05-07-2019, 10:55 AM
(05-06-2019, 03:23 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-06-2019, 01:24 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-05-2019, 05:55 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-05-2019, 12:50 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-04-2019, 07:44 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I would counter that I prefer them focusing on us rather than themselves. Should they actually become self-aware they may take steps to prevent their own demise.I prefer to limit their demise to themselves as much as possible. I can't help it, it must be the tinch of Christian in me.
I feel no threat from the Blues. The faster they drive their clown car off a cliff the better. But then again I'm not remotely a Christian.
No surprise. You went from Stalin to Trump. I have only gone from Hubert Humphrey to Barack Obama.
I think he only moved from Bernie to Trump.
On the old Forum he really was a Stalinist. He denied Stalin's crimes and suggested that Stalinist economics were the best hope for Humanity.
Have you ever read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer? It exposes the moral emptiness of extremists and the ease of going from one anti-human ideology to another. I start with his observation about opposites:
Quote:The opposite of a raging fascist is not a raging communist. The opposite of a raging fascist is a sober liberal.
Many fascists were extreme Leftists before going to the ultra-nationalist, elitist Right. In view of The True Believer, it is not so surprising that a neo-Nazi becomes a member of ISIS, that a former head of the French Communist Party became a leading member of a collaborationist party in Vichy France, or that brutal enforcers of such fascist cliques (Hlinka Guard, Arrow Cross, iron Guard, and Ustase) became enforcers for Commie rule. The dreaded Nazi "hanging judge" Roland Friesler had been a toady of the Bolsheviks while a prisoner during the Bolshevik Revolution (he had been captured by the tsar's armies); one Nazi official had said of him "Friesler is our Vishinsky!", referring to the leading judge of Stalin's purge trials. One of the people executed with Mussolini at the end of World War II As a gay black man, Kinsler can of course never become a Nazi or a Ku Kluxist, for obvious reasons.
The extremist is usually ruthless, emotionally hollow, and amoral; as a substitute for morality he chooses an easily-learned code that justifies his worst tendencies. Harsh measures against pariahs will allegedly transcend the will to kill, rape, steal, and lie; one's cruelty toward pariahs is charity toward Humanity as a whole.
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.