Stop Me Before I Vote Again

pro-war folks have proxies in the national discourse (media and/or government) who support the war.

anti-war folks are stuck with proxies in the national discourse who oppose the 'handling of' the war.

obamna is clearly of the second group. his acknowledgment of any kind of "success in Iraq" only makes for a smoother transition of power. (nice segue!)

There was never any chance that Obama, or any President, would just walk out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We've known for a long time that the end of Iraq would be to call it a victory and leave (however fucked up the country really was at the time.)

Obama did this by saying Afghanistan was where the action was now, and magically, Iraq disappeared from the public view.

Now, the wonks and the generals are beginning to see that Afghanistan is hopeless too, and they are starting to adjust expectations. I don't see Obama as being a great disappointment; merely a sentient being who's reacting to unmistakable information coming in from the outside.

Amazing how easy it is to sell a used pile of crap merely by changing the paint job.

The imperial project has many
Avatars eh?

Its agents are rife
But it's drones are a multitude

These drones have many
And various
Implanted controls
My favorite....
Common decency

Was their animus against Bush based only on the idea that he was doing a bad job? Did they agree with his goals, and reprehend him only for not attaining them?

It's very hard to tell. Some will say as much, but the same people who play at that eager beaver Realpolitik routinely compete to adjust their stance to fit whatever their flocks and flock leaders accept from their senior opinion makers. So, for example, when bombing people was bad because it's a bad thing to bomb people, that's what they believed and the pecking order took up morality -- as pecking points, if you will. When the flock leaders got the "efficacy" talking points, the flock praised efficacy and found flaws with the pod members who came up with less efficacious encomiums to efficacy.

I'd attribute the hook to common decency, but there's a struggle for dominance in the core flock. They're always triangulating against each other and Nader-baiting the stragglers. The Hillary-huggers and Kucinich-cuddlers are still being disciplined.

For a minority, perhaps, common decency is a reliably effective hook. But it's a rare bird who takes it further than goo-goo sentimentalism.

I think it's time to give up baiting the pwogs (and hoping that the decent few -- Krugman, Reich, etc. -- can still be redeemed) and start writing about the visionaries and lunatics who actually have something to say that might work. OP started to do this recently by digging up some old socialists or Debs-ites. Otherwise we're just engaging in schadenfreude, giggling at the passengers on the Titanic.

What's your psychiatric diagnosis of this disease, this exaggeration and making-up of "strong" stands? Is it simple narcissism, a projection of one's own importance into an important place?

Pay equity will do us a lot of good once the last job blows away in the wind...

Seneca, I find the baiting and ridicule important. For some people, they make a more mutinous outlook easier. For others, they reinforce the outlook. They offer a modest complement to the positive outlets offered and suggested by others, here and in their own venues. And they offer relief from the frustrations of good prescriptive proposals that fall flat, for lack of resources and energy to support them.

By themselves, I agree with you: they're schadenfreude. Owen's mining of the visionaries and lunatics is invaluable; on its own, and by comparison. What he's got is a way forward. I don't think the baiting and ridicule diminish it.

Finally, have a heart, Seneca! Have pity on me. Most of the time baiting and ridicule is all I've got.

seneca wrote:

I think it's time to give up baiting the pwogs

There's no lack of visionaries. Blueprints for Utopia abound. What's lacking is pissed-offedness.

And what's present in vast depressing excess is "hope" in figures like Obama, Pelosi, Biden....

Bruno is actually acting true to form as a Marxist. Others of the same ideological persuasion, such as Michael Parenti, who pooh-poohs the
"feudal" Tibetans' aspiration for freedom from their "modernizing" Chinese overlords, also have little sympathy for such "backward" peoples who were left behind in the March of History. Similarly, most organized Communist Parties in Europe such as the PCF never gave the time of day to, say, Algerians resisting the "civilizing mission" of the French.

In this, they are faithfully following the footsteps of Marx himself who was ambivalent about the struggle for independence of "backward" people such as Indians who revolted against their English overlords–manfully bearing the White Man’s Civilizing Burden—in 1857. It might of interest to listen to an interview (MP3 here, starts around minute 40) recorded in 1981 of probably the most prominent living Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm and count the number of times he manages to refer to non-industrialized societies as ‘backward’ in less than 20 minutes.

Oops, try Posted by sk | March 9, 2009 11:38 PM

Posted on March 9, 2009 23:38