Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Why are you insulting Stalin?

Mass murdering psychopath that he was, he was also the least dangerous Bolshevik since he was more of a wannabe feudal lord than a revolutionary.

Socialism in One Country was actually a good thing.

The real monster was Trotsky. He's the one who wanted to set the whole world on fire with his totalitarian ideals.

Lenin was almost as bad. But he does provide a bit of comedy when you get to see privilaged, tenured academics at capitalist universities in the USA base whole poltical science and history courses around the idea that if only Lenin had lived another decade, Communism might have worked. Ha. Suckers. Thank God for that anarchist who tried to kill him.

Another real bloodstained monster was the hunch backed little Pollack cripple Rosa Luxemburg. She was basically a stupider Trotsky. It's a good think the fascist bashed her skull in.

TKT -- If any poor fish bites on this candy-colored india-rubber worm, he'll be a bigger fool than I would have believed possible.

What?

You don't think rifle butts and ice picks saved Western civilization?

You might also say that Stalin and the Catholic vote in Boston saved Spain from turning into a 1930s version of Cambodia.

You just know those anarchist bastards wanted to kill every priest in the country and would have had FDR not been too worried about the Mick and the Dago vote in Boston to lift that arms embargo.

tkt
i prefer you as the reader of letters between bobby lee and his dullnes lord acton

this violent imagery sems like a taunt
do us the credit of our advanced years
nothing you say --and some of its quite fun--
nothing enrages any of us

our sins at least to ourselves are to obvious
and our gods to keenly real

nothing enrages any of us

Come on. Aren't there some lefty sacred cows you'd blow your stack if I insulted?

But I'm really trying to point out just how bad an effect new left historians and political scientists have had on those expensive diplomas your grandkids are getting.

I kind of have a grudging respect for the new lefty A Team. Noam Chomsky's at least entertaining.

But the new lefty B and C teams, that mythology they've been teaching for the past 35 years?

Jeez. This idea that Stalin was this monster who hijacked a fundamentally decent revolution instead of actually being the logical culmination Lenin's intellectual and moral abomination?

Every fucking lefty mediocrity believes that.

In fact, what happened was this:

First of all, don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of Joe McCarthy or J. Edger Hoover.

But I do think the New Left takeover of the universities in the 1970s and 1980s led to the construction of an elaborate lie.

Right after Kruschev denounced Stalin, people began to see just how evil Marxism is. It ran through Prague in 1968 and Pol Pot. After the 1970s, most people with any common sense knew what communism was all about.

But the new lefties were constructing an elaborate myth, an almost Straussian big lie, that the Soviet Union wasn't a socialist society, that somehow socialism had never been tried in real life. People were reading Lenin at Harvard even while the Berlin Wall fell.

Any wonder now that you go to an anti-war rally and see people hawking Marxist newspapers? Any wonder an old Communist hack like Leslie Cagan keeps all demonstrations against militarism looking like 1950s style Commie Front Group Parades?

There would be a real anti-militarist tradition in this country were it not for the fools in the universities.

Just my opinion of course.

And the upshot of all of it is is that as much as you attack liberal Democrats, you're all still basically in the same camp.

You just want them to be a bit harder core left, nominate Nader or McKinney or Kucinich instead of Obama or Biden.

But in the end, you'll side with the "pwoggies" because for you it's not that their lefty ideology is wrongheaded. It's that they're not lefty enough.

So you don't see that the only way to destroy militarism is a tax revolt. You won't go along because you want to save Social Security. You're all basically slaves of FDR's brilliant program of cooptation.

You really want to get rid of the Democrats?

It would have been easy in 2005. Support Bush's Social Security privatization scheme. Sure it would have wrecked a lot of lives. It may have even inflated another bubble and kept the Republicans in office for another four years.

But it would have taken away the reason for the existence of the Democratic Party, the one place where they will fight. And it would have meant a one party right wing state for real.

And it's still possible. If Obama gets desperate enough, he'll use part of the Social Security money to try to inflate another bubble.

If you're really interested in destroying the Dems you'll support it. You'll buy that rope Obama is selling you and use it to hang the Democrats.

But you won't because deep down inside, you're still a lefty and you consider the Pwoggies just wayward children who need some tough love and not the enemy.

TKT sure's got us pegged.

Hey MJS. Thought you'd enjoy this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/apr/08/dick-cheney-noam-chomsky

tkt, by the way, i do admit to being a reluctant admirer of vladimir il'ich. as some right-winger once said of pinochet: "yeah he was a bastard, but he was our bastard!" ;-) (my apologies MJS. i also admit to being a complete fool!)

TKT, let's set aside moral evaluations and political assessments for the moment.

I agree with you that it is intellectually lazy to flatly deny that there is any connection between Bolshevism and Stalinism, and to regard the latter as a simple bastardization of the communist project. But to do so is no less lazy than reducing an extremely complex historical process to alleged authoritarian kernels contained within a mere intellectual doctrine (Marxism).

As for your hit-and-run depiction of the academic scene... to the extent they ever had much influence, New Leftists turned neo-Marxists hit their peak in the 1970's and early 1980's, in the social sciences anyway. What little beachhead they established was soon ceded to the neo-utilitarians, the post-structuralists, the rational choicers, etc. beginning in the mid-to-late 1980's. What meager heyday they had was brief. They're rare birds nowadays. Familiarize yourself with the strange history of the journal _Telos_, for example.

Do you actually believe that the Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest types have less cachet in elite universities, think tanks, mass media, private foundations, and such than New Leftists turned neo-Marxists (not to mention that not a few neo-Marxists themselves made sharp turns to the right)? Please.

I dunno, dermokrat. If a comment on another post is any indication, TKT thinks Alex Cockburn is a Trotskyite.

Hey, MJS--
Did you purge your own comments about Flaubert and Emma Bovary? Is the fox in charge of the chicken coup?

Do you actually believe that the Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest types have less cachet in elite universities, think tanks, mass media, private foundations, and such than New Leftists turned neo-Marxists (not to mention that not a few neo-Marxists themselves made sharp turns to the right)? Please.

They obviously have a lot more. Lefties have little or not influence in terms of the American political scene as a whole.

David Brooks will get a meeting with Obama. Amy Goodman will never get a meeting with Obama. I could imagine Daniel Pipes getting a job inside the Obama administration. Note. I don't think it's likely but I can imagine it. I can't imagine Obama even agreeing to be photgraphed with Noam Chomsky.

All of that admitted, it's irrelevent.

The New Left had enough influence in the universities to create the myth that socialism's never really been tried, that what happened in the Soviet Union was Stalin's fault alone (Stalin's kind of a Lee Harvey Oswald Patsy of history) and not Lenin's and Marx's.

Once that myth was created, it was able to serve as the underlying myth for the left, anti-militarist, dissenting whatever you want to call it opposition. And it locked any opposition into a futile nostalgia for a Marxist left that never was.

Back in Czarist Russia, the Czar's secret police had Marx's works translated and distributed thoughout the country. They wanted to use Marx to undercut anarchism (which they thought was more dangerous). They thought it was harmless scholasticism.

They miscalculated in Russia. They never anticipated how some very Russian, very Slavic monsters like Lenin and Trotsky would eventually line them up against the wall and have them shot.

But their strategy works very well in America.

The fox is in charge of this one, Van. Play nice, now.

VM, no, the fox is in charge of his own blog, for which he takes the time, energy, and care to maintain. You seem like a concerted man with a concerted plan. Why don't you start your own blog? I'm sure it will be a model of accountable, transparent, participatory democracy.

I dunno, dermokrat.

I didn't say you were a Democrat. I said you were a lefty.

You look at liberal dems sort of the way a Christian fundy looks at a Presbyterian or a Chabad Lubavitcher looks Jon Stewart.

You don't want to break with the basic idea. You only want them to turn up the volume a bit.

So just like Kos, you're not willing to challenge the real foundation of the welfare warfare state.

I'm betting most people here (as much as they detest Obama) would be willing to put up with a few thousand dead Pashtuns if it meant keeping Social Security and getting Universal healthcare.

You still buy into the fundamental bargain.

TKT, permit me to be presumptuous, but I sense that you pride yourself on being a tough-minded, independent thinker. Why then do you fall prey to the sloppy habit of imputing "Marxism" to characters who don't self-identify as "Marxists" and who no reasonable person would identify as such, either. Amy Goodman, for example. She is way too much of a screeching USian left-liberal moralist to be properly slotted as a "Marxist." Thus the tag is just a shortcut for discrediting her. Surely you're better than the deliberately obtuse Fox Snoozers.

But you are correct... this is hardly the central issue. Be it a loathsome myth or a brilliant insight, the notion that the authoritarian state socialisms of the post-Lenin USSR and beyond are disfigurations of the communist ideal so grotesque that they are not worthy of being considered "communist" -- the notion that, as you put it, "communism has never been tried" -- does indeed have some traction among sectors of the Marxist left inside and outside academia. But regardless of the truth value of this position, it travels in such limited circles that it is wildly inaccurate to claim that it's had any meaningful impact on US socio-politico discourse.

What is more, you are really trumpeting a fallacious "great man theory of history" here. You reduce complex institutional structures and complex historical proceses to the psychological dispositions of power-hungry putschists. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the Bolshevik leaders were megalomaniacs. And let's also suppose (this is a real stretch for me!) that Marxism was an ideology perfectly suited for their nefarious aims, that it gave them a conceptual rationale for establishing a single-party state in the false name of representing the interests of oppressed toilers ("the dictatorship of the proletariat"). Is the authoritarian and bloody outcome that transpired in the USSR simply an artifact of their warped personalities and the ideological banner they flew? What about the badly weakened and essentially illegitimate stature of the Romanov regime? What about the irrefutable fact that Russia in 1917 was infertile soil for bourgeois democracy? What about the destruction of Russia's relatively modest and geographically concentrated industrial base courtesy of WWI and the civil war, or the defection and death of the country's trained professional-technical personnel? Etc. etc. etc.

Once you factor these factors into the mix, the political meaning that you assign to the claim that "communism has never been tried" loses a lot of weight. Yes, in a certain narrow sense it has indeed been tried -- but under contingent institutional and historical conditions that have, at best, arguable relevance today.

Anyway, it was not my intent to spend more than an hour on this... toodle-oo.

TKT, sometimes I find you hard to follow. Social Security, for instance -- as far as I can recall without looking it up, you're the only person who's ever mentioned Social Security on this blog. And what possible connection is there between killing Pashtuns and universal health care? Here in Amurrica, we do the former and not the latter. Other societies do the latter and not the former. There's no tradeoff necessary, and none is being offered. It's difficult to avoid the feeling that you are doing battle, sometimes, with intellectual constructs that correspond to nothing in the external world.

Whoops... TKT never called Amy Goodman a "Marxist," only a "leftist." Please disregard that segment of my post. TKT's shotgun style is infectious, I guess. And, MJS, sorry for taking the bait. That's not like me. The hothouse atmosphere around here lately has seeped into my pores... which is not to say that I'm not a fool.

Apparently we're all fools. But in my own defense I'd like to say that it was (specifically) TKT's original comments, on this post, about Trotsky, that I felt were fairly obvious bait trailed in front of anybody who might have a serious ax to grind in the Trotsky/Stalin debate. (I'm not one of these, and I don't get the sense that many SMBIVA readers are.)

Admittedly the Trotsky/Stalin debate resembles an exchange between living persons far more than does, say, the average US presidential debate -- but still!

MJS--
1. You avoided my point--you ask others to play nice. I hope that in this case the physician will try to heal himself. Do you also pledge to play nice--you've been no choirboy yourself. If you were really sincere about this, you would be passing judgment on yourself as much as others and perhaps even apologizing for your own excesses of personal spite. Or do you harbor a notion of unitary executive that exempts you from laws that you impose on others?

2. So gluelicker initiates another snide, sarcastic personal attack on me (see just above), entirely devoid of political substance (which you have exhorted everyone to focus on), even though I had not addressed to him in this thread. So no sooner do you issue your sermon than you let this baiting pass without comment--perhaps because it is a variant of his chronic groveling to you? Is this really a new policy, or just a warning to those who aren't registered members of your fan club that they had better join up?

There's a blanket amnesty for all misdeeds before Thursday the 9th. No faces will be cropped from Lenin's-tomb photos taken before that date. Let's all try to do better in future.

I'm not sure what post of gluelicker's you're objecting to, Van, but I don't see anything in this thread that seems out of line, by my admittedly low standards.

Gluelicker here! In the spirit of reconciliation, I take back the "I'm sure it will be a model of accountable, transparent, participatory democracy" snark. That was admittedly snarky.

Forget for a minute that far more than others, it was Van Mungo who let loose with a series of ornery tirades, when OP and others refused administration of truth serum. (At least in my view... Van Mungo is entitled to his view of things.) It's blanket amnesty all around -- a laudable policy. But VM, when you subtract the snark out of my above post, the question remains: what do YOU want to get out of this blog? If the prevailing culture or raison d'etre doesn't square with your preferences, why not begin your own?

Whoops... TKT never called Amy Goodman a "Marxist," only a "leftist."

She's a front woman for Medea Benjamin and Global Exchange. Seriously, Medea's $$$ was behind a lot of the early success of that show. That's why she doesn't criticize the anti-war left too strongly.

Don't get me wrong, reactionary though I am, I like Amy Goodman, Chomsky, Zinn, that whole crowd, if only because they allow me to see the limits of American leftism.

Democracy Now, for example, will never do a whole show on the nuts and bolts of how one of those big anti-war "cattle drives" (I love the term the anarchists use for them) are organized and funded.

Most of us know more about Dick Cheney's energy policy than we know about the internal workings of the lefty "anti-war movement." They're top down organizations. People know it. So they get sick of them and stay home. Oh, I know there were some big anti-war rallies in the early 00s. But that's only because they had Bush as a unifying factor.

Put in Hillary or Obama, and the "anti-war movement" is dead.

The cowards way out is the one you and ultralefties take, to imagine that the "pwoggies" are conciously getting together and saying "how do we kill the anti-war left."

A more courageous path would be to realize that most Americans simply aren't leftists. They like the free market. They like their country. They believe in God. They don't want to live under some revamped version of the Marxist dream. They want the American dream.

And lefties like the Chomsky crowd get caught flat footed when, for example, the Zionists bring up the Danish cartoons or Iran's policies towards homosexuals. Most lefties despise religion and can't really respect the fact that Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan like to pray as much as Christians in America do. So when Hillary or Obama take an aggressive posture towards Iran, they don't know quite what to do.

Same with you ultralefties. You have nothing against liberalism or the idea America should be a social democracy. You just want better leaders, to take out Hillary and Obama and put in Kucinich and Nader (as if either of them would be able to do anything more about the bankers than Obama can).

But you don't realize its the welfare/warfare state itself that's the problem.

(eg that's why I'm having so much fun embarassing you in front of Van Mungo by raising the idea, with my presence, that to criticize Obama puts you on the side of the libetarian right Tee Hee)

tkt

social security ???

no no

i didn't mean you had to develop a rubber finger

though i see great merit in the dembots as temple guards of the involuntary transfer systems of amerika

a tax revolt combined with
a white walling of our settler nation's perimeter
what a image eh ??

english language border barrier

no one new allowed in here
even with just a sun tan

i'm a major lady liberty
let em all in type of pinko tkt

but the notion of a militia
strikes to the core
of the juvenile
stars and bars tea party
side of me
in fact
i had my daughter design a nice sequence where the don't tread on me snake turns into the stars and bars that then bend into the hammer and sickle

my common law son in law
proposed
we found
a manhattan commie white boys
french frying legion
narrow nationalism
meets soviet fast food communism

socialism with rattle snake characteristics

the permutations make me giddy

"none of us has so far shown the true divine gift"

don't tempt me pilgram

after all as senile and quaking as i've become

the muzzle loader still fires off now and again

not here of course..heaven forbid
we may have
green unbent twigs among us here

love the typo

pil gram
like candy gram
very Finish eh earwicker ??
eyerish not earish of course

the only decent nar-sissy-ism
is
love of one's every day
naked slips

Yawn.

My apologies for contributing to the soporifics.

Mh

Yawn ?

Why u old jade u

Delightful
Garfield the cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M_cBkTw8Qg

Glue
I seriously doubt
That feline gesture
Was produced by anything u wrote
The longeurs were produced else where and without apology

I see tkt just broke the Smug-O-Meter. I think his best trick is telling all us 'ultralefties' what we think. Well, that and when he high fives himself for his imaginary pwoggie-bloggie victories. Tee Hee.

gluelicker's "spirit of reconciliation" amounts to the following: (a) an absurdly skewed history of a previous thread, which ignores the fact that it was Opie who began tossing nasty, acidulous ad hom barbs into what had been a perfectly civil discussion (as has been his wont since . . . forever, with MJS's full indulgence [double standard?], (b) referring to my counterpoints to Opie's gratuitous sliming of CounterPunch as administering "truth serum"--another clearly hostile, nasty caricature of reality, and (c) inviting me to go elsewhere if I don't agree with his ideas. Gluelicker's idea of "reconciliation" seems to approximate Henry Kissinger's idea of peace negogiations--carpet bomb while you "talk."

If gluelicker's rancid stew of spite and mendacity is a "fresh start," then I'd hate to see what more of the same would look like! But it seems that MJS is somehow less attentive to this kind of traduction of civil discourse if it comes from one of his declared acolytes.

I think that MJS is a man of good faith and good intentions. I hope he will consider obtaining a new eyeglass prescription instead of relying on the obviously distortive lens through which he now reads the continued personal attacks of his loyalists (for example, even gluelicker admitted to snarkiness in this thread that somehow escaped MJS's attention or reproach).

Meanwhile--I find it hard to believe that anyone ever responds to a post from TKT. Compared to TKT, Bill O'Reilly is Socrates, and Michelle Malkin is Hannah Arendt. TKT is plainly a ravening far-right-wing loon with all the good faith of a mafioso and the reasoning powers of a slug--you might as well be testing your polemical skills against someone on the street pushing a grocery cart full of garbage and declaring that he's the king of France. What is the point? Is this blog about blood sport or seriously discussing ways of achieving its stated purpose--deconstructing the Democratic Party? What does anyone feel is gained by answering his posts, much less allowing them to take up 90 percent of a thread?

MJS? Hello???

Sure, tkt is a flaming asshole. But on the other hand, he has a tremendous singing voice.

Sigh. Y'all are not making it easy for me.

I really hate censoring and banning and troll-hunting and topic-policing and Emily-Posting and all that blog-Nazi nonsense. My inclination is to let people fight it out with their own weapons of choice until they get tired and move on to something else. You can always count on me to err on the side of anarchy.

Consider this an appeal to all sides to dial down the vituperation and resentful indignation. Snark is fine as far as I'm concerned, but really, these half-page posts full of furious Billingsgate at other participants are a little over the top. If you've been snarked at, snark back. But maybe it's a good rule of thumb to confine it to one short paragraph.

Help me out here, folks. If you find anything interesting at the site -- well then, don't shit where you eat. If you don't find anything interesting, then go elsewhere. There's no shortage of blogs.

Aw, you're no fun anymore.

Welcome back smithee
Been a while

The battle for stalingrad continues apace
Much blood very little progress on either side

I think they're also behind us

As von paulus
Said on xmas eve

Alan, you wound me. You wound me. *Snivel*

Why is "snark" OK? When is it OK? When it comes from one of your supporters? Snark is NOT good--it is the opposite of civility and serious discourse; you claim to want to tone things down, and then you issue an open invitation to "snark"? What's wrong with this picture?

And just what do you mean by "half-page posts of furious Billingsgate"? In the absence of any documentation or specifics, this comes off as just the kind of personal attack. My last post, if that's what you meant to defame with your broadbrush strokes, was "furious" nothing. Unlike most of the "snarky" drive-by potshots that you seem to endorse, my post did three things: (1) It scrupulously documented the fact that you conveniently overlooked what was clearly another example of hostile ad hom posting from one of your supporters (overlooked perhaps because it came from one of your supporters), (2)pointed out that you seem to be applying a double standard in your judgments on these matters (also documented), and (3) asked why people indulge a right-wing lunatic like TK and discourse with him as though he were a serious interlocutor rather than a feral crank.

MJS--if you insist on assuming that your judgment is infallible and that any discussion of your pronouncements--no matter how calm, reasonable, and well documented--is to be casually dismissed as "furious billingsgate," then you are contributing to the very problem you claim to abhor.

Not even the Catholic Church considers the Pople to be infallible anymore. Surely the pope of SMBIVA should not seek to presume to take up that mantle. A first few steps would be (a) tolerance of reasonable discussion of the merits of your own edicts and judgments, (b) applying the same standards of judgment to all, including your admirers, (c) considering the inherent contradiction of fretting so urgently over some sporadic pissing matches while at the same time endlessly abetting, indulging, and even complimenting the ravings of a destructive right-wing loon, and (d) in your own comments refraining from the kind of ad hom adjectival overdrive you rightly deplore in others.

Sorry if this post was not sufficiently brief and snarky to meet the new blog standards. I'll work harder on both virtues in the future.

Michael, you heartless beast. Are you tormenting people again with your infallibility? Shame!

Nice ta see ya again, op.

AlanSmithees post struck just the right note of puerile snark. I'm sure that will earn robust applause from the peanut gallery, even from the Grand Inquisitor.

There--was that snarky and brief enough? Am I getting the hang of it?

Civil, nuanced, serious discourse isn't much fun anyway. So much better to pass the day trying to prove who's the cleverest as we massage one another's preconceptions. Now THAT'S a blog to be proud of!

Until this very post, I'd always found SMBIVA to be refreshingly well-humored.

To take my own tail-bat at TKT's garish rubber worm, the dog ain't buried there, bud. Try MLK and Gandhi, plus democracy and the Kerala State and Rachel Carson.

Real kids today aren't stuck in Russia. If anybody's stuck it's you and your Walking Old Ideas fetishes.

Capitalist libertarianism makes Lenin look deep and wise, btw.

I think his best trick is telling all us 'ultralefties' what we think.

ultralefties think?

I haven't met very many who do. The typical lefty (ultra and not so ultra) usually exists in a state of hyperemotional, impotent outrage.

Nevertheless, a a genuine conservative (as opposed to the howling band of pseudo conservatives who ran the country during the Bush administration), I do find myself having certain common ground with lefties, especially lefties of the ultra variety.

I'm against the occupation of Iraq. I'm against escalating in Afghanistan. I'm against funding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I'm against the Patriot Act. I'm against the bank bailout.

You're all probably a lot closer to me than you are to most Democrats.

I'm just trying to help you all see that the only reason you're all growling so furiously against the Democratic Party is that you're all still on their leash. The anger you feel against Obama isn't freedom. It's your neck being snapped back.

So let me help you. The connection between Social Security and militarism is fairly obvious for anybody who's honest enough to look without the idealogical blinders.

Social Security props up the two party system (which you all claim to be against).

Social Security grew out of the Roosevelt Administration, that same Roosevelt administration who lied us into fighting a war in Europe we had no business fighting.

First we fund the most brutal dictator and the most brutal system of government in history (Communsim) against a slightly less brutal dictator and a slightly less murderous ideology (facism), then turn right around and delare that the commies were our enemies all along.

This allows for a permanent military mobilization. The welfare state was invented in a militarist bureaucracy (ie Bismarck's Germany). It's not in the interests of the American people to fund the permanent military. But Social Security is the bribe that keeps them in the system, keeps them ready willing and able to pay for military Keynsianism.

What I want is as small a government as possible and a military that defends the American people, not American imperial interests abroad. The real message of 9/11 was that the US military doesn't exist to defend the American people. But nobody seems to have noticed it. It's hidden in plain sight.

And this

a white walling of our settler nation's perimeter
what a image eh ??

is a cheap shot.

Yes, I want those troops out of Iraq and on the border with Mexico. But the last time I checked, Houston and Phoenix had a few people who weren't white who need protection from the drug cartels too.

But hey, get used to it. I'm a lot closer to you than you think you are.

Try MLK and Gandhi

Hell, I have more respect for the commies than I do for Gandhi.

You have the right to use violence against a foreign occupier. Period.

How exactly do you explain the fact that Gandhi supported Britain in the First World War and not violent resistance in his own country?

Heh. That doesn't make it into the lefty hagiographies (Gandhis recruiting drives in 1914) does it?

And MLK? MLK was simply northern liberalism's point man in the south. The whole point of MLK's non-violent resistance was to blackmail the Kennedy's into sending troops. And before you accuse me of being a racist, I would have supported King in the early 60s. I just wouldn't have fooled myself into thinking that it was King's non-violent protests and not the Kennedy brothers bayonnets that ended Jim Crow.

Heh. Just thinking.

I just wouldn't have fooled myself into thinking that it was King's non-violent protests and not the Kennedy brothers bayonnets that ended Jim Crow.

Hillary got that one absolutely right. It was the state that enforced the Civil Rights Act, not any "movement".

But Obama won the exchange. He was able to position himself as the heir to MLK and Hillary as the heir to LBJ, himself as an insurgent and Hillary as a "yes" vote on the invasion of Iraq.

And there's the cultural dialectic that allowed Obama to win the presidency.

You Baby Boomers have spent the last few decades telling us you were the saviors of American politics, throwing a hazy gauze of romantic nostalgia over everything that happened in the 1960s.

And yet you all gape in horror and amazement when a slick operator like Obama comes in, swoops down, and hijacks your little cultural revolution.

Obama's election was about giving us cultural liberalism in exchange for our wallets, a liberal African American president in exchange for bailing out AIG. 1960s radicalism was never about politics. It was about smoking pot and listening to the Stones.

Obama's your child. You own him. He's the true heir to the 1960s.

TKT,

I think everyone understands any point you are going to try to make. It just seems as though you haven't really read much of the blog and don't get where they are coming from re: progressive war mongering, ghandi etc. etc.

It just seems as though you haven't really read much of the blog and don't get where they are coming from re: progressive war mongering, ghandi etc. etc.

Well help me out then. Let's see if I can list the base assumptions of this blog.

1.) The Democrats aren't as bad as the Republicans. They're worse. They exist to play the role of a fake opposition. The prevent the emergence of an alternative. (I agree)

2.) The vast majority of progressive activism is useless or worse because it channels people back into the Democratic Party (I agree)

3.) The ideal that the Democratic Party claims to stand for (social democracy) is worth preserving. (I disagree)

4.) We need to allow the Democrats to die a natural death so they can be replaced with a genuine leftist opposition party (I disagree. I think we need to weaken the state, not just replace military spending with social spending).

Correct me if I got anything wrong.

TKT--

Points 1) and 2) are just about right.

3) is a little more dicey -- some of us would probably think social democracy was the goal, others not.

4) has the same problem -- I don't think we would all agree about what might or should happen if the Democratic Party were to vanish, though most of us would very much like to try the experiment.

I don't think we would all agree about what might or should happen if the Democratic Party were to vanish, though most of us would very much like to try the experiment.

It's not hard to figure out what would happen.

Bush destroyed the Republican Party. Really, it's breathtaking. The GOP looks a bit like the Gaza Strip, a few stray religious fundamentalists lording it over a traumatized population on top of a smoking ruin.

But don't kid yourselves. Americans aren't leftists. Obama's Democratic Party is just the same old post FDR military Keynsian welfare warfare bureaucracy.

Push Obama to the left (even if it were possible) and a large portion will split off from the Democrats and the Republicans will reemerge as the majority party. You'll be left with a small progressive left party. You can call them the Democrats or you can call them The New American Socialist Alternative. Either way, it's not getting close to any real power.

If you really want to change the political reality, you need to change the underlying power structure. You're too fixated on the superficial.

Just to correct some of the right-wing lies that continually get dumped on this "socialist" Web site by the blog's pet fascist:

Only a slim majority of the American people prefer capitalism to socialism, according to a just-released Rasmussen poll:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/04/09/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4931888.shtml

I quote: "Here's a new Rasmussen Reports poll that could mean nightmares for Joe The Plumber: According to Rasmussen, just 53 percent of those asked say capitalism is a better system than socialism.

"Twenty percent, meanwhile, said socialism is better. The remaining 27 percent weren't sure.

"Among those under 30, the support for capitalism is even weaker. Thirty-seven percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent favor socialism, and 30 percent are undecided.

"Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism," note the pollsters. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism."

In addition, most Americans favor a host of measures usually associated with a left or socialist agenda: according to a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans favor single-payer Medicare for all (along with a majority of physicians, according a survey done by the Annals of Internal Medicine.)

Moreover, on nearly every political and social issue the majority of Americans favor positions that accord with a social democratic, left agenda. For copious documentation, see the following:

http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/report

I find it odd beyond belief that members of this blog accord the slightest notice or credibility to the endless stream of proto-fascist incoherence and mendacity of the kind that dominates this thread. No one's going to change the guy's mind--he's clearly in a delirium of crazed ideology--so what's the point? No better way to pass the time of day?

Oh wow. Polls. I've got a few too.

A majority of Americans believe in Bibical creation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223.shtml

A majority of Americans want to bomb North Korea.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/general_current_events/57_want_military_response_to_north_korea_missile_launch

But I won't even dispute your contention that a majority of Americans want more of a welfare state because the welfare state goes hand in hand with military spending.

Americans want more butter. They also want more guns.

If you weren't so blinded by Democrat Party propaganda (Media Matters snicker) you'd understand a very simple point.

But instead you're engaging in wishful thinking. You want butter without guns so you don't see the number of people who want guns too.

I'm answering only to correct your stream of lies and misinformation. There's no point in debating you on issues of theory or principle because you're too dishonest and too far off the deep end of ideological religiosity to benefit from rational discourse.

You stated, "Americans aren't leftists." I then produced unimpeachable data showing that Americans take left positions on nearly every key social and political issue. You then cited an irrelevant poll on creationism--but the topic is social and political views, not religious views.

You then purvey a new Big Lie: "Americans want more butter. They also want more guns."

Now the facts: The data summarized by Media Matters clearly shows that a decisive majority of Americans favor stricter gun-control measures. Other recent polls show that a large plurality of Americans think the country spends too much on the military: "On 1-4 February 2007, the Gallup polling organization asked a representative sample of US citizens if they thought the United States was spending too little, too much, or just the right amount on defense and the military. For the first time since the mid-1990s, a plurality of Americans said that the country was spending too much. The surprising result of the survey shows current public attitudes to approximate those that prevailed in March 1993, shortly after former President Bill Clinton took office. Today, 43 percent of Americans say that the country is spending 'too much' on the military, while 20 percent say 'too little.' In 1993, the balance of opinion was 42 percent saying "too much" and 17 percent saying 'too little.'" (http://www.comw.org/pda/0703bm41.html)

So . . . you're evidently grossly ignorant or grossly dishonest--maybe a bit of both. In either case, you have no idea what you're talking about.

I realize that facts like this are like Kryptonite to a rabid ideologue, but bear up as best you can. I recommend some chamomile tea.

Another lie to correct:

The Rasmussen poll does NOT state that Americans "want to bomb North Korea." 57 percent of respondents favored an unspecified "military response" on the assumption that the rocket launch constituted an aggressive military act, as implied by most of the corporate media. If it turned out to be an unsuccessful satellite launch, as the North Koreans claim, the poll results would be different.

For years now a decisive majority of Americans have favored withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is obviously little merit to a political outlook that must rely on a constant stream of lies.

The data summarized by Media Matters clearly shows that a decisive majority of Americans favor stricter gun-control measures.

And that has what to do with military spending?

If it turned out to be an unsuccessful satellite launch, as the North Koreans claim, the poll results would be different.

Sure they do. From the Rasmussen (a fairly credible pollster and not a Democratic Party propaganda outfit) poll.

Currently, 39% are Very Concerned about a possible nuclear attack from North Korea.

Looks like that Satellite Launch is going to worry most Americans.

But, once again, we can both quote polls all day, I in my charming laid back style and you hissing like a pissed off little high school girl.

What Media Matters isn't going to do is define what they mean by "socialism" and what most Americans mean by socialism.

Simply put, "socialism" means "I want the state to take care of me." That means "keep the military base near me open" as much as it means "give me free healhtcare".

Bush has temporarily made militarism unpopular. But there's a reason your Democratic Party isn't responding by pushing for a cut in military spending.

When you're working within the context of a welfare warfare state, the elites can push a militarist agenda any time they want and the people will respond.

Right now Obama doesn't need much support for military invention because the troops are already where he wants them to be. A slow escalation is more in his interests than an all out campaign of jingoism.

But don't count on it to stay that way.

And I won't count on you to define what you mean by socialism either. The pose of "I'm not talking to people like you" is always convenient when you don't have a clue and you don't want to answer.

Snicker. Media Matters. Rich. Why not just quote Gibbs latest press release instead?

Kids-Himself thinks the Kennedys ended Jim Crow!

Nuff said, game over.

You're a dishonest skunk, or you have a serious reading-comprehension disorder, or both.

First, the point about guns applied not only to gun control but also about military spending--if you had bothered to read on--or if you had bothered to deal honestly with the polling data presented to you if you did indeed read on and were able to comprehend the data.

You're so careless--and so dishonest--that you confuse the sources. Media Matters did not conduct the poll on Americans' attitude toward socialism--Media Matters does not conduct any polls. The poll on socialism was conducted by Rasmussen and has been reported by every major media outlet, if you want to Google it.

Second, the Media Matters report confirming American's left views on social and political issues is drawn from a variety of the country's most well-established and reputable polling organizations. You would have known this had you even bothered to click on the link and even scan the report.

This cavalier way with basic facts, this inability to accurately absorb some elementary data, shows that your mind is a hopelessly addled stew of falsehood, your character blighted by chronic mendacity. In other words, your relationship to truth and reality is documentably estranged to an extent that might warrant professional intervention.

The poll on socialism was conducted by Rasmussen and has been reported by every major media outlet, if you want to Google it.

Once again, what do you mean by "socialism?"

First of all we've already established that you're a militarist.

If it turned out to be an unsuccessful satellite launch, as the North Koreans claim, the poll results would be different.

If? If?

The idea that North Korea or Iran is a military threat to the United States is preposterous. RIDICULOUS.

You're "if" opens up the possibility that it might just turn out to be a threat after all.

From that you get 39% of Americans being worried that North Korea might nuke Rhode Island. In any sane society it would be closer to .0001%.

But what pray tell do you mean by socialism?

Most Americans mean "The New Deal" and we all know of course the progress of that myth.

It starts with Henry Fonda loading up the truck to go to California. And it ends with Tom Hanks charging across the beach at Normandy.

Media Matters does not conduct any polls.

So you're admitting that Media Matters isn't a credible source. Good. The next step for you to admit is the fact that collating polling data can also show a bias.

And then finally to come to reality. But I'll leave you with a question.

If the polling data demonstrates, as you say, that most Americans are flaming lefties ready to set up the next Paris Commune, why has Obama turned hard right?

Are you telling me Obama doesn't read polls? Gimme a break. He reads every poll and probably memorizes them all.

And yet he's still escalating in Afghanistan. Maybe he's onto something you're not, the fact that he's the manager of an enormous military-welfare state and that cutting the military would mean cutting jobs would mean Americans whining for more military spending.

Don't look at the polls. Look at the underlying reality.

Kids-Himself thinks the Kennedys ended Jim Crow!

I agree with Hillary Clinton.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3173652.ece

“Dr King’s dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”


It took state power.

Van, Kids-Himself is all rock and hard place, a self-satisfied cricket. Don't bother with him any more. Despite his posing, he's not mentally flexible enough to comprehend the relationship between polls, power, and Barack Obama.

Media Matters is a reliable source because they extensively and accurately report the facts--in this case, they extensively report, graph, and footnote a series of polls by the country's leading and most reputable polling organizations. In contrast, you just reel off one specious, skunky lie after another, without even having bothered to read the sources.

Another example--you attribute Americans' position that the country spends too much on the military to the aftermath of the Bush II administration. Again--if you had paused long enough to read the polls, you would have seen that this trend dates back to at least 1992. But you evidently don't want to be confused with facts.

Your absurd positions require you to resort to chronic lies and exaggerations: "Americans support the Paris commune, etc." That, of course, is not true--but it is true that surprisingly robust numbers of Americans do not like capitalism and prefer socialism.

As for your last bit of sophistry--why Obama pursues a hard right agenda despite Americans' clear preference for a social democratic agenda, including single-payer health care: he, like the major representatives of both major parties, is answerable to the major corporate interests that preponderantly own both the Republicans and Democrats thanks to the system of legalized bribery--campaign contributions--allowed in this corrupt swamp of a country--and nowhere else in the civilized world.

I think I've sufficiently exposed you as a fraud and liar to dispense with the need to waste any more time on you. If others on this blog find it amusing to goad you to further displays of sophistry and stupidity, that's on their conscience. Wasting time debating a patently incompetent, ill-informed, deceitful jerk like this is perilously close to fiddling while Rome burns.

Surely there are better uses for this blog given the severity of the crises--social, economic, climatic--bearing down on the planet right now.

wow 61 comments and mostly garbage. mjs, if you were to purge this post entirely, you'd have my rubber stamp. ;-)

why does this guy have nothing better to do than argue with people with which he ostensibly mostly agrees? he should be out proselytizing amongst his side of the spectrum, i.e. the big-gov conservatives (aka the Republicans), not reproaching the people frequenting this blog (who as far as i can tell are mostly left libertarians, not bolsheviks and maoists - although perhaps we have a few pol potists - op, i'm looking in your direction!!!). yes tkt, let's bring down the whole system. i'm for it. then we can argue about social security and universal health care plans if you want. sheesh. you assume we want nader or kucinich for pres, etc, but to be honest, i for one would have gladly voted ron paul without thinking twice (okay, well he's racist, no matter what raimondo says, so maybe i would have thought twice, but still), for the very reasons you have mentioned: he wants to get rid of it all. fine by me. i'm all for a federal pere(za)gruzka! as mike dawson once queried here: second constitutional convention anyone????

Again--if you had paused long enough to read the polls, you would have seen that this trend dates back to at least 1992.

A long term trend with wild swings that allows the government to manipulate public opinion into supporting or at least passively acquiesing in the invasion of two countries over the past 10 years.

Once again, look at the underlying reality, not the polls. Your own argument proves how irrelevent polls are. Even IF the long term trend of the polls shows most Americans want less military spending, the military/media/industrial complex can always whip up a short term gusher of support when it has to.

he, like the major representatives of both major parties, is answerable to the major corporate interests that preponderantly own both the Republicans and Democrats thanks to the system of legalized bribery

And all of this has survived since 1992, even though you say yourself that the polls have been trending towards anti-militarism.

Do you see how absurd your argument is?

Your too wrapped up in your Media Matters induced fog to see what's right in front of your face.

It's not political corruption. It's the American economy. The only industry America really has left is the military. Cut military spending and you lose jobs. Any short or medium term program of universal health care is going to depend upon an economy based on military spending.

Wasting time debating a patently incompetent, ill-informed, deceitful jerk like this is perilously close to fiddling while Rome burns.

Then show some self-control for God's sake and don't answer. Jeez. Or get your mom to handcuff you to the bed so you can't reach the keyboard.

close to fiddling while Rome burns.

Minor nitpick. Nero never fiddled while Rome burned. In fact, he responded to Rome burning much more efficiently than Bush responded to Katrina. But his political enemies made up stories about him. The rest is your shallow understanding of history.

you assume we want nader or kucinich for pres, etc, but to be honest, i for one would have gladly voted ron paul without thinking

I liked Mike Gravel myself.

You can't win on facts concerning contemporary politics, so you foist on a bit of mythology from ancient history. Sorry--but you're just a sleaze. "Fiddling while Rome burns" is a figure of speech--OK, a cliche; it's not an invitation to discuss whether he was really playing a lyre or if the whole event is apocryphal, as most modern scholars deem it to be.

The point is that you're a pathological liar and/or blockhead.

End of story.

The point is that you're a pathological liar and/or blockhead.

Perhaps. Perhaps I'm also a crack addict and a shopaholic. I might even be a Jehovahs Witness.

But that doesn't make any difference to the political reality I'm pointing out and which you're trying so hard not to see.

You yourself point to polling data trending back to 1992.

That's 17 years during which we've had a credible third party run in Ross Perot, two liberal Democrats and a hard core right wing Republican, one dodgy election, two terrorist attacks (three if you count Oklahoma City or four if you count Atlanta), the rise and fall of the dotcom economy, the growth of the internet, 17 Oscars for Best Picture, the full arc of Angelina Jolie's career, the rise and full of the Oslo process, and half the polar ice shelf melting.

And during those 17 years, the vast bulk of socialist America (socialist by your own words) has never interfered while its government has started war after war after war.

Do you REALLY think it's just some corruption in the funding of the electoral process? Are you really that silly?

Or IS IT the fact that the American way of life is based on the American way of death and that the only way to end it or significantly change it is not to give us MORE socialism added onto the military Keynsianism we already have, but a genuine free market, and genuine liberty.

And you can start by leveling with people. Social Security and National Health Care require a large welfare state. And that will inevitably be based on military spending.

More lies--you just can't help yourself. Without lies, your whole ideological house of cards collapses.

No one asserted that America is socialist. I merely cited a series of polls indicating that, contrary to right-wing corporate mythology purveyed by the mass media, this is not a "center-right nation"--to the contrary, poll after poll show that most Americans favor an essentially social democratic policy agenda. Now Rasmussen finds a large number of them to be hostile to capitalism and or supportive of socialism. That's a much more limited claim than "socialist America." But you rant and rage and distort--and hope that no one notices. I'm here to be sure that everyone notices.

As for your beloved stateless "free market," that's another of your feverish lies and delusions. Every so-called free-market system requires an elaborate and oppressive state apparatus to sustain it. The corporation itself is a reified creation of the state, with no reality other than that decreed by the state; corporate transactions require a vast panoply of civil and criminal law, courts, government bodies to create and certify these institutional Frankensteins known as corporations (the most dictatorial, undemocratic, top-down bureaucracies in the world), and substantial police and military forces to enforce the rule of these corporations and defend their property. You're actually a huge fan of the state--you just like a state that enforces class privilege, exploitation, and inequality, and despise any state measures that conduce toward compassion and decency. But such a preference in a pathological liar comes as no surprise.

Every one of your posts that have addressed a matter of fact has contained numerous, documentable lies, as I have repeatedly shown.

Mary McCarthy's famous barb about Lillian Hellman applies perfectly to you: "Every word she writes is a lie, including AND and THE."

merely cited a series of polls indicating that, contrary to right-wing corporate mythology purveyed by the mass media, this is not a "center-right nation"--to the contrary, poll after poll show that most Americans favor an essentially social democratic policy agenda.

And, as I've repeatedly pointed out, therein lies your mistake. You don't learn anything about the political culture of a country by looking at polls. Once again, you youself provide the refutation of your own argument.

If American opinion has been TRENDING towards anti-militarism and socialism then why has the American government been TRENDING towards more military spending.

You can't find the answer in a collection of polls put up by a website run by Democrat Party hacks.

You need to look at the nuts and bolts of the American economy, something you're obviously too lazy even to attempt. Then you'll discover why a population trending "left" puts up with a government rushing wildly to the "right" (and note I don't even like the terms right and left but I use them for your benefit).

You're actually a huge fan of the state--you just like a state that enforces class privilege, exploitation, and inequality, and despise any state measures that conduce toward compassion and decency.

Well let's put it this way. Maybe pre New Deal America had racial and economic inequality. And it had huge corporations. But it didn't have a permanently militarized population or an economy based on military spending. In those dark days before your beloved socialists took over America made stuff people actually used. Now the only thing America makes is guns, guns, guns, and poll spewing academic drones like yourself.

But such a preference in a pathological liar comes as no surprise.

Actually what's dishonest is the usual internet trolling technique of posting LONG out of context passages that have nothing to do with the argument and then accuse the people you're boring of not paying close enough attention to your irrelevent crap.

It's called blowing smoke and you're blowing it out your ass. Address the very clear, concise, simple point I've made or seriously, just shut the fuck up.

You're a boring pompous ass who speaks in cliches (quoting Mary McCarthy LOL!!!)

VM to TKT: "I think I've sufficiently exposed you as a fraud and liar to dispense with the need to waste any more time on you."

VM, how can anyone take your drama queen pronouncements seriously, when your very next move betrays a mismatch between what you promise and what you practice? Both the vocal and the silent majority here surely concur with your substantive positions, but I think the discursive environment would improve markedly if reined in your tendency toward righteous raging. If, as you correctly suggest, TKT is beyond the meeting of the minds, then your continued engagement with him must be driven by two impulses, both of which you've condemned other SMBIVA regulars for indulging: 1) it furnishes an opportunity to recite lefty nostrums with no purpose other than affirming one's own identity, and 2) it provides a platform for tossing off gratuitous insults.

Regarding the Rasmussen poll, given that the right-wing "populist" (ha!) media has been incessantly branding Obama and Obama's agenda as "socialist," certainly a fair percentage of those espousing support for "socialism" are merely channeling their own approval of what they believe to be Obama's (domestic) agenda, yes?

"Blowing smoke?" That's priceless-I cite fact after fact after fact--all documented--and you reply with nothing but carefully contrived lies and distortions. If your character were any lower, one would need a submarine to find it.

Instead of grappling seriously with the point that so-called free markets and corporations require a vast state apparatus to sustain them--especially the legal, reified fictions known as "corporations"--you just slide over that and start nattering incoherently about the New Deal.

You never address a fact or argument directly honestly. The point of quoting Mary McCarthy was not as a fancy literary reference but because the line so aptly describes you.

You are beneath contempt--your vehemence is in precisely inverse proportion to your basic intelligence and grasp of facts. Your posts are pretty much the equivalent of injecting a chimp with methedrine and letting him bounce around on a keyboard for a couple of hours.

certainly a fair percentage of those espousing support for "socialism" are merely channeling their own approval of what they believe to be Obama's (domestic) agenda, yes?

FINALLY, someone address the actual point I was trying to make.

I don't think most people who took that poll have ever read Marx or studied the history of the Paris Commune.

By "socialism" they mean the New Deal and the Great Society. They want to roll back neolliberalism (to use the European term for Reaganism). This does not imply a rejection of militarism or any kind of radical critique of the welfare warfare state. It means people want a stimulus program. It means people want the government to give them jobs. And "less military spending" doesn't mean "no military spending" or "a radical withdrawl from imperial overreach."

That's why polls are so fucking useless.

gluelicker--
Your post--I at first inadvertently but perhaps more appropriately typed "your pest"--is nothing but another scattershot series of personal attacks. There is absolutely no substance to it. As for your caricature of my reason for engaging TKT--you demonstrate a dishonesty and stupidity on a par with his. I have been at pains to make clear that the purpose of my posts has been to counter his numerous lies and factual distortions. To that end I have cited a long series of incontrovertible facts. You, on the other hand, appear once again to initiate a flame war with me and essentially rise to the defense of a right-wing lunatic.

I have, on the whole, engaged TKT far less than almost anyone else on this blog--yet you somehow fail to scold them with your pissy invective. Calling me a "drama queen" doesn't make you smart or clever--it just shows that you're an endlessly peevish and risible little boy, endlessly plying your grudge match against a phantom on the Internet.
Perhaps you cannot grasp the irony of your pious prattle about "discursive environment" while disgorging, in post after post, nothing but a spew of infantile rage and name-calling. I'm sure MJS is just appalled by your behavior.

You never address a fact or argument directly honestly.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Instead of grappling seriously with the point that so-called free markets and corporations require a vast state apparatus to sustain them

You didn't make that point. You cited over and over and over again some polling data.

Do you care to give me the figures on how large a percentage of its GNP America spent on the military in 1900 (when we, ahem, had lots of big corporations) compared to how large a percentage of its GNP America spends today?

Didn't think so. I bet you haven't even considered it.

point of quoting Mary McCarthy was not as a fancy literary reference but because the line so aptly describes you.

Yeah. I got the point you were trying to make but the reference is almost as unoriginal as the "fiddle while Rome burns" reference.

Maybe try turning down the volume a bit so you can be a bit more original?

Calling me a "drama queen" doesn't make you smart or clever--it just shows that you're an endlessly peevish and risible little boy,

LoL!!! He should have quoted Mary McCarthy.

an endlessly peevish and risible little boy

Do you find it wisible?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc

Seriously--do you pile up the lies intentionally, or do you just have a serious reading-comprehension problem?

You quote this snippet from me:
"Instead of grappling seriously with the point that so-called free markets and corporations require a vast state apparatus to sustain them"

Your reply:
"You didn't make that point. You cited over and over and over again some polling data."

This is another flagrant lie. Count back just three of my comments prior to this one, and you will find this passage: "As for your beloved stateless "free market," that's another of your feverish lies and delusions. Every so-called free-market system requires an elaborate and oppressive state apparatus to sustain it. The corporation itself is a reified creation of the state, with no reality other than that decreed by the state; corporate transactions require a vast panoply of civil and criminal law, courts, government bodies to create and certify these institutional Frankensteins known as corporations (the most dictatorial, undemocratic, top-down bureaucracies in the world), and substantial police and military forces to enforce the rule of these corporations and defend their property. You're actually a huge fan of the state--you just like a state that enforces class privilege, exploitation, and inequality, and despise any state measures that conduce toward compassion and decency. But such a preference in a pathological liar comes as no surprise."

So you lied again . . . so what's new? As I said, quoting MM, almost every word from you is a lie. So now that you know that I DID make that point, you can either reply to it or not. I've had it.

My main purpose in responding to you was to counter your lies and distortions of fact--starting with your false generalizations about the political preferences of the American people.

Your contempt for truth needs no further rehearsal from me. I'm quite confident that every word you write from now on will corroborate your essential dishonesty far better than I could. Knock yourself out.

"As for your beloved stateless "free market," that's another of your feverish lies and delusions. Every so-called free-market system requires an elaborate and oppressive state apparatus to sustain it. The corporation itself is a reified creation of the state, with no reality other than that decreed by the state; corporate transactions require a vast panoply of civil and criminal law, courts, government bodies to create and certify these institutional Frankensteins known as corporations (the most dictatorial, undemocratic, top-down bureaucracies in the world), and substantial police and military forces to enforce the rule of these corporations and defend their property. You're actually a huge fan of the state--you just like a state that enforces class privilege, exploitation, and inequality, and despise any state measures that conduce toward compassion and decency. But such a preference in a pathological liar comes as no surprise."

Lots of words, but no historical data.

I wonder why. You were certainly ready with the polling data when it came to your Democrat Party press releases.

But no data here at all.

Once again, what was the percentage of its GNP America spent on the military in the late 19th and early 20th Century and what's the percentage now?

No Media Matters press releases here. You actually have to do some digging. But check it out. You might be startled.

I'm sure MJS is just appalled by your behavior.

Actually I think the joke's up in the second post.

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/04/roma_locuta.html#comment-389453

Night fool.

First of all, if you had any character, you would have apologized for having lied about my not having made that point--along with all your other lies. But you skip merrily over those falsehoods, as though if you move fast enough from one lie to another no one will notice.

Now . . . more reading-comprehension problems. MJS was referring to your daft ramblings about the topic of Lenin and Trotsky. I agree that it would be nuts to discuss that topic with you.

If MSJ meant to deride anyone at tall who responded to any of your posts, the joke would have been on himself, since he is one of your most faithful correspondents, this thread included.

As for your dodge about the vast state apparatus needed to sustain a corporate "free market"--there is no need to provide footnotes. It is self-evident that EVERY corporate state could not function without this vast state apparatus of legislative and executive bodies to certify the corporations, civil courts and civil law to adjudicate contract disputes, police and military to defend property, etc. This is self-evident because EVERY corporate order requires these complex state structures TO FUNCTION AT ALL. As I said, you are not really an opponent of the state--you uphold states that perpetuate exploitation and avarice, but oppose states that foster compassion and justice.

Along with your chronic pathological lying, this preference tells us all we need to know about you.

VM writes: "The purpose of my posts has been to counter his numerous lies and factual distortions..."

VM, really, if your vocation is to be a clarion of truth, going head-to-head with a diehard paleocon (if I may be so presumptuous, TKT) on a backwater blog is a rather humble stage, is it not? Methinks you don't obey your own injunctions about self-reflexivity.

Why not regard this as a chance to find out what makes such a specimen tick? Or not...

VM: "I have, on the whole, engaged TKT far less than almost anyone else on this blog..."

I am confident that an examination of your beloved facts will prove otherwise.

VM: "Calling me a 'drama queen' doesn't make you smart or clever..."

True enough. It does make me a keen observer of your oratorical style, however... or perhaps one need not be so keen to notice it.

VM: "Endlessly plying your grudge match against a phantom on the Internet..."

Call it what you will... it seems to be working.

VM: "I'm sure MJS is just appalled by your behavior..."

Verklemft, prolly.

PS, Van Mungo, before things got rolling on this thread, yesterday on another long-lost thread I extended an olive branch, although you would probably consider it more of a twig... that's your prerogative.

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/04/why_does_this_picture.html#comment-389605

Anyway, this juvenile tit-for-tat is doing neither of us, nor anyone else, much good.

gluelicker--
You have cluttered this list now with no less than four unprovoked personal attacks on me.

It's getting rather weird to see you contorting yourself, first into pretzels of spite and rage, and then into pretzels of remorse and contrition, over nothing.

I had addressed no posts to you, but you nevertheless felt the need to jump in and initiate yet another attack on me to scratch your itch of spite.

I'm glad to see that you now regret this. I hope you will refrain from wasting everyone's time with your petty eruptions in the future.

VM, ah, your graciousness knows no bounds. Would you like me to sign my confession?

First of all, if you had any character, you would have apologized for having lied about my not having made that point--along with all your other lies.

Actually this was what provoked your spasm of outrage.

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/04/roma_locuta.html#comment-389941

But don't kid yourselves. Americans aren't leftists. Obama's Democratic Party is just the same old post FDR military Keynsian welfare warfare bureaucracy.

Push Obama to the left (even if it were possible) and a large portion will split off from the Democrats and the Republicans will reemerge as the majority party.

Even after all your churning, thrashing, and foaming at that mouth, it still seems accurate to me.

But who knows, maybe in some future socialist utopia, you'll get to have me up on the block interrogating me for "lies" as a prelude to sending me to the Gulag.

Keep the dream alive :)

ah the limits of reciprocal interventionism

mingo reached several points of eloquence
bravo

and tkt
always the calm sardonic touch
i'll not venture to prompt
either of you

keep it up

both of you deserve an after dinner mint

I believe OP's mention of an after dinner mint alludes to this famous exchange.

"You purple-assed cocksucker!" he screams. "I'll teach you to shit on the floor!" He pulls a whip from his umbrella and cuts the baboon across the ass. The baboon screams and tears loose the stake. He leaps on the next table and climbs up an old woman who dies of heart failure on the spot.

A. J.: "Sorry, lady. Discipline you know."

In a frenzy he whips the baboon from one end of the bar to the other. The baboon, screaming and snarling and shitting with terror, climbs over the clients, runs up and down on top of the bar, swings from drapes and chandeliers....

A. J.: "You'll straighten up and shit right or you won't be inna condition to shit one way or the other."

History doesn't tell us whether the baboon learned to shit right or not, but that's irrelevant to A.J.'s purpose.

Social Security and National Health Care require a large welfare state. And that will inevitably be based on military spending.

ho hum.

"inevitability" stated as if fact, rather than as a wet finger in the wind, a reading of tea leaves, a playing of the Ouija board, or a phrenological examination of head-bumps.

TKT does an almost-enviable job of passing the time by "arguing" via distraction. gotta wonder when TKT's trust fund runs out, and what TKT will do then.

micah--
What gives the lie to the paleo con man's absurd claim (gee--another lie!)is the following obvious fact: all other industrialized countries--Europe, Japan, etc.--sustain full national health-care coverage for all and even more extensive social-security coverage (including paid maternity leave, a full month's paid vacation, superior disability and unemployment benefits, etc.) with relatively small military expenditures (relative to the U.S. as a percentage of GDP).

In fact, the bloated, wasteful Pentagon budget is an impediment to the U.S. catching up with the rest of the civilized world in these areas. Something like Medicare for all in the United States could be achieved with a small per capita tax that would cost the average citizen far less than the current onerous combination of sky-high private premiums and deductibles that treat no medical conditions but do fatten the wallets of the HMO executives and stockholders (overhead in the private health-care sector is 30 percent, but only 5 percent in Medicare, thanks to profiteering and wasteful administrative costs associated with billing and denial of claims). Such a program would be a huge boost to the economy as a whole because its cost efficiencies would cut U.S. per capita health care costs in half (Europe and Canada spend half of what the U.S. does per capita on health care, with equal or better life expectancy).

So the con man, not surprisingly, has it exactly backward--military expenditures do not help but rather hinder the creation of the kinds of social programs that have made the quality of life in Europe far superior to that in the United States for the past half century.

Just to quibble, Japan has a pretty decent national health care system (although not fantastic, b/c there's a 1/3 co-pay for each hospital visit), but with the exception of the plum and fast-disappearing secure corporate jobs, few or none of the employment-related benefits (long paid vacations, etc.) associated with Western and Central Europe.

And hey, I'm as big an advocate of shrinking the US imperial state as anyone, but don't forget that the more commodius social democratic welfare states of the advanced capitalist world don't spend mega-euros (or yen or what have you) on military expenditure because (in part) they ride on US coattails... that is, the US does the dirty work of advancing the Global North's collective imperial project, while collecting tribute from its junior partners in the form of selling them low-grade dollarized debt... and of course, in exchange for allowing the US the privilege to wander off the reservation now and then and cross the general will (e.g. March 2003, with the EU giving the Iraq occupation its grudging stamp of approval once the bad deed was done)... that is, there's a functioning geopolitical division of labor at work here, for which the US working class pays quite mightily, as you demonstrate.

gluelicker--
The point is that there is no inherent need to have a large military sector in order to sustain substantial social benefits. The fact that the European powers--and to a lesser extent Japan, as you point out--have economies that thrive with such benefits and without a huge military proves this point. The fact that they benefit from the U.S. military/security umbrella in general is beside the point. In principle the U.S. economy would thrive just as well or better without the bloated Pentagon budget because much more social investment would go to useful things that the civilian population could actually use or benefit from: mass transit, bridges, energy grids, renewable energy R&D to save the planet, etc. Much of the Pentagon budget goes to bullets and guns and bombs that DESTROY things and people but do not CREATE anything of value for the mass of the population.

The point is that IN PRINCIPLE there is no reason that sustaining European-style social benefits--or better--requires a large military sector. This is just one of the many pieces of pure crap that the paleo con man has pulled out of his ass.

VM, regarding your "no inherent need" comment, sure, you're correct. There is no _logically necessary_ reason why a social welfare state requires a big military apparatus (but see the final paragraph below). And sure, the peculiar way in which TKT insists that there's no serious downsizing of the US military apparatus without the jettisoning of the US' (rather puny and tattered) welfare state seems to me to be casuistry of sorts, because he appears to presume that welfare spending is principally a mechanism of state social control, i.e. a mechanism by which the bureaucratic state renders the population economically dependent in order to bolster the state's imperial mission, rather than a product of class struggle.

BUT... it IS _historically_ the case that the growth of the warfare state and the welfare state have been intricately intertwined, and whatever the disingenuousness or confusion of TKT's overall argument, he does furnish some pertinent examples of this relationship. The first large scale instance of federal welfare spending was Civil War veteran pensions. Mass movements have historically used the institution of military conscription as a lever for demanding various forms of social citizenship, e.g. the modern civil rights movement in part has its basis in African-American GI's demands for the desegregation of the armed forces. Some have provocatively argued that it is no accident that neo-liberal attacks on the further expansion of the welfare state coincide with the end of the military draft. None of this is to directly refute what you had to say, but it is food for thought.

What is more, if you subscribe to the notion that metropolitan capitalist exploitation of peripheral labor/markets/resources is a major driver of wealth accumulation and hence welfare state formation in core countries, and that the imperial military apparatus ensures the reproduction of this exploitation, then it calls into question whether social democracy is viable without the imperial state. Of course this idea has been around since Third International formulations of the "labor aristocracy" and I tend not to buy it... but it does have to be grappled with.

:"the imperial military apparatus ensures the reproduction of this exploitation, then it calls into question whether social democracy is viable without the imperial state. Of course this idea has been around since Third International formulations of the "labor aristocracy" and I tend not to buy it... but it does have to be grappled with"

the outline for many posts my friend
like helens face
the nexus of corporate trans nats
gun boat diplomacy
and metropolitan lab-aristos
launches a thousand ships

I can't believe that anyone takes TKT's baiting seriously at all. Anyone who thinks the expropriation of the Americas began with the War on the Plains; or that the Homestead Act marked the beginning of socialism in the United States, based entirely upon how a visibly racist ruling class kept its books or recorded its history, is trying to be cute, and I don't have time for his/her eurocentric shit and classism. I'm surprised anyone else bothers.

As for his preferred strawmen, the "socialists" who deny that Bolshevism or stalinism had anything to do with real socialist theory or practice, it was good that most people here left that to the ISO and similar ideologues to argue with TKT. The cat is a totally predictable bore.

mh

why do i at once agree
with your glass jar confinement
of tkt
as euro centric and classist
and in particular
-- the implicit taunts
of all things RAD-PC --

and yest find your boredom
almost a pose

i think he offends you
i think you figure him for a racist swine
that is not really feeling bored
that's feeling retributive
vicious and you reach quite smartly for
the one word if its believed
that just might
wound tkt
for coming on styage at a site like this

is not his proud display
of rudimentary insights
and predictable thrusts
fetchingly human ???

he's an amateur magician
with every desire ..ever need in fact
to dazzle
performing
before an audience of
jaded professionals
the lot of em
seeing thru every one of his tricks
from the first florish

i'm surprised mingos strident indignation
isn't equally ...boring

i suspect you can identify
with van much better
and i'll admit
in a whistling tea pot sort of way
van is every bit
as fetching as tkt
there is still about him
the yowl
of primal injury

in his case
to his sense of justice

could anything make one more whistful
then to hear that undertone
in his finger sandwitch
of a fury

gluelicker--
Not sure I understand your argument, but I'll venture a few thoughts. (I freely avow that I do not understand one word of Opie's last two posts--just impenetrable, free-associating psychobabble gussied up as free verse to these eyes/ears--sort of like John Ashbery-meets-Marxism or Marxism-meets-John Ashbery, and both come away bruised and bloodied--but I digress.)

For every instance of the coexistence of social-welfare measures and militarism/imperialism you can name, you can also mention a host of counterinstances: the New Deal in the United States arose prior to, not as a result of a major military/imperial mobilization; likewise, much of the expansion of social-welfare policy in Europe took place during the extended peace of the post-World War II era. In fact, militarist adventures are often a pretext for catalyzing reactionary, chauvinist atavisms that eclipse or override mass sentiment for structural reform--discontent is displaced from the injustices inflicted by the native ruling class onto the "other," and the reformist impulses of internal class conflict are thereby blunted. The protracted anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War is a classic example of this strategy, and it was effective in disarming and suppressing the left in the United States for a generation.

Likewise, just as the antiglobalization ferment of the late 1990s was cresting into a potent force reminiscent of the militant heyday of the late 1960s, post-9/11 militarist paranoia effectively crushed the momentum of that movement.

It seems to me that TKT is trying to imply that socialist or semisocialist measures are somehow intextricably tied to the destructive, aggressive impulses of war and imperialism--whether as cause or effect, he does not make clear. I think the whole grand crackpot thesis--theoretically preposterous and empirically groundless--is his fevered attempt to whip up some association between (a) the ruinous evils of war and imperialism and (b) social policy (whether as cause or effect) in order to negate the self-evident
benefactions of (b) by a kind of free-form guilt by association with (a). If you can convince someone that (b) is always tied to (a), then no one will be seduced by the blandishments of free medical care or paid maternity leave, etc.--every visit to the doctor on the state's tab would implicate you in mass carnage.

In TKT's version (as opposed to your more careful historical reflections), the whole thing amounts to a right-wing quack's funhouse-mirror distortion of reality, with logic and fact supplanted by free association. Maybe that's why Opie, his fellow dadaist, finds TKT's phantasmagorias so endlessly edifying.

Ah well, busted again, op. Good call. peace.---m.

Michael Hureaux--
You write, "As for his preferred strawmen, the 'socialists' who deny that Bolshevism or stalinism had anything to do with real socialist theory or practice, it was good that most people here left that to the ISO and similar ideologues to argue with TKT."

I have two questions/comments:

1. Why do you place scare quotes around the word socialist when applying it to those who wish to distance themselves from the authoritarian excesses of Leninism and/or Stalinism? Does that mean that for you the only real socialism entails a one-party state, state monopoly of the means of expression, no independent labor unions, etc.? There are many people who would characterize that form of "socialism" with scare quotes. Please clarify.

2. The ISO is not anti-Leninist but is anti-Stalinist--so you fundamentally mischaracterize their outlook. I am not a member of the ISO, but I find them (along with their ex-comrades of the British SWP) to be among the most intelligent and least sectarian of the far-left groups. So I wonder what your problem is with this group, and I also wonder whether you think that Leninism and Stalinism are coextensive, such that the latter is a logical byproduct--as opposed to a negation--of the former?

Uh oh.

As for his preferred strawmen, the "socialists" who deny that Bolshevism or stalinism had anything to do with real socialist theory or practice, it was good that most people here left that to the ISO and similar ideologues to argue with TKT.

The ISO, it must be admitted, isn't made up of dogmatic Communists since, for example, they support Hezbollah.

So much for religion being the "opiate of the masses".

When there's a badass guerilla organization to "tail" (to use the Commie term) then atheism goes out the window and you pick up your Koran.

Of course this idea has been around since Third International formulations of the "labor aristocracy" and I tend not to buy it... but it does have to be grappled with.

I was simply going by Van Commie's little poll.

Let's take North Carolina, for example. Since the stated voted for Barack Obama the socialist, I'll admit it's reasonable to say that a good portion of them want "socialism."

Ruling class or no, why not look up the percentage of North Carolina's GNP that's based on military spending and think about what kind of economic activity that "socialism" would be based on if you ever got it.

Yeah Yeah I know you commies think that the military industrial complex is going to be replaced by building bridges and trains or something.

I'll believe it when I see it.

TKT: So much for religion being the "opiate of the masses."

Glue: I come neither to praise nor to bury Marx, but this oft-cited passage of Marx's is as oft-misinterpreted as it is oft-cited.

Marx was not suggesting that religion is an ideological delusion occulding revolutionary consciousness, but rather a "haven in a heartless world," that hypothetically could be used to rouse anti-elite mobilization as much as to suppress it, depending on historical circumstances... although of course he tended to assume that the industrial proletariat would be imbued with a "scientific" understanding of its class situation (one of Marx's less prescient habits of mind).

TKT: "Let's take North Carolina, for example. Since the stated voted for Barack Obama the socialist..."

Glue: Oh dear, TKT. You held such promise. Now you've devolved from half-baked to quarter-baked, with a very gooey interior. Better quit while you're ahead...

TKT: "Ruling class or no, why not look up the percentage of North Carolina's GNP that's based on military spending and think about what kind of economic activity that 'socialism' would be based on if you ever got it."

Glue: According to this logic, we should also expect the socialist future to contain a gob of industrial hog farms and vinegar-based BBQ. I wouldn't reject the latter.

nice comment run
glueman

mh

beware the bunyonesque
trials of .....mingo

he hath a clean and eager look
but just
slip
into
one of his ernest looking
two chambered sludge traps
and
..whilst mired there

prepare to receive....
his mark of cain

even a brisk trot won't allow full escape
and then he tails u
like a loud can tied
to your
honeymoon escape car

nice comment run
glueman

mh

beware the bunyonesque
trials of .....mingo

he hath a clean and eager look
but just
slip
into
one of his ernest looking
two chambered sludge traps
and
..whilst mired there

prepare to receive....
his mark of cain

even a brisk trot won't allow full escape
and then he tails u
like a loud can tied
to your
honeymoon car

Gotcha.

sorry for the micro redacted dup

i doubt my double entry
was a soft ware problem
despite father S's misgivings
the fault
more likely
an imp
telling me thru my reflect system
to kool the fuckin aleatory filigree

OK--let's be absolutely clear about something. The next time anyone dares to rebuke me (or anyone else who is not a card-carrying member of MJS/Opie Toadies Anonymous) for responding in kind to personal attacks, consider that the source, the initiator, is ALWAYS Opie.

I'm going to quote in its entirety his next-to-last post in this thread--as bizarre and nasty an example of contentless, pure ad hom mud-slinging as you will find anywhere on this blog (complete with his comical Olympian scorekeeping--facile Roger Ebert-style--about who made "nice comments" [no reasons needed, of course] and whose comments are "sludge traps" [no reasons or examples given or needed there either]. In response to Opie's latest eructation of bile, I will guarantee that MJS will issue no portentous warnings about blog comportment, and that gluelicker, so impassioned in his gusts of indignation about the discursive transgressions of others (besides himself and Opie, of course) will maintain a similarly discreet silence. That's the implicit Rule of Hypocrisy here in the town of Double Standard, SMBIVA: the sheriff and his deputies get to shoot up all the poison pellets want, but woebetide the newcomer to town.

Here's Opie's latest mudfest, just as a reminder of the clearly demarcated class hierarchy set up by these "socialists": the Politburo gets to slime and slander at will, while the masses had better just STFU if they know what's good for them:

"nice comment run
glueman

mh

beware the bunyonesque
trials of .....mingo

he hath a clean and eager look
but just
slip
into
one of his ernest looking
two chambered sludge traps
and
..whilst mired there

prepare to receive....
his mark of cain

even a brisk trot won't allow full escape
and then he tails u
like a loud can tied
to your
honeymoon escape car

Posted by op | April 13, 2009 9:35 AM

gluelicker--
You can't seem to help yourself. You post two sincere expressions of regret for past flaming excesses, post another couple of interesting replies on matters of substance, but then revert to the standard list snideness with your latest "uh oh." "Uh oh" what--you fear that Hureaux can't answer the very clear, simple, and legitimate queries I raise? I'm not baiting the guy--I simply was interested in a clarification of his views, given his drive-by swipe at the ISO.

But I guess in SMBIVA Land quick strokes of sarcasm are the preferred substitutes for civility, logic, and reason--witness Opie's latest splatter of mud above (Jackson Pollock splatter, pretentiously masquerading as "arty" verse, with Hureaux clicking his heels with a hearty "jawohl" each time his master Opie barks a command. The whole thing is just a bit pathetic.

I'd be curious to hear your positions on the ISO (anyone who's commented), since I haven't heard them elaborated. My limited understanding of the SWP is mostly positive, and I've liked things I've read in the IS journal.

VM, by my reading, it was you who started the insult-fest in the first thread. I think op criticized someone or other you read (not you yourself), and then you said something about being a "high priest of nuance" and "orotundity." Then Stalin came up and it really all went to hell. Where do you feel the conflagration started?

I'm not about to pretend anyone's been consistently polite to you since then, but that's where I think the conversation started to turn nasty.

StO:

Your account of the previous thread is way off base. Opie started hurling his condescending insults first, just as he did here. For the record, here is the abrasive, nasty post from Opie--complete with abusive nicknames--that began to send the discourse downhill in that previous thread:

"'unpretentious, unconvoluted, sturdy prose'
marks of a knot head
only the fabulously uncertain soul
sups with pretense
hides in convolution
and bluffs with sturdy prose
want plain my dear mudgo ???
try algebra and traffic signs"

It was only then that I swatted back at his pretentious grab bag of insults. But it is very clear who started slinging the ad hom mud--against Roberts and, by clear implication, anyone who recommended any of his work.

The case is just as clear in this thread--a fact that you conveniently overlook in you predictable, skewed flacking for the Snarler in Chief: I quoted Opie's comments in their entirety. His penchant for substituting ad hom strafing for substantive replies is a long-standing and deeply ingrained trait--a symptom of his self-image as combination Genius and Head of the Politburo.

In the past, Opie's pretentious, chronic flaming has been tolerated or lauded by the worshipful peanut gallery. Now I've called him on it, and the acolytes are scandalized. So be it. Maybe it will inspire a few of them, StO included, to a more productive pastime than smooching Opie's grandiose tuchis.

As for your question about the ISO/ and British SWP--for some reason there was a split between these two groups in 2004--I think it's because the SWP deemed the ISO's support of the Nader campaign that year to be somehow too "sectarian," although to me the ISO's support of the campaign seemed vigorous and thoroughly nonsectarian. At any rate, the two groups are essentially similar: state-capitalist anti-Stalinist (as opposed to deformed-workers-state anti-Staliniist); interesting, creative, nonsectarian approach to building left/anticapitalist formations (I would say that the SWP is a bit better in this regard:the SWP was instrumental in building the ill-fated Respect movement in the UK--and attempt at left regroupment--and has undertaken a number of collaborative ventures with the Mandelistas of the USFI (they have been supportive of the formation of the NPA in France, for example, one of the most promising far-left formations in the industrialized world).

The ISO/SWP are certainly a blessed world away from the involuted Trot scholasticism of formations like the Healyite WSWS (David North's little sect) or the lunatic Spartacists. In fact, I think that the ISO/SWP, along with the parties sympathetic to the USFI, represent some of the most dynamic and creative elements in the movement toward global far-left regroupment--"far left" meaning militantly anticapitalist, as opposed to the compromised mainstream-dinosaur Communist Party remnants and neoliberal Socialist and SD parties. For example--the NPA already has 9,000 committed activist members in France; its leader, Oliver Besancenot, is the second-most popular political figure in France; and the NPA has refused to run in a common bloc with the Left Party and the Communist Party because the latter two have refused to preclude a common ruling bloc with the procapitalist, neoliberal Socialist Party. These are all hopeful signs for anyone who hopes to see a resurgence of a militant left untainted by the last two decades of neoliberal "center-left" fraud.

VM, "uh oh" was a reply to your asking MH "I also wonder whether you think that Leninism and Stalinism are coextensive." At worst it seemed like a litmus test (you say it wasn't, so I'll take your word for it), at best it seemed to open up the proverbial can of worms. That's all.

gluelicker--
I think Hureaux's gratuitous swipe at ISO was closer to a worm-can opener than a reasonable inquiry about what he meant.

heel klicker that I is
jahwohling and caterwauling in plagiarized style I be almost sure
I can't find words to address that
be anything but groucho marxism
Mungo oh merciless as you seed
I done lost my soul to d man op
oh rust rust rust is me,
mere rhetorician of the lower colon,
drive by shootist that I is
at ISO groupies all I wants to
do is ape the lyric oh woe is myself.
slap me upside the head
yea verily hit it till I quit it
hit me good gawd as sayeth the prophet James.

VM, I didn't register that op comment as nasty because I skimmed it at the time, as it seemed impenetrable. I'm still not quite sure what it's saying. On rereading it, it seems to be saying that "sturdy prose" is the real "pretense" and "convolution," and that you wouldn't find any here. (I personally kind of like algebra and traffic signs). I think the "knot head" of "uncertain soul" was directed at PCR, not you, and that you should avoid such people (by eschewing standard prose?), but I see how you took it that way now. As for "mudgo," he butchers everyone's name whether he likes them or not, so I'm not convinced it was intended as a slight. But I've been reading his outsider-art comments for a while and am inclined toward charity. Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

Besancenot seemed like an interesting guy when he was running with the Communists back in the Sarkozy/Royal election, and I've pleased to see the NPA growing.

MH, you might not find it productive to talk to VM, but I at least would be curious to hear why you don't like the ISO/IST, if you'd indulge me.

StO:

I was perfectly civil in my inquiry to Hureaux. He then got his marching orders from Opie that I was under his fatwa. Hureaux jumped to attention and saluted with a servile "gotcha." So your little introductory clause, "MH, you might not find it productive to talk to VM," is just another needless ad hom provocation. For someone who is so sensitive to the polemical temperature, you sure don't seem to mind lighting a fire or two.

I was also amused to see your convoluted apologetics for Opie's snide personal abuse. So your pious little sin patrol operates with a grossly hypocritical double standard that turns a blind eye to the offenses of the ruling elite--that scarcely sounds like a socialist sensibility to me. As Gandhi one said, StO, you must be the change you want to see in the world. Being a servile apologist and hypocrite is not a step in that direction.

Bottom line: I had not addressed a single post to you, and you enter the scene to (a) serve as spin doctor for Opie's earlier unprovoked abuse while completely ignoring the current instance, and (b) taking another unprovoked shot at me.

As the ancient Greeks used to say, "Physician, heal thyself."

Hureaux--
You know you could have accomplished your slithery dodge of the questions about your snide swipe at the ISO without also making a fool of yourself. So, in successive posts you have established your bonafides as (a) a sneering, empty-headed slime artist, (b) toady, and (c) witless oaf.

If seamy self-revelation (as opposed to coherent dialogue) is your project, you're doing a bang-up job.

StO--
Besancenot never ran with the Communists, if by "Communists" you mean the PCF (French Communist Party). He did run for president as the candidate of the LCR (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire), a nonsectarian Trotskyist party (the largest far-left group in France) that was affliliated with the Mandelista USFI. I say "was" because the LCR has liquidated itself into the NPA, retaining a far-left program but expressly shedding some of the nomenclature ("communist") and leaden subculture of traditional old-leftism (including the dysfunctional "party discipline" of the pseudo-Leninist sects [a defect that still mars the ISO,by the way]) the better to forge a vanguard of contemporary far-left activists from several arenas: socialist, feminist, environmentalist, antiglobalist, etc. So far, the idea seems to be working, since the NPA starts out with a membership that is at least double (maybe triple, not sure) that of the LCR. If you Google the combined terms NPA and France under Google news, you'll come across a number of interesting articles from various sources, including an utterly daft and grossly mendacious hatchet job from the ultrasectarian WSWS.

Now--I hope we can sustain a civil discourse without any recurrences of the old ad hom garbage--even if Opie seems to be issuing his anathemas from on high.

It's too bad the SEP's politics are so retrograde, because quite often the WSWS is an excellent go-to news source, provided you ignore the call from the hustings that graces the conclusion of every piece. It does seem that Walsh does have about 20 aliases/pen names though.

Marx was not suggesting that religion is an ideological delusion occulding revolutionary consciousness, but rather a "haven in a heartless world,"

Ha. Ha. I knew that was coming. But it misses the point. If the ISO and the SWP are cheerleading political Islam, it means there are no viable Marxist organizations in the Middle East.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Islam has contributed a major part of western civilization to the world. It saved Plato and Aristotle, for example. It opened up trade routes to Asia. Marxism's contributed precisely zero.

Glue: According to this logic, we should also expect the socialist future to contain a gob of industrial hog farms and vinegar-based BBQ. I wouldn't reject the latter.

You dodge the point. Once again, the point was about Van Boring's little poll.

It depends on how it was phrased.

Let's say we ask the typical citizen in a rather lefty city like Seattle the socialism question.

There's a big difference between these two phrasings:

Phrasing One: Are you in favor of single payer (to use one of the clumsiest ways to avoid saying the word "socialism" ever invented) health care and more public transit. And would you be in favor of it if it were called "socialism".

The answer would be "hell yeah."

Phrasing Two: Would you be in favor of socialism if it meant Boeing losing 75% of its military contracts?

I bet even a few people wearing Che shirts would answer no.

The ISO/SWP are certainly a blessed world away from the involuted Trot scholasticism of formations like the Healyite WSWS (David North's little sect) or the lunatic Spartacists.

They're all the same.

1.) Newspaper hawking cults.

2.) Social clubs for college professors.

Group one would include The Bob Avakianites (and their various front groups), the Spartacists, and some of the more obscure Trotskyist sects that still type up their leaflets and mimeograph them.

Group two would include the ISO and SDS. The only difference is that they're a bit more upscape socially and some of their members have trust funds.

The vast majority of the people in these tiny, political irrelevent groups don't have the slightest idea of what it's like to live under a Marxist government.

I'd rather talk to a born again Bible thumper giving out Jack Chick tracts. At least the Bible thumper's probably read the Bible.

The typical commie newspaper hawker will tell you one of two things. Buy my paper. And "we need to build a revolutionary party." After that they don't have much to say.

a grossly hypocritical double standard that turns a blind eye to the offenses of the ruling elite--that scarcely sounds like a socialist sensibility to me.

You mean like Mao or Stalin lived by the same rules as the mass of Chinese and Russian workers and peasants?

Oh right. Mao and Stalin weren't really socialists. Real socialism only exists in the imagination of American grad students.

VM, I really was not trying to take any shots at you in the last two comments, though I doubt you'll believe me.

I don't think it demeans you to point out that MH doesn't feel like responding to you, whether due to op's conversation with him or for any other reason. From his posts, it seems hard to draw another conclusion. It doesn't require taking a position on when you were or weren't polite to him to note that. I hoped he wouldn't let his evident antipathy towards you stop him from answering me.

As for point (a), I really wanted to know how you felt op started it, because it didn't make sense to me. I explained where I thought it went wrong, then asked you what you thought because I genuinely wanted to know. When I first read through the posts, you seemed to get increasingly for no reason, and I couldn't figure it out. It was confusing me.

I did not pick up on it the first time, because I find op hard to understand. You may or may not find that believable. I'm still not convinced he intended it to be rude towards you rather than PCR, but I wouldn't be so heartbroken if he had I would feel the need to absolve him of that sin. He's demonstrated his capacity for rudeness too, so it wouldn't shock me if the comment was a slam on you. That's the best I can explain it.

As for completely ignoring current abuse, yes, he's saying rude things about you, and I doubt he'll stop (or that he'll be asked to stop), but you hardly needed me to point that out. What first pissed you off was the thing I didn't get, which is why I asked.

On another lefty list, years ago, there used to be a rabid right-wing, anticommunist, ex-Trotskyist with the same mad-dog-philistine-manic-left-baiting-borscht-belt-shtik as TKT. Seems like he was a weird loner type (former Healyite and Columbia grad, as I recall) who spent all his leisure hours roaming socialist/left lists goading lefties. I'd bet the house it's the same guy--or a twin separated at birth.

Thank you for the clarification on the French parties. I just vaguely remember BBC calling him "the Communist candidate" and reading his positions. Seemed hard to believe people were so enthusiastic about "Sego."

I'd rather talk to a born again Bible thumper giving out Jack Chick tracts.

Jesus Christ, find some then.

StO--
In the first round of the French presidential elections, the far-left parties--mainly the LCR (now NPA) but also Lutte Ouvriere (an insular Trotskyist group that has some traction in French unions)--garnered 10 percent of the vote. Now these are not just peace-and-love Green Party types, but resolute anticapitalist (and antiauthoritarian) revolutionaries. And this occurred before the onset of the economic meltdown. So the advent and mushrooming popularity of the NPA might herald a rebirth of a potent far left in Europe.

VM, how does the Lambertiste tendency fit into the picture of the reconstituted French Marxist left? Back in the day in San Francisco, I used to attend speaking events staged by their US affiliate (Socialist Organizer), and on rare occasion go to their post-event social mixers... and even more rarely, publicize their events. (I think I rose to the task once, or twice, at most.) I was more of a fly on the wall there for the political buzz than a true believer, much less an activist. (And boy, oh boy, was the contrast between their little lifeworld and the neighborhood where they held their venues, the post-modern ironic hipster-drenched Mission District, stark and discombobulating... although of course the SO diehards were too culturally illiterate to notice.)

gluelicker--
The only thing I know about the French Lambertistes is that they do not register on the far-left radar in France; if they do run any candidates, they do not receive an appreciable number of votes. It seems as though the LCR (now morphed into the NPA) and, to a far lesser extent, the LO (Lutte Ouvriere, sort of a sui generis workerist Trotskyist sect) have dominated the French far left over the past decade. Five or six years ago the LCR and the LO were doing some common electoral work--running common slates and the like--but the LCR proved too unorthodox for the rigid, textbook-Leninist LO, which pictures itself as the sole nucleus of the revolutionary party--the old delusional story. The LCR has pretty much abandoned the Leninist organizational paradigm (to its credit) but not the revolutionary spirit--it seems to me they've struck a note that blends well with the scattered choruses of far-left radicalism that have arisen from the globalization and environmental movements. Maybe the NPA can forge these currents into a coherent political force that can dethrone the ossified SP-PCF "left" in France and pose a real challenge to the status quo. In any case, the Lambertistes will be securely self- quarantined from any such messy real-life struggles.

I agree, based on the minimal info I have, the NPA is the most politically attractive thing going (ecumenical and radical simultaneously, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary simultaneously), and it may actually have legs too...

And there are individuals here who actually have the nerve to define political courage as the desire to get into a discourse on the rarifed atmosphere of trotskyist sects. Been there, done that.

I may well be a fool, and maybe a toadie, and possibly even slimey,who knows, I know I can be a real jerk sometimes, but I could see where a certain energy was trying to drive a discussion and I didn't play, and I'm not sorry.

"The LCR has pretty much abandoned the Leninist organizational paradigm (to its credit) but not the revolutionary spirit"

priceless !!!!!
holy ghost power
charismatic trottles

(ecumenical and radical simultaneously, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary simultaneously)

ya seeeeeems like spontaneous good sense

danger will robinson danger

Opie blathered:

"priceless !!!!!
holy ghost power
charismatic trottles"

This is Opie's typically incoherent spew of snide, ad hom splatter. Does he think that the "democratic centralism" of the sects (including the moribund CPs the world over) is a good thing or not? Does he think the LCR was right not to have imported this sclerotic authoritarian policy into the NPA or not? Or is he just looking for another opportunity to display his frivolous contempt for anything resembling serious political discourse?

Opie's specialty is ornate, empty declamation. It's time to start calling BS on this guy.

Hureaux wrote:
"I could see where a certain energy was trying to drive a discussion and I didn't play. . . ."

Could Hureaux be talking about this comment, also by Hureaux?
"As for his preferred strawmen, the "socialists" who deny that Bolshevism or stalinism had anything to do with real socialist theory or practice, it was good that most people here left that to the ISO and similar ideologues to argue with TKT."

This petty sniping at the ISO wasn't an attempt to "drive a discussion"? I guess not, since Hureaux's idea of discourse is apparently something like the following: I (Hureaux) slime, and you (anyone who doesn't like anything I have to say) STFU.

No thanks, Commisar.

That's very funny VM. Ain't nobody shutting you down or preventing you from speaking your peace here, man. Although you seem to have a pretty low threshold for hecklers. That's too bad.

vm cut the absurd shadow boxing
we love ya baby
even if you can't run things here ...

btw
the original v mingo
did ...the real thing
he boxed blade swinging husbands

i bet he wasn't
a shame faced trot-oid either

its time to put away childish things
and silly fanzining for
french fried party figments

btw
yes i think the leninist rev org
just about gets it right DC paradigm and all

but rev conditions hardly exist here now
or in france either

recall the lenin paradigm despite hal drapers soggy bottom up redactions
emerged just in time for a real rev in 05
a real rev
in which the lenin RO
played
but a fittingly apprenticeship role
turning a loose voluntary
proto organization
into
an administrative apparatus

a bunch of circles into a network of cells
strikes me as a decent enough building plan

what's yours leon ming ???

Hureaux--
You're not a heckler, you're a coward. You gratuitously slime the ISO, and when not one but two people ask you to explain yourself, you come up empty. All bluff, no substance. Just a garden-variety bullshitter. You and Opie are cut from the same cloth--you're just a duller version.

btw
mr mingoooo

do you have an e mail
or a blog or web site
now i hardly expect anything like the site mr dawson runs
but
i click on your name and get
nothing some juvenile re roll of hillary

u must have an e mail address at least ???

a place where i can get at u
or at least to u
to answer your questions
without boring the be geez
out of every one who stumbles thru here

i'm here

kapshow@hotmail.com

where are u ???

Opie--
No need to try to sequester me to address any issues I raise out of solicitude for the entertainment value of the site--your view of this matter seems to have things exactly backward: Many posters, whether in agreement or not, have shown a lively interest in the points I raised; just as many routinely ignore your impenetrable prose poems or express complete befuddlement about what you're trying to say. So it seems that my stuff is generating more interest than yours. Aside from the infotainment angle that seems so perversely important to you, I think that my posts are generally better informed and better argued than yours to boot. I try to bring something to the table other than oracular posturing, which gets a bit old after while, sort of like an old serial that's been in reruns for too long.

Lesson? You're doing a splendid job of boring the bejeesus out of many visitors to this site already. No special measures needed.

chicken eh ???
want to vamp it up here but afraid of the alley fight eh ??

no mano a mano
just the two of us ??
u know
personal unobserved
only each of us knowing who got taken out

okay you can invite every to read it after one of us cries no mas
and i won't be me
this is like chess by mail i love it
just give me time to reply i'll go as long as you can keep your self intact

come on fellah lets dance

the real van m would scoff at you
he'd be at my e mail growlin for action
unobserved action
i got nothin to prove to these fine folks
i'll gladly let you brag ...er lie about the out come
cause hey pal...i'll know what really went down
so lets at it mr deep

your a fine guy i'm sure
when sleeping

but oddly on the boil quite a bit too much eh ??
when awake
lets see what some cold non moma's milk does for your temperature eh ??

i like u just the way you are
i just wanna show u who's got
the real wood in his bat
no van was a hurler

lets see who's got the real fast ball and the big braking curve here
and throws fover the black

come on to kapshow@hotmail
i'm waitin
or invite me to your place
it oughta be fun

ps
i'll admit the very thought of leon b
and his faux apache bands of goggle eyed nerds
make me feel like ....
ah well ....
more on that
can ruin my digestion

140!!! Breaks the previously broken sound barrier...

I'm gonna knock you out
Mama said knock you out
I'm gonna knock you out
Mama said knock you out

Call me "coward" all you like. I don't see anything particularly fearless about hogging this page's bandwidth debating arcane areas of reworked 4th Intnl questions, be it ISO, Pierre Lambert, the Sparts, the Mandelites or whomever. I will happily address your questions about me and the ISO point by point, page for page, if that's what it takes,at my email address tricksterbirdboy@yahoo.com, not in a public forum which isn't oriented to the self-confirming disputes kicked around in the internal bulletins of trotskyite sects both present and past. Okay? Okay.

MHureaux, I'll take the blame for the Lambertiste tangent, tho' it was more of a nostalgia curiousity, than a serious escapade.

Opie--
I tried to post a reply, but my posts keep getting diverted to the KGB headquarters--perhaps because I included some links to sources the spam alarm goes off?

Anyway, if you can convince the Poliburo to let my posts go through unimpeded, I will post my reply. No point playing with dice that are loaded in your favor.

Hureaux--
You're the one who initiated the point about the ISO--pretty odd for someone with such an aversion to staining this list with any hint of a discussion about any Trotskyist group.

If you think the proper way to conduct discourse is (a) Hureaux initiates a topic with a slimey plop of calumny and then (b) everyone else shuts up, so be it. But don't try to disguise your nastiness and cowardice as a concern about the group's bandwidth! If you think people are going to buy that sophistry, you should try your hand at selling Sham-Wows on TV.

gluelicker--
Why apologize to Hureaux? The guy is just flaming left and right to divert attention from his unwillingness to explain his drive-by sliming of ISO. There are some things I admire about ISO and some things I don't--but if I'm going to comment on the group, I'm not going to hurl abuse at someone for asking me to elaborate my position. Nor would any other rational person posting in good faith.

Your question about the Lambertistes was perfectly legit--a one-sentence query that elicited a brief reply. The main line of discussion--from which that was a momentary detour--was about the promising example of the NPA in France--you would think that no topic could be more germane to a blog that purports to be about building a left alternative to the Democratic Party.

But that does not seem to be the point of the blog--that point seems, rather, to provide a forum for the endless stream of obscurantist pontification from Opie and the unending revelations from MJS that Democrats and liberals are knaves, rogues, jerks, etc. So--now that we've gotten that point ad infinitum, what do these people propose to DO about it aside from the incessant self-congratulation for having arrived at this momentous insight?

VM writes, irately:

the point of the blog... seems, rather, to provide a forum for the endless stream of obscurantist pontification from Opie and the unending revelations from MJS that Democrats and liberals are knaves, rogues, jerks, etc. So--now that we've gotten that point ad infinitum, what do these people propose to DO about it?

The Secret Life Of Michael Smith

Others here may as Van says "purport to be about building a left alternative to the Democratic Party." But speaking entirely for myself, that has never been my mission. I'm too modest for that.

"Building an alternative" is something people more creative and energetic than I will do once they figure out that the DP is their enemy, not their friend. I'm just trying to get 'em over that first step.

Vm
Still waitin for the e mail

Odd u can't write
An e mail
I guess your
All about the ragin pea hen act

For Public display
Only

And the bs
about
No comment gets up here is a joke

Opie--
I'm still trying to reply to you, but Smith won't let my comments go through. Some yes--the ones addressed to you, no. Must be some kind of rationing policy in the software or in his brain.

Opie--
I must have touched a rather sensitive nerve--you want to flee and take cover in private before your sorry hide grows any redder from my regular thrashings of your empty pomposities. Seems like you're the "chicken"--you're so desperate for the cover of darkness--vampire or coward?. Tut, tut, Mr. Bluster.

Opie wrote,

"i'll admit the very thought of leon b
and his faux apache bands of goggle eyed nerds
make me feel like ....
ah well ....
more on that
can ruin my digestion"

It's just because of this childish ad hominem splatter that there is no possibility of anyone carryong on a serious debate with you about anything. Only your certified toadies nod before your florid effusions as though they are reading English sentences rather than surrealistic babble.

You talk about fastballs and curves, but out here you toss nothing but whiffle balls. If I implore you to get serious, you just redouble your doubletalk--quadrupletalk, laced with first-grade insults, none it very entertaining, much less edifying, capped off with an invitation to "take it outside" on the flimsy pretext that you don't want to bore anyone--too late for that, Opie!

On this blog, with your posts and comments, day after day, you make exactly one point and one point only: Democrats and liberals are knaves, fools, phonies, rogues, hypocrites, incompetents, criminals, etc., etc. OK--I think by now we all agree on this. It's passing strange to me why you think that belaboring the obvious makes you a world-class intellectual, whereas any other topic pertaining to left ideas and activism is just a waste of bandwidth. Your windup-doll purview is really no different from Keith Olbermann's nightly rehash of how awful the Republicans are--it's like, OK, we get it, now tell me something I DON'T know.

It's amusing to see you mustering the chutzpah to use the term "faux" to anyone or anything else. If attitude were intelligence, you'd be president of mensa rather than the mirror-image William Buckley of an obscure, willfully insular blog.

I have some sources for you on the history and evolution of the concept of "Leninism," but I will post them separately.

Yo, VM, what's next, you gonna do Alex H. and challenge me to a duel at Weehawken?

I made my offer to elaborate on this ISO stuff at my email address. StO took me up on it, and has received volume one, much to his regret, I'm sure, it really does take up a lot of space. The ISO and I have an on-again, off again relationship that goes back about 26 years in my experience as a labor and community activist. But I won't walk into your baiting, and you can go on ahead and make it as personal as you think you can. Water off a duck's back, for some of what you say is very true, though you'd benefit from having some of op's caustic lyrical chops. Still, you're right. I should not have hit and run. Having said that, I would like to clear this up, but again, I won't do it here. When you're done fuming about my personality defects, email me and we'll discuss the ISO. Oh, and bring your sense of humor, which seems to need a workout.

van

"I must have touched a rather sensitive nerve"

well no as much as i'd love a good lathering up

my nerves seem as jaded as ever

btw
"passing strange.."

u used that ??? really ???

but to the point
why dodge the mano a mano ???

u oughta be one of those
' any where any time pal '
type of guys (or gals )

u got two invitations
to a private dance lesson here

so if u want "a serious debate"
e mail your best shot
show me how i might learn
a few things from u

and if you feel a need
to vamp anything
that emerges in any direct e to e
to a larger audience
hey fine ...knock yourself out

the challenge remains
i'm prepared to wait

------------
" OK, we get it, now tell me something
I DON'T know."

well if you find others here
u learn from
or better yet
can teach
what's your beef ???
if i'm johnny one note
avoid my posts and comments
skip em
after all your the king of your own head

oh ya
and
if you just want me to ignore u
i promise i will
even if you need to vent now and again
any spleen i provoke
u know if you take a peek at one of my posts
----------------
"You talk about fastballs and curves,
but out here you toss nothing but whiffle balls"
correct sir
here i'm not trying to strike anyone out

its tee it up
and let em wack away
at it

now with you ...in private
that's another story

ad hom
brush backs
spit balls
head hunting
a real rip roaring bean balling might
be fun in that venue

a bop off your skull
here
and there along the way
would probably do us both some good

of course as i said
if you feel compelled
to make it public
be my guest

in fact just give me your e mail
and u won't have to do anything
more then take your beaning
not a moment of yours
will be wasted
out of the public eye

surely u aren't afraid
of what i might say in private ...are u ???

btw
if all this boiled noodle abuse
is only your way of telling me
to stop posting here
'cause i got nothin to say worth readin'
why that might be damn good advice
of course
you'll find you've just joined
a fairly large chorus

i've gotten the same advice
more then a few times

but i'm not taking it

i'm having too much fun

i do this just for the sake of doing it

if its read
...... what a bonus

if folks say it stinks...
well only i
have to live with that now don't I ..eh pard

------------------
PS

YOU "have some sources.." for me

do tell ....

though i'm too comfortable in my blindness
to be in the market for
a seeing eye dog
and in particular
not one that might
want to take me on a tour
of trot land

but none the less

much obliged
van

pps
forget posting them here
just
send em to kapshow@hotmail.com

Opie--
Congratulations. You have succeeded in wresting the coveted Worst Writing in the World Award from Al Schumann, based on your sheer implacable nutty determination to use the absolute maximum number of words and syllables to say essentially nothing--you are a role model for aspiring blowhards the world over.

I've got nothing to hide--I'll take you on in public. If you're too cowardly or nervous to face that prospect, tough luck. I prefer to see you duck and evade and squirm in public.

I'm not going to let you run and hide. You can cower on your own. I'm not going to join you in your cave to hold your hand.

"I prefer to see you duck and evade and squirm in public."

that was always clear

hey

make it all public pal
but start personal
i guess you have no guts

no willingness to establish a location

i'll ignore u then

too bad i was looking forward to itif you write anything here worth half a shit
i'll indirectly refister my re actions

"squirm"

u really have an hysterical need to project
and punish

god bless your tormented soul

little boy got humiliated eh ..at home ??

was your pop the big bad sadist

or your controling nit pick mom
i'd bet your mom

Sheesh, Opie, if you don't get your way, your abuse goes over-the-top virulent. I'm a tormented sould because I happen to find your pompous, empty declamations to be so much BS, and because I don't want to give my e-mail address to some pontifical nut job out on the Internet? Gee . . . call me CRAZY!

You've always treated all your interlocutors with sneering contempt and condescension. Some masochists in the crowd purport to find this chronic nastiness endearing--pardon me if I do not. When someone finally calls you on your BS, the icy veneer melts, and we see the vat of gruesome, boiling malice at the core of your psyche. It has always been obvious to me that an essential viciousness was lurking beneath your pose of chipper superiority to the rest of humanity. Now that the facade has cracked, it's obvious to everyone.

What a drama queen! And all because you refused to be held to account publicly for your party-hack authoritarianism.

So let's examine your impressive resume: pretentious fop, "economist" who can't write a single lucid sentence of expository prose, ardent fan of totalitarian excess, and inveterate misanthrope. To quote Marx, if this stew of irrationality and contempt for other humans is "Marxism," then "I am no Marxist."

You could make a new account just for the occasion and forget about it afterward if you think he'd spam you.

StO--
Thanks for the suggestion, but taking the bait in this case would be conceding a major point in advance--namely, that Opie gets to decide what topics merit inclusion on the list and which do not.

Second, it's become obvious to me from reading this blog for a while that Opie runs roughshod over the whole landscape here to no serious end at all: no real thoughtful, well-supported, nuanced discussions of any issues. The text of Opie's posts and comments might pertain to some newsy item like the economy or politics, etc.--but the clear subtext is always Opie himself; the essence of EVERY Opie posting is, "BEHOLD me, dammit, notice how much cleverer, smarter, slicker I am than the rest of you ciphers."

Trying to have a dialogue with Opie is futile--like any all-out narcissist, he manages to transmute ANY conceivable subject into a consideration Opie himself--of his (self-adjudged) grandeur and magniloquent erudition.

Opie is just a bizarre case study in pathological exhibitionism, accompanied by contempt-bordering-on malice for any human specimen who is not Opie. (If this guy has ever sustained a prolonged adult relationship with a significant other--other than himself--I'd be amazed, or woefully sorry for the other.)

Consider the twisted self-hatred that this relentless self-aggrandizement races to outrun every day--a pretty exhausting game of borderline-psycho internal guile and double guile.

If others wish to serve as enablers for this diseased ego running amok, all I can say is . . . it takes all kinds.

This blog could be a great resource for forging a left alternative to the Democratic Party. But instead it's basically an arena of archness and frivolity and self-congratulatory distaste for lower orders of humanity. Why? By turning over most of the space to the preening megalomania of Opie and the deranged right-wing malice of TKT (a lifetime obsessive troll on left lists), he ends up with a protracted pissing match in which the the main criterion for esteem is not insight but ego bloat--the more gruesome the better. The subject matter becomes irrelevant because the true subject matter is always the underlying psychopathology, not politics.

Van --

Email me a post (stopmebeforeivoteagain@yahoo.com) about "building a left alternative to the Democratic party." I'll run it.

I do think it's only fair -- since you've reproached the rest of us so severely for our negativity and carping -- to ask that you keep it positive, and give us a program. The whacks at the rest of us should remain in the comments.

After the stream of hair-curling abuse pouring from Opie in this thread--and, frankly, his overall history of subtler negativity toward nearly every other poster on this blog--it's a bit much for you to direct comments about "keeping it positive" to me alone.

I don't claim to have any panaceas about building a left alternative to the Democrats. But every time I attempt to steer the discussion in that direction--such as in my comments about the NPA in France as a possible model for such efforts here and elsewhere--I trigger a spray of Opie's ad hom sneering invective--to wit:

"The LCR has pretty much abandoned the Leninist organizational paradigm (to its credit) but not the revolutionary spirit"

priceless !!!!!
holy ghost power
charismatic trottles
(ecumenical and radical simultaneously, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary simultaneously)
ya seeeeeems like spontaneous good sense
danger will robinson danger

Or how about this charming note of "positive" discourse from Opie:

beware the bunyonesque
trials of .....mingo

he hath a clean and eager look
but just
slip
into
one of his ernest looking
two chambered sludge traps
and
..whilst mired there
prepare to receive....
his mark of cain
even a brisk trot won't allow full escape
and then he tails u
like a loud can tied
to your
honeymoon escape car

And you're lecturing ME about "positivity"? Seems your positivity radar needs adjusting!

Why shouldn't the discussion of possible alternatives to the Dems be a fit subject for collaborative dialogue in the comments section? I tried that tack with my comment on the NPA, but it was derailed by Opie's perverse antipathies, personal and political. I think you'd be better off encouraging a bit more civil consideration of this topic from within; why would a post, rather than a comment, on this subject elicit anything other than Opie's ardent efforts at sabotage? It would be futile either way.

Van -- I take it that's a "no" then?

No--it's a yes, in this sense: I'm willing to pursue this topic in the comments section to see what kind of dialogue develops around it. If it seems fruitful, I might venture a post; or perhaps someone else might like to do so. But I want to see first whether such a discussion will be derailed from the outset by carpers and flamers. I don't intend to walk into a trap. So far the blog as a whole has not seemed congenial to this kind of discussion. If that changes, I might try my hand at such a post. If not, not.