3122

I don’t take it that way, and I don’t want anyone to take anything I say personally either. Most of the things said in this political forum are absurd and contrary to reality, but that doesn’t affect whether or not I like the people making the statements or not.

Someone’s beliefs naturally inform your view on that person’s judgement and reason and accumulated knowledge, or how qualified they are for a particular role or position where those attributes matter, but how they act and the type of person they are is more important. I kind of like Bernie Sanders, despite his beliefs being completely wrong. Yet I can still like, admire and respect how he carries himself, his passion, altruism and his integrity, etc.

3123

Come on man. These are straight republican talking points.

Do you seriously not believe that any of the crazy stuff republican candidates have been saying should not be called out? I can’t recall anything this crazy being said in previous elections. Not even sarah palin said things as crazy.

Also I have a hard time believing any reasonable person thinks Obama is a worst commander in chief than the previous president who got us in to this no win situation in the first place.

Really, you guys only have yourself to blame. Don’t let people like Carson, Trump and Cruz up on your stage when trying to decide your candidate. If you let them speak in front of the nation, they are going to say stupid things and the media is going to follow them because it drives ratings. There are republican candidates that aren’t frothing at the mouth crazy, they just don’t get any screen time because the crazy ones make more of a spectacle.

Really ratings are what matters to these channels. If you guys had a decently supported story about Hillary kicking a puppy, it would be all over the news because people want to see stuff like that. Until then, we’ll have to settle with Carson’s claim that he was a thug who only didn’t become a murderer because jesus stepped in and stopped the knife.

3124

No, this is beyond the pale. Sarah Palin was just an idiot—these people are dangerous. You have front runners in this election saying shit that I never thought a serious politician would ever say in this country, and they’re gaining ground with it. I desperately want to believe that there are enough intelligent, rational people in this country to keep assholes like Trump and Carson out of the White House, but then I load up Facebook and see the legions of morons flying Confederate flags while claiming to be patriots and I realize that we might be in trouble here.

3125

I’m just worried about what the republican candidates next election will look like. It almost makes me wish they win this one so the next round isn’t even more extreme.

3126

With Trump’s ability to just “ignore” the media and the success in the polls he is having I wonder just how effective the “left wing” media really is. Fact is, I wonder how effective at shaping things any of the media really is. I think the main stream media may be less effective that we think they are.

3127

You have to live in an ideological bubble of self-delusion to claim that non-conservative politicians are shielded by the American media. Bill Ayers and Rev Wright went through the news cycle in 08 not once but twice. The Palins’ association with AK secessionists? Never mentioned once by mainstream media, and not one Republican I know personally knew a thing about it. Just yesterday a Republican co-worker had no idea who Jack Abramoff was, had never heard of him.

The NYT sat on Bush ordering the NSA to begin domestic spying for over a year. Did they sit on the Hillary email server story for a year? I could go on and on with one example after another. I could, in fact, make a cogent argument that the corporate-owned American media actually leans Right in many ways. Their meekness to call out bullshit directly certainly serves Republican strategic efforts. The entirely artificial fiscal crisis concocted by the GOP in 2011 bears witness to this; the MSM constantly referred to how dysfunctional Congress had become, rarely daring to lay blame squarely where it belonged.

Just today CNN was covering the former intel chief saying how Obama ignored ISIS in 2012, as did USAToday, MSNBC, etc. If they were actually concerned with shielding him, particularly at this time when the GOP attempting to shift the campaign tone to security issues, they wouldn’t make it front page stuff, or even not cover it at all. But that’s not what happens.

The Republican business elites, which declared war on the liberal class’ call for cultural diversity, allied themselves with an array of protofascists in the Christian right, the tea party, groups such as the National Rifle Association and The Heritage Foundation, the neo-Confederate movement, the right-to-life movement and right-wing militias. The elites in the Republican Party, who needed an ideological veneer to mask their complicity in the corporate assault, saw these protofascists as useful idiots. They thought, naively, that by demonizing liberals, feminists, African-Americans, Muslims, abortion providers, undocumented workers, intellectuals and homosexuals they could redirect the growing rage of the masses, sending it against the vulnerable, as well as against the only institution that could curb corporate power, the government, while they greedily disemboweled the nation.

But what the Republican elites have done, as they now realize to their horror, is empower a huge swath of the public—largely white—that is gripped by magical thinking and fetishizes violence. It was only a matter of time before a demagogue whom these elites could not control would ride the wave of alienation and rage. If Trump fails in his bid to become the GOP presidential nominee, another demagogue will emerge to take his place. Trump is not making a political revolution. He is responding to one.

Chris Hedges can be a bit too histrionic for my tastes, but here I think he’s spot-on.

3128

I don’t know who Chris Hedges is, but that shit is just batshit insane. The fact that you could possibly laud such nonsense just shows how divorced from reality political exchange on the left has become - they just seem so invested in this lunacy, as well, while most conservatives are far more politically disengaged, generally because they’re busy dealing with life and getting shit done. While guys like Trump and Carson (and every other republican candidate) are getting plenty of criticism from conservatives, people like you actually praise the clear lunatic who wrote that crap.

3129

I am pretty sure I disagree with him. There isn’t really another Donald Trump out there. Not the whole package.

3130

I like how I disprove Desslock’s claims with multiple examples, yet he’s unable to do anything but knee-jerk against Hedges’ writing while projecting leftist assumptions (which I think closes the loop for Qt3 right-wingers making that claim) and attitudes that simply don’t exist onto me. As I’ve had to say many, many times since early last decade: a willingness to criticize the Republican party does not automagically make me some far left liberal socialist/commie.

Hedges is spot-on. The #1 driver of ideological violence in America today, by several orders of magnitude, is the far Right. Not Muslims, not environmentalists, not liberals, not gays, not feminists, etc. Why? One can understand the antebellum Dems. Their way of life, their economy, was directly threatened if slavery were to be abolished for lofty notions of human equality and dignity. So why is it today the far Right and not the far Left that’s creating such feverish reactionary rhetoric and acts against perceived domestic enemies? Why did threats against the presidency increase by over 400% the week Obama took office?

And, Scuzz, you missed Hedges’ point. If Trump fails, which I think he will, another will take that role during the next election cycle. . .if Hedges is correct. Time will tell.

3131

It’s what he does.

3132

(Please excuse my pedantism)

That’s an ahistorical line.

Free Soilers believed their system was morally superior, but they didn’t believe in human equality.

3133

You cited examples of how the media discussed conservative criticisms of Obama and, surprisingly, generally found them without merit, overstated or irrelevant…and you think that disproved that the media shields the politicians they overwhelmingly vote for. That’s like citing how you disproved defense counsel was acting for the accused because they actually mentioned the allegations.

The NY Times ran a story about a handful of misfits abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners on the front page for 47 days, only muting its coverage when it became clear that those idiots were abusive on their own without orders, so they could no longer argue for some deeper political conspiracy or sinister motive. By contrast, Benghazi appeared on the front page once - 2 days after the incident – with the heading “attack on US site kills envoy: a flashpoint for Romney and Obama”, and after somehow managing to reference Romney in that story title, it relegated any further coverage to obscurity until long after the 2012 election.

When Valerie Plame was identified as a CIA agent by Robert Novak in the Washington Post it lead to a media full court press for weeks despite Plame’s job being classified, but not a secret, and the special prosecutor that the Bush Administration was forced to appoint conducted comprehensive investigation that ultimately didn’t even charge Richard Armitrage, who was Novak’s source, with any crime for the disclosure.

By contrast the Obama administration has outed actual covert agents in far more precarious positions, including the CIA station chief in Kabul; operational details concerning the Bin Laden raid that got the Pakistani doctor who assisted arrested, the location of drone bases in the middle east, the location of anti-terrorist operational bases in Africa, a British double agent who had infiltrated Al Qaeda and foiled a Yemeni plot, the presence of CIA operatives in Turkey who were steering aid to Syrian opposition, the secret agreement Israel made to use Azerbaijan bases against Iran - and there are many more examples, all far more consequentially harmful and egregious than the identifying by name of a CIA office employee in Virginia, yet it’s safe to say didn’t attract anywhere near the media attention of the Plame affair, let alone the scrutiny and criticism.

Hedges is spot-on. The #1 driver of ideological violence in America today, by several orders of magnitude, is the far Right.

I think most people are more concerned with “actual violence” than “ideological violence”, and “by several orders of magnitude” that violence is being committed by people in cities that vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

As I’ve had to say many, many times since early last decade: a willingness to criticize the Republican party does not automagically make me some far left liberal socialist/commie

You probably have to repeat it so often, including to people like myself who criticize the Republican party, because you are constantly expressing far left, fantastical views so naturally people assume you believe them.

I don’t waste the time dissecting your nonsense regularly because it’s clearly not worthwhile. You’re incapable of benefiting from the exchanges and I’m just not sufficiently altruistic to spend my time so fruitlessly. But your perspective suggesting that there’s some sinister, violent, corporate (lol), plot among people who actually just think their policies would give Americans - including you - a better way of life, deserved some rebuke. “Not evil, just wrong” is a more worthwhile framework than such histrionics

3134

You probably have to repeat it so often, including to people like myself who criticize the Republican party, because you are constantly expressing far left, fantastical views so naturally people assume you believe them.

This is the problem. This claim is false. Far left views are true socialist, syndicalist, and communist views. Sanders is a middle-left soi-disant socialist who is IMO really a liberal, and Warren is a conventional liberal, but I can’t think of any other leftists offhand on the national stage. The Democratic party is a center-right party by any conventional ideological standard. And yet when any non-far-right policy emerges from the Democrats or from an opponent of the current Republicans it is instantly branded “radical” and “far-left” despite the obvious falseness of the claim.

3135

Hey man, any time you can get Desslock to drop 1500 words on “what happens when an otherwise intelligent person gets suckered by a hilariously non-reality-based movement” you gotta count it as a win.

3136

Think it’s safe to say that anti-corporate (“mask their complicity in the corporate assault” “business elites, which declared war on the liberal class”) pro-government control (“the only institution that could curb corporate power, the government,”) screed that describes a modern Western country’s political opposition with the phrases “protofascists”, “the neo-Confederate movement”, “right-wing militias” “demonizing intellectuals” while they “greedily disemboweled the nation” amply qualifies as “far left” even by your restrained (or any sensible) definition.

Agree that it’s a common partisan tactic to label people they disagree with as extremist and abnormal, and far from even the traditional views of their political party. It happens here pretty regularly, even though it’s often incorrect or only partly true. Modern Democrats are far to the left of Kennedy or Truman on many social and foreign policy issues, and most Republicans in those eras wouldn’t advocate the flat income tax systems that are popular among this slate of candidates and accepted far higher progressive rates (although there were fewer other sources of taxation) and so by that standard the current views are further to the right. But that’s obviously not the complete picture. The world is too complicated to judge positions from a standard derived from, or in, very different circumstances.

It’s just a routine way to try to marginalize views and opponents to avoid dealing with the merits of views that they dislike so they concoct something that’s easier to demagogue and ridicule (not as if there isn’t ample fodder for that by just sticking to what’s actually said, and done, these days) and using the phrases like those I quoted are a clear example of that practice. It’s just not constructive or worthwhile for anyone.

3137

The Chris Hedges piece you’re referring to reminded me of the Communist Pamphlet quote used in the classic essay Politics and the English Language by George Orwell (which is brilliant and strongly related to this discussion, in case you haven’t read it):

“All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.”

What is a ‘protofascist’ or ‘neo-confederate’? It’s much harder to define than a word like racist or selfish or ignorant which is probably what many of these Republican presidential candidates should be called instead (and are).

3138

Exactly this. And I’d love for Desslock to find one post written by me at Qt3 or anywhere expousing true liberal ideology. Because it doesn’t exist. But we’re talking about the Desslock who peddled the Jonah Goldberg piece comparing GWB to Batman after the Dark Knight was released (both were such brave warriors willing to do bad things to keep The People safe and snug), the Desslock who thinks GWB was a great president, who, as others pointed out, peddled pure Republican talking points in his initial post about how the big bad liberal media never criticizes Democrats (laughably untrue). But, yes, Desslock doesn’t have the time to spend correcting a far leftie like me, he’s too busy masturbating to the latest Ben Quayle video proclaiming Obama to be the_worst_president_EVAR!!! What I would like is for someone like Desslock to even attempt to answer some of my rather simple questions, such as why the 400% spike in threats against the president, etc.

And, Adam B, I’d love to know which “hilariously non-reality-based movement” referring to when I can quote a West Point study laced with FBI and DHS stats on how there have been over 300 domestic far Right acts of violence per year since 9/11.

3139

I dunno John, I get a pretty left of center vibe from you too. I think it’s generally not that you espouse extremely far left values, but rather that you focus heavily on criticizing only the right, in a fairly venomous way. I don’t recall you ever directing any of that to the left, which is why you give off that vibe I think.

3140

Because there is no left in America, perhaps?

3141

Yeah, no. I mean, I grasp that you are under some illusion that you are the standard… but that’s not actually reality.