PA Ram wrote:

It’s so disheartening that the Democrats have to be pushed into single payer. It is such a no-brainer. Get behind it. Sell it. But then again–maybe it’s better if it sits in limbo–not attached to either party. Maybe if it doesn’t have a party “label” it has a better chance. Maybe it can be some negotiated ground. But of course the Republicans would NEVER go for this–would they? I mean–they couldn’t.

It’s a tough fight that people will have to demand at the grass roots level.

As for the Dems–I’m hearing that Mark Warner of Virginia is a favorite right now for the nomination in 2020. God help us all. It’s bad enough to fight one party. When you have to fight two?

Lotsa good points, PA.

Warner? He’d lose, easily. He’s the typical center-right Dem with liberal leanings on social inclusion issues. He also has no charisma, can be a nervous speaker in public, is not very good on TV, and just won’t inspire “the base.”

It’s a shame Sanders is getting up there in age. By 2020, he’ll be 79. They need someone a great deal younger but with at least his degree of lefty views. At least.

As the young kids used to say, O – M – G!!!

If the Trump administration’s goal is to lead us headlong into fascism, it’s doing a bang up job. Make America White Again!! is its battle cry, and it really should just be honest and wear white sheets in public.

There really are no words to express how much I despise him, his administration, and its poisonous ideology.

This is sure to win the Palin vote.

These people are bat-shit crazy, and it’s beyond obvious that their control of all the levers of power is existentially dangerous.

Zooey wrote:

Looks to me like Republicans are Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don’t.

If they don’t pass this, there will be finger-pointing, and skepticism that they can unite on anything.

If they do pass it, millions of people will be hurt by it. It will be low-hanging fruit for Democrats in 2018 and 2020. Of course, Democrats are too incompetent to pick all of it, but some of it will harvested.

I think the main reason they feel they need to pass it now, first, is for the supposed deficit reduction. They need to carry that over when it comes to making the case for massive tax cuts for the rich later. They made it more difficult for themselves, of course, because they slash taxes for the rich in the health care bill too. Which makes the cruelty directed toward the poor even more obscene, of course. But they just may get away with that anyway.

But if they were smart, politically, they wouldn’t do that. They’d chalk up even more (albeit questionable) deficit reduction, and then apply that toward the tax cut crusade.

Regardless, the bill is incredibly cruel, and it will literally kill Americans — far more each year than all the “terrorist” acts in the US combined since 9/11.

ZN,

Again, this isn’t about me persuading you to change your mind. I accept that you won’t. I’m making my own case, regardless, without any expectation of that altering your beliefs. In a sense, it’s an exercise, a way to hone my own arguments. I long ago gave up on the idea that minds are changed in these forums.

So a last word on the subject, and then I’ll bow out. Perhaps WV wants to add more, but I’ve had my say.

You mentioned the “warmongering north” got what it deserved. But, again, the south, at the time, was at least equal in matters of “warmongering.” From my readings, it was worse, in fact. It committed worse atrocities, again, at the time. So, if “warmongering” is the factor/rationale/variable that makes the war justifiable, America should have fought against both governments, north and south — which, of course, is kinda crazy. So that wasn’t a real option. Staying out of the entire thing made far more sense — at the time.

Anyway, that’s it for me. Hope all is well in Maine.

From Wiki:

Soviet occupation and division of Korea (1945–50)
Main articles: Division of Korea and History of North Korea
Suspected communist sympathizers awaiting execution in May 1948 after the Jeju Uprising

At the end of World War II in 1945, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two zones along the 38th parallel, with the northern half of the peninsula occupied by the Soviet Union and the southern half by the United States. Initial hopes for a unified, independent Korea evaporated as the politics of the Cold War resulted in the establishment of two separate states with diametrically opposed political, economic, and social systems.

Soviet general Terentii Shtykov recommended the establishment of the Soviet Civil Authority in October 1945, and supported Kim Il-sung as chairman of the Provisional People’s Committee for North Korea, established in February 1946. During the provisional government, Shtykov’s chief accomplishment was a sweeping land reform program that broke North Korea’s stratified class system. Landlords and Japanese collaborators fled to the South, where there was no land reform and sporadic unrest. Shtykov nationalized key industries and led the Soviet delegation to talks on the future of Korea in Moscow and Seoul.[43][44][45][46][47] In September 1946, South Korean citizens had risen up against the Allied Military Government. In April 1948, an uprising of the Jeju islanders was violently crushed. The South declared its statehood in May 1948 and two months later the ardent anti-communist Syngman Rhee[48] became its ruler. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the North on 9 September 1948. Shtykov served as the first Soviet ambassador, while Kim Il-sung became premier.

Soviet forces withdrew from the North in 1948 and most American forces withdrew from the South in 1949. Ambassador Shtykov suspected Rhee was planning to invade the North, and was sympathetic to Kim’s goal of Korean unification under socialism. The two successfully lobbied Joseph Stalin to support a short blitzkrieg of the South, which culminated in the outbreak of the Korean War.[43][44][45][46]

This is just one quick summary, but I’m just not finding any credible histories that show a “totalitarian North” and the absence of that in the South. I’m seeing histories that describe both halves of the partition as having terrible governments, but with the North being less terrible at the time.

Also seeing that both the South and the North were aggressors at various times. It was never a scenario of white hats against black hats. More black hats against black hats, etc. The North feared the South would invade it. The South feared the North would, etc. etc. But the Korean people wanted unification.

I think the allies could have prevented this from ever becoming a problem in 1945 — and the allies once included the Soviet Union, of course.

Another obvious key here: In 1950, America had no way of knowing how Korea would look in 2017. Duh, as the young kids used to say. So it’s absurd to try to read justification into the actions of those in power back then, based on what happened decades later. They couldn’t possibly know. And at the time, the hard-right government in the south was no better than the one in the north. History actually shows us it was worse. At the time. In 1950. It was worse.

So America made its choice, at the time, based upon circumstances that existed at the time, not based on time travel to 2017, and then an assessment based on that. And, again, even if it could perform that particular feat of magic, if it didn’t ALSO know how Korea might have turned out if it had stayed out, or favored the north, then it still wouldn’t have been a proper basis for that decision.

Was it justified based upon how things were in 1950? Um, no. Not at all. Not given the actually existing behavior of the respective governments, north and south at the time, which were both abysmal . . . and certainly not when the Korean people are asked for their “vote” in the context of 1950 or prior to that.

zn wrote:

Well, I see the sloganizing coming from the “official” line that says it was justified

I don’t care about the “official line.” So much so that I could not actually tell you what it is. The idea that it was justifiable is my own determination.

The “sloganizing” comment was aimed at the original article starting this thread. I don’t care, I don’t like that kind of stuff. When the left dumbs down. And I wasn’t debating that, I was declaring a vote. That’s how I vote on that kind of writing. If someone votes different good for them.

That’s fine. I get the vote thing. But would you admit that we’ll never know what would have become of Korea if we had chosen the North instead, or just stayed out completely? Its current regime doesn’t tell us anything regarding that. It doesn’t in any way prove it was beyond redemption, as you suggest, if history had been altered. Radically alter history back then, and logic tells us Korea is on a radically different course now.

Remember, after WWII, Koreans, north and south, wanted unification. They didn’t want partition. The allies forced that to happen, against the will of the Korean people. So we set the table for civil war right off the bat.

Short video by Chomsky on the subject.

zn wrote:

I would say the Korean was entirely justifiable and that the South Korean leadership at the time is irrelevant. As events have shown, South Korea was redeemable. North Korea never was and never will be. I have no complaints about bombing North Korea because they started the war—it was a flat out invasion that came just short of succeeding. If Korea because a Stalin proxy that entire region would be far less stable and Japan would have been forced to be an adversarial military state locked in local conflict.

3 million died and that included South Koreans killed by North Korean forces. This is one reason I never buy into the left-wing upside down versions of right-wing propaganda pieces. I prefer the real way of wide-ranging historical sources and real historical analysis, not commie kids camp sloganizing.

Sloganizing is just regressive no matter who does it. I always prefer real analysis. My view on that has always been and always will be this–sloganizing is just the worst of the right turned upside down.

.

Well, I see the sloganizing coming from the “official” line that says it was justified, and I haven’t seen any “real analysis” to support it. I also disagree with your dismissal of alternative takes as coming from “commie kids.” The articles I’ve read on the subject are based primarily on Korea’s own “truth and reconciliation” projects, not from “commie kids.”

Also: It doesn’t prove what you say it proves — that because the NK government is so horrific now, our actions after WWII wouldn’t have mattered. We sided with the South, which instantly and radically improved their chances to survive and eventually — it took thirty more years — become more “democratic.” Logic tells us that if we had chosen the North instead, a similar progression should have occurred, at least. It’s not as if they were different species, North and South. They were all Koreans. All of them. Why would you think that our support of the North wouldn’t have resulted in at least as much progress — which, of course, is in the eye of the beholder — as the South finally achieved?

Same thing goes for the Russian Revolution of 1917. How different would the world be right now if the West, instead of doing everything it could to crush a truly leftist, popular rebellion, had supported it? Is it not highly likely that the West’s endless and violent assault, embargo, fomenting civil wars there, actually made it far, far more likely that a Lenin or a Stalin would arise? Is it not far more likely that the West’s violent opposition to any and all leftist, popular rebellions worldwide actually help those nations become despotic in reaction to this?

If we’re going to play the counterfactual game, let’s do that “real analysis” you’re talking about. Let’s look at all the historical sources, including things like the Koreans’ truth and reconciliation writings, etc.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Billy_T.

I was watching a panel discussion on MSNBC yesterday — I know. I shouldn’t torture myself like that — and was struck with the persistence of another lie. That the media is “liberal.” It was odd in this way, too. Elise Jordan, a conservative commentator, chastized a Republican guest for playing the victimhood card when he said the press was overwhelmingly Democratic (party) and liberal. But she then went on to say, after the guest left, that it was overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic.

In reality, that charge might have had some teeth forty years ago, but not now. We had twelve years of right-wing Reagan/Bush, followed by the centrist-to-conservative Clinton, followed by right-wing Dubya, followed by the centrist-to-conservative Obama, followed by right-wing Trump. The press tends to grab large numbers of former pols from the Executive and Congress, and there have been zero “liberal” establishments to draw from, really, since LBJ.

In short, it’s not their grandfather’s press anymore.

The press in America is overwhelmingly center-right on pretty much all issues except for “social inclusion” stuff, but the hard right is still trying to brainwash the public into seeing “liberal bias” everywhere. Again, they may have had a case to make back in the 1960s and early 70s — maybe — but not since then.

Again, just to clarify:

I’m not merely turning the tables on the “official” story. I’m not in any way saying North Korea was the home of the “good guys” and that South Korea was the exclusive home the “bad guys.” I’m saying both arbitrarily created “nations” were controlled by dictators. In essence, there were no “good guys” in the picture, except, perhaps, Hawkeye, Radar and Trapper John.

Massacre in Korea, by Pablo Picasso, 1951

There was never a reason or rationale for us to go to war in Korea. And the actions of the allies after WWII set the table for the civil war there in the first place. It was yet one more case of the “great powers” thinking they could, through unelected fiat, draw boundaries and partition the lands of others against their will.

And contrary to the myth that it was the “bad guys” in North Korea versus the “good guys” in South Korea, the real aggressor was Syngman Rhee, a hard-right dictator we backed. Both the north and south were controlled by (installed) dictators, but Rhee was the one who committed mass atrocities that sparked the northern invasion. Rhee also threatened to attack the north prior to its invasion of the south.

The Korean War: Barbarism Unleashed

Excerpt:

Wolfowitz’ analysis is undercut by George Katsiaficas’ history, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century (2012), which shows that democracy emerged in 1987 not because it was promoted by the U.S. but because of the efforts of committed social activists, many of whom endured torture, beatings, and massacres fighting against the American-imposed military dictatorship. For years, the U.S. had built up South Korea’s military and police forces, honoring the generals who committed myriad atrocities, including the 1980 Kwangju massacre, South Korea’s equivalent to the Tiananmen Square massacre in China in 1989.[6]

Many prominent historians have reinforced the official narrative about the Korean War. John L. Gaddis of Yale University, the so-called Dean of Cold War scholars presents the war as a clear-cut case of communist aggression backed by Soviet premier Joseph Stalin. David J. Bercuson of the University of Calgary considers the war to have prevented Korea from “becoming the Munich of the Cold War.”[7] Absent from this viewpoint are the perspectives and experiences of the Koreans themselves, which scholars such as Bruce Cumings take into account.

Well before the Korean War officially began on June 25, 1950, South Korea was in a state of revolt. The war actually began in 1946 when the American Military Government supported the repression of opposition movements in South Korea, particularly in the southern island of Cheju-do where tens of thousands of peasants were massacred between April 1948 and May 1949. The South also provoked the North, mounting clandestine raids and sabotage. Also absent from the official U.S. narrative is the recognition of the horrors of the war and the fact that U.S. and South Korean forces committed mass atrocities against civilians.[8]

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Billy_T.