"irreparable harm"
Vicki Rosenzweig
http://www.newsday.com/columnists/stories/tuesday/nd5540.htm
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
T Nielsen Hayden
I've been calling this an attempted coup since a few days after the
election. Hell, I've been calling it that since the days of the hoked-up
impeachment case against Clinton. No more. Now it's a successful coup.
There are only two real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate. One is his
insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there. The other is
his passivity: he won't get in the way. I will assume that there's a pending
agenda. The people who funded this campaign spent their money for a reason.
We'll shortly be finding out about it in more detail.
The Republicans' use of fraud and force has been shocking. Let's go beyond
that shock for the moment. What's truly troubling is that their tactics have
been so blatant -- for example, the organized mob attack on the vote
counting operation in Miami by a gang of out-of-state Republican operatives,
including known staff members employed by highly placed officials. They
didn't bother to conduct that as a covert operation. They didn't even hide
the cashflow that paid for it.
Such an approach is not sustainable long-term under our present system of
law and government. But there's no use in seizing power just long enough to
get inaugurated if all you do is spend the next four years pinned down in a
hopeless tangle of legal actions and political countermeasures. Therefore,
we have to assume that they are planning to consolidate their power shortly
after Bush is inaugurated.
If you're not following me: This is the equivalent of that moment in the
plot where the guy who's being held captive by the bad guys realizes they're
planning to kill him because they're letting him see their faces and hear
their names spoken. They're not worried about the consequences.
The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
power, things are going to get a lot worse.
How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
do so effectively.
This is bad.
-tnh
Lenny Bailes
>
> The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
> abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
> power, things are going to get a lot worse.
>
> How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
> anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
> illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
> It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
> engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
> vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
> that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
> do so effectively.
>
> This is bad.
>
It might also be that these people are blinded by their own arrogance
(even as Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich's Congress, Oliver North,
and others) and may be underestimating their opponents.
--
Lenny Bailes | len...@slip.net | http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~lennyb
Bruce Baugh
>The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
>abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
>power, things are going to get a lot worse.
>How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
>anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
>illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
>It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
>engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
>vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
>that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
>do so effectively.
If we can hammer out some specifics, I'm still willing to bet against a
lot of this.
--
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
http://www.tkau.org/
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> This is bad.
Yes, it is. Very.
But would any of it had won the election for George Bush if Al Gore had
simply received another couple of thousand votes in Florida? Or if Ralph
Nader had decided to do what Pat Buchanan did, and run only in states that
weren't "battleground" states?
And much as we despise George Bush, and his masters, do we really want to
imply that the other half of the country are all fools and dupes, when we
assert that they could have no possible good reason in their minds or hearts
to vote for him?
--
Gary Farber New York
gfa...@savvy.com
P Nielsen Hayden
Teresa made no such implication, of course. Frankly, I suggest that
she, raised a Republican, veteran of Goldwater campaigns, has an even
better sense of whether all Republicans are "fools and dupes" than you
do.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> Teresa made no such implication, of course. Frankly, I suggest that
> she, raised a Republican, veteran of Goldwater campaigns, has an even
> better sense of whether all Republicans are "fools and dupes" than you
> do.
Teresa wrote "There are only two real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate.
One is his insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there.
The other is his passivity: he won't get in the way."
Are there no other real reasons people could choose GWB as their candidate,
could choose to vote for GWB as their candidate?
What do you think, by the way, of my notion of attempting to fight this in
Congress, and in the public?
P Nielsen Hayden
>P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>[. . .]
>> Teresa made no such implication, of course. Frankly, I suggest that
>> she, raised a Republican, veteran of Goldwater campaigns, has an even
>> better sense of whether all Republicans are "fools and dupes" than you
>> do.
>
>Teresa wrote "There are only two real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate.
>One is his insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there.
>The other is his passivity: he won't get in the way."
>
>Are there no other real reasons people could choose GWB as their candidate,
>could choose to vote for GWB as their candidate?
There might be. Teresa, of course, was talking about the reasons the
barons of the right settled on GWB as their standard-bearer (your
first clause), not about why many Americans might vote for that
standard-bearer (your second).
It's a political and personal assessment of Bush's appeal. You're
entitled to disagree. I think many people who know you both would
have happily bet lunch money that, should Teresa decide to post on
this subject, you would strive to find some detail with which to
one-up her.
Pete McCutchen
>And much as we despise George Bush, and his masters, do we really want to
>imply that the other half of the country are all fools and dupes, when we
>assert that they could have no possible good reason in their minds or hearts
>to vote for him?
Apparently so.
I sense a certain lack of -- well, call it empathy, on the part of
many Gore supporters. It's as if one could only support Bush if one
were a fool, a dupe, or somebody who wished to see corporate titans
crush the peasants beneath their jewel-encrusted sandals.
The truth is that both of these men agree on a wide range of issues.
They agree on the basic desirability of our current system of what you
might call "managed free trade." Both like NAFTA, and would expand it
South, given an opportunity to do so.
They agree on the death penalty, and, unfortunately, on the
desirability of continuing the War on Drugs.
They agree on the basic framework of the current regulatory/welfar
state (again, to my libertarian sense, unfortunately). Neither would
abolish any government program of note, though it's my sense that Gore
would expand government programs at a somewhat faster rate.
It's not as if either man proposed truly radical change, and, given
the current state of Congress and the closeness of this election, I
seriously doubt that either would be able to implement such change,
even if they had advocated it.
There were, however, a couple of issues upon which I believed (and
still believe) that Bush was better.
I believed that Bush's Social Security partial-privatization plan
would help to move Social Security onto a more actuarilly-sound
footing. Actually, Steinn S. (I'm not going to try to spell his lass
name) on rec.arts.sf.written made a good point in response to this,
but, even if I accept his argument, I still think that, politically,
increasing the size of the investor class is a good thing.
I also think that the Bush administration will be more amenable to
less traditional market solutions to problems which have not been
susceptible to traditional Great Society-type solutions. These market
solutions could include some limited form of voucher plan for school
districts that cannot bring themselves up to spec, after being given
an opportunity to do so.
And I think that Bush is more likely to limit US military force to
situations in which real national interests are at stake, rather than
in various messy peacekeeping missions.
I was also put off, in a major way, by Gore's veer to the left -- his
"I'm for the people, not the powerful" bit. I'm very hostile
class-warfare type demagoguery, and that really put the nail in Gore's
coffin, so far as I'm concerned.
Finally, I sense a difference in attitude between these two fellows.
It's my sense that, even if he is a "New Democrat," Gore sees all
blessings as flowing from Washington, while Bush is, at least aware
that a private sector exists, even if his sojourn into the private
sector was not as successful as one might hope.
I don't think that Gore is some sort of pathological liar, even if he
does sometimes embellish a story to make it better. Besides, I have
to confess that I have that weakness, myself, so I don't consider it a
character flaw. And Gore certainly wouldn't have had any sort of
Lewinsky-type problems, had he been elected.
I do concede that Bush is probably less intelligent than Gore, and
he's certainly less of a policy wonk. (Though this can be a weakness
as well -- Gore has recently shown a penchant for Carter-style
micromanagement, which typically turns out to be a disaster.) But I
don't think that Bush is retarded, as Saturday Night Live enjoys
suggesting, and I think that part of Bush's problem may be a lack of
verbal acuity, rather than a real lack of intelligence. I suspect
that the report which said that he's mildly dyslexic is probably true.
But, even though I myself did reasonably well in school, I'm not
convinced that school-smarts are necessarily predictive of political
success. Jimmy Carter was pretty pathetic as a President, as was
Nixon (for different reasons), but both of them were very
school-smart. Reagan had verbal acuity which W lacks, but he was
never great in school, and he succeeded in achieving his stated goals.
I'd _prefer_ a conservative version of Bill Clinton, somebody who's a
policy wonk with the good-old-boy charm and great political instincts.
Unfortunately, such folks are hard to come by.
But hey Gary, I guess I'm just a dupe for those monied interest who
are secretly conspiring to make the US a fascist state.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>There might be. Teresa, of course, was talking about the reasons the
>barons of the right settled on GWB as their standard-bearer (your
>first clause), not about why many Americans might vote for that
>standard-bearer (your second).
That distinction was not clear, to me at least, from her original
post.
Of course, the logical implication of her claim still that "many
Americans" are dupes for these "barons of the right" who are out to
reinstitute serfdom.
--
Pete McCutchen
Mark Atwood
> Finally, I sense a difference in attitude between these two fellows.
> It's my sense that, even if he is a "New Democrat," Gore sees all
> blessings as flowing from Washington,
It's certainly true that all of *his* did...
--
Mark Atwood | The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Janice Gelb
>
>I sense a certain lack of -- well, call it empathy, on the part of
>many Gore supporters. It's as if one could only support Bush if one
>were a fool, a dupe, or somebody who wished to see corporate titans
>crush the peasants beneath their jewel-encrusted sandals.
>
I certainly don't feel that way, and thank you for providing
some of the reasons you supported Bush.
However:
>
>I do concede that Bush is probably less intelligent than Gore, and
>he's certainly less of a policy wonk. (Though this can be a weakness
>as well -- Gore has recently shown a penchant for Carter-style
>micromanagement, which typically turns out to be a disaster.) But I
>don't think that Bush is retarded, as Saturday Night Live enjoys
>suggesting, and I think that part of Bush's problem may be a lack of
>verbal acuity, rather than a real lack of intelligence. I suspect
>that the report which said that he's mildly dyslexic is probably true.
>
This seems overly kind and comes to the heart of why I, at
least, am so appalled at the thought of GWB as president: I
honestly believe that the guy is not interested in global or
policy issues, and cannot really comprehend the nuances of
them -- and is *proud* of it. One of the most depressing
things I've read recently is _Shrub: The Short but Happy
Political Life of George W. Bush, Jr._ by Molly Ivins and
Lou duBose. Among other things, they quote Bush as proudly
pointing out the fact that he practically never reads
briefing books.
I don't believe the Bush wanted to be President because
he had an agenda for the country or for foreign affairs.
He may have opinions on some issues, but I don't think
there's any deep desire to implement them for the
betterment of the country. I think the guy just wanted
to be President because politics is now his business
and that's the highest profile job in that line.
One of my big annoyances throughout the campaign were the
GWB supporters who said, when this or something similar was
pointed out to them, "Well, he's surrounding himself with
good senior people." It didn't seem to have occurred to
them that sometimes senior people disagree with each
other, and someone has to make the final decision.
And it scares me to think that it might be someone
who I really don't think is interested in comprehending
the nuances of the issues.
***********************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janic...@marvin.eng.sun.com | this message is the return address.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/index.html
"Politics is show business for ugly people" -- James Carville
John Boston
[snip]
> I was also put off, in a major way, by Gore's veer to the left -- his
> "I'm for the people, not the powerful" bit. I'm very hostile
> class-warfare type demagoguery, and that really put the nail in Gore's
> coffin, so far as I'm concerned.
I am put off in a major way by this characterization, by you
and many other Republicans, of Gore's mild populist rhetoric as "class-
warfare type demagoguery." That seems to me a big part of the
Orwellian transformation of political language that has been going
on for some years and now seems to have taken over entirely.
John Boston
[snip]
Matthew Austern
> > If you're not following me: This is the equivalent of that moment
> in the plot where the guy who's being held captive by the bad guys
> realizes they're planning to kill him because they're letting him
> see their faces and hear their names spoken. They're not worried
> about the consequences.
>
> The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
> abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
> power, things are going to get a lot worse.
I have a different assessment, which is less alarming but more
depressing.
I think the Republicans are not worried about the consequences of
their blatant abuses, because many people do not see them as blatant.
Some people are detached: politics is just another spectator sport,
and what does it matter if one side cheats? Others are cynical:
they're all crooks, we've always known it, here's just another
example. Others believe the Republican party line, and think that
it's Gore who was acting dishonestly. (We already knew that Gore
lies all the time, right?) Still others see the Republicans accusing
Democrats of stealing the election, and Democrats accusing Republicans
of stealing the election (if anything, the first accusation gets
repeated an awful lot more often), and don't know who to believe---it's
all just partisan bickering, and it's all so confusing, and don't both
sides have a point? Finally, there are those who will be relieved by
"finality," and will assume that whoever ends up winning must be in
the right by virtue of having won.
So I think the Republicans assume that a public relations strategy
can minimize voter outrage, and that, by time of the next election,
most of the people who are outraged now will have forgotten about it.
I think there's a good chance that they're right.
Evelyn C. Leeper
Janice Gelb <jan...@marvin.eng.sun.com> wrote:
o> ...
o> This seems overly kind and comes to the heart of why I, at
o> least, am so appalled at the thought of GWB as president: I
o> honestly believe that the guy is not interested in global or
o> policy issues, and cannot really comprehend the nuances of
o> them -- and is *proud* of it. One of the most depressing
o> things I've read recently is _Shrub: The Short but Happy
o> Political Life of George W. Bush, Jr._ by Molly Ivins and
o> Lou duBose. Among other things, they quote Bush as proudly
o> pointing out the fact that he practically never reads
o> briefing books.
o>
o> I don't believe the Bush wanted to be President because
o> he had an agenda for the country or for foreign affairs.
o> He may have opinions on some issues, but I don't think
o> there's any deep desire to implement them for the
o> betterment of the country. I think the guy just wanted
o> to be President because politics is now his business
o> and that's the highest profile job in that line.
o>
o> One of my big annoyances throughout the campaign were the
o> GWB supporters who said, when this or something similar was
o> pointed out to them, "Well, he's surrounding himself with
o> good senior people." It didn't seem to have occurred to
o> them that sometimes senior people disagree with each
o> other, and someone has to make the final decision.
o> And it scares me to think that it might be someone
o> who I really don't think is interested in comprehending
o> the nuances of the issues.
In a desperate but undoubtedly futile effort to get the topic at least
marginally related to SF, has anyone here read Joe Haldeman's latest
novel, THE COMING? I'd prefer not to say too much about it, except
that it deals with corrupt Florida politics, and Know-Nothing
Presidents, and wacko Presidents, and in spite of all this, really is
science fiction. :-)
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
Golden ages always shine more brightly from a distance. -Jack Shafer
Avram Grumer
> If you're not following me: This is the equivalent of that moment in
> the plot where the guy who's being held captive by the bad guys realizes
> they're planning to kill him because they're letting him see their faces
> and hear their names spoken. They're not worried about the consequences.
>
> The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
> abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
> power, things are going to get a lot worse.
I think we're reading slightly different stories into recent events. The
blatant abuses are things the GOP can only have known they'd be safe to do
once they knew that they'd have both houses of Congress and that the
election was so very close. So while this might have been a contingency
plan, I more suspect that most of it was cooked up on the fly starting
November 7th.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
"All this talk of legitimacy is way overblown."
-- James Baker III
Seen on ABC's "This Week", 10 December 2000
Kevin J. Maroney
> I am put off in a major way by this characterization, by you
>and many other Republicans, of Gore's mild populist rhetoric as "class-
>warfare type demagoguery." That seems to me a big part of the
>Orwellian transformation of political language that has been going
>on for some years and now seems to have taken over entirely.
The Republicans lost any hope of my voting for their national
candidates long, long ago when Ronald Reagan scored points in his
first debate against Carter by dismissing Carter's reliance on true
facts with a benevolent "There you go again". The Republicans, at the
national level, have spent 20 years making fun of the Democrats for
relying on facts.
--
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
<http://www.nyrsf.com>
Bruce Baugh
>The truth is that both of these men agree on a wide range of issues.
*much snippage*
I am really, really glad someone posted this.
Kevin J. Maroney
>The truth is that both of these men agree on a wide range of issues.
Sure. That's why Avedon consistently refers to Al Gore as "a moderate
Republican", and she's hardly the first person to do so.
They disagree on a whole range of issues, too.
Avram Grumer
kmar...@ungames.com wrote:
> The Republicans lost any hope of my voting for their national
> candidates long, long ago when Ronald Reagan scored points in his
> first debate against Carter by dismissing Carter's reliance on true
> facts with a benevolent "There you go again". The Republicans, at the
> national level, have spent 20 years making fun of the Democrats for
> relying on facts.
Well, facts are stupid things, y'know.
T Nielsen Hayden
That is most charitably described as a simpleminded take on what I wrote. I
said no such thing, and I'm surprised that you think I implied it, either. I
do feel that JarJar Bush doesn't deserve his followers' loyalty, but that's
a different matter altogether.
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
Thank you, Patrick. Gary's known for a couple of decades now that I don't
think that; and in case he forgot the first few instances, the subject's
come up quite a number of times since then. I don't know what he's trying
here, unless it's his old trick of unwarrantedly pretending someone's taken
some impossibly stupid position so he can then correct them at length. If
so, it would give him something to talk about, for which I'm sure he's
grateful these days; but otherwise it has almost no entertainment value.
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
Pete, do you really think I'm saying that?
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
Me too. That used to be the kind of line you'd hear from the Jimmy Stewart
character in the movie. It's strange to hear it described as demagoguery,
much less an incitement to class warfare.
In fact, it seems to me (and I'm not talking about Pete McCutchen now) that
over the past several years a huge midrange of traditional American
political discourse has been stigmatized using terms such as liberal, class
warfare, demagoguery, leftist ideology, etc. I've been denounced online as a
flaming liberal for repeating things my very conservative high school civics
teacher taught me.
The effect has been to collapse all arguments into a purely adversarial game
of Republicans vs. Democrats. There seems to now be a large class of persons
who're permanently loud, rude, and incapable of real engagement -- Patrick
tells me they've been showing up here as drive-bys -- for whom the old
assumed common ground of shared democratic assumptions just doesn't seem to
exist. I find them genuinely disturbing.
-tnh
Randolph Fritz
>
>How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
>anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
>illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
>It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
>engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
>vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
>that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
>do so effectively.
>
I think it's more likely that they just don't see themselves in the
role of the bad guys, just as the religious conservatives couldn't
understand that the country didn't agree with them.
>
>This is bad.
>
Yes. But perhaps less so than your reading of it; that these
people are conscious criminals who just don't care.
Randolph
Kevin J. Maroney
>I don't know what he's trying
>here, unless it's his old trick of unwarrantedly pretending someone's taken
>some impossibly stupid position so he can then correct them at length.
It is uncharacteristic of me these days to stick up for Gary, but I
believe that his statement ("And much as we despise George Bush, and
his masters, do we really want to imply that the other half of the
country are all fools and dupes, when we assert that they could have
no possible good reason in their minds or hearts to vote for him?") is
*not* an unreasonable reading of your statement ("There are only two
real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate. One is his
insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there. The
other is his passivity: he won't get in the way."). The secret masters
of the Republican party--and I believe such people do exist--are not
the only people who "chose" GWB as their candidate.
I *know* that what you meant was not what Gary said, but Gary was not
being completely an ass here.
T Nielsen Hayden
Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>In article <slrn93e2o...@panix3.panix.com>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>
>> If you're not following me: This is the equivalent of that moment in
>> the plot where the guy who's being held captive by the bad guys realizes
>> they're planning to kill him because they're letting him see their faces
>> and hear their names spoken. They're not worried about the consequences.
>>
>> The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
>> abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
>> power, things are going to get a lot worse.
>
>I think we're reading slightly different stories into recent events. The
>blatant abuses are things the GOP can only have known they'd be safe to do
>once they knew that they'd have both houses of Congress and that the
>election was so very close. So while this might have been a contingency
>plan, I more suspect that most of it was cooked up on the fly starting
>November 7th.
Thank you. There's some consolation in that viewpoint, though I'm still
appalled that they did it at all.
Actually, I've been appalled ever since John McCain got smeared in South
Carolina. That was a vile campaign. When I heard Bush refer to McCain as a
"liberal" (a strikingly inappropriate adjective) half an hour after McCain
won the New Hampshire primary, I knew the primary race was about to turn
nasty. I figured they'd be throwing shit. I didn't know they'd use a
firehose. (The media could hardly bring itself to notice that this was going
on. That was shocking too.)
I've known lots of good, decent Republicans, and some of them were
professional politicians. But there are operatives in the present-day
Republican party who in my opinion don't belong in any legitimate
organization.
-tnh
Pete McCutchen
It strikes me that this is the logical implication of your claim. I
don't know whether you meant to say that, or not, but it struck me
that it followed from what you did say.
--
Pete McCutchen
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
snip
>In fact, it seems to me (and I'm not talking about Pete McCutchen now) that
>over the past several years a huge midrange of traditional American
>political discourse has been stigmatized using terms such as liberal, class
>warfare, demagoguery, leftist ideology, etc. I've been denounced online as a
>flaming liberal for repeating things my very conservative high school civics
>teacher taught me.
Hear hear! I have to agree with this, and I blame a lot of it on the
popularity of extremists (of both Right and Left) on talk radio. Over
on a politics newsgroup I frequent all polite discourse has flown out
the window; odd thing is that when we meet face to face over lunch
politeness returns. But we don't invite the knee-jerk flamers,
true...
>The effect has been to collapse all arguments into a purely adversarial game
>of Republicans vs. Democrats. There seems to now be a large class of persons
>who're permanently loud, rude, and incapable of real engagement -- Patrick
>tells me they've been showing up here as drive-bys -- for whom the old
>assumed common ground of shared democratic assumptions just doesn't seem to
>exist. I find them genuinely disturbing.
What I also find genuinely disturbing are the numbers of *thinking*
conservatives who see eye to eye with me about this election...Orycon
had several jolts for me of this sort. None of us appear to be
happy--so who *are* these people acting like brownshirts down in
Florida?
There seems to be no real interest in *governing*; rather, it appears
to be a game of "damn the compromises, we're winning at whatever
cost!" Doesn't make for good government, that's for sure.
jrw
Erik V. Olson
>On 13 Dec 2000 21:19:28 GMT, t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>
>snip
>
>>In fact, it seems to me (and I'm not talking about Pete McCutchen now) that
>>over the past several years a huge midrange of traditional American
>>political discourse has been stigmatized using terms such as liberal, class
>>warfare, demagoguery, leftist ideology, etc. I've been denounced online as a
>>flaming liberal for repeating things my very conservative high school civics
>>teacher taught me.
>
>Hear hear! I have to agree with this, and I blame a lot of it on the
>popularity of extremists (of both Right and Left) on talk radio. Over
>on a politics newsgroup I frequent all polite discourse has flown out
>the window; odd thing is that when we meet face to face over lunch
>politeness returns.
"Crossfire" Syndrome. The best (IMHO) thing the liberals (pardon me) we
liberals can do is swear to never appear on "Crossfire" and it's ilk again.
Quit legitimizing our opponents weapons. For that matter, somebody needs to
clue in Alan Colmes.
--
Erik V. Olson: er...@mo.net : http://walden.mo.net/~eriko/
T Nielsen Hayden
>On 13 Dec 2000 05:37:28 GMT, T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
>>anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
>>illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
>>It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
>>engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
>>vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
>>that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
>>do so effectively.
>
>I think it's more likely that they just don't see themselves in the
>role of the bad guys, just as the religious conservatives couldn't
>understand that the country didn't agree with them.
How often does anyone see himself as the bad guy?
>>This is bad.
>
>Yes. But perhaps less so than your reading of it; that these
>people are conscious criminals who just don't care.
If they'd been common citizens of Florida in the grip of strong emotions,
I'd think differently. They weren't. They were political professionals --
campaigners, regular staffers, and the like -- and they knew perfectly well
that what they were doing was wrong.
Randolph, this would arguably be a better world if everyone in it were as
nice as you are; but alas, they aren't.
-t.
Pete McCutchen
Olson) wrote:
>"Crossfire" Syndrome. The best (IMHO) thing the liberals (pardon me) we
>liberals can do is swear to never appear on "Crossfire" and it's ilk again.
>Quit legitimizing our opponents weapons. For that matter, somebody needs to
>clue in Alan Colmes.
I'd be happy if conservatives stopped appearing on that show as well.
I don't think that shouting does _anybody's_ position justice.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>How often does anyone see himself as the bad guy?
Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
himself."
--
Pete McCutchen
P Nielsen Hayden
I don't buy it. Some outrages are worth shouting about.
I certainly find CROSSFIRE and the other political thrash shows
unwatchable. But I'm not signing onto any comfy consensus that the
real problem is that "extremists" of "both left and right" have gotten
all loud and bad and stuff. The real problems are much nastier and
much less tractable, and they will not be addressed by simple
exhortations to play nice.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Mike Kozlowski
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
>himself."
John Donne, actually.
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/
gfa...@savvy.com
> t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>I don't know what he's trying
>>here, unless it's his old trick of unwarrantedly pretending someone's taken
>>some impossibly stupid position so he can then correct them at length.
[. . .]
> I *know* that what you meant was not what Gary said, but Gary was not
> being completely an ass here.
I'm glad that Teresa clarified her meaning. I'm glad that you grant that I
engaged in discussion in good faith.
--
Gary Farber New York
gfa...@savvy.com
Joel Rosenberg
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 01:33:57 GMT,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> scripsit:
> Which isn't true, of course; there are people who see themselves as
> evil. They thankfully do not tend to be particularly _effective_
> people.
And, besides, he had to resign as Speaker of the House.
Mary Kay Kare
> On 13 Dec 2000 05:37:28 GMT, T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
> >anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
> >illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
> >It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
> >engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
> >vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
> >that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
> >do so effectively.
> >
>
> I think it's more likely that they just don't see themselves in the
> role of the bad guys, just as the religious conservatives couldn't
> understand that the country didn't agree with them.
Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? I have had to deal with
someone who didn't see herself as a bad person, she was, by her lights a
good person. Therefore anything she wanted was, by definition, good,
anyone who opposed her was, by definition, bad. And it was justifiable to
do anything to defeat bad people. We discovered to our dismay that the
legal system does not, cannot, protect you from crazy people. And those
people are now in control of the Republican Party.
MKK
--
Stamp out tin toys!
Joel Rosenberg
And the Democrats. The Republicans are hardly the only ones to
rewrite the facts to suit their desires. I think the Republicans have
been doing more of it, of late, but that's at least in part because
they've been in a position to.
The next couple of years will probably give them even more of a
chance.
Kip Williams
>
> In article <1o5g3tonvdg4n8eba...@4ax.com>,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
> >himself."
>
> John Donne, actually.
I've been reading some plays by Marlowe, where the villains have a
distinctly villainous self-image. They make asides, as well as whole
speeches that amount to "Am I a villain, or what?" Presently I'm
reading "The Jew of Malta." The first one I read was "The True
Tragedy," which the editors thought was the strongest claimant of
the dubiously attributed works of Marlowe. Spurious it may have
been, but I enjoyed going through the Wars of the Roses again, even
at the price of reading another of Crookback Richard's obligatory
"I'm a Willin' Villain" speeches.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
gfa...@savvy.com
I contrast, say, the way discussion from opposing politicians is handled on
the PBS Newshour, to "Crossfire," and those awful Fox shows. And contrast
"Washington Week in Review" to "The McLaughlin Group." Though I have to
confess that I tend to watch such shows just to pick up more information
about how certain POVs view specifics, and how they respond to countering
views.
T Nielsen Hayden
Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 15:47:44 GMT,
>Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> scripsit:
>>Of course, the logical implication of her claim still that "many
>>Americans" are dupes for these "barons of the right" who are out to
>>reinstitute serfdom.
>
>
>Not 'dupes' in the sense of 'too dumb to pound sand', but 'dupes' in
>the sense of not having questioned the rhetorical basis of the
>language shifting.
I don't like calling them dupes because it either makes them sound like
helpless victims, or like it's somehow all their fault for being gullible. I
don't think either of those things. I think their trust has been abused.
Were they inadequately critical? It's hard to say. An appropriate degree of
suspicion in one set of circumstances is paranoia in another. I've never
seen a fraud victim who wasn't left kicking himself for failing to exercise
due vigilance -- even though that degree of caution would have been
completely inappropriate, even damaging, in all previous episodes of his
life.
Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting those barons
and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
>On 13 Dec 2000 21:02:10 GMT, t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 15:47:44 GMT,
>> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>On 13 Dec 2000 13:59:15 GMT, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>>
>>>>There might be. Teresa, of course, was talking about the reasons the
>>>>barons of the right settled on GWB as their standard-bearer (your
>>>>first clause), not about why many Americans might vote for that
>>>>standard-bearer (your second).
>>>
>>>That distinction was not clear, to me at least, from her original
>>>post.
>>>
>>>Of course, the logical implication of her claim still that "many
>>>Americans" are dupes for these "barons of the right" who are out to
>>>reinstitute serfdom.
>>
>>Pete, do you really think I'm saying that?
>
>It strikes me that this is the logical implication of your claim. I
>don't know whether you meant to say that, or not, but it struck me
>that it followed from what you did say.
Pete, have you ever known me to talk like that in all the years you've known
me online? Or maybe that's not a fair question. I haven't known you to talk
like this either. Barons? Serfs? Huh?
If I think people have been dupes, I'm not backward about saying so.
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
>>I don't know what he's trying
>>here, unless it's his old trick of unwarrantedly pretending someone's taken
>>some impossibly stupid position so he can then correct them at length.
>
>It is uncharacteristic of me these days to stick up for Gary, but I
>believe that his statement ("And much as we despise George Bush, and
>his masters, do we really want to imply that the other half of the
>country are all fools and dupes, when we assert that they could have
>no possible good reason in their minds or hearts to vote for him?") is
>*not* an unreasonable reading of your statement ("There are only two
>real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate. One is his
>insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there. The
>other is his passivity: he won't get in the way."). The secret masters
>of the Republican party--and I believe such people do exist--are not
>the only people who "chose" GWB as their candidate.
>
>I *know* that what you meant was not what Gary said, but Gary was not
>being completely an ass here.
Kevin, don't waste your defense on Gary's misreading. He's not quite as dumb
or helpless as you suggest. It took some effort for him to misread my post
in the way he did, especially given that he's known -- literally for decades
-- that I don't hold the opinions he laid on me. Nevertheless, his desired
result has now been achieved: We're talking about Gary, rather than the
ideas. Do you find that interesting? I don't find that interesting.
-tnh
Randolph Fritz
>>
>> I think it's more likely that they just don't see themselves in the
>> role of the bad guys, just as the religious conservatives couldn't
>> understand that the country didn't agree with them.
>
>Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? I have had to deal with
>someone who didn't see herself as a bad person, she was, by her lights a
>good person. Therefore anything she wanted was, by definition, good,
>anyone who opposed her was, by definition, bad.
>
Yes. I have written extensively on this in this newsgroup, in the
context of the Spanish Inquisition. But that isn't quite what I think
is going on here. The Religious Right has pretty much been
discredited at this point. These are simply people who see their way
as the right way. They are not likely to see the world in terms of
believers and heretics, but rather in terms of leaders, followers, and
everyone else; if the last batch was theocrats, these are would-be
aristocrats.
Randolph
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> The Religious Right has pretty much been
> discredited at this point.
I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
the country.
Would but that were true.
[. . . .]
Avram Grumer
> Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting
> those barons and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
If you take another look at <7e4f3todhu9j6v6er...@4ax.com>,
you'll see he was quoting Patrick's phrase "barons of the right." The
serfs may just be implication from the barons.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | www.PigsAndFishes.org
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Avram Grumer
> The effect has been to collapse all arguments into a purely adversarial
> game of Republicans vs. Democrats. There seems to now be a large class
> of persons who're permanently loud, rude, and incapable of real
> engagement -- Patrick tells me they've been showing up here as drive-bys
> -- for whom the old assumed common ground of shared democratic
> assumptions just doesn't seem to exist. I find them genuinely
> disturbing.
It just came to me: We've allowed our social infrastructure to decay.
It's like the Manhattan Bridge now.
David T. Bilek
Hmmm... ok, then don't you think there may be one other possibility,
which is that the Republican leadership selected and pushed Bush as
the nominee because they thought he actually had the best chance of
winning? I don't know if that was the reason behind their choice,
but it would seem plausible given recent events.
There are a great many people who say that McCain would have done
even better, but many of them, to my mind, have a greatly mistaken
impression of the man. They don't know much about his record,
values, or even his personality except that he supports campaign
finance reform. Much of his support among moderates would have
disappeared once the primary was over. I suspect the Republican
leadership believed this as well.
(Yes, there are also many cynical reasons for the party leadership's
support of Bush over McCain, of course).
-David
Ray Radlein
>
> I think we're reading slightly different stories into recent
> events. The blatant abuses are things the GOP can only have
> known they'd be safe to do once they knew that they'd have both
> houses of Congress and that the election was so very close. So
> while this might have been a contingency plan, I more suspect
> that most of it was cooked up on the fly starting November 7th.
I agree. I can't imagine that all of the low-level shenanigans in
Florida on election night were part of some nefarious plan to steal
the election; after all, who in their right mind thought it would be
close enough to steal or be worth stealing? But then they woke up on
the morning of the 8th, and saw that, against all odds, the whole
thing was balanced on a knife's edge. And they just couldn't stop
themselves from reaching out and giving it just a little *push*.
- Ray R.
--
**********************************************************************
"Monday, May 7. The weather was warm. I was working the day watch
out of Robbery-Homicide with my partner, Frank Gannon. The Boss
had just complimented me, and my nipples crinkled with delight."
-- Robert A. Heinlein's "Dragnet"
Ray Radlein - r...@learnlink.emory.edu
homepage coming soon! wooo, wooo.
**********************************************************************
Randolph Fritz
>Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>[. . .]
>> The Religious Right has pretty much been
>> discredited at this point.
>
>I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
>Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
>Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
>independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
>supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
>the country.
>
But when it came down to it, and the RR was trying to impeach Clinton
(and it was the RR leading that charge)--the country said, "feh." The
RR leaders couldn't believe it, which is part of why the thing dragged
on so long after it was plain there was not going to be a conviction.
There's a lot of sympathy with their more moderate ideals--home,
family, and so forth--but when it comes down to supporting their
radicalism, an overwhelming majority's already rejected them.
Randolph
Randolph Fritz
>and the treatement of Dubya's former cocaine addiction -- don't cause
>you to notice that, hey, these people _don't_ think using state power
>on the economic (and poltical, and ideological) competition's bad for
>them in the long run, and at that point their concern generally
>ceases.
>
There are lots of signs that the current Republican leadership is
quite authoritarian; have been for at least two decades. People
believe what they want to believe.
I've made some study of the matter of what led people to finally stop
believing in Stalin; I think some of it has applicability here. (I am
*not* comparing any current US politician to Stalin.) For Republicans
to repudiate their current leadership, I'd say the requirements are
like those of a scientific paradigm shift: a credible alternative that
fit with Republican ideals and a dramatic betrayal.
Randolph
Randolph Fritz
>
>I don't like calling them dupes because it either makes them sound like
>helpless victims, or like it's somehow all their fault for being gullible. I
>don't think either of those things. I think their trust has been abused.
>
I talk about betrayal. I will add that I do think that it is very
difficult for most of us to resist sufficiently skillful,
well-thought-out, and well-targeted propaganda.
>
>Were they inadequately critical? It's hard to say. An appropriate degree of
>suspicion in one set of circumstances is paranoia in another. I've never
>seen a fraud victim who wasn't left kicking himself for failing to exercise
>due vigilance -- even though that degree of caution would have been
>completely inappropriate, even damaging, in all previous episodes of his
>life.
>
I believe part of what keeps people believing is a desire to avoid
feeling fools.
>
>Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting those barons
>and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
>
I think that may be me...I've been calling the lot leading the current
Republicans New Aristocrats because I think that fairly characterizes
their vision. Barons and serfs is pushing it, though!
Randolph
Jo Walton
gra...@dsl.ca "Graydon Saunders" writes:
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 01:33:57 GMT,
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> scripsit:
> Which isn't true, of course; there are people who see themselves as
> evil. They thankfully do not tend to be particularly _effective_
> people.
I worry about people who see themselves as having sold out by entering
politics in the first place, (because politics isn't a place for an honest
person,) so that organising a riot or accepting bribes or... whatever evil
thing, is only the logical next step.
I think there's a fair amount of this in local politics in some parts of
Britain, in both parties, and I think it certainly seems to fit the
Republican organised riot in Florida and the blatant cheating Katherine
Harris engaged in.
These people don't think they're evil, they think everyone feathers their
own nest, it's naive to believe they don't, everyone would cheat to their
own advantage if they could get away with it, or anyone who wouldn't is a
sucker, everyone's out for what they can get, they're not doing any
different.
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk Take the rasfw pledge
*THE KING'S PEACE* out now! From Tor Books and good bookshops everywhere.
More info, Tir Tanagiri Map & Poetry etc at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
T Nielsen Hayden
Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>In article <slrn93gjd...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>
>> Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting
>> those barons and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
>
>If you take another look at <7e4f3todhu9j6v6er...@4ax.com>,
>you'll see he was quoting Patrick's phrase "barons of the right." The
>serfs may just be implication from the barons.
Ah, it comes clearer.
-t.
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>In article <slrn93e2o...@panix3.panix.com>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>
>>The Republicans are not worried about the consequences of their blatant
>>abuses. The logical conclusion is that once they've consolidated their
>>power, things are going to get a lot worse.
>>How much worse? Bad enough that staffers employed by the ruling party don't
>>anticipate having to worry about being identified as participants in an
>>illegal attack on election workers who were then engaged in counting votes.
>>It doesn't worry them that they crossed state lines to participate in it,
>>engaged in conspiracy to commit various crimes, and for all I know are
>>vulnerable under the RICO statutes as well. That means they don't expect
>>that those who would normally oppose them are going to be in any position to
>>do so effectively.
>
>If we can hammer out some specifics, I'm still willing to bet against a
>lot of this.
I'm not. On things like this, Teresa is often nothing less than
uncanny.
--
I am reading from rec.arts.sf.fandom, where I am on-topic;
follow-ups are set accordingly, just in case.
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>One of my big annoyances throughout the campaign were the
>GWB supporters who said, when this or something similar was
>pointed out to them, "Well, he's surrounding himself with
>good senior people." It didn't seem to have occurred to
>them that sometimes senior people disagree with each
>other, and someone has to make the final decision.
>And it scares me to think that it might be someone
>who I really don't think is interested in comprehending
>the nuances of the issues.
It occurred to me that we could hold a lottery and surround any
randomly chosen winner with "good senior people", and do at least as
well or better.
I have always taken the position that we pay politicians do all this
stuff because we don't want to. If George Bush doesn't want to
either, I don't see why he should have applied for the job.
Kip Williams
>
> Avram Grumer wrote:
> >
> > I think we're reading slightly different stories into recent
> > events. The blatant abuses are things the GOP can only have
> > known they'd be safe to do once they knew that they'd have both
> > houses of Congress and that the election was so very close. So
> > while this might have been a contingency plan, I more suspect
> > that most of it was cooked up on the fly starting November 7th.
>
> I agree. I can't imagine that all of the low-level shenanigans in
> Florida on election night were part of some nefarious plan to steal
> the election; after all, who in their right mind thought it would be
> close enough to steal or be worth stealing? But then they woke up on
> the morning of the 8th, and saw that, against all odds, the whole
> thing was balanced on a knife's edge. And they just couldn't stop
> themselves from reaching out and giving it just a little *push*.
And another.
And another.
And then they deny they're pushing, while simultaneously alleging
that the other side is pushing so hard, they have to push back.
That's sort of how it seemed a lot of times.
David G. Bell
<3A3879EB...@learnlink.emory.edu>
r...@learnlink.emory.edu "Ray Radlein" wrote:
> Avram Grumer wrote:
> >
> > I think we're reading slightly different stories into recent
> > events. The blatant abuses are things the GOP can only have
> > known they'd be safe to do once they knew that they'd have both
> > houses of Congress and that the election was so very close. So
> > while this might have been a contingency plan, I more suspect
> > that most of it was cooked up on the fly starting November 7th.
>
> I agree. I can't imagine that all of the low-level shenanigans in
> Florida on election night were part of some nefarious plan to steal
> the election; after all, who in their right mind thought it would be
> close enough to steal or be worth stealing? But then they woke up on
> the morning of the 8th, and saw that, against all odds, the whole
> thing was balanced on a knife's edge. And they just couldn't stop
> themselves from reaching out and giving it just a little *push*.
Apathy.
Complacency.
People who, in a position to do something which might affect an
election, did so in ways which could be expected to favour the side they
supported.
In short, a lot of low-level not-caring about the honesty of the
election process, because it wasn't seen as mattering. Even quite
honest, rational, "We don't need to count the absentee ballots because
there aren't enough to make a difference."
And suddenly it did matter, big-time, and not only did people start
trying to push, all the past little corruptions of the system started to
get publicised.
Mostly, they came out in Florida. And those States where card punching
ewasn't used are probably all smug about how they won't have those
problems. But the lasting harm comes from the attitudes which allow
things to reach such a condition. And which allow the political parties
to even think about reaching out to give that little push.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
We suffer as a society and a culture when we don't pay the true value of
goods and services delivered. We create a lack of production. Less good
music is recorded if we remove the incentive to create it. -- Courtney Love
gfa...@savvy.com
> On 14 Dec 2000 05:46:40 GMT, gfa...@savvy.com <gfa...@savvy.com> wrote:
>>Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>[. . .]
>>> The Religious Right has pretty much been
>>> discredited at this point.
>>
>>I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
>>Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
>>Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
>>independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
>>supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
>>the country.
> But when it came down to it, and the RR was trying to impeach Clinton
> (and it was the RR leading that charge)--the country said, "feh."
About 60%, yeah. That still leaves that 40%. That's all I'm saying.
But that's the problem. This country is truly deeply, widely, thoroughly
divided on a large number of political and cultural issues. On various
specific issues, the gaps are more and less bridgeable. But on many, well,
those across the canyon from thee and me are not marginal, and we ill-serve
ourselves to not recognize that.
P Nielsen Hayden
Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>But when it came down to it, and the RR was trying to impeach Clinton
>(and it was the RR leading that charge)--the country said, "feh." The
>RR leaders couldn't believe it, which is part of why the thing dragged
>on so long after it was plain there was not going to be a conviction.
>There's a lot of sympathy with their more moderate ideals--home,
>family, and so forth--but when it comes down to supporting their
>radicalism, an overwhelming majority's already rejected them.
I just want to say, and I know Randolph knows this, that _I_ am
certainly for "home, family, and so forth," and I have no intention of
defining the radicals of the modern Right, whether it's the religious
fundamentalists or the money-is-the-measure-of-all-things lunatics, as
having some kind of special relationship to those areas of concern.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>In article <1o5g3tonvdg4n8eba...@4ax.com>,
>Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
>>himself."
>
>John Donne, actually.
Heinlein, John Donne, what's the difference?
(Maybe Heinlein quoted him at one point, and I remembered the
quotation, rather than the original.)
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>You, yourself, Pete, are a specific sort of amiable old-school private
>sector guy; you think the solution to the utility of state power as a
>means to squish the economic competition is not to do that, because,
>hey, that's obviously bad for everyone else in the long run.
I've never been described quite that way before, but I suppose that
captures it fairly well.
>
>That's a respectable position. You are far from alone in it.
Nice to hear.
>
>What I don't get is why the implications of the War on Some Drugs --
>and the treatement of Dubya's former cocaine addiction -- don't cause
I don't know that he was ever *addicted* to cocaine. He may well have
used it once or twice, or even ten or twenty times, but I doubt he was
an "addict."
I do think that there are legitimate hypocrisy issues -- if W. signed
bills authorizing harsh punishments of cocaine users (and he did), we
might well ask whether such laws would have caused him to become a
felon, his life shattered, had he been caught. But I'm not sure about
the issue to which you seem to be referring.
>you to notice that, hey, these people _don't_ think using state power
>on the economic (and poltical, and ideological) competition's bad for
>them in the long run, and at that point their concern generally
>ceases.
I have no illusions that Republicans are at all consistent in their
application of principles of limited government. However, unlike the
Dems, they at least *have* such principles.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>In article <slrn93gjd...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>
>> Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting
>> those barons and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
>
>If you take another look at <7e4f3todhu9j6v6er...@4ax.com>,
>you'll see he was quoting Patrick's phrase "barons of the right." The
>serfs may just be implication from the barons.
That's correct. Patrick said "barons," and I extrapolated to serfs.
It was, perhaps, a bit of rhetorical license.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>In article 994f3t81vnl3e2n04...@4ax.com, Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>>
>>I sense a certain lack of -- well, call it empathy, on the part of
>>many Gore supporters. It's as if one could only support Bush if one
>>were a fool, a dupe, or somebody who wished to see corporate titans
>>crush the peasants beneath their jewel-encrusted sandals.
>>
>
>I certainly don't feel that way, and thank you for providing
>some of the reasons you supported Bush.
You're welcome.
>
>However:
>
>>
>>I do concede that Bush is probably less intelligent than Gore, and
>>he's certainly less of a policy wonk. (Though this can be a weakness
>>as well -- Gore has recently shown a penchant for Carter-style
>>micromanagement, which typically turns out to be a disaster.) But I
>>don't think that Bush is retarded, as Saturday Night Live enjoys
>>suggesting, and I think that part of Bush's problem may be a lack of
>>verbal acuity, rather than a real lack of intelligence. I suspect
>>that the report which said that he's mildly dyslexic is probably true.
>>
>
>This seems overly kind and comes to the heart of why I, at
Well, I always like to give folks the benefit of the doubt.
>least, am so appalled at the thought of GWB as president: I
>honestly believe that the guy is not interested in global or
>policy issues, and cannot really comprehend the nuances of
>them -- and is *proud* of it. One of the most depressing
See, I don't think that a President's job is to grasp "nuances." I
think it's the President's job to set a general tone, establish
general principles, and send his soldiers off in the right direction.
>things I've read recently is _Shrub: The Short but Happy
>Political Life of George W. Bush, Jr._ by Molly Ivins and
>Lou duBose. Among other things, they quote Bush as proudly
>pointing out the fact that he practically never reads
>briefing books.
Um, you do know, don't you, that Molly Ivans *hates* George W. Bush?
I'm not convinced that he's nearly so detached as he's depicted as
being.
>
>I don't believe the Bush wanted to be President because
>he had an agenda for the country or for foreign affairs.
Oh, I do. I thought his speech at the Republican National Convention
did demonstrate a vision, and it was clear to me that he's passionate
about implementing it. In a way, he's actually the opposite of his
father, the prototypical policy wonk -- he does have "the vision
thing." What he's not concerned with are the details.
>He may have opinions on some issues, but I don't think
>there's any deep desire to implement them for the
>betterment of the country. I think the guy just wanted
>to be President because politics is now his business
>and that's the highest profile job in that line.
>
>One of my big annoyances throughout the campaign were the
>GWB supporters who said, when this or something similar was
>pointed out to them, "Well, he's surrounding himself with
>good senior people." It didn't seem to have occurred to
>them that sometimes senior people disagree with each
>other, and someone has to make the final decision.
>And it scares me to think that it might be someone
>who I really don't think is interested in comprehending
>the nuances of the issues.
And when that happens, he'll have to make the call. Whether he makes
a good call or a bad call will depend, in large measure, on whether he
has good instincts.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<john....@verizon.net> wrote:
>Pete McCutchen wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>> I was also put off, in a major way, by Gore's veer to the left -- his
>> "I'm for the people, not the powerful" bit. I'm very hostile
>> class-warfare type demagoguery, and that really put the nail in Gore's
>> coffin, so far as I'm concerned.
>
> I am put off in a major way by this characterization, by you
>and many other Republicans, of Gore's mild populist rhetoric as "class-
>warfare type demagoguery." That seems to me a big part of the
>Orwellian transformation of political language that has been going
>on for some years and now seems to have taken over entirely.
I guess we have differing levels of taste for "populism."
Look, John, make no mistake about it, this is an issue about which I
have strong (and, likely, intransigent) views. Maybe I'm even a bit
demented about it, so bear with me.
I think that the idea that society is divided into groups called
"classes" and that one "class" must necessarily benefit at the expense
of another is one of the worst ideas that humans ever had, right up
there with notions of racial supremacy. I think that idea has killed
perhaps as many as hundred million people in this century, and, as a
consequence, that any slogan, any campaign, any argument that draws
upon such ideas is not just wrong, but evil. To your sensibilities,
Gore's rhetoric may well have been "mild populism," but it sure didn't
seem "mild" to me. Nor do I think that class warfare is more
desirable when it comes dressed as American-style "populism" rather
than in European garb.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>There are a great many people who say that McCain would have done
>even better, but many of them, to my mind, have a greatly mistaken
>impression of the man. They don't know much about his record,
>values, or even his personality except that he supports campaign
>finance reform. Much of his support among moderates would have
>disappeared once the primary was over. I suspect the Republican
>leadership believed this as well.
I think that's right. I don't think that McCain would have beaten
Gore, or even come close to beating Gore. Most of the folks who are
so hot about campaign finance reform are Democrats -- folks who would
have voted for Gore, even if they thought McCain was good on that one
issue. And McCain had very little support from the Republican base.
Besides, though we may not like it, likability does matter, these
days, in a political figure. Gore ultimately came off as a basically
good guy who's a bit stiff in public. W. is a basically good guy,
even if you think he's an idiot or disagree with his policies. McCain
is a jerk, and the sustained attention of a presidential campaign
would have brought that out, full force.
--
Pete McCutchen
Lydia Nickerson
<2hsf3tcftsqi7t7il...@4ax.com>:
>t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>I don't know what he's trying
>>here, unless it's his old trick of unwarrantedly pretending someone's
>>taken some impossibly stupid position so he can then correct them at
>>length.
>
>It is uncharacteristic of me these days to stick up for Gary, but I
>believe that his statement ("And much as we despise George Bush, and
>his masters, do we really want to imply that the other half of the
>country are all fools and dupes, when we assert that they could have
>no possible good reason in their minds or hearts to vote for him?") is
>*not* an unreasonable reading of your statement ("There are only two
>real reasons to choose GWB as a candidate. One is his
>insubstantiality: it's hard to argue against what isn't there. The
>other is his passivity: he won't get in the way."). The secret masters
>of the Republican party--and I believe such people do exist--are not
>the only people who "chose" GWB as their candidate.
This view requires that one conflate the term "candidate" with "president."
The voters in November did not, in fact, choose the Shrub as their
candidate, but instead chose him as their preference for president. Teresa
writes very precisely, and in my experience most problems with
understanding her come from this sort of error: assuming she uses words
with the same amount of slack as most people. I've seen that more than
once in this forum.
As to whether or not Gary is likely to make that same mistake, well,
opinions will differ. It was clear to me, however, that Teresa was
referring to the internal party politics when choosing and funding the
Republican candidate, not the voters as a body. (Bush was the annointed
heir before the primaries, if you'll recall. The choice of Republican
candidate was made well before any popular vote was taken.)
Mike Kozlowski
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 18:22:16 GMT, John Boston
><john....@verizon.net> wrote:
>> I am put off in a major way by this characterization, by you
>>and many other Republicans, of Gore's mild populist rhetoric as "class-
>>warfare type demagoguery." That seems to me a big part of the
>>Orwellian transformation of political language that has been going
>>on for some years and now seems to have taken over entirely.
Blame Gore -- he's the one who seemingly ended every speech with "I will
fight for you." He's the one who took a question of macroeconomics and
turned it into a fight between the rich and the poor.
I voted strongly for Gore -- if I'd been in Florida, that chad would have
been ripped out of the ballot forcefully -- but I hoped that he was just
posturing.
>I think that the idea that society is divided into groups called
>"classes" and that one "class" must necessarily benefit at the expense
>of another is one of the worst ideas that humans ever had, right up
>there with notions of racial supremacy.
Yes. It's _stupid_. It really fucks up the way that people look at
economic policy issues by casting it into terms of us vs. them, and
demands a loser for every winner. If we abandoned the talk of fighting
and demanding, and instead shifted to a discussion about how best to
allocate our resources, we could have much more sensible political debate
on the matter.
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/
Mike Kozlowski
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:34:53 -0600, m...@klio.org (Mike Kozlowski)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <1o5g3tonvdg4n8eba...@4ax.com>,
>>Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
>>>himself."
>>
>>John Donne, actually.
>
>Heinlein, John Donne, what's the difference?
>(Maybe Heinlein quoted him at one point, and I remembered the
>quotation, rather than the original.)
That was a (bad) joke. Donne said, "No man is an island unto himself."
Clearly, I need remedial lessons at the Jordin Kare School of Puns.
John Boston
Well, we're not going to agree about this. Equating, or even
relating or linking, the rhetorical or policy differences between the two
major capitalist parties of the United States with the idea that "killed
perhaps as many as hundred million people in this century" strikes
me as comprehensively loony and an odious form of red-baiting, and
(to repeat myself) part of an Orwellian transformation of political
language.
John Boston
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> Well, we're not going to agree about this. Equating, or even
> relating or linking, the rhetorical or policy differences between the two
> major capitalist parties of the United States with the idea that "killed
> perhaps as many as hundred million people in this century" strikes
> me as comprehensively loony and an odious form of red-baiting, and
> (to repeat myself) part of an Orwellian transformation of political
> language.
It's the old equation of Rooseveltian New Dealism with Stalinesque
communism, when, in fact, the best protection this country ever had from
totalitarian communism was New Deal-type reforms.
There *is* an upper class. There *is* a lower class. That some from the
latter can rise to the former does not obviate the existence of the classes.
The fact is that said rise is difficult, and that most don't make it.
At times, the interests of members of these classes do clash. Not always,
and it's a mistake to impute that they do, and it's a mistake to assume that
they do. But sometimes, they do. Cutting taxes on multi-millionaires does,
in fact, take money out of the general budget, where, in fact, it at least
*could* be used to help more of the poor rise out of being poor (it's not
guaranteed that the money couldn't be wasted or spent otherwise, of course,
but if it's not there at all, it's not there at all). For instance.
Do I believe in some redistribution of wealth? At the point of a gun,
thugs, and all, etc? (Not your language, Pete, I'm just preemptively tired
of the more dimwitted libertarians expecting that that sort of language will
shock me out of my beliefs.) Yes. Within limits, mind, but that's one
thing life is about: doing things within limits.
Mitch Wagner
>In article <1o5g3tonvdg4n8eba...@4ax.com>,
>Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>Didn't Heinlein say something like this? "No person is a villain to
>>himself."
>
>John Donne, actually.
Pfaugh. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Heinlein didn't
write "To His Coy Mistress."
--
Mitch Wagner
Mark Atwood
> At times, the interests of members of these classes do clash. Not always,
> and it's a mistake to impute that they do, and it's a mistake to assume that
> they do. But sometimes, they do. Cutting taxes on multi-millionaires does,
> in fact, take money out of the general budget, where, in fact, it at least
> *could* be used to help more of the poor rise out of being poor
By that standard, *every* change in taxation is a "class struggle"
--
Mark Atwood | The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Mary Kay Kare
> On 13 Dec 2000 16:23:25 GMT,
> Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
> >Not 'dupes' in the sense of 'too dumb to pound sand', but 'dupes' in
> >the sense of not having questioned the rhetorical basis of the
> >language shifting.
>
> I don't like calling them dupes because it either makes them sound like
> helpless victims, or like it's somehow all their fault for being gullible. I
> don't think either of those things. I think their trust has been abused.
>
There are people whose trust has been abused, but of late it seems to me
there are a great many people who fit Graydon's "not having questioned the
rhetorical basis of the language shifting" Almost everyone related to me
by blood is in that latter group. And most of them and have groups of
friends and other relatives for whom the same is true. And I'm going to
have to spend the holidays with them, god help me.
MKK
--
Stamp out tin toys!
Pete McCutchen
>But that's the problem. This country is truly deeply, widely, thoroughly
>divided on a large number of political and cultural issues. On various
>specific issues, the gaps are more and less bridgeable. But on many, well,
>those across the canyon from thee and me are not marginal, and we ill-serve
>ourselves to not recognize that.
What do you think that the unbridgeable differences are?
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
Well, I admitted that I'm perhaps a bit demented on this topic, did I
not? I mean, it's not as if I claim to be some disinterested
observer.
At one level, of course you're right -- the Democratic party is,
basically, a capitalist party, and it doesn't favor transformation of
society along Marxist lines. But that, to me, makes this rhetoric
even worse -- it's, as Mike said, turning every policy difference into
this "Us v. Them" thing, which strikes me as pernicious.
And my concern is not "Orwellian," even if it is exaggerated.
"Orwellian" means turning war into peace, or some such. I may be
oversensitive to issues of class warfare, but it's not as if I'm
imagining it. Gore was clearly saying that there are two groups, "the
people," and "the powerful," that they were involved in some sort of
conflict, and that he was on the side of "the people." The
implication, of course, being that his opponent favored "the powerful"
over "the people." If this isn't class warfare, I'm not sure what you
should call it.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>>It strikes me that this is the logical implication of your claim. I
>>don't know whether you meant to say that, or not, but it struck me
>>that it followed from what you did say.
>
>Pete, have you ever known me to talk like that in all the years you've known
>me online? Or maybe that's not a fair question. I haven't known you to talk
>like this either. Barons? Serfs? Huh?
Well, Patrick used Barons.
In any event, I apologize if I misread your original post.
--
Pete McCutchen
Bruce Baugh
>>If we can hammer out some specifics, I'm still willing to bet against a
>>lot of this.
>I'm not. On things like this, Teresa is often nothing less than
>uncanny.
I could well be wrong. It's happened before and will again. This is
mostly an exercise in me committing myself to some specific predictions,
expectations, hopes, fears, and/or guesses, so that later I (and others)
can look back and say with some certainty "I was right about this, wrong
about that". Discussing matters in less concrete terms is valuable in
many ways, but I know I get annoyed sometimes at what feels like too
much weasel room, so I'm setting myself up with a bit more definition.
--
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
http://www.tkau.org/
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> And my concern is not "Orwellian," even if it is exaggerated.
> "Orwellian" means turning war into peace, or some such. I may be
> oversensitive to issues of class warfare, but it's not as if I'm
> imagining it. Gore was clearly saying that there are two groups, "the
> people," and "the powerful," that they were involved in some sort of
> conflict, and that he was on the side of "the people." The
> implication, of course, being that his opponent favored "the powerful"
> over "the people." If this isn't class warfare, I'm not sure what you
> should call it.
The view from the other side of the house is that denying something exists
doesn't make it non-existent. And that when the ruling class, in the voice
of George Bush, says "class-warfare rhetoric is divisive," what he means,
effectively, if not consciously, is "your concerns are illegitimate,
therefore you should stop disagreeing with me."
I know you admit you are a "bit demented" on the topic, and that's a
respectable bit of self-perspective, but nonetheless, what you're going
along with is the delegitimizing of a point of view you disagree with.
You're not just disagreeing with it. You and Bush and others of this view
say, effectively, "you must not be allowed to voice your different
perspective."
I hope you'll consider that.
gfa...@savvy.com
Abortion. Religion in public schools. For some, legitimacy of
homosexuality and bi-sexualtiy as a valid and respectable way of life.
Granting of full civil rights, including marriage, to all people, including
a right to write your own contract with whomever is in mutual agreement.
Those are "culture war" issues that Pat Buchanan is on one extreme of. To a
far lesser extent, it's hard to bridge the gap on whether progressive
taxation is immoral or not. Guns is troublesome as an issue. There's
probably more, if I spent more time thinking about it.
Mark Atwood
abortion
my right of self defense vs someone else's hoplophobia
one person's labor value vs someone else's "needs"
gfa...@savvy.com
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>> On 14 Dec 2000 14:01:18 GMT, gfa...@savvy.com wrote:
>>
>> >But that's the problem. This country is truly deeply, widely, thoroughly
>> >divided on a large number of political and cultural issues. On various
>> >specific issues, the gaps are more and less bridgeable. But on many, well,
>> >those across the canyon from thee and me are not marginal, and we ill-serve
>> >ourselves to not recognize that.
>>
>> What do you think that the unbridgeable differences are?
> abortion
> my right of self defense vs someone else's hoplophobia
> one person's labor value vs someone else's "needs"
I see we agree.
Avram Grumer
Baugh) wrote:
> I could well be wrong. It's happened before and will again. This is
> mostly an exercise in me committing myself to some specific predictions,
> expectations, hopes, fears, and/or guesses, so that later I (and others)
> can look back and say with some certainty "I was right about this, wrong
> about that". Discussing matters in less concrete terms is valuable in
> many ways, but I know I get annoyed sometimes at what feels like too
> much weasel room, so I'm setting myself up with a bit more definition.
Have you checked out the Foresight Exchange?
http://www.ideosphere.com/fx/main.html
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
"All this talk of legitimacy is way overblown."
-- James Baker III
Seen on ABC's "This Week", 10 December 2000
Heather Anne Nicoll
> There's a lot of sympathy with their more moderate ideals--home,
> family, and so forth--but when it comes down to supporting their
> radicalism, an overwhelming majority's already rejected them.
Er.
That's right, I'd forgotten; my weird religious beliefs and abnormal
sexuality mean that I'm out to Destroy The American Family.
Because, after all, the Religious Right is the only philosophy out there
that's defending Mom and Apple Pie, so I /must/ be one of Them.
Buh?
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Total attraction -- it's driving me insane
A chain reaction. . . . -- Boston, "What's Your Name?"
Mitch Wagner
<mf5i3t0drve51t25k...@4ax.com>:
>And my concern is not "Orwellian," even if it is exaggerated.
>"Orwellian" means turning war into peace, or some such. I may be
>oversensitive to issues of class warfare, but it's not as if I'm
>imagining it. Gore was clearly saying that there are two groups, "the
>people," and "the powerful," that they were involved in some sort of
>conflict, and that he was on the side of "the people." The
>implication, of course, being that his opponent favored "the powerful"
>over "the people." If this isn't class warfare, I'm not sure what you
>should call it.
Pete, your knowledge of basic English seems to have taken flight and left
your brain entirely.
I'd call what Gore said "class conflict" at worst. Warfare doesn't happen
when there is no violence.
(Extra credit question: Rich people are afraid to go into poor people's
neighborhoods, because they believe violence may be done to them. Poor
people are far more likely to be hauled off to prison by men with guns, and
even killed, than rich people are. Explain to me why class warfare isn't
ALREADY happening?)
--
Mitch Wagner
Pete McCutchen
>Elsewhere in the sentence, I have no idea where Pete is getting those barons
>and serfs. This isn't a game of Kingmaker.
Well, I got the "barons" from your husband. The serfs I came up with
on my own.
--
Pete McCutchen
gfa...@savvy.com
> on my own.
Well, any good lord does.
(Cue Graydon to explain that that the serfs choose their own barons,
perhaps.)
Kevin J. Maroney
>By that standard, *every* change in taxation is a "class struggle"
Possibly. That doesn't mean that I think that every change in taxation
is a bad thing--it doesn't even mean that I think that every change in
taxation which benefits the rich is a bad thing.
--
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
<http://www.nyrsf.com>
Kip Williams
>
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> [. . .]
> > Well, I got the "barons" from your husband. The serfs I came up with
> > on my own.
>
> Well, any good lord does.
I thought they were selected by a Board...
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
gfa...@savvy.com
> gfa...@savvy.com wrote:
>> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> [. . .]
>> > Well, I got the "barons" from your husband. The serfs I came up with
>> > on my own.
>>
>> Well, any good lord does.
> I thought they were selected by a Board...
But that waxes and wanes. They really need to catch a wave.
Bruce Baugh
>Have you checked out the Foresight Exchange?
>http://www.ideosphere.com/fx/main.html
Completely forgot about them. Thanks.
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>On 13 Dec 2000 16:23:25 GMT, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>>
>>and the treatement of Dubya's former cocaine addiction -- don't cause
>>you to notice that, hey, these people _don't_ think using state power
>>on the economic (and poltical, and ideological) competition's bad for
>>them in the long run, and at that point their concern generally
>>ceases.
>>
>
>There are lots of signs that the current Republican leadership is
>quite authoritarian; have been for at least two decades. People
>believe what they want to believe.
>
>I've made some study of the matter of what led people to finally stop
>believing in Stalin; I think some of it has applicability here. (I am
>*not* comparing any current US politician to Stalin.)
I was under the impression that what led the USSR to stop believing in
Stalin, mostly, was that he died.
If you mean what led the US/European left to stop believing in Stalin, that
wouldn't seem to entirely map onto the Republican leadership; it wasn't the
belief of members of the US/European left that kept Stalin in power (although
it did help him get the bomb).
>For Republicans
>to repudiate their current leadership, I'd say the requirements are
>like those of a scientific paradigm shift: a credible alternative that
>fit with Republican ideals and a dramatic betrayal.
What interests and worries me here is that, in fact, the Democratic
Leadership Council people (Clinton, Gore, etc) actually do largely fit with
Republican ideals - business-friendly, free-market, etc - but have been so
thoroughly demonized that they aren't credible.
A tangent: I happened to look at Lucianne.com last night. (I went
websearching for Republicans and found a link to that site - run by, or on
behalf of, the book agent who persuaded Linda Tripp to entrap Monica
Lewinsky- where the message forums were full of people exulting over the
Supreme Court decision, of course, but also - and more disturbingly -
bashing all the newscasters. Close paraphrase: "Everyone in the media is a
socialist, but Now that I've found Lucianne.com, I can get all my news here
and from Rush, and avoid the socialists on CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS." There
was even a small thread of complaints about how while the opinion shows on
Fox News Channel were good, the actual news coverage all had an obvious and
horrible liberal slant. That is: the new technology enables us to
ignore any news source that might tell us anything that would in any way
contradict our established opinions; we can get only the straight dope from
the unbiased sources like Limbaugh, Lucianne Goldberg, etc.
How can you even have an intelligent argument with somebody who's doing
that? You won't even be able to agree on actual, researchable, establishable
facts, much less their meaning. (An establishable fact would be "does the
majority of scientific opinion generally agree that global warming is
real?") And if you try to introduce facts, well, then you're just an agent
of the lying Devil.
This doesn't seem to me to bode well for the future of our polity.
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Physical mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 69, PO BOX 4349, STANFORD, CA 94309-0210
===============================================================================
gfa...@savvy.com
[. . .]
> I was under the impression that what led the USSR to stop believing in
> Stalin, mostly, was that he died.
I don't think that was it at all, actually. At best, a very first step.
Much more was Krushchev's "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress in
1956.
"We have to consider seriously and analyze correctly [the crimes of the
Stalin era] in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in
any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who
absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who
practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but
also toward that which seemed to his capricious and despotic character,
contrary to his concepts."
And then, slowly, some de-Stalinization percolating downwards.
(I agree with the rest of what you said, but having nothing to add at the
moment.)
[. . . .]
Randolph Fritz
> <dark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>> There's a lot of sympathy with their more moderate ideals--home,
>> family, and so forth--but when it comes down to supporting their
>> radicalism, an overwhelming majority's already rejected them.
>
>Er.
>
>That's right, I'd forgotten; my weird religious beliefs and abnormal
>sexuality mean that I'm out to Destroy The American Family.
>
>Because, after all, the Religious Right is the only philosophy out there
>that's defending Mom and Apple Pie, so I /must/ be one of Them.
>
>Buh?
>
Um, sorry I even gave the impression I thought that. (I don't.)
My point was, that the RR supports some important things of value to
many people--that is why they have so much support. Many of their
supporters don't fully grasp--and don't support--the fanaticism of
their leaders. (And I believe many more would likely reject that
fanaticism if their leaders weren't so busy whipping up fear.)
Randolph
T Nielsen Hayden
>[. . .]
>> The Religious Right has pretty much been
>> discredited at this point.
>
>I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
>Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
>Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
>independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
>supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
>the country.
What definition of Religious Right are you using, and what do you mean when
you say that much of the country supports them? For instance, there are very
solid numbers that say a majority of the citizens are in favor of keeping
abortion legal. That's from multiple samples taken over a long period of
time. Support for prayer in school varies, depending on how you ask the
question, but there are some deeply religious conservatives who are dead set
against it. Religious conservatives are strongly split on the death penalty.
And so forth and so on.
You have to keep a close eye on the numbers in the vicinity of these issues.
Relatively small RR groups can generate an amazing amount of noise, and they
always claim the lurkers support them in e-mail.
Also: It's true that the Republicans draw on their support. Politicians
seldom turn down support. It's less clear how much support the RR gets in
return. You get backlash within the party itself when the Religious Right is
given too prominent a role, and of course that translates into a much larger
backlash amongst independents.
-tnh
T Nielsen Hayden
>On 14 Dec 2000 05:46:40 GMT, gfa...@savvy.com <gfa...@savvy.com> wrote:
>>Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>[. . .]
>>> The Religious Right has pretty much been
>>> discredited at this point.
>>
>>I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
>>Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
>>Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
>>independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
>>supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
>>the country.
>>
>
>(and it was the RR leading that charge)--the country said, "feh." The
>RR leaders couldn't believe it, which is part of why the thing dragged
>on so long after it was plain there was not going to be a conviction.
>There's a lot of sympathy with their more moderate ideals--home,
>family, and so forth--but when it comes down to supporting their
>radicalism, an overwhelming majority's already rejected them.
I'll agree with all of that, with one addition: Many of the politicians
leading the impeachment attempt weren't religious conservatives.
-tnh
gfa...@savvy.com
I fear you're still being exceedingly loose with your terms, to the point of
seriously lacking clarity. I'm sure that your second sentence holds some
truth. But it would be more useful to identify *which* "leaders," and which
beliefs. And then I'd note that I expect that, in fact, extremely
significant numbers of people *do* believe in ideas I suspect that you
consider "fanatic," and which I too feel are reprehensible.
I'd love to believe this notion that it's really just a small number of
folks who disagree with us. But I don't at all believe that that is so. A
large number of people truly do believe that, for instance, homosexuality is
an abomination, that the Bible is literally true (as they know it), that
evolution is wrong, that the mass media is full of sinful images and idea,
and so on. Honest.
T Nielsen Hayden
>>>Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>> The Religious Right has pretty much been
>>>> discredited at this point.
>>>
>>>I'm not clear what you mean by that. Much of the country supports them.
>>>Much of the country *are* them. Much of the leadership of the Republican
>>>Party draws on their support, and returns that support. That the swing
>>>independents, and the Democratic Party does not support them and are not
>>>supported by them, hardly makes them "discredited" by something like 40% of
>>>the country.
>
>> But when it came down to it, and the RR was trying to impeach Clinton
>> (and it was the RR leading that charge)--the country said, "feh."
>
Could you break down and source that 40-60 split?
>But that's the problem. This country is truly deeply, widely, thoroughly
>divided on a large number of political and cultural issues. On various
>specific issues, the gaps are more and less bridgeable. But on many, well,
>those across the canyon from thee and me are not marginal, and we ill-serve
>ourselves to not recognize that.
There's plenty of ambient political rhetoric saying the country is utterly
divided on some vast number of issues. It's less clear what these divisions
are, or how deep they're supposed to go. The point on which I'm surest is
that there are propagandists out there with a strong interest in
manufacturing unbridgeable chasms.
-tnh
Randolph Fritz
>On 13 Dec 2000 22:03:07 GMT,
> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>I think it's more likely that they just don't see themselves in the
>>role of the bad guys, just as the religious conservatives couldn't
>>understand that the country didn't agree with them.
>
>How often does anyone see himself as the bad guy?
>
Most people, sometimes. I've done it now and again. As far as I
know, feeling oneself in the wrong sometimes--shame--is a normal part
of human life.
>>>This is bad.
>>
>>Yes. But perhaps less so than your reading of it; that these
>>people are conscious criminals who just don't care.
>
>If they'd been common citizens of Florida in the grip of strong emotions,
>I'd think differently. They weren't. They were political professionals --
>campaigners, regular staffers, and the like -- and they knew perfectly well
>that what they were doing was wrong.
>
I don't think they think of it that way. They probably regard it
rather as a kind of rough play--think of US-style football. The
referee having allowed it, well, that must make it ok. :-(
>
>Randolph, this would arguably be a better world if everyone in it were as
>nice as you are; but alas, they aren't.
>
Thank you.
Randolph