Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Right vs. Left: Slipping into darkness

Written recently on The Backroom, a pro-audio/politics email list:
Kerry is a lot like Bush, only more ambiitious and therefore more dangerous. They are both spoiled rich brats with snob school educations who behaved in ways during Vietnam, and since, that any intelligent person would regard as unbefitting a future Chief Executive.

When you have a choice between Bush and Kerry for president, the only appropriate response is, A, neither and B, who rigged this election?

If you arguing Kerry would have been a better choice than Bush in the particular situation we faced in 2004, because he'd be a one term president facing total gridlock and would at least derail the Bush family, that's one thing. If you are going to say Kerry is actually a good choice for President, you are debased and probably on powerful hallucinogens.

LIBERALS are why we have Bush, because people rightly oppose unlimited social spending, kowtowing to the knaves and fools, and the high hard one of Big Government up our you-know-where all the time. The neocon, fundie, and apocalypse-nutty superfundie lampreys and remoras we have put forth in front of us as "The Right" are not. They are nuts and criminals. The legitimate conservative movement wants less government, lower taxes, etc., but does not seek to put anyone's religious beliefs into law.

Nice. This is in response to Kerry's piece in the Boston Globe, reported at HuffPo & TruthOut.org:
Thirty-five years ago today, I testified before the United States Senate. I was a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who believed the war had to come to an end.

Pretty volatile stuff, eh? Hardly worth disputing, that war should be fought for the right reasons. Hardly makes Kerry a traitor, you would think. Well, there's more from the Backroom:

Take a good long hard look at the laws of this land from day #1 to the present. It has been a story about a power struggle. The citizen has been on the losing end since 1934, thanks mainly to liberal Democrats who enabled the process.

As far as the President not being worth much position-wise in the government, you really need to review the laws governing the office, in particular the Emergency War Powers Act. Given the creation of the Fatherland Insecurity department, if you honestly think that this legislation will never be used, you need to have your head examined.

We are now at a point where we are on the very threshold of totalitarianism. (Technology has made it much easier to pull this off.) If you think either side doesn't know it and/or wants to avoid it, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Washington operates and thinks. Take a good look at the balance sheet of every one of Washington's elite. Just one of them could buy and sell every person on this list several times over. They risk NOTHING. Laws don't apply to them, only YOU. Unless they get caught with a live boy or a dead girl, it is business-as-usual and even THEN they are given a get-out-of-jail-free card. The general public has been CONDITIONED over the decades to accept this.

Other than the crack about Democrats since 1934 (dang, too bad the depression had to end because of legislating the middle class), the writer makes an almost good point about totalitarianism.

I responded thusly:

You still don't get it.

Leaving Afghanistan while BinLaden ran loose...

Invading Iraq for a theoretical purpose (PNAC) {and no declaration of war}

Letting citizens die while Katrina was totally predictable (see Tsunami response in Thailand for comparison)

Historical deficits and record tax giveaways to wealthy

Patriot Act

Domestic spying

Lobbying corruption at unprecedented levels (DeLay, Abramoff, et al)

Tax breaks for corporations who outsource labor

Homeland Security total failure (no more incoming containers inspected than before 9/11)

and as subsets to several of these: no-bid giveaways to Halliburton, etc.

Harriet Miers for Supreme Court? Roberts & Alito (torture is OK) confirmed

Gonzales as Att'y Gen'l (Torture OK) {I know, you probably think torture is OK, so never mind}


If you think all of these would have happened if Democrats had any shred of power in the legislature, you're not a very good student of history or current events.

Admittedly I was thinking that I would get some sort of "Yeah, the Repubs are really not nice guys." Instead, here are some of the responses:


Leaving Afghanistan while BinLaden ran loose...
As I recall, Elvis had left the building and headed for Pakistan, which led to another series of events. George W had a bit of a Freudian slip when he stated offhand that he didn't care about BinLaden. How do we justify presence in the general region if we nail public enemy #1? As I have stated before, the goal as I see it is a continued, heck... escalating mid-east presence. It is obvious to anyone that Iran is next on the hit parade. Notice how we signed off for nukes a bit west of there? Care to guess who that is meant to send a signal to??

Invading Iraq for a theoretical purpose (PNAC) {and no declaration of war}
What else is new? You think Kerry would have done something different? I disagree. While he would probably have taken longer to do something, he would eventually have been forced to something very similar and perhaps extreme.

Letting citizens die while Katrina was totally predictable
Civil Defense / Disaster Control (something I used to be a part of) was essentially screwed long before George W. I never thought FEMA could respond the way we locals could have. Looks like I was right. CD-DC was the buffer zone... people like you and me pitching in until the cavalry came over the hill. (assuming they weren't getting their chargers re-shogged.)

(see Tsunami response in Thailand for comparison)
Thailand has their own government.

Historical deficits and record tax giveaways to wealthy
Not great to be sure, and not something I agree with in the least. I said this was a Keynesian move to goose the economy ala` Tricky Dick. I said it wouldn't do much good over a year ago.

Patriot Act
...fully supported by the Democrats, before they knew what it was...

Wow! I won't even begin to take all that apart. But here's another response to my points above:
Actually only about 80% of those would have happened under the Democrats, but they would have had their own additional problems.

The Democrats and the Republicans are the same thing, pretty much. Ninety percent of Dems and eighty percent of the GOP is worthless, venal, petty, idiots. No one with any fundamental willingness to fix the structural issues is going to go anywhere in either party. Fundamental and necessary change would gore too many golden oxen. It would be unpopular, profoundly unpopular. Until....the masses are desperate enough. Then it will be demanded.

Present GOP and Dem leaders are mostly like the incompetent, venal, stupid people that ran Germany in the Weimar days. We know what the outcome there was.

I was quite surprised to find out that only 80% of today's hell would have happened under Democrats. This writer believes the Left and Right to be equally bad, never mind that all the stuff I mentioned happened under the total control and domination of the Right.

Of course I responded:
This is utter bullshit. We have never had the level of mendacity, corruption, and warmongering as we do now under the Bushies. That you righties refuse to believe that is really sad. DeLay, Gonzalez, Cheney and his oil buddies, Cunningham here in San Diego, et al are all Republican constructs. The Democrats have nothing to compare with the current level of badness.

Read Sy Hersh's piece in the latest New Yorker. Bush is an end-times fundamentalist who may actually, at best, be trying to stake his legacy on bombing Iran so the students rise up and support the west. Lunacy.

Or he may, at worst, be actually trying to hasten Armageddon. This would NOT happen under a Democratic administration. For one thing, Dobson & Falwell would likely have no sway over Democrats. Big oil might, but not to this extent.

Jeebus, people, are you still so tied to the right wing that you can't conceive of their utter contempt for the constitution, democratic process, and people in general?

And did that convince them?
Let's face the music here: it was the Dems that got this vicious idiot Bush elected IN THE FIRST PLACE. If Algore, the worthless, spoiled brat rich kid with a love for turgid, throbbing big government and the personality of a laminated fiberglass diving board was unable to defeat this loser maybe it was because people were disgusted with Clinton corruption and high-handedness. And it was the Dems who kept Algore from the Presidency when he could have probably had 2 1/2 terms for all intents and purposes by not removing Clinton, NOT for f***ing but for PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, which he was guilty of, although those were the least egregious things he did.

(Of course it was the GOP who got Clinton re-elected in 1996, by running Dole. I guess stupid is as stupid does. )

When The Rod gets elected, of course, she will set new standards for viciousness and likely for corruption as well.


Well, now we see the real truth:

  • It's the Dem's fault for the evil of the Repubs because Bush won(?) in 2000.
  • It'll be Hillary's fault sometime in the future.
  • Bill comitted perjury and obstruction, for which he should have been removed from the Presidency. Never mind that the Repubs failed to do this. And never mind that no one died as a result of Bill's actions. GWBush still gets a pass.

This, folks, is the Right-Wing base.

Part 2 tomorrow.

No comments: