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wvParticipantPrior to the Civil War, most Americans were not involved with the capitalist system. Most were self-employed, small farmers, artisans, craftspersons, etc. who worked within their own local, independent markets, not yet subsumed under the umbrella of capitalism.
(As with the previous posts, I’ll split this up)
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From posting with W over the years, i ‘think’, in a nutshell, his essential view (oversimplifying here) has two components:
1 Capitalism, while bad for many, is better than the alternatives,
2 Like it or not, its not going anywhere….so…fighting it is just tilting at windmills.I think you do a good job exploding point number one, BT,
but point number two is a more difficult target.Point two raises all those, ‘what are you going to do about it?’ questions.
I think its fair to point out, that the no.2 issue is
not an easy one to answer. I can understand people asking it,
and wondering whether its worth it to ‘fight capitalism’ and what form exactly would such a fight take….etc.w
vwvParticipant=============
That was like a who’s-who of evil, lining
up for her.Man, they like her more than i thought, too.
“the warrior queen”
Lord.
w
vwvParticipanthttp://www.jill2016.com/ballot_access
States Jill is on that ballot
wvParticipantthat 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 IconoclastwvParticipantI miss have that kind of intellectual fire and passion for the new. At my age, far too much of that is gone. I fear more than a decade of chemo has something to do with this, and just life itself. It can beat that excitement out of you — if you let it. I just need to fight harder against that.
Thanks, WV.
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No doubt. Old age can beat you up, too. I wake up nowadays,
and sometimes i walk to the bathroom like a 90 year-old, crooked west virginian. 🙂I once dated a rich jewish lady from New York. When She came to visit me in Morgantown the first time, we walked downtown, and I asked her what she thot. She hesitated, and then looked around town, and kinda painfully said, “are all West Virgnians bent-over and crippled?”
Ah well.
w
vwvParticipant< To get where you want do we just abandon the Constitution and simply start all over? I assume you would agree that is not in the works. If not then what do we do? My answer is we do the best we can to keep the wolves at bay. I mean what else can we do?
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Well, who knows.I would say, in general you can always fight a multi-front-war. You can TRY to educate and organize like-minded folks for real core fundamental revolutionary change, using the internet or whatever.
But that doesn’t rule out practical, incremental, ‘reform’ activities where you join groups and vote for ‘relatively progressive’ policies, etc.
You do what you can do. Case by case. Issue by issue. Policy by Policy.
“Widening the cage” as, I think Chomsky called it.For you that would mean helping Hillary. For someone else it would mean helping Jill….etc.
There’s the broad ‘vision’ work. And there’s the “start where we are” reform work. Maybe. I dunno.
w
vwvParticipantI dunno, but they need three solid passing-weapons. (to go with Gurley)
I think they have one with Tavon (who still needs to improve, but he’s dangerous and draws a lot of attention)
They need two more.
Higbee? Cooper? Britt? Kendricks? Quick? …
w
vwvParticipantIs he worth it?
w
vJune 29, 2016 at 3:10 pm in reply to: Matt Bowen: offseason rules are brutal for QB development #47449wvParticipantSo, its not necessarily the best thing in the world
to be the youngest team in the NFL
every year.w
vwvParticipantHe’s rotating.
The liberals who murdered him put him on a spit, and buried him in a grill.
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He tastes like chicken.
Just so you know.
w
vwvParticipantI am not reading a suffering-whale story.
According to Chapter 6, Article 6, Section 6, subsection (A) of the board-regulations, you can be banned for posting suffering-whale stories.
I shall report this to the Board-Purity Counsel.
w
vwvParticipantI understand your philosophy of the subject and the clear end game. I just don’t ever see that happening in this country. For better or for worse we are a country of wolves-at least in the economic sense. It is the price we pay for what we perceive as “freedom”. Unfortunately, that price is often devastating to the disadvantaged. No system of governance has perfected a way to prevent the wolves from eating the sheep or even their young.
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Well, thats an interesting paragraph. Lots of food for thot/disagreement/agreement there.
If we are a ‘nation of wolves’ how did we get that way? Does the system teach people to be wolves or nurture that kind of wolfishness? Is there a kinder-gentler system that would be more sustainable and biosphere-friendly?
You would probly say, “Capitalism is the best we can do. Its far from perfect but its the best we can do.”
I’d probly say, “Corporate-capitalism is destroying the biosphere, crushing and dehumanizing the poor, obliterating meaningful democracy, and fostering a culture of Lies”
I do think there’s a better approach. Guess I’m an idealist 🙂
w
vwvParticipantMy take on the Shallows? I agree with PA…it sucked.
****Beware – here there be spoilers***
If a 20 foot white shark is trying to kill you, you would be killed and there is not a thing you could do to prevent it. The result of such an encounter would not be a seven inch wound that can be mended with jewelry. There were many other lapses in logic but these bugged me the most.,,,
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But see this is EXACTLY why taking away surfers’ semi-automatic-assault guns
is the wrong thing to do.How are we supposed to defend ourselves from 29 foot White Sharks ?
With butter-knives? Maybe call 911 and wait for the police?
You cant even answer that can ya.
And before you say, how is a shark going to get to appalachia, i have
one word for you — flood waters.Your silence is deafening.
w
vwvParticipantGood addition I think. He wasn’t ready to be a Head Coach,
but Singletary can help them this year.w
vwvParticipantSeems a bit high to me. 22nd. Dunno about that.
w
vwvParticipantWV,
Going back to your mention of lots of “socialisms,” which is spot up. Makes me think of the knee-jerk reaction I always hear:
“Every time it’s been tried, it’s been a disaster!! Look at Russia!!” etc. etc.
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Yup, thats the mainstream-meme. And its a powerful one.
Its in the heads/hearts of joe and jane citizen. Especially the college-educated citizens.
Try finding a major corporate-newspaper that even covers stories on the little nations that have strong socialist policies.
Otoh, the newspapers do keep up on Prince, Bowie, Abortion, and Horoscopes. So there’s that.
w
vwvParticipantWV,
I haven’t really either, to any close degree, other than noting how the crash of oil prices has really hurt them. And by noting the usual way these things go. Leftist comes into power in Latin America. Capitalists freak out. Capitalists call Daddy on phone to get help. Daddy answers in ways subtle and overt. Forcing capital flight, capital boycotts, gets the IMF to call in loans, sets up sanctions, embargoes, may try a quiet coup or two or three. Hires street thugs to start protests. Gets capitalist media in on the deal.
Eventually, leftist is toppled, blamed for everything that happened to nation, and everyone starts the counter for economic catastrophe on the leftist’s watch, forgetting about all previous decades of right-wing governance and poverty, inequality, hyper-inflation on their watch, not to mention all the “disappearing.”
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LoL, well-said.
Thats pretty-much what i figured but i havent bothered to read up on it.
These things always seem to follow a blueprint. Figuring out the blueprints iz a big part of being politically-educated in theze Dr Strangeluvy times.
w
vwvParticipantGreat 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.
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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 🙂
w
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
wvParticipantDepressing read.
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“…The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.
A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear]weapon more thinkable.”
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What makes it all even more surreal and nutso,
is the rightwingers argue Obama is soft on defense, blah blah blahsigh
w
vwvParticipanti 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.
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Well, i am not rooting for a cataclysm, because it would destroy the innocent luna-moths, tapirs, and banana-slugs. Plus it would wipe out all recordings of ‘the tackle’.As far as getting off the planet, Nittany and his science-people are working on that. From what i’ve heard the latest testing involves a giant frisbee (that will hold over ten thousand people) and a great-big catapult.
w
vwvParticipanti 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 ConradwvParticipantAs for Chavez. I think you’re portraying him as the American media want him portrayed, and, again, while adding metaphors like wolves and sheep straight out of 1950s red-baiting. That said, he took over a terrible economy, with massive inequality and unemployment — something his critics conveniently forget. It wasn’t as if he inherited some thriving, prosperous nation and then destroyed it.
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Whats really happened in Venezuela, btw. I havent kept up.
w
vwvParticipantI don’t agree at all, particularly with the first paragraph, but I’m not going to argue it.
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Oh. I have sinned. I thot i was agreein with one of BillyT’s posts up there, but i must have clicked on the wrong post.So I now disagree with wv,
and agree with BT,
and I think Waterfield should apologize for causing so much confusion
and chaos.w
vwvParticipantBad plot, bad writing, bad acting.
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Well just from the cover-photo in that vid,
I can honestly say, that woman is the finest
actress I’ve ever seen on a surf-board.w
vwvParticipantTrump will eviscerate her.
She doesn’t even know how to tell the truth. Even with the moderator agreeing with and vouching for her lies Trump will still get his message through to the people. Its about jobs. Its about accomplishment. Its about trustworthiness. Its about being in touch in that our people and much of the western world is now repudiating globalism.———————–
Well, it will be so totally surreal, i may have to watch some of the
Great Hillary v Donald Debate Of the Century.I havent watched any debate since Bobby Riggs debated Billie Jean King, but i might actually watch some of this Trump vs Hillary thing. It will be like Jason vs Freddy. Or the Alien vs Predator.
Its going to be a spectacle.
And the Dems will think Hillary won, and the Reps will think Trump won…and the undecideds? I dunno. I dunno who they are. Will they like either one? Trust either one? Will they like Trumps tone? Hillary’s system-itis ?
My gut tells me they will go for Hillary very slightly. But i dunno. I’m just guessing the undecideds will lean slightly towards the ‘safer’ candidate.
w
vwvParticipantI suppose when it comes to politics and religion we all become “dogmatic”. Nevertheless, I genuinely believe that those on the “left” and those on the “right” tend to follow what has been called a process of “group think”. Meaning there is a far greater consensus on political issues than one might find in a group of so called centrists. At it’s worst there can be the “let me know what my group thinks of this so I can be consistent and won’t ruffle the feathers of those I know”. By definition a “moderate” or “centrist” does not have a “group” to measure his views on issues. I suspect when it comes to abortion rights, affirmative action, gun control, etc there is far more divergence among moderates than you would find on the “left” and the “right”, especially as one approaches the polar ends of both these bodies.
As far as “socialism” goes-your right it’s far more complicated than what we give it. Growing up in the 50s words like “communism”, “socialism” were dirty words that few of us knew anything about other than these were the bad guys. Today with globalization we see bits and pieces of socialism everywhere including here in the U.S. The word doesn’t carry with it the stigma it once did-although talking to some of my friends my age you wouldn’t know that.
My problem with it is the ideology not the end game. To me the weakness in the system is in the “planners”. A collectivist planned economy means there must be central planners. And the only way that will work is if there is total commitment to the “plan”. And how does that exactly work in a society of free people. What do you do with the dissenters or those who disagree? Who will choose the planners and what plans take priority when there are competing legitimate interests? Who will make these decisions. And those dissenters cannot get in the way if the system is to work. Would there be debate or would that be looked upon as subversion? Would dissenters be eliminated? (not an entirely shocking expectation) Somewhere I read that collectivism and individualism are political oil and water.==============
Agreed. Preachin to the choir comrad 🙂
w
vwvParticipantI think you have a bit of a blind-spot when it comes to this “leftists are dogmatic” thing. Just because we dont agree with what YOU call ‘moderate dems’ or ‘moderate reps’ doesn’t make us ‘dogmatic’ — it just mean we disagree totally, and completely with Dems and Reps on some very fundamental policies. THEY disagree with us too — why dont you call the ‘moderates’ dogmatic ?
w
vWell, he is in a minority on this board, and probably feels besieged every time he posts politics here. I think Waterfield is as honest in his views as can be reasonably expected of humans, and he practices what he preaches by working with charities and fundraisers and neighborhood/community building stuff. It must be a little odd to him to step into this particular corner of the world and find his politics criticized by a tag team of leftists.
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Agreed, Zooey. We all like Waterfield. Heck i like anybody that likes dogs and surfing and the Rams.But still, he’s a moderate-centrist-capitalist-californian-lawyer,
and thus, i think we are gonna have to torture him until he confesses
and then he’ll have to be burned at the stake to purify his soul.
Its for the best, really.w
vwvParticipantWhy do you take criticism of Hillary so personally? You actually seem to get invested emotionally, as if critiques of HC were attacks on you. Or that’s the sense I get.
That’s a valid criticism . It’s a fault I have and wish I didn’t.
Okay fair enough.
Have some pie.
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Is that a capitalist pie or a socialist pie? Or a moderate pie?Because i only eat socialist pies.
w
vwvParticipant1)Speaking for myself I am not in favor of a socialistic form of government. That’s a biggie.
2)Also I find that the “progressives” are very dogmatic in their views not willing to give an inch when it comes to the views of moderate Republicans or moderate Democrats. In fact in my experience there is real contempt for those who are not in their camp.
3)OTOH there are many views expressed on this board that I agree with totally and I consider myself..
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Well, the word ‘socialism’ is real real complicated once its untied from abstract notions and actually tied to real examples in the real world. I mean there’s no one ‘socialism’ — there’s been various experiments with it in various forms in various places of various sizes, having various results.
So, i am never content saying “I’m a socialist” — it has very little meaning to me, divorced from actual examples or policies.
In the ‘abstract’ if i were to imagine a wv-utopia, there would probably be a mix of a large amount of socialism (health care, dental care, energy, education, transportation, big-projects like Nasa, etc),
but there would be a bit of anarchism and capitalism mixed in, and i can imagine a nice-utopia with some private property rights. But thats all pie-in-the-sky, speculation, entertainment-thinking.In the real world of our corporotacracy we have to start with what we have and where we are. So, we dont get to be pure ‘socialists’ even if we want to be — we can be in favor of socialist POLICIES which can be fit into a corporotacracy. Like, say National Health Care or something like that.
Enuff about socialism. As far as progressives being dogmatic — I dont see it that way at all. I dont see anymore dogmatism among progressives as any other group. Every political group is gonna have some folks that are more…oh…strident and stubborn than other more conciliatory members of the group. There’s plenty of different personalities among “progressives” as well as rightwingers and centrists and other “ists”.
I think you have a bit of a blind-spot when it comes to this “leftists are dogmatic” thing. Just because we dont agree with what YOU call ‘moderate dems’ or ‘moderate reps’ doesn’t make us ‘dogmatic’ — it just mean we disagree totally, and completely with Dems and Reps on some very fundamental policies. THEY disagree with us too — why dont you call the ‘moderates’ dogmatic ?
You yourself agree with what you call moderates. You disagree with leftists. Why doesnt that make you dogmatic?
w
vwvParticipantI asked progressives yesterday if there have been any Presidents of this country who if running today they could support. Any takers?
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Hmmm, i dunno. Generally speaking the system eliminates all but the pro-corporate-anti-poor candidates.Lets see…no to Obama, no to Bush, no to Clinton, no to Bush1, no to Reagan, no to Nixon…
Maybe FDR? Yeah, I’d probably vote for FDR.
w
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