09-12-2020, 12:51 PM
(09-12-2020, 08:46 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 12-Sep-2020 World View: Socialists and Pirates
(09-10-2020, 03:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > I would just question Bernie making US ports into safe harbor for
> pirates, for people who today would be working against
> international law.
Socialists don't hook up with pirates on day one. On day one they
start confiscating the money of the people who are going to live in
their Socialist Paradise -- for the people's own good. After they run
out of other people's money, that's when the hook up with any and all
pirates, crooks, criminals, drug dealers, dictators, etc., they can
find. They also starve, torture, jail and execute their political
opponents still living in their Socialist Paradise.
There's a huge difference between social democracy (which depends upon a large, efficient private sector to make it work) and Marxist-Leninist socialism and its variants (arguable exception: Tito's system that seems to have recognized that small business can generate prosperity without generating power for capitalists in the political system). Tito still had a secret police, rigid censorship, and no political competition. China of course has practically abandoned socialism in theory and practice and saves only the icons of Mao.
The Hard Right is as capable as Marxist-Leninist thugs in aligning themselves with very bad people. Typically such people promote economic bubbles that devour capital while creating the illusion of prosperity. The Hard Right is as willing to establish dictatorship complete with torture chambers, concentration camps, and killing pits as the Hard Left. Fascism is basically a reactionary agenda that uses Bolshevik techniques, if not style and rhetoric, in the furtherance of tyranny. Nazi and Commie Newspeak are similarly vile.
If a bullet is racing toward your head, does it matter why that bullet is heading that way?
Quote:(09-12-2020, 06:18 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: > I just thought that as I have already invoked Happy Talk
> and You've Got to be Carefully Taught on this forum, I
> ought to look to see if there is another highly political song
> from South Pacific I ought to invoke. Surely Rodgers and
> Hammerstein had a vision into the 21st
> Century.
> Let's see...
> I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" - SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)
If you're familiar with the plot of South Pacific, then you know that
Nellie Forbush was just posturing and making meaningless political
gestures in order to gain the support of the nurses. Once Émile de
Becque, a former pirate and murderer, showed up on horseback at the
end of that very scene, she embraced everything the she had claimed to
have washed out of her hair. For Socialists, embracing piracy and
criminals is never farther away than a shower and shampoo.
Pirate? That's new to me. Knowing how to pilot a boat is a survival skill on a small island if one wants to remain connected to civilization. Of course nobody is a 'former' murderer, robber, arsonist, rapist, pirate, counterfeiter, etc. One may not do such things anymore. I thought that Emile De Becque was very much a capitalist, if an agrarian one. Owning and developing a plantation takes capital, of course.
As with any unexplained mystery in a story (and Michener as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein seem to have deliberately kept that a secret), one can assume whatever one wishes that is not explicit in the story line. If you believe Emile de Becque, then he may have provoked the wrong person and killed in self-defense. De Becque describes his victim as an evil man who said whatever people wanted to hear (as is so with demagogues Right and Left... including Donald Trump, by the way) but collected around him the worst people, as one would expect of a fascist or Commie. Or he may have 'only' killed a bodyguard. Or you can believe that he is a sociopath (he is charming, which is one hallmark of a sociopath -- I know a couple of them as relatives, and they turn on the charm without cause). Maybe he has mellowed some and lost his old combativeness.
Michener, a writer of better-than-average potboiler novels doesn't leave ambiguity in the plot line without a purpose. He may have been no Dostoevsky or Hugo, but at least one can turn the pages,
It is also possible that De Becque killed a Communist demagogue, and family members sent him off to the South Pacific where he could establish a plantation. De Becque might have been a right-winger, but in the absence of French women he ends up with some "Tonkinese" (really Vietnamese) woman who is not going to ask too many questions about his past. But she is deceased, and we know not why. Were I in the position of Nellie Fourbush, I would be more concerned about that than about his Eurasian children. De Becque is seemingly apolitical and has a choice between going along with the Allies, aligning himself with the Americans and of course the Free French or letting things go as they might. The Free French had no paucity of conservatives and even right-wingers who became as disillusioned with French fascists as with Commies. It could be that the more one knows about Emile De Becque the weaker the story would get.
OK, I never did read Tales of the South Pacific, but I have seen stage plays and of course the movie. If you read it, then tell me if Rodgers and Hammerstein butchered the story into a gross distortion for reasons other than emphasis
....As for Donald Trump...
"I want to wash that man right out of my hair!
I want to wash that man right out of my hair!
I want to wash that man right out of my hair
And send him on his way!"
That has nothing to do with a potentially-troublesome love interest.
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.
