The Maelstrom of Violence

[Kinser79]

(08-23-2017, 01:33 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I’m skipping the stripes for some semblance of brevity.

I won't.  I find point by point argument more to my tastes.  But then again I was never much of an essay writer.  While I've never been much for twitter, Gab and Minds are similar.  May be a difference between generations as to what counts for brevity.

Quote:First, Breitbart is on my bookmark list of sites to be visited which advocate worldviews different from mine.

Good.  Salon, HuffPo and the Atlantic are on mine even if those three sites are absolutely ridiculous.  The Atlantic even claimed the recent solar eclipse was racist.  I'm not sure how an astronomical event can have any sort of racial prejudice but apparently, according to the wacko leftists at the Atlantic it is. And the Atlantic used to be a decent magazine too.  Sad.

Quote: This morning’s observation was a trend towards quote quotes.  Brietbart will absolutely accurately quote blue leaning people; press, politicians, pundits, whomever.  This isn’t to say they don’t cherry pick.  This meshes with my notion that good propaganda doesn’t lie, but it is based on a carefully selected solid kernel of truth.  

Indeed. Good propaganda, and lets face it all news and (((news))) is propaganda, must contain at least a kernel of truth.  My experience is that Breitbart and Drudge have more of these kernels than say CNN, MSNBC, or overtly lefty rags.

Quote:The Breitbart agenda, as I read it, isn’t to bring those with urban and rural values together.

What you term urban and rural values cannot be brought together.  One is distinctly nationalist, the other internationalist.  They cannot be brought together much like matter and antimatter cannot be.

 

Quote:The quotes seem selected to generate outrage, to present as absurdly false ideas which seem rational by the extreme blue.

Usually what passes as rational by the extreme blue are both outrageous and absurd.

Quote: I won’t deny that extreme partisans disagree, often emphatically.  It’s the art of generating outrage that seems interesting.  If one buys into this approach, the country’s divide is only emphasized.  It’s just Eric’s demonization habits inverted and put on steroids.

Let us suppose I agree.  I don't but for the sake of argument lets just say you are right.  Do you not realize that this is merely saying that Breitbart is doing the exact same thing as Eric except doing it in the opposite direction and competently?

Quote:The domino effect is a common if dated term tied into the perceived need to contain the old Soviet Union.  You can express the idea differently.  You can find in history other examples of containment.  Neither makes the perceived need to contain the Soviet Union and other autocratic states of the time go away.  Kinser for some reason dances around words and rewrites history, but this does not make the perceived need for containment go away.

Not quite.  The domino theory in and of itself only relates to the containment of communism and Soviet Communism in particular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory

Also it is the "Domino Theory" because we're speaking specifically of a political theory and not the effect of stacking and knocking over dominoes themselves which the effect describes.

Quote:I for one find an echo of Reagan and the unraveling memes alive and well.  All one has to do to see it is watch Republican and especially Trumps campaign promises.

Nonsense.  Using essentially "'Murika Fuck Yeah!" as a campaign propaganda indicates precisely nothing since most successful political campaigns tap into at least some sort of patriotism.  Let us be real here.  Even intellectuals on the right realize that the plebs cannot be expected to vote on the basis of well thought out ideological grounds.  You appeal to them with flag waving.  This was as true in 1924 as it was in 1984 as it was in 2004.

 

Quote:Then too, I find FDR and the New Deal memes alive and well on the left.

I the Dimocrats ran Bernie Sanders I would have agreed.  Instead they selected Hillary and she ran on being an Obama 3rd term which was going to be a losing proposition even if the Dimocrats had selected anyone else.  Hillary was not helped by the fact that she was and was correctly perceived to be part of the over all problem in Washington.

Quote: Neither defining president is entirely in the past.  While some has changed, those two presidents go a long way towards defining their parties.  

The effect of both is waning.  This will be most obvious after Trump finishes his two terms because he will be re-elected unless the Dimocrats give up identity politics and the Alt-Left.  Since I do not expect them to until after 2024 that means the only way Trump isn't a two term president is that he's assassinated (as Alex Jones is convinced of--and yeah I know he's out there but he's more right than wrong, he just seems crazy since he's six months to a year ahead of everyone else) or he decides he isn't going to run.  Given that the man is 71, in good health, doesn't smoke or drink (never mind drugs) and essentially looks like he's 60 I see no reason for him to not run.

Quote:I don’t see S&H as clockwork predetermined.

Good, neither do I.  I liken the generational cycle and the turnings to being similar to a tide chart.  High tides and low tides happen in a regular cycle and can be roughly predicted within a quarter hour.

Quote: I’m unusual in seeing Bush 43’s Iraq war with it’s associated stay the course vs cut and run debate as a massive potential crises.

That is unusual because Gulf War II was essentially Bush using a weapon of mass detraction.  Rather than finishing the job of hunting down Osama Bin Ladin and killing him he got distracted by Saddam Hussein for who knows what reason.

Quote: That war reprises Vietnam, experimented with a new form of colonial imperialism, exposed sole superpower power to be less that what some hoped, and put containment vs active shaping of the world on the table.  It just didn’t become a typical Anglo American crisis as the new ideas failed.  We stuttered and stumbled into the next crisis, the economic collapse, where some not so  new ideas again sputtered.  This left the see saw see sawing.

Yes and no.  

Gulf War II was a Trotskite style military adventure to bring liberal Jeffersonian democracy and capitalism to Iraq.  Why do I call it Trotskite?  Because the NeoCon ideology has its roots in Trotskyism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CFT88cMlQo

Quote:What I find refreshing, though, is Kinser’s open admission of tribal thinking.  Most won’t admit that that’s what they are doing.

I see no shame in acting on my innate human nature.

Quote:As a progressive, I do not see it locked, inevitable and fixed.

As a Classical Liberal and Civic Nationalist neither do I.  But as someone who accepts that humans have a nature based in their biology, I understand that all humans being social creatures and limited by the evolutionary capacity establish for themselves tribes.  These tribes primarily base themselves on identity, most commonly race but also sexual orientation, religion and even sex.

As such this means that identity and the culture that arises from that identity is more important than politics.  In fact in other posts I've pointed out the following:  Identity yields Culture which yields Politics.  As such attempting to tackle political issues without addressing culture and identity issues first is essentially the same as closing a barn door after one's cattle has already vacated for the neighbor's pasture.

Quote: As a progressive, I am aware of progress.  Slavery ended.  [...]

Your adherance to Whig History blinds you.  As someone who at least partially subscribes to a cyclical theory of history should understand that society does not have an unending arrow of progress.  Rather we have an ebb and flow, much like a tide.

Quote:It is not inevitable.  Who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ is a culturally learned thing.  Some will view ‘us’ as a tribe with certain cultural, racial, religious and perhaps regional affiliations.  Others will view ‘us’ as Americans, and embrace cultural values that all humans are equal under law and equal in dignity.

I would argue that even if we agree that who is 'us' and who is 'them' is a culturally learned thing, that these 'us-es' and those 'them-s' are innate to the identity of the individual in question.  It is not a learned thing that I'm a gay black man.  These are statements of fact.  It is not a learned thing that I'm also of mostly rural stock and feel most at home in the South or Midwest either.

Quote:This is not fixed and unchangeable, but rather a significant element of the red / blue divide.  I will often say the blue believe in community and mutual support while the red value independence.  Ideally, the two could respect and understand each other and their differences.  In part, the problem is that the red have smaller tribes.  The blue will embrace and integrate much sooner than the red.  Many blue will see a strong cultural refusal to accept and share with others of their tribe as out and out evil.

I would argue that the red view the almost pathological altruism of the blue as the mental disorder it actually is.  Acceptance and sharing within a tribe is universal.  It is when attempting to embrace those outside of it that resistance is met by those who are rightfully skeptical of outsiders.

Quote:This mutual inability to understand is a core part of the divide.  Either that, or perhaps many of the blue leaning understand all too well.

I'm not convinced that the Blues understand much of anything.  If they embrace the Alt-Left they will end up in the gulags.  I should know because I used to be part of that Alt-Left as a Marxist-Leninist.  I think I said in a previous post that a comrade complained to me about something AntiFa was doing in a local area by telling him, and I quote, "Indulge them comrade, after-rev (after the revolution) they are the first to the gulags."  I hope I do not have to explain that the liberals follow the antifa useful idiots.