In one of the shortest posts ever, Booman wrote:
John Kerry is frying my synapses. More later.
What indeed, Booman?
Really.
Whatchoo gonna do after the barn-burning commences?
Really!!!
Read on for more.
You are blaming Kerry for this? Do you truly think he went off the reservation? I doubt it. He’s just an errand boy, a robotic set of talking points. He’s never gone off the reservation in his life. Not really. Just for show if at all. Blame his boss. Or alternatively…blame Obama’s bosses.
In the Kerry statement you reference, he said:
But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime, and the regime issues orders, and we have regime members giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations with results going directly to President Assad.
We are aware of that so we have no issue here about responsibility. They have a very threatening level of stocks remaining.
Let’s transpose this to the U.S. PermaGov situation, ok?
But under any circumstances, the Obama regime is the Obama regime, and the regime issues orders, and we have regime members spewing this bullshit under orders coming directly from President Obama.
We are aware of that so we have no issue here about responsibility. They have a very threatening level of bullshit remaining.
You want to blame Kerry for something? Great. Blame him for obeying orders when he ran as the intercept part of the fix to make sure Howard Dean didn’t upset the PermaGov applecart as it was functioning under Butch II. Blame him for running a stupid, cowardly campaign and getting Swiftboated. Blame him for choosing John-Boy Edwards as his ruining…errr, ahhh…running mate. Blame him for not standing up and demanding a recount and or investigation of the computerized vote counts in Florida and Ohio after Butch narrowly squeaked through the Electoral College. Blame him for using his position and money to annul his first marriage so that he would be free to marry the ketchup heiress. But do not blame him for this. He doesn’t have on original or useful thought in his head. He’s just Lieutenant John Kerry, reporting for duty as usual.
You want to blame somebody? Blame his supposed boss.
Or…blame his bosses.
Bet on it.
You continue to toe the DemRat party lines, Booman. This was understandable when it seemed as if Obama might be a breath of fresh air as president, but since the ongoing surveillance state information broke (along with the indiscriminate drone warfare/failure to close the financial deal[s] w/congress/failure to close the health deal[s] w/congress and now this huge Syria error from which he is obviously not going to retreat/not going to be allowed to retreat), it is time to rethink your position.
Or…go down with the ship.
Your choice.
As the great basketball prophet Micheal [sic)] Ray Richardson said about a particularly bad NY Knicks team in the early ’80s:
Reporter: What do you think is happening to the team?
Richardson: The ship be sinking.
Reporter: How far can it sink?
Richardson: Sky’s the limit.
Yup.
Sky’s the limit, Booman.
Bet on that as well.
Sky’s the limit.
Jump ship, Booman.
You be bettah off.
Just jump off the ship in the full belief that you will fall up. (And, of course…just in case, wear a life preserver and a parachute. After all..it’s a big, big ship.)
Whatchoo gonna do, Booman?
It’s approaching stink…errr, ahhh… sink or swim time.
Whatchoo gonna do?
Support Hillary?
Everybody into the pool!!!
AHHHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
Short of jumping ship?
Not really.
Deal wid it.
Later…
AG
That’s a choice, I guess.
How has it worked so far, Booman?
How’s that working out?
Later…
AG
You see the problem clearly AG, that’s for sure, but I cannot buy your proposed solutions.
The Democratic ship is indeed very leaky, not to mention that many of us passengers think the captain is lying about where he’s taking us. But I’ll take my chances with the sharks before I get in a lifeboat with a Libertarian, the sharks at least won’t lie while they’re eating me.
Whether labeled D or R, I don’t think the permagov will allow the nomination of any candidate who would threaten them. Obama is probably about the least bad of any president we will be allowed to have.
An inkling of hope with the British, perhaps?
when bush/cheney/bliar… errrr I mean Blair, were lying us into a $2 Trillion dollar war in Iraq, the British people got out in the streets and protested- in what was one of the largest protests in their history.
Bliar is gone now- off to collect his corporate $$ reward, but more or less the same propaganda was used by Cameron/Obama.. and this time the British people didn’t have to take to the streets in protest, their Parliament did what was needed.. and voted NO.
I suspect in large part this is because the economy in Britain, like here, still sucks… and leadership knows you can’t impose a sucky economy, austerity measures (failing) AND war on the people. it’s all a bit much to swallow.. and it looks like the same is happening here.
I agree with you about everything except jumping on the Paul/Teabagger train. That’s just the Right hand of the Permagov.
The right hand of the Permagov is a rather apt description, as it turns out.
i do not trust anything but my own sense of the matter. I do not trust articles pro or con so-called “libertarianism” on the hottest-thing-ever blogs of the day; I do not trust anything that appears in the mass media whatsoever and I do not particularly trust those who do trust those things.
So there I am, listening to..and reading…the syntax and vocal/visual presentation of people like Ron Paul. Just as I do the presentation of the other 7 million people w/whom I live cheek-to-jowl in this magnificent New York City. I read them on the street; I read them on the subways and busses; I read them when they re trying to sell me something and I read them when they don’t know they are being read. After almost 50 years of reading faces and voices successfully…I’m still here, succeeding at what I set out to do and no one has yet effectively laid a hand on me in a negative manner except one woman who I had the (partial) misfortune to marry…I trust my own instincts first and foremost.
So here’s my take on your various bad opinions regarding Ron Paul and others who are allied w/him…opinions that are so far almost completely unfounded other than by reading second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand (and so on) screeds from others who have their own axes to grind and livings to make.
A teaching joke I heard recently:
Hmmmmm…
Me too. I have considered what is happening here in The United States of Omertica and have come to some conclusions. Take ’em or leave ’em. No insult intended…that’s just the way it is. If it resonates with you…and I have been hearing on the street a lot of resonance with the ideas and approach of Ron Paul (if not some of his acolytes) for a couple of years now despite his having been so thoroughly non-personed by the mass
mediocrity…errr, ahhh…media…if it resonates with you take another look at your own conclusions. And if it doesn’t? What will be will be no matter what any of us think.So it goes.
My own guess?
The PermaGov will again manage to squeak through in 2016. It will maintain its various criminal stances until the whole shebang eventually falls apart, and when that happens there will be hell to pay for the survivors.
So that goes as well.
Have a nice day….and…watch your back!!!
AG
I’ve heard a lot on the street too. Gold is the only true money. Zimbabwe dollars. Obama is a Communist. Obama is a Muslim. Everyone should pay exactly the same tax percentage and that shouldn’t exceed 10%. Everyone should go to a private school or home school. Illegal immigrants should get the death penalty. Unemployment will end if only the minimum wage and unemployment insurance are abolished. Rush Limbaugh tells the real truth. Obama cares about poor people. Obama cares about black people.
All of the above is nonsense. Don’t go by what you hear in the street.
You have to choose your “streets” wisely, Voice. Your media as well.
What I most hear on the street…on streets as disparate as working class white NYC, working class minority NYC, suburban areas outside of NYC far enough away (an hour or more drive) to be essentially “the rest of the country,” in rural New England and upstate NY…is a growing awareness that we are being ripped off and controlled by a massive, technologically-run governmental edifice that really doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about any individual human being or care about people’s rights to privacy and freedom. I am also hearing…from the kinds of people who used to be able to be counted on as gung-ho warhawks…that the waste of money and lives in foreign war adventures is simply not something that the U.S. can afford to do anymore. This is a sea-change in and of itself. The 2012 polls that showed heavy preferences among those in the military for Ron Paul out of all candidates for the presidency (including Obama) support what I am saying here. There is a mass movement building in the United States that rejects the actions of the Permanent Government over the past 50 years, and this is a brand new set of events. The NSA thing was a deal breaker. Now no one with even an ounce of sense trusts this government as it presently stands. Hell, with the latest Syria hustle that old cloak and dagger spy/Russian kleptocracy enabler Vladimir Putin looks more trustworthy than our own brownish Peace President. How low is that watermark!!!??? People hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, but when that “lesser evil” turns out to be pretty bad himself, then what?
Then what?
Then people start to look for real change.
This tide will crest in 2016.
Watch.
Will it crest high enough to really change things?
I don’t know.
But waves will be made.
Bet on it.
Watch.
The security state/surveillance state had produced nothing but insecurity. A reaction approaches.
Watch.
AG
I wanted to comment on this at length because it deserves it. Unfortunately, time constrains me.
I wish I could believe you about a protest wave in 2016. I really do. But I think that democracy (little d) is dead, murdered (or suicided) by television, apathy, and general unconcern. We are entering (or have entered in 2000) an age of Caesarism. Although the forms will be followed and the Senate will debate, an Emperor will make all the important decisions. Killing the Emperor will only lead to the next Emperor taking power, in the name of the People and Constitution (SPQR), of course.
Perhaps.
But sometimes the fire burns highest when the forest has become overgrown.
We shall see. Soon enough. Bet on it.
AG
‘The security state/surveillance state has produced nothing but insecurity.’ You can say that again. You can smell it on the street (and in the house!).
‘A reaction approaches.’ I’m not holding my breath. But any reaction against the prsent configuration will be put down by all available means…ALL.
Oh yes!!! You can smell it everywhere. Internally as well. Everyone from the upper middle class on down is scared now. Everyone. Scared of random massacres, scared of the IRS, scared of inflation, scared of environmental issues like fires, floods and storms, scared of the so-called justice system, scared of the Big Medicine/Big Pharma/Big Insurance monster, scared of the police/surveillance system…scared shitless.
Welcome to the U.S.F.
The United States of Fear.
Land of the surveilled and home of the scared shitless.
When will it end?
I dunno. When it finally fails due to its own fear, I think. Immobilized by fear of consequences, the culture will simply cease to work well enough to be able to continue to survive.
Remember the cage of rats with which Winston Smith was threatened in 1984? Room 101, the torture chamber in the Ministry of Love in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia?
Like dat.
Only bigger.
Nation 101.
Bet on it.
Poverty?
Imprisonment?
Death?
Disease?
Torture?
We got it all.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
And…vote for me!!!
Yes we can.
Bet on it.
We bigga than you.
Bet on it.
AG
There probably will continue to be reactions – though so far those are likely to be limited to spontaneous movements, as has been the case in the recent past (Occupy largely fits that description) or whatever the right-wing is willing to offer as the political equivalent of Ritalin (the Pauls, “libertarian populism”). That shall likely continue until those on the left get over their aversion to some semblance of stable organization, and the painstaking efforts required to make that happen (one need not buy into the tenets of “democratic centralism” to acknowledge that Lenin did have a point in his writings prior to the October Revolution). I would suggest looking far beyond 2016 – it’ll take a good decade (optimistically) to put together a movement that could have at least a hope in hell of withstanding whatever a decaying national security state can throw at it.
Lenin never even dreamed of a media opinion-controlling apparatus as powerful and efficient as is the present corporate-owned Government Media Complex. Instead of organizations operating on any sort “democratic centralist” principles…”freedom of discussion, unity of action” In Lenin’s words …the freedom of members of [a] political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision of the party is made by majority vote, all members are expected to uphold that decision…we now have “political parties” directed entirely from the top down, the members of which are convinced of the correctness of those policies by trance-media mandate. There is no real “freedom of discussion,” and unity of action is enforced by the sheer volume of propaganda unleashed on unaware citizens. Sure, on little blogs like this one people rant and rave about various things, but one look at the so-called “debates” and the ensuing convention delegates every four years is just about enough evidence for anyone with a remaining ounce of sense left to realize that the whole system is simply a political version of pre-cooked and pre-packaged fast food.
Nothing matching this level of propaganda has ever been laid on an entire people. Joseph Goebbels nightly spins in his hellish grave in pure envy at what has been accomplished since he ran Hitler’s little propaganda thing. They had to get people out of the house and massed in gargantuan militaristic edifices to control their minds, and the people outside of the major cities were pretty much left out of that loop. Now? The cultural/political edifice freely enters every home (and almost every mind) in the country, often under cover of “entertainment.” The rise of Ray Kelly and the whole “stop and frisk” level of the surveillance state? From the ’50s Dragnet programs right on through the amazing proliferation of “CSI/Law and Order”-style cop shows, Americans have been hypnotized into believing that a police-run state is the way to go.
Riiiight…
How’s that working out?
Like dis, brethren and sistren!!!
Like dat.
Like it or lump it.
Bet on it.
Step away from the media with your brains in the air!!!
Please.
AG
I think I’m thinking a little bit outside of the dominant political parties in the US, but okay. With those, has anything really changed much during party conventions? Go off the reservation, and you’re left to hang out to dry. Think of how Henry Wallace got replaced with Truman. That stuff has been going on a while. Same thing with communication – any time there is a technological advance, whatever powers with a lot to lose have gone out of their way to dominate. Someone might have used the term hypnomedia in the 1950s or 1960s and made sense to other radicals. Flash back yet another half century, and one would be talking about yellow journalism – hypnomedia by another name. We have an awful national security apparatus right now – no doubt about it. But it wasn’t that long ago when we had J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO with which to contend, and that was awful for its time. And on it goes.
There has always been some sort of Goliath, in a metaphorical sense. Any struggle for progress is done so against very long odds. It would be delusional to expect differently, just as it would be delusional to simply give up all hope. If all there really is left is the current soft neoliberalism or the various forms of hard neoliberalism with nothing else allowable, then I guess we all really should just curl up in fetal position and call it a life. Somehow – as someone who stubbornly insists on believing in something better – that strikes me as unsatisfactory.
Obviously a good starting point would be to switch off the TV, step away from FB and Twitter on your iPhones, and look at what the successful movements had in common: How were they organized or structured? How did they keep their activists and members on message? How did they handle the inevitable and necessary conflicts and dissent? How did they handle setbacks? What steps did they take to secure their victories?
Anyhoo, that’s where I’d suggest starting out – for anyone reading this who might care. Ask those questions. Read up on the histories of those movements that inspired you (for me as a much younger person, the Civil Rights movements and facets of what the New Left did were mine), and get the answers to those questions to the extent that you can. There are some very rich histories if one is willing to do a little legwork, and even decades later a knowledge base that is potentially relevant. Converse with others who are asking similar questions. Apply what you learn to our present set of circumstances. Whatever you do – use whatever happened in the US in the 1980s as a cautionary tale. Whatever it was that we did – don’t. Separating economic and social justice was an even more rotten idea in hindsight than it appeared to me at the time.
That’s about all I can offer. No clever catch phrases or Tumblr-style images or memes – just a few hints as to how I might think the next generation of activists could approach this political landscape. That next generation has its work cut out.
Step away from the media with your brains in the air.
Or else.
Or else.
Bet on it.
WTFU.
AG
Which Rand Paul are we supposed to support?
Right.
You take your cues from snarky comics on comedy channels
‘Nuf said.
Really, Marie.
Step away from the TV with your brains in the air.
The Comedy Channel is owned lock, stock and barrel by the same corporate entities that own leftiness, rightiness and centriness channels, all of which are bringing you the message of corporate America in several different flavors. On what do they all agree?
This.
How can you tell when the networks are lying?
They’re on the air.
How can you tell when the networks are promulgating one or another big, big lie?
When they all agree.
Step away from the TV with yiour brains in the air and WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
Please.
AG
Is any media outlet considered acceptable for offering criticism of either of the Pauls? Would you accept lewrockwell.com? antiwar.com? Something else? If so, what specifically is it that makes that source or sources acceptable?
I am not convinced that any commercially-supported media can be trusted, Don. Nor any PermaGov-run one like PBS. Nor any media that is truly committed to a given party or interest group like the Daily Kooz. Any time real money…or even the possibility of real money…enters into the truth equation, the hustle commences. “Money talks; nobody walks” say the wiseguys. Yup. That leaves little sites like this one, and even here the owner (although astoundingly open to disagreeing posters) is a tool of the Obama wing of the DemRat party. An employee of some sort, apparently. A “consultant.”
So where does that leave us? For me, I am forced to undergo the same sort of hunt-and-pick procedure that I regularly employ when looking for reasonably priced, really fresh food in the West Bronx/southern Westchester area where I live. One place usually has a couple of things worth buying, another one has a couple more, a third might have one thing, a fourth a few others. The rest of the food in these stores? Either way overpriced and/or not fresh and/or chock full of poisonous chemicals.
Ditto the media.
Hunt and pick. Smell the info for truth. Compare. After a while you begin to recognize the various different odors and tastes of disinfo. Although a well-reasined, non-hustle, non-hysterical critique on the Pauls my exist, I have yet to find it. Meanwhile Ron Paul continues to make good sense almost every time he opens his mouth as far as I am concerned, and Rand? He’s the political arm of the family now. He tapdances in order to be able to get over while his father lays down the real beat.
That’s my take, anyway.
I could just walk away, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter much what I think or say because the theft and carnage will go on until breakdown time. But…everybody needs a hobby, right?
Riiiiight…
AG
P.S. Let’s play “Who Do You Trust,” shall we?
What media do you trust?
And…why?
If you are genuinely that curious here it is:
On a daily basis:
The Guardian – as general international news sources go, it’s generally tended to be reliable, and tends to be independent enough of the usual UK political parties. Actually get a better analysis of US news and politics from them than most other sources.
Socialistworker.org – largely for analysis and opinion. They’ve been fairly solid, and jibe at least closely enough to my own ideological convictions.
Black Agenda Report – They address racial and economic inequality from a broadly socialist perspective. I respect their work, and it was civil rights (racial and gender equality) and economic inequality that got me into activism back when I was young – their work is in line with long standing interests of mine. One of their writers used to regularly update her own blog, Freedom Rider. Thankfully she still regularly reports and offers commentary for BAR. Good stuff.
Memeorandum – I’ll peruse it as a news aggregator just to see where the “energy” is here in the US with regard to main stories.
I lurk also at Eurotrb (really should just make an account there) to check their daily postings of headlines.
Most days, I am swamped enough that all I get to do is check the headlines, and a few opening paragraphs, and that’s it. Sometimes I have the luxury of getting to really read in great detail.
I think there is a certain consistency in the sources I choose. My ideology is probably informed by various threads of Marxist Humanism (I list Sartre, Gorz, Fanon, and a number of others from the early Frankfurt School as touchstones, in addition to the usual canonical works of Marx & Engels and Lenin), and tend, at least for practical reasons, to be more of a reformist – at least that is what would make sense in what are still the material conditions for the foreseeable future in the developed nations. Having grown up in the shadows of the Weathermen and RAF, I have advocated some sort of reformism as a practical path anyway, and for what I think are really damned good reasons, since my late teens. Means that like it or not, my path and those of liberals/progressives will likely continue to cross for a good while to come, especially while it is necessary to continue rear-guard struggles to maintain what few advances were made my my ancestors.
So there you have it.
It is equally safe to say that I don’t trust Republicans as a rule – no exceptions, nor do I trust GOP sources. I will not vote for or give money to a Republican politician or cause. That is non-negotiable. A former Republican would only possibly be worth listening to only if she/he had offered a very public and very extensive self-criticism and could provide tangible evidence of having actually reformed.
Nor do I trust news channels, papers, or websites that have a history of transmitting right-wing ideology – hence Lew Rockwell, Alex Jones’ sites, etc., are avoided like the plague. I am highly allergic to conspiracy theories – so 9/11 Truther sites, for example, are ones I will simply dismiss out-of-hand. Have a site with a history of publishing racist authors? I don’t even want to link to it. Holocaust revisonists? Don’t even try me. To quote John Lennon, “If you go giving your money to people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother, you have to wait.”
During my day as an activist – basically 1980s & early 1990s, I often felt that many of us were better at articulating what we were against than what we were for. Those of us guilty of that will have to answer for our mistakes, and understandably so. A lot of anti-government rhetoric from my side was more anti-imperialist, but often superficially indistinguishable from some of the rhetoric served up by more nefarious sources on the right. I think somehow the conditions were set up to make it rather easy a scant two-to-three decades later for the Pauls and their followers to show up in various and sundry liberal, left-leaning, and leftist gatherings and websites with a straight face, and sucker some people who really should know better.
Right Woos Left, although a bit dated, does have a few useful things to say about how we got to this sorry state of affairs. There is so much damage to be undone.
You write:
Yes.
But…
How can you say this without saying…on the evidence of the continued damage done to this country and culture since Butch II was deselected and replaced with Barack Obama by the PermaGov…without saying exactly the same thing regarding the Democratic Party?
Have any of the real miscreants gone to jail? The financial hustlers, the Permanent War people? No. Not a one. Have they even been deposed from their powerful positions within the PermaGov womb? Has anything changed in our continuing militarily enforced economic imperialist policies other than a bump up in efficiency due to reliance on technology rather than foot soldiers?
No.
Nothing has changed except the cover story. All warm and fuzzy, how our new, oh-so-gifted (And brownish, too!!! See/ We are so post-racial!!!) president was going to make things better. Only he didn’t, and now the new cover story is wearing thin. Not new anymore. Time for another “other” to keep the scam going.
Bullshit!!!
He was (
s)elected on the promise of non-intervention in the ongoing scam. Tactitly expressed or quite clearly expressed, I don’t know. Probably a little of both. The scammers didn’t quite trust Hillary Clinton to do the job because they feared her wrath at the honeytrap game they ran on her husband. She had to prove herself to them…and frankly, I’m not sure that that she has successfully done so even now. Watch the media hustle when the 2016 thing really gets started. Watch.So if you can say that about the Republicans…totally understandable, given their history…how can you not say it about theDemocrats too?
This position is where an increasing number of Americans are currently headed. Mass media trance-state attempts or not, the over-and-over-and-over again failures of the Permanent Government in terms of the quality of daily life for the people of this country are breaking those trance states. The suspension of disbelief that is necessary for people to be able to participate in the ever-rotating “Good Guys/Bad Guys,” WWF-style PermaGov fix edifice is being worn away, one chip at a time.
The ongoing financial collapse/runaway inflation:
Chip after chip falls as working Americans see their position getting worse day by day and week by week.
The obvious gridlock in congress:
More chips fall.
The ongoing foreign policy/PermaWar positions:
There go some more chips.
And so on.
So…what are the real alternatives for American voters?
They can give the fuck up, of course. How’s that worked out so far?
Or they can vote for some truly new ideas.
If those ideas manage to push through either of the existing party structures, will the history of those parties as vehicles for PermaGov stalemate stop people from voting?
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Or…a third party could arise.
Not likely…not on any level of real effectiveness. Too late. It would take 4+ years of real organization to get one up and running.
So…whatcha gonna do? Call Ghostbusters?
Or listen to the few people in positions of national attention who are at least trying to end the scam?
Oh.
I forgot.
They’re “Republicans.”
You don’t buy (
Fords) Republicans.They break.
You buy (
Chevrolets) Democrats.They break too, of course, but their advertising is better.
WTFU.
AG
P.S. You also write:
Allergies are curable, Don. After the three assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK Jr. essentially firmed up and finalized the right-wing coup in this country, how can you say that?
Take a wake-up pill, brother. This entire system is now a conspiracy. A criminal conspiracy, not just a bunch of clowns trying to make a profit. When the Meyer Lansky character in The Godfather II says the “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel,” he wasn’t just whistling Dixie. You could have a Dick Cheney character in abn equivalent fiim about the rise of the {PermaGov say the same thing.
“We’re bigger than even the outfit.”
Much bigger.
How do I know?
The gangster bosses all eventually went to jail.
Why? How?
Because a bigger gang found them to be too weak to compete.
Bet on it.
Clicked the wrong link and the reply went to the wrong place. Minor detail in the grand scheme of things.
The part about non-negotiable means precisely that: non-negotiable. If you have known anything about me here or on my home blog, I have been very clear about why I may barely trust the Democratic Party, but why I will never ever trust the Republican Party under any circumstances. There is nothing that could be said to change my mind. Period. What you have pushed for several years now still ends up being a form of lesser evilism – I am sure you can’t or won’t see it that way, but it is.
I have also been equally clear that as far as a Left worthy of its name goes, it will take a good decade or two to really be effective – both at the extraparliamentary level and at the parliamentary level. Building organizational infrastructure takes time. Convincing various leftist factions to trust each other enough to work together will require some enormous effort – ironic given how much most of our factions (outside the anarchists) have in common. I am not that focused on the immediate electoral cycles, except to the extent that whoever ends up in the Oval Office and running Congress could do either a great degree or a lesser degree of damage to those for whom I care about (in broad brushstrokes that is essentially the 99% in the parlance of our times, or what might have been called the proletariat or workers in an earlier era).
Beyond that, I really do get the feeling that you and I tend to really talk past each other. We’re operating from radically enough different assumptions as to make most conversations untenable. The one possible superficial commonality we have is a disdain for US war ventures, albeit for largely different reasons – mine have to do with a disdain for American imperialism going back to US attempts to destabilize and overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (Vietnam was just very slightly before my time). I think it is safe to say that there is a different theoretical rationale at work than that of the various strands of conservative isolationism that have been around for a while.
In the meantime, until a viable Left Front exists that can really sufficiently shake things up emerges, I have to ask myself the question – who will do the least economic and social violence to those of us who work for wages, to women, to those who are in the LGBT communities, and to those who are POC? For now, I find it prudent to at least hear out those who identify as liberal/progressive, and especially those who identify with groups who are scapegoated by conservatives in guiding whatever actions I take, and whatever actions I might suggest to my ideological peers.
That is pretty much all I’ve got. Maybe you’re right that a Glorious Libertarian Utopia is upon us, and is truly the one and only salvation. I somehow doubt it. In the meantime, I have to be able to live with myself with as clean a conscience as possible under the circumstances.
Durito Out!