. Why not?
I see that our favorite redneck B Larsen has graciously decided to endow us with his rambling descriptions of things.
Scary part is, Buddy is the ONLY one who can accurately describe DWS—which ought to be a felony—–Drinking While Schulzed. Wassamatter Deb Dear?
Can’t ya get your bottm(s) upped?
DB @ #8, when he began writing in these comments, he would be accused of hating Israel and/or the Jewish people, and he would strongly deny it, saying that he was merely interested in what was in the best interests of the USA –which he thought was too close to the state of Israel for an honest broker of misdeast peace to be.
One notes now a couple or three years later, now that all his original dreams are well–fulfilled in full with a flourish on top, he’s still not quite happy, and has had to move the goalpost to where he can publicly scratch that last little itch –that need to do a little Jew-taunting –no matter how disgraceful an exhibition it is.
***
For those who do not know the term, ‘bottoms up’ need not refer to DWS’s obvious charms (she IS kinda cute, tho), as Dave & I had quite a few conversations about the Macondo disaster, and both wondered how the operation could have possibly run credible pressure tests without first pumping ‘bottoms up’ to ‘condition mud’.
9. buddy larsen
The editors of the forthcoming DSM-5 can concoct a whole new diagnosis for DSW: Democrat Dissociative Identity Disorder or DDID (as in D[ebbie] DID). A remake of Sybil waits in the wings.
stevesmith, IMHO the Russian revolution would have failed if there had been cell phones in 1917. I question the future of Zellar (mass media politics) in the face of alternate communication channels. Media control will just cause the information flow to seek other paths.
Socialism looks pretty good if there is nothing better. So the left HAS to destroy America. With America gone, Socialism can create a ‘new normal’.
Nov. 09 will be the key. I expect the first challenge to be filed when the courts open on the 7th. Ohio, Florida, PA. It will be interesting to see what those 40 million hunters heading out on the 9th will be hunting.
Rule .308; No mercy asked, none given.
11. Baobo
The problem is, what isn’t propaganda?
……………
Pontius Pilot is famous for asking the same question slightly differently.
He asked, “What is truth?”
In context the line goes like this:
John 18
For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
You can read the whole chapter starting with the betrayal and arrest of Jesus here.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018&version=ESV
PAC @ 14, Sybil, or The Three Faces of Heave –and at the end of a long career, Debbie Does Dialysis –
(*groan*)
Buddy those in charge of Mcondo were no doubt “Schultz-faced.”
Now everybody is gonna have to forgive me for a long and off topic message to Buddy.
Oct 1 2011. Was at 82nd FG Reunion in Palm Springs. Gentleman named Jack Sides showed up in spit of his difficulty in traveling He had a friend same age who somehow survived a head-on on the Interstate Jack just had to see him so with his wife drove from AZ. Then since so close came to reunion banquet.
For first time in history no assigned seating. jack and Judy grabbed empty table. Cora, me and three buddys joined them. Others renewed aquaintance. Jack then asked me my connection to 82ND Told him Father. He said sorry but did not recognize name. I then told him Fathers name. Jack came out of chair. Creech? Creech? CREECH? I knew him! He was a friend. We went overseas together. His wife said “you were talking about him this morning” Jack side I could not stop thinking about him. Could not remember his first name. Now I do. Elbert. Elbert Creech.
Rest of evening was a blur. I had been looking for over 50 years. Given up hope and then lightning struck. (Or was that Lightnings???) I went sub-orbital and was still climbing. Word got around and everybody knew about the meeting next day.
And talk about beating odds. Jack and a Walter Carper were at Pentagon post war and reasearched their pool of replacement pilots. 82 of them arrived Italy early March 44. Of the 82 17 saw VE Day. Russian shuttle missions, Ploesti flak, dive bombing trains in mountains, took a heavy toll.
One out of the 17 now left. And then we met. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
The only game Obama has been playing, long or short, is golf, and if that hack can’t finish his round in four years, then the rest of us are just going to have to play through.
18. Dave
Buddy those in charge of Mcondo were no doubt “Schultz-faced.”
Can’t help wondering whether Debbie is related to a certain sitcom sergeant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ag4nkSh7Q
(sorry for o/t)
Dave, it sure does. Almost like there’s some sort of invisible something or other somewhere, sometimes.
Some couplets to ponder, as strangers we wander, to such places where, lives only despair. – Or, as Buddy constantly reminded us in 1942, there was, every day, a close shave on the Burma Road.
Every day the lying spews
From Lefties anchoring the news
Our Left’s composed of selfless nobles
Who self compete to be like Goebbels
The sycophants all love Obama
Incompetence, thus daily drama
The Left has won and none can foil it
They’ve put the country in the toilet
Our children’s lives will be disasters
Should they defy their Lefty masters
If Obie wins a new four years
The future will exceed our fears
The Sullivans who think they’re clever
Will live, like coprolite, forever
Will Mongo grace us with his presence
Wit under pressure is his essence
PA Cat 20: put her in the Klink and we shall see.
There is about the propagandist’s desperation a kind of exalted madness, to which I am not wholly unsympathetic. And the best comparison I can find is from a Broadway play about the pain of watching a beautiful dream slip away.
They did a remake of Man of La Mancha. Well not really, but it was the same idea. It was called Requiem for a Dream. “The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken by reality.” It features pimps, game show contestants and wannabee players. A perfect remake for the times. “Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position.”
Maybe we want that. Doubtless some do. But perhaps it is one thing to be a stage Don Quixote and another to be President of the United States. As George Will boringly put it, there was once upon a time when people expected sane and competent men to run for President of the United States. Back in the day people didn’t want dreamers with their fingers on the nuclear button. They didn’t want someone who would feel their pain or share their visions. They didn’t want Facebook Friends; what they wanted for President was someone who could do the job.
But that was then and this is now. If I had to rewrite the Man of La Mancha for 2012 I would reverse the dramatic question: not whether it was licit to dream in this world but whether it was not prohibited to wake up.
Dave
OT.
My father was a pilot in the war, died in Feb 1945. One day, just interested, I mentioned his name on a pilot’s forum. Twenty four hours later I had a call from one pilot who flew with him and an email from another and four photographs of him from 1944 as well as a couple of pages from the squadron log. Survival rates for Typhoon pilots wasn’t good and this was 65 years later too.
Amazing thing the internet.
e2 @ 25: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a long-term cocaine habit.
Hmm. So happens I have a new neighbor, and a new nightly wafting of the resinous aroma of certain burning weed. Other than that they seem quiet, so far.
Sullivan is just nucking futz, it requires powersets of the real continuum of speculations just to try to deconstruct him, and it ain’t worth it, all that’s left at the end is of infinitesimal value (that means too small to grasp).
Pelosi I think at this point oozes botox rather than consumes it, probably they have to scrape her down about three times a day and air freight the stuff back to Hollywood. I don’t know what else she might be on, other than the houseboy Raul.
So far as I know, propaganda worked back in the day when the majority of folks in Europe where just becoming literate, or a half generation after most of them became literate. Radio appeared about the time the propaganda system had been practiced successfully for ten years or so–the World War I period and immediately after–the U.S. being flooded with it under Wilson and his war admin (the world’s first fascist state) for example.
It seems to have worked better in Europe than in the U.S., though. Hence the Left’s “Long March” through academia to “dumb down” the American population, both by miserable education at home and by importing millions of poor, uneducated folk from South of the Border who never lived in a free society.
I asked friends back in Ohio why Josh Mandel is losing to that idiot Sherrod Brown, and one wrote me back, “The negativity of the attack against Mandel is unbelievable. The libs are buying air time on a par with the Bummer campaign. They are dragging him through their own created cesspool with a hydroplane instead of merely a motorboat.
King Sherrod is now portraying himself as a job saver and a common man proponent in the face of his record.”
Another wrote, “I agree, its intense. Brown is saying Mandel favors the elimination of medicare and tax breaks for millionaires. The lies are working well on Romney, guess they figure painting Mandel with the same brush will work, as well.
I am more worried about Obama raising in the polls. Saw at least three Obama stickers on cars in the church parking lot yesterday – I don’t get it. Who, in their right mind, would vote for this guy, particularly if they claim to be Catholic.”
Who, indeed? Then again, I saw a PA poll on Drudge (http://triblive.com/home/2641005-74/obama-percent-romney-poll-voters-pennsylvania-leads-lee-margin-points#axzz27PXwwg8W) that shows Romney gaining on Obama, but what’s REALLY amazing is to read the various interviews with people that the article reported: those interviews were more nightmarish than reading Wretchard’s quote of Sullivan. Average, everyday folks as delusional as Dippy Debbie or Penni-less Sullivan.
Good God, what a freak show. We ARE on the edge of a knife, aren’t we?
An Préachán
In classic propaganda there is no attempt at logical coherence. There is no effort to make cogent argument. It simply treats the public like cattle or a bunch of Pavlovian dogs; it dins a lie into the audience’s head until they are conditioned by repetition to accept it, even though they don’t even realize why.
For example:
If you want to colonize and take land these days you have to adopt the Israeli approach
1-Provoke
2-Provoke
3-Provoke
4-When you get a reaction then massively retaliate
-it works for them
Key words:
* Israeli
* colonize
* take land
* provoke
* massively retaliate
* it works
* them
Terrific example. Thanks Victor.
Thank you
” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Why Pilate found him innocent. None of his servants were fighting against Rome. But the mob wanted Barabbas. Why?
Well, have no fear, The Won has figured out how to secure Peace In Our Time:
“Campaign politics shadowing every word, President Barack Obama on Tuesday will challenge the world to confront the root causes of rage exploding across the Muslim world, calling it a defining choice “between the forces that would drive us apart and the hopes we hold in common.”
Root causes! Now why didn’t we think of that before?!? That will do it!
Unfortunately, the root cause seems to be that they are friggin’ crazy. Obama proposes to be friendly to The Walking Dead.
Not only is propaganda an appeal to emotion but the Social and Emotional Curricula being deliberately foisted in US classrooms, Preschool through 12th, are designed to prime students at an unconscious level to respond to emotional appeals. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/does-purple-america-come-with-a-toy-dinosaur-or-is-it-just-more-sel/ is the story I did months ago on the NEA’s contribution that it also plans to profit richly from.
The really frightening part of what is going on under this Administration’s ed initiatives, building on what started under the Clintons and LBJ, is reading the profs who lay out that the mandated practices and curricula ARE designed to interfere with mental functioning. If it bolsters independent, logical, abstract thought it is not to be allowed. It is essentially what the new teacher evals are designed to prevent. Just closing the door and focusing on content.
If it limits the capacity to conceptualize, like systems thinking or Transformational Outcomes Based Education, why here is a boatload of federal and local tax dollars. Come help us get it quickly into US classrooms.
Our windows are closing in this deliberate assault to shift us to pre-print literacy, very malleable, minds. Another reason to worry about what will happen by 2016 on the current trajectory.
1. Victor
You mean like the Russians did in Georgia? Grab a dozen goat herders, force them at gunpoint to put on Russian uniforms, kill them, then claim they were attacked by bandits and then invade some defenceless little country. That didn’t work out so well for Hitler, did it? Hitler got his war but He would have gotten that anyway.
Do Pootie and the Boys really think they fooled anybody? Do they think it even matters?
The Chinese didn’t even bother with a pretext. They just over ran Tibet. Bogus claims that Tibet was part of China several centuries ago rendered after the fact.
To your run of the mill dictator, might makes right. They are not fooling anybody.
7. Josh
I consider the Romney campaign a replay of the McCain campaign. I’m gonna call it a ‘jello’ campaign. That is where the (R) goes ‘I dare you to nail me to the wall’.
So the (D) drives a few nails, says ‘screw this’ and goes and gets a beer (white wine?) the jello plops to the floor and the ants eat it.
A jello campaign. If Romney loses, it will be time to get rid of the Republican elite.
Charlie don’t surf.
#13 (welcome back Buddy!)
…in the best interests of the USA….
As our Confabulator-in-Chief said (cue in knit eyebrows, tucked-in chin, serious gaze, low intonation):
“When it comes to our national security decisions — any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people…”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-refers-israel-concern-over-iran-noise_652967.html
So how do you like that? Bibi (aka “the noisy one”; aka “the holy pain in the butt”) has provoked—yes! PROVOKED!!!—our CiC to finally, FINALLY decide to act in America’s best interest!!! (heh, heh)…
Finally. (And, phew, it’s about time….)
All because of Bibi (CiC said so himself)….
….And they say Bibi isn’t an ally of the Good Ole U S of A….
OT: test message, having problems posting
Does sleep apnea make you crazy? Sullivan has sleep apnea. Rick Perry has sleep apnea and it hurt Perry in the primaries.
Just saying…
In the broad strokes of the times politics has become metaphysics. Curious about what it means to be human? Refer to the Democrat Party platform or ask your union boss. Go anywhere else and you may find yourself on the wrong end of a few questions from those folks who “Serve and Protect.”
Religious speech has been criminalized in New Orleans. Several arrests have been made. Everyone expects the courts to overturn the ordinance, and they probably will, this time. Next time, next city – who knows?
The Public Broadcasting Corporation (PBS) is prohibiting “religious” programming. Never mind that the PBS charter requires exposition of a full intellectual life. Apparently religious topics are no longer considered part of modern intellectual life. The Party Platform says so.
And so it goes. When artful persuasion is not enough to save us from our silly and superstitious selves the state is justified in advancing the public good by other means. Russia, Mexico, Spain in the 20th Century. The United States in the 21st?
Speaking of not being able to discern propaganda.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/high-school-band-celebrates-russian-revolution.html
Springtime for Hitler, anyone?
Ot, here is a strategypage article on Syria;
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/syria/articles/20120925.aspx
Casualties are estimated at 1.000 per week. All youse guys that argued against American intervention in the form of a no-fly zone share the guilt for those casualties. How does it feel? That dead baby isn’t your baby but it’s still dead. Want to see who is responsible? Look in the mirror.
Oh, I don’t know, Victor. Post WWII, the big land winner was the USSR. Israel got a little speck on the map, the USSR walked off with chunks of Finland, Poland, Romania, Japan… if you ask me, brazen threat backed up with force is the way to do it.
Pakistan is another big winner.
How did Pakistan grab such a big chunk of India? Why is there a Pakistan? Shouldn’t it have been the western provinces of India? (Not that India would ever want it in its current state, regardless of Pakistani fantasies, but back then…)
In what way is Israeli sovereignty any less legitimate than Pakistan’s? Both were handed off one empire to the next, and haven’t been independent nations since ancient times. Both were formed from the breakup and redistribution of the “old regimes” of south and southwest Asia. Both were former British administered territories created as nations by UN actions in 1947- and both began their histories with wars started by Muslims unhappy with the resulting political partitions. Both involved the movement and resettlement of many people- more than five million Hindus and Sikhs were expelled from Pakistan, but apparently they don’t count as much as 750,000 Arabs.
So again, in what way is Israeli sovereignty any less legitimate than Pakistan’s? Given all of the above, is there any reason beyond bigotry to blame Israel’s alleged misdeeds while ignoring the much larger, much worse case of Pakistan?
#38.
That may not be the dumbest thing I ever read. But it’s in the short line.
Stoicheon, I am curious how you reconcile two very different arguments you’ve made, several times, in this comments section. If I’m misstating either, I don’t mean to. I could have misread you.
The first is that we should if necessary nuke the Muslim world, or enough of it that the remainder doesn’t give us any trouble; or that we should develop biological/chemical agents that would render sterile all Muslim males.
The second is that we should have intervened in Syria, or should still do so, to save innocent lives, and by not doing so we share the responsibility for their murder.
Isn’t there a contradiction here?
29. waxwing01 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Many relevant texts were edited in the literary inquisition known as the Council of Nicea… A fine example of state-controlled media, peer reviewed study, and plain propaganda.
But the mob wanted Barabbas. Why?
It’s sad seeing crowds come alive when re-enacting this scene. Role playing enemies too well isn’t healthy or kind.
#38 since syria concerns you so much, why don’t you sell all of your posessions and donate them to the cause? save enough for a plane ticket over there so you can apply your heart felt principles in person. let us know how it all works out. i guess syria is the one arab country where every damn person doesn’t hate us.
“Yet Sullivan does it with a straight face. Maybe not because he believes it himself; but simply because it is time for the new phase.”
Oh, he believes it. Belief is achieved through the process of endoltment. It is selection bias run amuck. But it only applies to the big questions. You don’t want to slam into the brick wall at full tilt yourself — you want the entire nation to do it. On the personal level it will hurt. On the national level it will put the w-e-e w-e-e in we.
When I was fifteen I thought I was a socialist and even told some of my friends I was a Socialist. One day when I was in study hall (and not studying) I had a thought followed by another thought which I shut down because it might gnaw at my faith. It was like having a thought detrimental to your religion and shutting it down because you don’t want to question the existence of God at the end of it. I’d gone to parochial school (I was in a public high school at the time) and recognized the feeling. It was like guilt.
That might be fine in religion but I didn’t think socialism was religion and continued my chain of thoughts. The first time it was conscience decision to push on. Years later I sensed that if I had shut it down — and continued to shut incorrect thinking down — it would become a mental addiction. When PC came along I figured it was a project to “shut it down” everywhere — not just in the brain of a particular academic. If they don’t allow themselves certain thoughts, why allow it to anyone?
I won’t say my thoughts that day were particularly insightful. In fact the fact that I had to choose to have them was the insight. As I had uninsightful insights I realized that when you bump into brick walls in your daily life the same forces at work can have implications for the grand theory. Do you adapt the project to humanity or humanity to the project?
About the time I was in that study hall the Progressive Lyndon Johnson soundly beat the Conservative Barry Goldwater. I read an article in Time Magazine about the selection of future candidates for the two parties. It said the really good candidates were waiting to see who won the Presidential election before choosing parties. I thought about this a moment. I got this notion that a lot of politicians are more about grabbing a banner and getting in front of the crowd and getting the crowd to follow them than they are concerned with leading the crowd to a good place or maybe running them into a brick wall (while standing aside and shouting “charge!”).
These two conclusions kept me from putting too much stock in politics even when I considered myself a liberal (when will we know that we won the “war on poverty” or is endless war the point?). Over the decades I concluded these two “insights” explained much of what I witness — both the revolutionary leaders and the useful idiots.
#42
If 300 people can get together and “edit relevant texts” to tell such a compelling story, without a single one ever bragging about it, then I’m with ‘em. Beats the crap out of whatever story you have to sell.
I suspect, oftimes, that Mr. Sullivan’s meanderings into darkness may be as a result to whatever medication he now takes to offset those years of lurking in public bathrooms and freeway rest stops.
Howard Stern Interviews Obama Supporters 2012:
“Just trust me, not one person knew that Osama bin Laden was dead,” Stern said during the segment.
“Well, we’re obviously dealing with a whole population that doesn’t listen to the newscasts or read a newspaper,” co-host Robin Quivers said.
So there must be another explanation.
http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/24/howard_stern_interviews_obama_supporters_2012.html
@30. RWE
“Obama on Tuesday will challenge the world to confront the root causes of rage exploding across the Muslim world..”
Translation:
Obama on Tuesday will imply to the world that an insufficiently apologetic and inept, non-compliant America is the root cause of the rage exploding across the Muslim world.
We seem all to face a very stark choice. Either we fall through the looking glass with the rest of them or lash ourselves to the mast of tradition and objective morality.
Somewhat along the same lines: If 60% of the country doesn’t trust the establishment media anymore, which would potentially be a source of cynicism, does it make sense to trust that 60% to respond honestly when polled by that same establishment?
Hdgreene (#47) Wrote “So there must be another explanation.” Yes it is painfully obvious to all here at BC, just as today’s speech at the UN by 0bama only demonstrates even further, 0bama and the Demoncrats know that it matters very little what 0bama says or they the Demoncrat party say or does, the MSM propaganda machine makes sure the lie(s) are spoken enough to become the truth, the only hole left to close for the Demoncrat (Progressive/Liberal) Party is the Voting hole, two parts to that hole they have to close up, part one is getting everyone (legal/illegal) to have a right to vote And part two is mandatory voting, they know that the Honey boo boo’s will vote themselves more treasury and they (the Honey Boo Boo’s) outnumber the self reliant American 10 to 1… They (Demoncrats) also know that if they make it a mundane choir to vote and they word the ballot with Doublespeak it is all over for the rest of us! This November 6th will simply determine if it is going to take a little longer or if 0bama will be the truly Chosen One, 0bama gets another four years and the Demoncrat party will forever be on top and they will close those last remaining holes, If Romney is elected the can is simply kicked down the road, it will take far greater reform in the Federal Government than Romney or Ryan can muster, there is very little hope of a small government with any true prospect on the current political map!
h @ 47: So there must be another explanation.
Slippin’ into darkness, yeah
When I heard my mother say
I was slippin’ into darkness, yeah
When I heard my mother say
You’ve been slippin’ into darkness
Oh oh oh oh
Pretty soon, you’re gonna pay.
Yeah, yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKFOjfwlprM
(War, 1972)
one of the great hooks of all time
–
m @ 49: We seem all to face a very stark choice. Either we fall through the looking glass with the rest of them or lash ourselves to the mast of tradition and objective morality.
Wot?
I think I’ll step aside and as they rush past on the way to destruction, help them out with a kick to the ass.
You want to lash yourself, be my guest.
I remember a story that came out of the days of the old Soviet Union in which propaganda films about the US were shown in theatres touting how bad life was in America by using footage of the ghettos. To American audiences it might have worked. But the Soviet citizens noticed something quite unintended: cars. They saw the old beaten up cars of the American ghetto and thought, “Hey! The poor and oppressed people in America have cars! How come we don’t?” I think that is happening with most Americans as they look at the news out of the MSM and apply their filters; noticing things quite unintended. “Hey! That sure looks like a terrorist attack in Libya to me”
Another point. My brother owns a small manufacturing company in Southern California. He listed online an opening for a shipping manager’s position. The flood of online applications was so great that they ganked the listing after two days. In that two day period they got over 1,500 applications for one position that pays only a halfway decent salary and benefits. Anyone telling you that things are improving job-wise is blowing smoke up you know what. MSM filter or no MSM filter, folks on the ground know how bad things are.
An idle question.
The net worth of the US appears to be around $75 trillion. The current rate of wealth creation is low. If the Bernanke keeps printing enough of those little green IOU’s so that the net worth decreases by about $5 trillion per year, would the U.S. dollar depreciate by about 7% (5/75) in the first year? If net worth decreases by $5 trillion each year, after 5 years would the U.S. dollar have depreciated by a cumulative 33% (25/75)? In other words, can the Bernanke drive the U.S. dollar down to 67 cents in 5 years?
If this happened, how would the propaganda industry spin this?
Sitting in a lifeboat far out to sea with no water, no food and no hope and change, I watch the two idiots who are running for the job of lifeboat captain prance about and fling poo at each other. While the MSM lies to us all about everything not in their vision of reality.
I am not amused.
Obama? loser, lets ideology intrude on his vision of reality. reality continues to bite him in the ass.
Romney? This clown cannot even run a campaign against a loser like Obama.
The Main stream media? People who see a difference in Republican’s and Democrats that politician wise and wary citizens don’t see.
I am not better off than I was four years ago and no matter who wins Romney or Obama I do not expect to be better off in the next four years.
Indeed I expect to lose pretty much everything I was told I didn’t build.
What a goat screw.
s @ 53: In other words, can the Bernanke drive the U.S. dollar down to 67 cents in 5 years?
He can inflate prices / deflate the dollar by that much.
The cash under your mattress would depreciate by that factor. Presumably the prices of commodities like gold and oil would rise by that factor. But it’s not entirely that simple, as the prices of gold and oil over the past three years illustrate.
What the dollar would do compared to other currencies is also important, and if they are all doing the same thing, and devaluing for other reasons as well, then, hey.
So far, Bernanke has “only” printed $3t in 3 years and (arguably) much or all of that replaces funds already stolen, so his printing was not the sin, it was the theft (via sale of worthless derivative securities) which was the crime, and the beneficiaries (sellers, thieves) have as yet, for the most part, not been named nor prosecuted nor their ill-gotten gains “clawed back”, nor anything much done to prevent them from doing it again, as they are doing every day.
Ain’t revenge a bitch? By all indications Stevens played a major role in the ousting of Ghaddaffi, and now he is dead too. He never really thought that those Libyan elites whose lives he had ruined might get back at him. It seems that the entire US, Obama included, revels in targeted assassination by drone or Seal hit team, but no one seems to worry about blowback, even after this Stevens affair.
When the German army rolled from former Poland into Russia in 1941 and started brutalizing the slavs no Germans thought about blowback. Well once the Russian Army rolled into Pomerania in 1944 the East Germans got to learn a very bitter lesson. Germany had all those high-tech weapons, even V1 cruise missiles. But the Russian generals had learned how to beat the vaunted German army despite their technological disadvantage, even before the US landed at Normandy.
The US has been molesting and screwing over the entire middle east since Suez and US propaganda is doing an ever worse job of keeping it covered up. Just like Hitlers Germany, the US has many, many enemies all who would like to taste some sweet revenge. Once the energy from the US military’s kinetic warfare is dissipated, once the “allies” complete their inevitable flake out, the retreat from Afghanistan is likely to be as humiliating as Hitlers retreat from Russia.
And speaking of humiliating defeats due to a lack of foresight, Romney’s unnecessary alienation of Ron Paul and his campaign is going to cost him the election. All those Ron Paul supporters could have given Romney a major jolt of energy, but Romney wanted nothing of it. The Republicans waged a scorched earth primary and Ron Paul supporters are joining the partisans. Romney is no different than Obama just like Obama was really no different than Bush. SS, Medicare, Obama Care, Secret Wars, Sprawling Empire, and all those millions of federal government employees will see no differences if Romney is elected, and like most Ron Paul supporters I will rejoice when Romney gets creamed in 2012. Just like those “terrorists” who Stevens had armed to overthrow Ghaddaffi, who he subsequently double crossed, and who made him pay for it with his life.
CharlesWhite @ 50: “… there is very little hope of a small government with any true prospect on the current political map!”
Beg to disagree. The current political map absolutely guarantees small governments around the world. Eventually, even the guy who runs the printing press declines to come to work for some of the paper he prints.
What is not clear is how governments will become smaller — a smaller, less-intrusive share of a big pot, or a bigger, more-intrusive share of a tiny pot. Either way, governments become smaller. At some inchoate level, the Political Class probably realize this. It would help explain some of their awesome stupidity.
Start keeping a diary. We live in “interesting times”.
No, wretchard, no.
Sullivan is quoting mainstream thinking on the left.
They are all saying what he’s saying.
That’s how religion and politics works.
Syria: Assad protects the Christians and non-Muslims, banned MBros, has an understanding with Israel, is mainly interested in keeping Beirut banks out of the PLO’s pedophilic hands. At best he ‘ll retain the Alawite coastal mountain homeland as a Levantine Eritrea servicing Russian freighters.
He lets Iran’s Hezb thugs pacify Pali troublemakers in the south, but now Quds is there to grab turf.
Part of the Obama plan to replace neutrals with hostiles for 1967 redux.
Some dodgy looking characters showing up in the FSA while HO stays mum, no?
Bar Abbas: his street gang killed a Roman police soldier; Joseph the carpenter’s son, a gang member, also died, so he made the crosspeice twice as heavy, intending it for Bar Abbas. Thus his compassion when Christ stumbled.
Yeshua was in the middle of a Jewish civil war- Greek speaking urbanites prospered in the concrete and architectural trade with Rome, Hebrew speaking rurals wanted war to ‘take their land back’. Christ’s rich, political family- personal friends of the Emperor- were actively caught in the middle.
All religios begin as politics; the stories are crushed and smoothed by time, becoming memes to be used by future generations. The Bible is an encyclopedia, especially of poltics. It allows us to trace the cultural flows by analyzing the edits, such as the rewrites of Nicea. (That’s why they had to convene a council- to get the official story straight.)
Not an ounce of magic or miracles in it.
Only claims- a speaker woos the crowd; but now he, his hidden agenda, and the audience are dust. Only the story remains.
“”a writer is either a scoundrel or mad — possibly both —”
For Sullivan it will be far too many “milky loads” and a lot of anti-Aids medication that erodes his soul and brain and, in the end, his skanky body.
53. stevesmith
An idle question.
The net worth of the US appears to be around $75 trillion. The current rate of wealth creation is low. If the Bernanke keeps printing enough of those little green IOU’s so that the net worth decreases by about $5 trillion per year, would the U.S. dollar depreciate by about 7% (5/75) in the first year? If net worth decreases by $5 trillion each year, after 5 years would the U.S. dollar have depreciated by a cumulative 33% (25/75)? In other words, can the Bernanke drive the U.S. dollar down to 67 cents in 5 years?
…………….
The networth of the USA is much higher than 75 trillion. Why? Because the new discoveries in oil and gas enabled by fracking have added trillions to the USA’s net worth. That’s why the fed has been able to get away with printing money.
Think this isn’t so. Consider some recent discoveies of massive gas and oil deposits off Greece’s coast have changed the calculus on that country. (The deposits are part of the same fields off the coast of Israel. Apparently the whole undersea eastern medeterranian is one big hydrocarbon basin.)
http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2012/09/greece-massive-unexploited-oil-reserves.html
RE 50. CharlesWhite
I agree that Romney will only delay the inevitable, which is a crash due to corruption being adopted by the larger majority as an operating principle, erasing the design margin that moral living provides as a common benefit, but making it subject to the Tragedy of the Commons.
I am not a rabid fan of Rowlings/Harry Potter, but the plot device is apt: Romney doesn’t have the drive, nor will have the support if he did have the drive, to destroy all the marxo-communi-liberal horcruxes embedded throughout the country’s institutions. Indeed, some of the artifacts were unique and valuable historical objects of their own right, and thus would have bleeding-heart supporters who would call for their preservation in foolish ways that would not truly expunge and destroy the evil spirits within them. Ditto for the “Long March” necessary throughout our institutions: some will be held as sacred cows, and thus not touched, their inner corruption preserved.
Indeed, I wonder, pursuing the analogy, that the Jacksonian perchant for looking for the Savior-Leader on the White Horse is equivalent to looking for Hollows instead of Horcruxes.
A clarification to ‘only claims’:
Much, if not most, of the story are referents or cultural slang, forgotten to us-
I meant in no way to be skeptical or dismissive.
It is arrogance to refuse to translate dialect.
60. PA-
I just noticed your first paragraph-
that is remarkedly profound. Thanks!
My main interest is not who’s “right”, but how the social mechanism works.
Listen long enough, and all sides begin to sound very much the same.
I mean that in an academic, not negative, sense.
Cain’t fix it til you know how it works.
“Propaganda is often the fanfare of fascism.”
This is why you cannot easily poo poo the corruption of the MSM.
@56. ConfederateH
You should take into account that Hitler’s armed forces killed in the neighborhood of 12,000,000 civillians in the USSR. We commited such horrors as building schools, educated women, and built roads in Afganistan. Hitler lost in the military sense, our failures tend to be political. We will be forced from Afganistan because it simply is not worth the cost to stay. The flake out will not be an existantial loss for us as Hitler’s was for the Third Reich.
As far as interfering in MENA most of the parties WANT us to meddle so long as it is for them. They just get upset when somebody else is aided. since it seems every tribe hates every other tribe there will be problems.
For better or worse the rest of the world has vital interest in the area and will work to protect them. One interest besides oil are refugees. Unless you believe that the Europeans should simply sink the refugee ships at sea and not rescue the survivors then they have a legitimate interest in the peace, prosperity, and stability of the region. That means that they strongly object to one tribe trying to exterminate another tribe and making them refugees.
As far as S the attack on the mission, if diplomats can not work in safety then the only alternative is the extermination of one side. That is why from ancient times onwards the persons of envoys were considered sacred. I fear we are heading for a war to the death that we will not win but Islam will most certainly lose.
@21: “Dave, it sure does. Almost like there’s some sort of invisible something or other somewhere, sometimes.”
I was hauling some communication gear to FLSG-B in Chu Lai for repairs when I learned that my brother’s ship, the USS Isle Royale, was just offshore assisting with the reclamation of an LST that had foundered on the rocks during a storm on New Years Eve 1966.
I managed to talk a sailor with a small boat into take me out to the Isle Royale where my brother and I had a wonderful reunion half way around the world.
The world isn’t small, it’s downright tiny.
@27: “Good God, what a freak show. We ARE on the edge of a knife, aren’t we?”
And good morning to you, kind sir.
@31: “Our windows are closing in this deliberate assault to shift us to pre-print literacy, very malleable, minds. Another reason to worry about what will happen by 2016 on the current trajectory.”
As always, it is up to the parents to raise their children. Education, if limited to public schools, is a genuine failure of parents. Ignoring government is probably not only the only plan, but the best plan as well.
The MacAllan has spoken; I shall retire now and enjoy the warmth.
@65. octa bright
To paraphrase Stalin: Its not the number of casualties, its who counts the casualties. I am sure you are aware of the numbers being thrown around just for the Iraq occupation. I believe Lancet claimed 1 million. And Stalin also said “one death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic”.
So the Muslim Caliphate(s) will be able to dream up all kind of US warcrime statistics in order to shelter their violations of UN, Haig, Geneva and other agreements, just as Hitler and Stalin both did. But the payback I refer to will not manifest itself in the same way as in Germany, just as the US retreat from Afghanistan will not be anything like Germany’s from Russia. This defeat will center around the collapse of the dollar and the refusal of the rest of the world to accept anymore QE-generated Fed IOU’s.
The Pentagons Lily-pad strategy leaves the US military burdened with incredibly complex lines of communications. Those small drone bases strewn across the Africa and the Middle East are all very vulnerable, just like the embassy in Benghazi.
Or look at these great series of pictures on the Minesweeping activities in the gulf, and 45 pictures of the USS Ponce. Apparently virtually the entire crew of the Ponce is contractors, obviously being paid for by QE3. When bond and treasury prices fall and interest rates rise and the dollar takes a sudden nose dive the US will have only a brief window of opportunity to consolidate all these activities into something defensible without money printing. I certainly don’t expect the current US government to be capable of pulling this off in the middle of an economic breakdown in the US.
Why did Obama lie about Benghazi?