We can probably thank the Soviet Union in general, and Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in particular, for a great deal of the distortions. If, for instance, mainstream Marxist, socialist and communist traditions had won out there, instead of right-Marxist Bolsheviks, history may well have seen a large scale demonstration of left-anarchism, which is anti-authoritarian by nature. It would have been nearly impossible to associate “the left” with authoritarian or totalitarian governments.

Of course, given that we have had many examples of supremely authoritarian governments coming from the right — Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Spain, Portugal and Japan, etc. etc. — it’s more than bizarre that “the right” has escaped from the same kind of association. This may be due, at least in part, to a highly successful propaganda campaign, pinning those political forms on the left — which has gained steam in the last two decades. Once the stuff of fringe thinkers, this absurd view of fascism and nazism has gone mainstream, even among some Republicans pols. Dictionaries and encyclopedias once said up front that fascism and nazism were right-wing ideologies. Few say so now.

I’m also guessing that the ever increasing consolidation of media has much to do with this. Money talks, etc. etc.

The Scots, Welsh, Irish and Manx are Celtic peoples. While there are (especially) recent reevaluations going on about them, they are definitely distinct from the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who made up the “English.” The English basically destroyed Celtic dominance in “Britain,” and dispersed it to the West and North, especially.

At one time, the Celts roamed across most of Europe, and dominated large swaths. Surprisingly, they once had a strong presence in Italy and sacked Rome before the Romans became a great power. Centuries later, Julius Caesar got his revenge, coming close to wiping out the Celts in Gaul — which seemed to be his desire. Full scale genocide.

Fascinating book on the Celts is The Discovery of Middle Earth, by Graham Robb. It’s amazing how advanced they were in the sciences of their day. The druids, from what we know, were great astronomers, among a host of other skill sets.

(I’m mostly Celtic. Irish, Scottish and Spanish. Would love to see how it all breaks down, though. Need to take that DNA test.)

Your Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -9.0
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.67

On the health care issue again. There is no reason for Single Payer to produce wait times. Those are almost entirely a result of the ratio of patients to doctors, and have next to nothing to do with the kind of insurance system in place. The real way to fix those wait times is to make sure there are plenty of doctors, hospitals and staff to support the needs of every community/region. And a great way to guarantee this is to make all public colleges and universities tuition free. This will also do away with the need for doctors to charge high enough rates to cover their student loans — which can set them back well over 150K.

When it comes to rationing, that’s a different issue. In the capitalist system, “rationing” is done according to who can afford to pay for care. We have long had “death panels” for the poor, for the working poor, and for many a middle class person, even those with insurance. In my own case, I have to forego certain medical care suggested by my GP and oncologist, outside the scope of the seemingly urgent. Last year, this included treatment for Sleep Apnea. This year, other kinds of care. There are millions of Americans in worse shape than I am, too. “Rationing” is a part of our system, because of its profit motive and privatized nature, and most of it will vanish if we go to a truly non-profit, Single-Payer system. Most but not all. The rest would, if we decommodified all of it.

Other issues will crop up, as mentioned before. But they won’t be “rationing” or “wait times.”

If you google the TB scare, you mostly get Breitbart. Which is easily one of the worst “journalist” outlets in America, discredited (on a daily basis) by its loathsome views and endless lies and right-wing propaganda. Breitbart was a notorious serial liar, and his outlet hasn’t improved with his death.

Beyond that, the whole reason why we know about levels of TB in America is because we DO screen immigrants and refugees (among others). And it takes refugees roughly two years to get through the process here, which is arduous. If we were a moral and humane society, we’d do our best to shorten that process and make it a matter of days, rather than years. We could do that rather easily if we actually reversed the trend of slashing public sector jobs, and started adding them to the degree needed. The very same people who scream about the supposed dangers of immigrants and refugees are always calling for deeper and deeper cuts to the public sector.

We now have a million fewer federal employees than we had in 1962, and we have roughly 150 million more Americans for them to deal with.

That’s just pure insanity.

bnw,

We’ll never agree on this one. I think the evidence shows that it was absolutely unnecessary from a military point of view, that we had dozens of alternatives that would have brought about the end of war and truly saved lives. Those 300,000 Japanese dead on those two islands count too. No lives were saved by the bombs. Huge numbers of defenseless humans were slaughtered, needlessly, instead.

To me, the decision to drop the bombs was despicable, contemptible, unconscionable, and I doubt FDR would have made the same choice. I know Henry Wallace wouldn’t have.

I’ve never accepted the old chestnut of “all is fair in love and war.” I think what we do in war says profound things about our character, our principles, our worldview. When America dropped the bombs, it told the world that so much of our rhetoric was hollow.

I think it’s disingenuous for an organization of doctors to call for Single Payer. They’re actually just as much a part of the problem as the insurance companies. They have every incentive in the world for a Single Payer system to come into place (they’ll make more money), and no doubt believe they could “capture” it via lobbying, as do Big Pharma, Hospitals and Medical Equipment folks, among others.

Yes, we need Single Payer for the insurance side. We need non-profit health insurance for everyone. But in America, if we leave it at just that, the costs of medicine itself will not go down overall, and may well go up in many cases. As long as medical providers operate under capitalist laws of motion and incentives, those prices will continue to escalate. They, not just the insurance companies, keep raising their prices too on everything from simple 10-minute (almost symbolic) checkups, to surgery, to chemo — with cost pressures also coming from Big Pharma, etc.

The cost of one chemo treatment, for instance, has literally doubled since I started on this journey. From roughly $15,000 to $30,000. And that’s for a single treatment, roughly 4-5 hours in a chair, with a single chemo drip bag and maybe two nurses in attendance (who also look after other patients). I’ve never had an insurance company turn down the chemo, though I have had them say no to a PET scan. Change it to a CT scan, and we’ll cover it, they said.

To make a long story short: We need to make both insurance and delivery of health care a right, not a commodity. Decommidify all of it. Remove it from the capitalist laws of motion. End the profit incentives from both sides of the equation. If we do just the insurance side, we open ourselves up to a gold rush of abuse from medical providers, who will attack the new cash cow with armies of lobbyists and kill it, if they can’t control it.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

ZN,

But the point of recent historical research is that it (dropping the bombs) didn’t bring an end to war. I listed all kinds of key military personnel who said, at the time, and later, that it was totally unnecessary and had little to do with Japan’s surrender. There is debate about what those other causes were, but it’s pretty much agreed upon by recent historians that it wasn’t the bomb that did it . . . . and, that Japan was ripe for full surrender months before it. If only we had been willing to grant one condition that we later granted anyway.

Zinn, Chomsky, Gar Alperovitz, among others (including Einstein and most atomic scientists), all say this. And Chomsky adds the horrific note that Nagasaki wasn’t even the end of our bombing. We continued after that world-historical war crime to kill more Japanese civilians.

Personally, I can’t begin to wrap my mind around the idea that it was at all necessary to kill 300,000 unarmed and totally defenseless civilians, especially in order to “save lives.” As Zinn points out, we would be horrified at the suggestion that we should drop a bomb on our own children, which would kill 100,000 of them, for the purpose of shortening the war. But it’s okay to do so on Japanese children?

It didn’t save any lives. It slaughtered 300,000, in the most horrific way imaginable. We had no need to continue on with the invasion (prior to the bomb), as several generals noted at the time. Japan was on the brink of national death. Russia was about to end its neutrality with Japan. It was over. We could have surrounded the islands, blockaded them, worked toward a surrender, and Japan would have taken it. They only had one condition, going back months: let the emperor remain the symbol of the nation. That’s it.

IMO, it was an unforgivable act. Unconscionable and indefensible.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Some more articles showing why the bombs were not necessary.
From Wikipedia: Opposition to the Bomb

They include a host of very high-ranking military personnel who felt the same, at the time, along with a commission from 1946 which also determined the bombs weren’t needed.

Howard Zinn later came to this conclusion. He was a bomber in WWII himself.

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.
— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, [69]

The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons … The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
— Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950, [79]

The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945, [80]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it …
— Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr., 1964, [80]

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Mac,

No one’s conflating Japanese leadership in that article. But I think you’re going waaay too far the other way. The military obeyed what the state said it must do. It didn’t have its own say in the matter. It obeyed the dictates of the state. If the state offered up a full surrender — it did — the military had to go along with it. That was modern Japanese tradition, and it didn’t require that the military was all in with what the state wanted to do. It did it anyway.

Also, I think you may be guilty of what you accuse the article of doing. It sounds like you’re treating the military itself as a monolith.

A tragedy of errors: We in the West built up a myth of Japanese supermen, who would fight to the death and never let up. We did this to excuse war crimes, largely, and to psych our soldiers into being relentless as well. Some of the Japanese leadership also put forth their own version of this myth about themselves, from the other side of the fence, to stoke resolve. In reality, Japanese soldiers in WWII were no more likely to fight to the death or sacrifice themselves than any other military, including ours. They, too, were staffed by teachers, scientists, accountants, plumbers, carpenters and so on. They were not Samurai, as the West wanted to imagine. They, too, wanted to live in peace and see their children grow up and watch their daughters get married and so on.

It’s time for America to come to terms with this, and it appears that it’s finally ready, judging from the polling.. Dropping the atomic bomb ranks as among the worst war crimes in world history. Easily. In no way did we have any legitimate rationale to do this. It was flat out terrorism against totally defenseless citizens. It just wasn’t necessary.

You refuse to acknowledge that the issue with dropping the bomb had to do with saving Allied servicemen lives. Thats it. Nothing more.

I already dealt with that. Twice, at least. It didn’t have anything to do with “saving servicemen lives,” because no invasion of Japan was necessary. They were already defeated. Ike said this. A half dozen generals said this. No further action on our part was necessary.

So, if no invasion was necessary — and it wasn’t — how can anyone claim that the bomb was essential to prevent loss of life due to a potential American invasion?

bnw wrote:

Of course the war was won but that isn’t the issue. Perhaps you and Katie Couric should do documentaries together? The issue was securing an UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. That is the issue. It was necessary to prevent a great loss of US ad allied personnel in the invasion of Japan. The japanese leadership publicly stated the fight would be to the end and considering the casualties taken in invading Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Truman had every reason to believe them. The decision by japanese leadership to try to use Stalin to get better terms with the allies was fateful. Stalin doublecrossed them to grab more territory. That isn’t Truman’s fault. The japanese ignored the Potsdam Declaration which demanded unconditional surrender or Japan’s immediate destruction. Truman also gave fair warning of the second bomb drop.

Japan only had one “condition.” Allow the emperor to remain as symbol, as figure-head. That was the only thing they asked for. It was, for all intents and purposes, the offer of unconditional surrender, and it also was what we ended up agreeing to. But not until after 300,000 absolutely defenseless civilians were slaughtered. It was a war crime and “terrorism,” by definition.

And, again, there was no need to drop the bombs to prevent losses in the invasion, because the invasion was completely unnecessary. Japan had already offered to surrender prior to that. From the article linked to above:

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, for his part, stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives…” He later publicly declared “…it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Even the famous “hawk” Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

I don’t think wars are just or unjust. That’s dependent on the perspective of the combatants. And those perspectives change over time. Wars considered just at the time they were fought often become unjust as facts surrounding the causes become available, etc…

Interesting. However I don’t buy it, not completely. Take the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman had a choice. Ask his nation to endure what he was told would be 1 million US casualties in an invasion of the Japanese homeland, or drop two atomic bombs in an effort to force surrender.

But those weren’t his choices, at all. There was no need to do anything more than accept Japan’s surrender, which was offered weeks before the dropping of the bombs. It’s a myth that America would have lost tens of thousands of soldiers (or more), because that kind of mass invasion wasn’t at all necessary. Japan was finished, and they knew it. And Truman had to have known it, because Ike and many other generals told him they were finished — and, again, Japan already offered to surrender with, what turned out to be, the conditions of the eventual surrender.

The firebombing of Tokyo alone had already killed more civilians than would be killed with the dropping of the bombs, and that was in the hundreds of thousands. Russia was ready to enter the war against Japan. It had no way out. There was no need for the bombs — or the firebombing.

Excellent article about the above from Jacobin too:

Seventy years ago, the United States committed one of the most horrific atrocities in military history. Why?

Another great resource on this is Gar Alperovitz:

The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It

Oh, and I also learned that it’s not such a great idea to drive in Dublin, unless you’re ready for total insanity. At least when I was there, they made New York City drivers look like scared old folks in comparison. And the motorcyclists made the car drivers look like they were standing still. Better to start your self-driving trip outside the city.

My people came from Cork, Killarney and Tipperary. Got to see all three places, but regret not taking the time to research the family history. Also regret not being able to see Yeats Country, County Sligo. Will definitely see it next time.

Perhaps the most magical (and emotional) moment for me — and there were many — was seeing the Cliffs of Moher, while hearing the ethereal notes and singing of a loverly harp player sitting on the stones there. Looking out at the sea, the cliffs, and thinking about the recent diagnosis (this was 2003) of my Stage Four cancer. It was all too much, but in the best possible way.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Ozoneranger wrote:

Some Irish folk will take Trump expats, too. I just got back from there two days ago.

Epic vacation, great people, great beer…even the driving on the left from the right seat was enjoyable…

http://evoke.ie/news/irish-news/inishturk-island-welcomes-donald-trump-exiles

I did a self-drive trip through Ireland back in 2003. Loved it. The place is just so beautiful and magical. Need to go back again. For a small island, it really has a ton to see and experience, and I know I didn’t even scratch the proverbial surface.

What were your favorite places?

(Edit: Sorry, WV. That’s twice now that I posted something all too similar to your own, without knowing you had, etc. etc.)

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Billy_T.