Pilger on Hillary

Thanks, Zooey.

Pilger is excellent, and damn brave.

Agree with pretty much everything he said in the article, with this one quibble:

I think some people are using two different prisms for the two candidates. To be overly simplistic about it, “best case scenario” and “worst case scenario.” I think the latter is a good way to view any potential leader given great power. Big time skepticism, no suspension of disbelief, no automatic trust, not even “trust but verify.” They have to earn our vote, and it’s up to them to erase our doubts, etc. No givens, etc. But this should apply to both of them. To Clinton and Trump.

I think some are rebelling against the idea of Trump as media monster by going too far the other way. Almost to the “He won’t be nearly as bad as folks are saying” point. They don’t say that about Clinton. And they shouldn’t, IMO. But they also shouldn’t say it about Trump. Just because he hasn’t done all the horrible things Pilger lists, doesn’t mean he won’t once in power. And I see no indication from his words or his temperament that he would buck U.S tradition when it comes to the violent, brutal expansion/protection of empire.

Though he did say the invasion of Iraq was wrong, I think that’s just pandering to his right-libertarian base, the Ron Pauliacs among them, especially, etc. When you pair this with his all too frequent calls for getting tough on the rest of the world, including using nukes, I don’t think it really matches up.

In short, I think Trump is every bit as likely to take us to war as Clinton and do crazy, violent shit, and both will. The only difference is, where. We really are screwed.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.

InvaderRam wrote:

i think we’re at a point of no return. this world has 2 options.

either we somehow get off this planet which i think is a real possibility. and somehow humanity is able to keep stumbling forward.

or we destroy this planet. or the planet is destroyed by some cataclysmic non-human event.

right now i’m hoping for the latter.

With that attitude how can you even get out of bed?

InvaderRam wrote:

i don’t know. just cuz i think it’s hopeless doesn’t necessarily mean i want to stop trying while i’m still alive.

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Yes. Exactly. Just cuz its probably “hopeless doesn’t mean i want to stop trying”.

That-there notion is what gives human-life its poignancy,
and richness. Or somethin. I think. I dunno.

w
v

“The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between this profusion of matter and the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.” Les Noyers de l’Altenburg: Andre Malraux

“Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.” ― Joseph Conrad

“The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. And he is
not insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a
sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile that is not a grin.” Joseph Conrad

Great quotes. All of them. But especially the first. I read Malraux’s Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope a long time ago. Favorites of mine. Took a class on French Existentialism and the Age of Alienation when I went back to school in the 1980s, too. He was a big part of that class. The man also walked the walk and fought fascists, bravely. Risked his life, constantly, like Orwell and Camus.

Billy_T wrote:

Great quotes. All of them. But especially the first. I read Malraux’s Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope a long time ago. Favorites of mine. Took a class on French Existentialism and the Age of Alienation when I went back to school in the 1980s, too. He was a big part of that class. The man also walked the walk and fought fascists, bravely. Risked his life, constantly, like Orwell and Camus.

—————

Some folks around here know i save quotes. I’ve saved over a thousand of em, i suppose.

Bout a year ago, i decided to try to classify them ‘hierarchically’. Ie, list about a hundred of them in order of how much i liked’em. My favorites, in other words.

Them three made the top 20 🙂

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v
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that
in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human
problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than‘try to be a little kinder.’ “ Aldous Huxley

“We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.” ― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between this profusion of matter and the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.” Les Noyers de l’Altenburg: Andre Malraux

that pretty much encapsulates what i think of life.

you’re right too. i wouldn’t WANT to see this planet destroyed. can’t punish other living things for our mistakes.

i do think what will ultimately happen is the rise of the machines type scenario where robots become sentient and become the dominant life form on this planet. but it won’t be a violent uprising like the terminator. and then they will live in the peaceful communist regime billy_t has been yearning for. hahahaha!

Billy_T wrote:

that pretty much encapsulates what i think of life.

you’re right too. i wouldn’t WANT to see this planet destroyed. can’t punish other living things for our mistakes.

i do think what will ultimately happen is the rise of the machines type scenario where robots become sentient and become the dominant life form on this planet. but it won’t be a violent uprising like the terminator. and then they will live in the peaceful communist regime billy_t has been yearning for. hahahaha!

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Communist sentient-machines?

Well damn. What about football? What about the Rams?

w
v
“In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho’ it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population — likely including us and our families — before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and ‘religious’ adaptation with nature is possible. Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship — but most of the present human world is dead set against us…” Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast