Fox News on Trump-Putin

Whether the Kremlin meddled in the U.S. election or not, the hyper-focus on Russiagate overlooks bigger threats: Russian elites to the Russian people, and U.S. elites to the American people, says Paul Jay

Billy_T wrote:

My own take is that Trump’s rationale for making nice with Russia is essential to consider. It makes the attempt beyond empty for me.

It’s also vital, IMO, to consider what he’s done around the world. It’s not as if he’s tried to reduce tensions anywhere else. In fact, he’s raised them, threatening Iran with regime change, Venezuela with military invasion, even Mexico with the same.

He drove us to the brink of nuclear war with North Korea, prior to kinda sorta defusing the crises he created. And he’s attacked our allies without mercy, throwing much of the world into chaos.

If he were an actual peacenik, I’d feel much differently about his overtures to Russia. But he’s anything but that. Who hasn’t he attacked or threatened, other than Russia?

===============

I dont really care about his ‘rationale’ (I assume it is always just a reflection of his narcissism, etc). All that matters to me is Russia’s nukes. I want the threat of nuclear war to be reduced.

And i think he’s done that. I think he met with putin and he said “hey, whats with this election interference?” And putin goes, “Seriously? You people have been interfering all over the world for decades, LoL”. And trumpy goes, “I know, I know, now lets tell the press weve discussed it and the world is safe from nuclear war.”

So far, I’d say Trumps foreign policy is better than Bush’s.

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

Thing is, they’ve been under Republican control since before it was even called the FBI. They’re famously right-wing, even hard right — which Trump is too.

So, to me, the entire attempt to claim a “deep state conspiracy against Trump” is absurd (Not saying you’re doing this, WV). If it (the deep state) exists at all, the vast majority of it is going to be more sympathetic to Trump and the GOP than their political opponents.

===============

Well but Trump isnt your garden-variety Republican is he. We know Trump has caused a lot of friction and waves with mainline-Reps, Like Bush for example. So I could see how a ‘deep state’ might have issues with a wacko who likes Putin.

But as I’ve said before, my view of the ‘deep state’ is not the rightwing view. Their view is just political paranoid bullshit.

w
v

Personally, I want the US and Russia to have good relations. Ratcheting down the tensions is a good thing for the world, imho. I’m glad Trump is doing that.

As far as the russian interference, I’m just not concerned. At all.
I’ll worry about that kind of thing when the American-Corporate interference with democracy is addressed. Cause right now there is no democracy to interfere ‘with’.

I’ll shut up now 🙂

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

Well said. All of it. But especially the last sentence.

And that makes me think about this, too: Marx and other leftists took it for granted that the “proletariat” would remain with them, and for generations into the future. That turned out to be a bad assumption. They may in fact be providing winning margins for far-right parties all over the globe these days, and the union vote in America is now up for grabs. It may just be leaning Republican these days, though I haven’t done the research on that.

I think one of the really smart things Ocasio-Cortez did was to stick to concrete policies, and not try to fight in terms of theories. Which ties me into this, too: I’m almost finished with a book of essays by Dwight MacDonald, an old leftist — with most of the essays being from the 1950s and 60s. He talks about Germany’s history of obsession with Theory, and our history of obsession with Facts, mostly from the angle of weaknesses in both obsessions. He was quite the curmudgeon, but well worth reading. Anyway, I think his point is similar to yours. It doesn’t work in America to trade theoretical arguments. People here want to deal with what they consider to be “facts,” which opens up still another can of worms, of course:

Competing visions of what they are, etc.

I think I’m writing myself into a depression, so will exit stage left for a bit.

;>)

Hope all is well with you and yours.

=====================

I dunno whether Marx really understood the power of modern-propoganda in a corporate-state. Ya know. I doubt he knew voters would have their brains ‘this’ colonized with anti-truths. They’ve done been infected.

Invasion of the brain-snatchers. Or somethin.

Ocasio had a perfect storm of stuff go her way, btw, i think. Most progressives will have a harder road. Still, it looks like there will be more progressives win in the next few years than at any time in the last 20 years. Nice to see. At least there will be a few voices in the wilderness now. We can thank Bernie Sanders for a lot of that, i think.

Billy_T wrote:

<
I throw in analogies, and they fall on deaf ears . . .
.

=================

Allz i know iz, this is important. This exchange about ‘socialism’, progressives are having with Lib-Capitalists and Rightwing-crazies.

I see the same exact pattern playing out over and over and over, whether its an MSM talker asking Bernie about socialism or Ocasio-cortez being asked about it on Fox, etc, etc, etc. And its been the same exact dynamic for many years.

The Capitalists/rightwingers are WINNING the tv-debates. (not among leftists but among joe and jane voter)

Leftists need to rethink their answers to the “its never worked” and “its killed a 100 million people”.

We need to study on it. We need better, quicker, sharper answers. To win the average propagandized voter. Keep an eye out to how others answer it. Maybe someone out there has figured out a good tv-answer.

Lefties win the ‘debate’ while righties are winning the ‘voter’ — if that makes any sense. …what do i know 🙂

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

wv wrote:

Well you know i disagree on some of that, but we’ve hashed it out and no-one’s gonna change their mind at this point.

I hope Russia interferes on the side of Bernie this time.

w
v

That’s bad, WV.

;>)

On Sanders, etc. etc. I’m very hopeful about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is a star. If the Dems had thousands just like her, I think America would be in a vastly better place.

Which brings me to a side-note and question:

Why do you think this is all too often the case? I’ve been having discussions on other boards, when I’m up to it, about “socialism” recently. When the term “democratic socialism” is mentioned, I try to remind people about some of the great thinkers, humanitarians, peace advocates, civil rights advocates, who carried that banner, but it always seems to just fall flat.

I remind them that the following held that philosophy: MLK, Gandhi, Einstein, Camus, Orwell, Helen Keller, Dorothy Day, Bertrand Russell, Alexander Dubcek and Andrei Sakharov, for starters . . . and it generally elicits crickets.

Any guesses why that doesn’t seem to change any minds regarding the idiocy of viewing that philosophy as scary or dangerous?

================

If you want to practice your rhetorical skillz….watch FOX news. Watch how they handle the ‘socialism’ thing. They always, always, always go thru the same exact talking points. Which means — itz easy to prepare for them.

For starters Foxers always start with the same argument — “its never worked anywhere”, and then they move on to “Stalin, Soviet Union….its killed a hundred million people…”

So, if libs and leftists want to talk about socializms, they need to have sound-bitey, quick, sharp answers to that point.

…if yer gonna talk to amerikan-humans about politix, study, Fox-News. The evil-brilliance of Fox is in how they get right to the blunt-point. No hemming and hawing and qualifying and explaining — they hit you right in the face, with quick hard sound bytes. They are masters. Leftists are trying to do Chomsky and the Foxers are doing Mike Tyson. Er somethin. I dunno.

Libs use the same framework as Fox, so studying Fox works for dealing with libs too…

w
v

“…when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.” Sogyal Rinpoche