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  • in reply to: time to take the political compass poll again #45553
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.

    in reply to: time to take the political compass poll again #45540
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    About this test:

    On another forum, nearly a year ago, I had the toughest time trying to get through to a right-libertarian (propertarian) about how the scores were done. No matter how I reworded things to say the top to bottom scores had nothing to do with the left to right scores, he just wasn’t buying it. In his mind, apparently, the further left someone goes on the spectrum, the more authoritarian they have to be. I actually placed well below him on the anti-authoritarian scale — almost to bottom (meaning extremely anti-authoritarian) — but because I was also very much “far left,” he refused to believe I was anything but a Stalinist. He was incapable of seeing any leftist as “libertarian” or anti-authoritarian, even though, historically, the left wrote the book on those things, not the right.

    Societal brainwashing, etc. etc.

    One would think in the Age of the Internet this would be less prevalent than it is. But if you investigate how leftist thought is depicted (when it isn’t silenced altogether), how “socialism” is defined (and by whom), it’s not surprising. Web software, the kind used to customize your news sources on this or that app, for example, has become blatantly tilted to the right. Search for “socialism” in the Itunes library, for instance, and you’re likely to find “definitions” from mises.org or some other propertarian organization, and pretty much never by actual leftists. Same goes for Google apps.

    Silicon Valley is dominated by right-libertarian billionaires, as gatekeepers, and they do what they can — consciously or subconsciously — to steer the average Joe or Jane away from leftist thought. The main method for doing this appears to be . . . never let leftists speak for themselves. Never point to actual leftist writers and writings, if you can, instead, point to third and fourth-hand accounts coming from the right.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: I did a DNA Test #45537
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.)

    in reply to: time to take the political compass poll again #45536
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Nittany,

    Right click on the image, left click on “copy image location.” I put it inside the Huddle’s “img” code.

    in reply to: time to take the political compass poll again #45534
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Political Compass

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

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    We were forced into a “bargain” of sorts, with the capitalist system. No one asked us for our accent. We were forced. But the basics are:

    Democracy is not allowed within the boundaries of capitalist commerce. It is not allowed in the workplace — if that business is still to be “capitalist.” It is not allowed inside the employer/employee relations, or they wouldn’t exist. Democracy has its own sphere, the public sphere. It doesn’t get to be in the private sphere, though it can sometimes act upon that private sphere from the outside.

    The reason why this is a major problem is because capitalism’s laws of motion force it to forever seek expansion into new markets. It must always grab up more, Grow or Die. It is the first truly imperialistic economic form in world history, and one of the results of this internal drive is the wiping out of the Commons, all over the world, including in America. Its internal desire is to commodify all things, make everything a sale, a private sector exchange for dollars. And that includes matters of life and death, as in, health care.

    We the people should fight back against this intrinsic, internal, perpetual drive and take back as many life spheres as we can — if not all of them. We the people should “democratize” and de-commodify as many aspects of life and death as we possibly can. That means grabbing hold of health care, from the payment and the delivery sides, and yanking it out of the private, for-profit sphere and placing it all, instead, in the Commons. Once in the Commons, we can radically reduce costs for care from the ground up. All of it. Not just from the payment side, and not just from the provider side.

    To me, if we don’t do this, we will continue to have “rationing,” “death panels” and long waits for a very large portion of society. Only the wealthy do fine, basically, in our current system. That, to me, is obscene.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.”

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Ozone,

    Am truly sorry to hear about your loss. There are no adequate words to express that. I’m just sorry.

    in reply to: So if Trump wins you want to go to Canada? #45089
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45084
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    ZN,

    But that’s all it is. An interpretation. An argument. I find that people who tend to advocate the “not militarily necessary” interpretation are strongly pre-disposed to that interpretation to begin with. If you survey the vast field of research on this, and I mean all of it from every angle, it never appears that simple.

    That works both ways. I find that people who think it was necessary are strongly pre-disposed to viewing it that way from the getgo, and are not willing to look at the issue from all angles.

    I have. You say you have. We’re at an impasse, etc. etc.

    It’s not really a helpful way of debating when you say the other guy isn’t looking at all the evidence, or from all the angles, or is being too simplistic. We’re both guilty of this. Perhaps most people are. But it’s not helpful.

    You are correct that it’s a matter of interpretation. Problems can arise, however, when it becomes a matter of “Well, my interpretation isn’t simplistic like yours.” Or, “My interpretation takes into account all the angles, unlike yours.”

    Again, I’m guilty of the above, too. And with that, I bow out of this discussion for good.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45081
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Also, as much as it pisses me off to know that a huge amount of my premium dollars go to making insurance execs rich, it also pisses me off that medicine in America is so expensive — far more expensive than anywhere else on the planet — so that insurance companies have to keep raising their prices to keep up with the providers. And when I say “have to,” I don’t mean as the response to a moral dilemma. I mean as a response to the capitalist system itself, which is the real problem here.

    Another angle on this: Without insurance, I would have died in 2003. I couldn’t have afforded chemo treatment on my own. I had just purchased a house, so I didn’t have any equity in that to sell. Yeah, I could have afforded a few doctor’s visits. But not the full treatment schedule. That first year’s chemo regimen was in the neighborhood of 100K, which the insurance company covered. As mentioned above, it’s double that now. When I go through a year of this, it’s costing the insurance company itself roughly 200K, give or take.

    If every American has access to a new Single Payer system, and everyone goes to see their doctors, instead of choosing food or lodging instead, as they do now, something has to give. Some combination of non-profit medicine along with an huge increase in funding is going to have to kick in. We won’t just be able to wash our hands of this issue even if we get Single Payer — and we should. It’s going to be just part of the process toward sane, humane health care, and the best way to get there is separate it from the capitalist system itself.

    (I’d prefer seeing the end of capitalism altogether, but that’s a different story.)

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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 Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45060
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    ZN,

    But the point of recent historical research is that it (dropping the bombs) didn’t bring an end to war.

    I did not read that as recent historical research supplanting other positions. I read it as one possible interpretation among others, and not, to me, a complete or completely historically grounded one. I actually don’t buy the argument.

    This issue is an old discussion and has swirled in many directions at once over the years.

    That’s fine. We disagree on this one. But doesn’t it at least give you pause that so many generals (and admirals) said it wasn’t necessary at all, including Ike and Nimitz? I listed some of their quotes. They said it wasn’t needed to end the war. That Japan would have surrendered months earlier if we hadn’t been so adamant about “unconditional” surrender. And their only “condition” was to keep their emperor as figure-head. An extremely small price to pay to really, truly “save countless lives.”

    Dropping the bombs obviously didn’t save any. It cost at least 300,000 civilian deaths that first year. Who knows how many have died since that first year, due to radiation, etc.?

    Anyway, I’m more than convinced by the arguments from others I presented (going back to the start of the thread), and do see them “well-ground” historically. I also see them as brave. Very brave. It’s all but “sacred ground” to argue against WWII policies and our sense of the “greatest generation.” I’ve seen this among conservatives and right-libertarians, especially. The same folks who believe in all kinds of “false flag” ops and basically consider our government evil, simply will not accept that dropping the bomb was wrong — strategically or morally. They draw the line there. Obama is supposedly purposely trying to destroy America, but no way could Truman have gone in a different direction.

    Oh, well. I just want peace. Won’t live to see it. But I want it for the youth of the world, at least.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45054
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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 Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45043
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    We can add MacArthur to the list of those against the bombing as well.

    Opposition to dropping the bomb

    GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

    MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur’s reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: “…the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.”

    William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

    Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”

    Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45041
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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 Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45008
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    No you didn’t deal with it. You ignored the facts. You deny the truth. Who said an allied invasion wasn’t necessary? WHO? Ike? So Ike knew the japanese military? Interesting since he was only dealing with the european theater from ’42 until long after the japanese surrender! Do you really believe Ike knew more than Truman who was advised of the situation at that time?

    Yes, bnw. I did deal with it. And I didn’t ignore facts. I posted them, with sources, something you have yet to do — in any of our exchanges so far. And it’s pretty obvious that you never bother to read the articles I link to, or check out the books. If you had on this particular issue, for instance, you’d know that Ike was far from alone in saying the bomb wasn’t necessary at all.

    Face it, we’re not going to agree about this one. Best to move on, etc.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45007
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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.

    in reply to: Vanis Varoufakis – one man's view of capitalism #45002
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    WV,

    Your first link doesn’t work. Could you post the article separately from your google account?

    Am a fan of Varoufakis, and was thrilled when Greece elected Syriza. I thought, for once, a real, honest to goodness leftist party finally had some power over events. But the president seemed to give into the three-headed monster too soon, and ignored Varoufakis, basically. A tragedy. He basically accepted the status quo ante, when his party and he had been elected to reject it and fight it.

    Thanks for the youtube link. Have bookmarked it. Two great minds, together. Should be excellent.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #45001
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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?

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #44985
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Btw,

    Could you link to an article describing Japan’s supposed attempt to get Stalin to help them and his subsequent double-cross? Had never heard that one.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #44983
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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 Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: Death of Clintonism, Victory of Sandersism #44961
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The Dems now represent the professional class. Basically, the richest 10%, give or take. They used to represent unions, the working class and so on. Not saying anything new here, of course. But the Dems basically abandoned the working class after the 1960s, and little by little, and then with greater acceleration with the advent of Clinton and the New Dems, pinned their hopes on a coalition of the selectively blind . . . the professional class, which should keep doing well until robots take their jobs for good; blacks and other minorities, who likely feel they have no where else to go; and women who likely feel the same.

    The GOP gets its superior funding from the same folks the new Democrats now chase, but they don’t have any of the same baggage and can sweet talk their egos until the cows come home. They don’t have to even pretend to not like it. The Dems have to pretend still, lest their nominally “liberal” coalition will feel too guilty to manage or compartmentalize as they do now.

    The key for the Democrats is to keep this coalition together, which seems to me on its way to splintering, mostly along generational lines. Young minorities are no longer as willing as their elders to think of the Democratic Party as their traditional home, and the absence of any class politics is starting to piss them off. They’re starting to wise up to the fact that “parity” among racial, ethnic and gender groups, etc. etc. isn’t very helpful when it’s parity among the impoverished, or parity among the 1%. What they are beginning to notice is that massive inequality, from top to bottom, demonstrates the phoniness of the promise of escape. Escape for a select few is no longer enough, etc.

    From where I sit, the party that employs a no-holds-barred, class-warfare agenda, merging this with the absence of bigotry, will own the political landscape in the fairly near future. The party that demonstrates that conquering class differences is the fastest, most effective means of conquering the effects of racism, gender and sexuality discrimination, etc. etc. is going to own the future. Smash hierarchies, all of them, and you also smash the effects of American bigotries. And we should really be far more concerned with the effects than with the existence of those bigotries. They will always exist. The key is to render anyone (or any group) absolutely powerless to impact others through those bigotries.

    in reply to: Exploitation of Veteran's Day #44956
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: So if Trump wins you want to go to Canada? #44920
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Nittany,

    Our trips sound similar. I wound my way south of Dublin, hit a bit of the middle of Ireland, and made my way west, south-west. Also stayed in Limerick. Covered most of Ireland except for the north and northwest. Far too much to see in 14 days.

    What was your favorite castle? I’m crazy for castles, and probably liked Lismore the most.

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: So if Trump wins you want to go to Canada? #44914
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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 Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: So if Trump wins you want to go to Canada? #44913
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Very true about those narrow roads. I was warned, and made sure I rented a very small car. Was also warned about the tour buses, and that if you want to drive the Ring of Kerry — one of the most beautiful places on earth — you should always make sure you go in the same direction as those tour buses. I elected instead to get on one of those buses, temporarily stopping my self-drive travel.

    It was a great idea, leaving the driving to others, and being much higher up in the bus meant I could see over the stone walls which are everywhere.

    Also learned that you can’t really depend on maps to get from A to B. You need nearly play by play directions, because there are so many road digressions — which kinda fits in with Irish Story-telling itself.

    Yep, it takes time to get your Guinness. Mostly, because of pride. They want it to look as good as it tastes, I’m guessing.

    Also, I stayed in B and B’s too, except in Dublin. And they were almost all working farms. I had the best breakfast of my entire life at one in Grange, near Ardmore. Everything was home-made and beyond “locally sourced” as is the current rage (luckily) in America now. It was sourced from the working farm itself. The bread, the bacon, the milk, the yogurt, the pancakes. Nothing could have been “fresher” there.

    Only had one tricky moment where I forgot to drive on the left side of the road, pulling out of the small “mall.” The driver on the other end of my goof was decent, after slamming on his horn. He must have thought, “stupid Americans.” But he was decent and I didn’t make that mistake again. Ireland was so beautiful and the people were amazing. In shape, too. They walk or bike everywhere, it seems. You rarely run into “obese” Irish.

    in reply to: So if Trump wins you want to go to Canada? #44880
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    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, 5 months ago by Avatar photoBilly_T.
    in reply to: Also stopping by to say Hi. #44879
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Hey, Ozone.

    Doing fine, all things considered.

    Hope all is well with you and yours.

    LA? Come on. The Rams won’t go back there in a million years!! People in LA are interested in too many other things to welcome back a football team.

    ;>)

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