09-03-2020, 11:30 AM
(09-02-2020, 07:26 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-02-2020, 03:54 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Encouraging and supporting fascist mobs who destroy your own city is not some political ideology. It's a sign of severe mental illness, whether by Ted Wheeler (Portland), Jenny Durkan (Seattle), Lori Lightfoot (Chicago), Muriel Bowser (Washington D.C.), Bill De Blasio (NY City). These people get some sort of erotic pleasure out of feeling all-powerful and superior to the rest of us, and using their power to bring about the destruction of their own cities, just like men who feel power and get erotic pleasure out of beating the crap out of their wives or raping their daughters and supporting each other. These are sick, mentally ill people, and there's no telling how much destruction they'll bring about before they're through.
These are all Democrats, and there's a historical analogy from a century ago, when Democrats got erotic pleasure out of seeing the thugs from their own KKK organization go out and lynch, torture, rape and kill blacks. A century ago, the Democrats got erotic pleasure out of seeing their fascist KKK thugs lynch, torture, rape and kill blacks, and today, the Democrats get erotic pleasure out of seeing their fascist antifa-blm thugs beat, trash and destroy the hated 63 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters. What's old is new again.
Hmm. I guess these two paragraphs are enough to start.
In Portland, you have three right wing organizations causing bad trouble. I add the word bad, as to distinguish it from what John Lewis called good trouble. Anyway, the Trump followers, the Boogaloo Bois and the bad cops are causing bad trouble. All have reasons to promote violence, even if some of the reasons are considered wrong by many. The blue government, Black Lives Matter and the good cops are trying to stop it. The blues have to pay the costs for what the extreme red factions do. The problem isn’t with the blues.
"Good trouble" -- one challenges entrenched evil (cruelty, perverse traditions, inequity) that have fading strength but years of entrenchment behind them. "Bad trouble" is evil, new or old. I expect law enforcement to do its duty, and that means that crooks connected to the President and violent provocateurs will face arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. I expect huge reforms in techniques of law enforcement.
We are going to need negotiations between law enforcement and such reputable groups as the NAACP cutting deals. Obviously nobody has the right to provoke the police with an attack. Maybe we make the system more lenient in practice toward blacks... or less lenient toward white suspects.
Quote:I'll add that you (X) have added a very new and highly non standard definition of 'fascist' to score points, but I have already commented on that.
I have seen the expression "red fascists" applied to Commie fanatics. I have my snide definition of fascism as Bolshevik techniques (of terror, repression, and propaganda) in the service of an economic agenda of entrenched elites. Aristocratic elites, warmongers, and rapacious tycoons may have found the Bolsheviki as unspeakable evil for confiscating the wealth of people like them before either forcing such people to flee or liquidating them... well, if only they could have people willing to liquidate people who don't concur with monopoly, brutal management, and near-starvation pay that maximize profits... If someone wants to call Maoists, the Shining Path, or the Khmer Rouge "Red Fascists", then at least one has the body count or extremist rhetoric as justification.
What X considers the "Left" wants at the most radical a "social market" society... a prosperous society that considers prosperity for the working classes a good idea instead of a frustration of maximal gain, indulgence, or power of some "right" people who... well, we know who they are already.
Quote:A century plus in the past the Democrats were the rural racist faction fighting to continue slavery then to promote Jim Crow inequality. Things have changed since then. The blame still goes to the rural racist faction which still exists, even if they have switched to the other party over the years. If you do not acknowledge the change, you can score some debate points at the expense of loosing your credibility among those who have studied history.
I could go on, but one question first. Is it that you are that selective in studying history and analyzing the situation, or are you that dedicated to scoring points with those already in your bubble that the loss of credibility among those who have studied the situation doesn’t matter?
People and organizations have changed sides. Self-appellation is not invariably reliable. Language either excessively laudatory or derisive (such are characteristic of Orwellian Newspeak) must be checked for validity and not accepted at face value.
And... yes... beware of language that covers something with a very different meaning. Much Apartheid legislation in South Africa came under the cover of the Suppression of Communism Act. Because collective bargaining keeps employers from exploiting individual workers' incompetence in negotiating with specially-trained executives and specialists in finding such weaknesses, workers whose productivity is machine-paced need collective bargaining to avoid a race to the bottom in pay and thus unions; Big Business promotes "right-to-work" legislation intend on destroying collective bargaining and exploiting such weaknesses. Dubya's Healthy Forests Initiative was an endorsement of the much-deprecated clear-cutting of forests, and No Child Left Behind seems to have the objective of ensuring that kids are prepared solely to take an initial placement in a low-paying dead-end job and be happy with such. Beware of platitudes and oxymora, commonplace elements of Newspeak.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
