"Better yet, move the hell out of this country you hate and whine somewhere else."
It's not the Left that hates America. If we hated America, we wouldn't be sad; we'd be rejoicing in its pain. But you've give us our rallying cry:
"Wake the fuck up."
Mitch does bring up an interesting point, in his way: given that there will be "trouble" at the protests (think FL during the recount), will there actually be a CHANGE of voters...
This point gave me pause. I have talked with (both online and in person) a not insignificant number of people who either believe or purport to believe that the Democrats, and only the Democrats, "caused trouble" during the Florida recount. This despite the fact that the only documented violent protest there was caused by employees of Republican politicians, at the documented order of their supervisors.
No matter what actually happens in New York over the next week, the public perception of the events is going to follow whatever Story the press forces the events into. We have an overabundance of evidence from recent months that whatever happens, the Story is going to favor the Republicans, even if it's in total contradiction of all the facts on the ground. How can the sane people force the Story into a flow that supports democracy and opposes Bush?
This isn't a note of despair, but I am more concerned about this than I am about the actual protests.
Just a point to Bill Shunn's comment: Al Gore made what I thought was a terrific, presidential speech in mid-2000: his nomination acceptance speech. It's not just my opinion that it was a great piece of work from start to finish; it gave him a sizable convention bounce, much bigger than Bush's. In general, whenever Gore had a chance to speak directly to the American people before the election, his support went up significantly, including after all three debates. It took the focused efforts of the Republican Noise Machine to overcome that effect.
Gore's speeches as president-in-exile (starting with his concession speech in December 2000) have been even better, because he doesn't have to tailor his statements or his delivery to his audience, so he can really rabble-rouse and tub-thump. Gore is no Churchill or Obama, but he's a good speaker, and has been one far longer than has been acknowledged as part of The Story.
(Of course, in 2000, The Story included the idea that Gore should tap John Kerry as his VP candidate because Kerry was a charismatic leader and a great orator who would counterbalance the stiff-as-a-board Gore. But The Story shifted when Kerry became a potential nominee on his own. Strange, that.)
Lenny: Now that you mention it, in that photo Peter Finch does look something like an older version of The Big Red Cheese, who in turn was modeled on Fred MacMurray.
The best reason I can think of to criticize Moore for being sloppy and occassionally untruthful is that his sloppiness and untruthfulness reduce the usefulness of his films. The weaker the film, the easier it is for the right-wing noise machine to reduce it to irrelevance.
I notice that Fahrenheit 9/11 was a tremendous improvement over Bowling for Columbine on that score. There was nothing in F9/11 that was as egregious as the inexcusable parts of Bowling--"the speech Charlton Heston never made" sequence (where Moore spliced together bits from five different Heston speeches to completely misrepresent what he said) and getting the facts wrong about the founding of the NRA.
F9/11 is a much stronger film for having its facts right. Of course, the right-wing noise machine is attempting to use the errors in Bowling to discredit F9/11. But they're not having much success.
On the larger front, among the biggest reasons I oppose the modern Republican party is that they are egregious liars who pander to stupidity. If the only way to defeat the Republicans is to promote lying and stupidity, I don't see that as much of a victory. The governance of the United States is not a matter of my team vs. their team; it's a matter of what type of people I want governing the country. I have nothing against populism; I have a problem with acting as if the only way to appeal to the populace is to be a stupid liar.
My association with the phrase "I take full responsibility" goes back to Reagan, who "took full responsibility" for the bombing deaths of 241 Marines by, apparently, shrugging and squinting.
Actually, one of the good things in 24 is that torture is presented as something that actually almost never works.
In the second season, I think there were four instances of torture, only one of which actually worked against a determined victim.
One instance failed to produce any information before the subject was freed; one produced false information that almost lead to catastrophe; one was against a subject who gave in easily because he decided he didn't have much to hide. The one determined subject who caved was subjected to psychological torment rather than what is commonly thought of as torture--he thought that his children were being executed, though they weren't.
In the third season, there have been two instances of torture; both failed, completely, to produce any useful information, and one lead directly to terrible consequences for the torturers.
I don't think that the creators intend to send the message that "torture almost never works", but that is, none the less, the dramatic effect. Other forms of investigation are invariably shown to be more effective.
I posted this paraphrase on my LJ two weeks ago and got no comments on it, which is a shame since I think it's an important insight from someone who knows whereof he speaks:
The words of noted anti-war writer David Drake are haunting me: "When you start a war, you're letting eighteen-year-olds with guns set your foreign policy."
It is worth noting that David Drake was an interrogator during the US's war on Viet Nam.
Kathryn Cramer said: I have been fairly dubious of the leftish talk radio project from the beginning. I just don't like the kind of discourse no matter what political persepctive it's from.
I listen to leftish talk radio all the time--Brian Lehrer, Leonard Lopate, Tavis Smiley, a lot (but by no means all) of NPR's news coverage. It's a vital part of my intellectual life.
What's really problematic, to me, is "left wing talk radio" which is really "Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity in left-wing drag". I'm not fond of insult radio, or, as I think someone smarter than me called it, "political anger pornography"; I don't think it helps the political discourse and it doesn't make the world a better place.
What I've seen of Al Franken's political work (including his books and what I've heard of his show and the blog thereof) isn't political anger pornography. It sounds very much like Marc Maron is.
adamsj wrote: Janeane Garofalo. . . . Sigh. I suppose it'd help if I had some idea who she is. An actress, right? That much I know.
She's an actress and stand-up comedienne who has in recent years turned into a political commentator because she discovered that, as an actress and comedienne, mass media would listen to her when she speaks. She's now one of the co-hosts of Air America Radio's evening program, "The Majority Report".
Incidentially, I note that Lis Carey, who is rightly insistent upon the spelling of her own name, has indulged in the exceptionally sophisticated rhetorical technique of referring to Marc Maron as "Marc Moron".
I cannot imagine why I might be slightly sensitive on this matter, but this tactic undermines my willingness to pay heed to her points on this subject, no matter how valid they might be. Strange, that.
One of the aspects of the modern political scene I most dislike is that politicians learn to guide any question towards a prepared statement. Bush's response to the "biggest mistake" question was very clearly a matter of floundering for a while (45 seconds or so of "I wish this had been written" and "I'm sure history will think of something") before he hits upon a segue ("I'd still invade Afghanistan") to a prepared statement ("I'd still invade Iraq knowing what I know now about the WMD situation") that had almost nothing to do with the question.
Al Gore was particularly bad about that, but at least his prepared statements made sense.
Times Square was Brechtville: a perfect demonstration of the principle that the market, left to itself, will produce an economy of crime as easily as an economy of virtue.
So, what Gopnick is saying is, technology finds its own uses for the street?
Well, maybe not.
On Margaret Atwood: Atwood uses a categorization system which is fairly consistent and which puts A Handmaid's Tale in one category ("speculative fiction") and The Left Hand of Darkness in another ("science fiction").
This is not a judgment against science fiction in her mind, any more than saying that The Left Hand of Darkness is science fiction while A Wizard of Earthsea is fantasy is a judgment against science fiction. She has written stories that she thinks are science fiction, complete with rocket ships, and sold them to science fiction anthologies.
Stefan: Joan Gordon, mainstay of the science fiction critical world and one of the editors of Femspec, teaches at Nassau Community College. So it's not all hopeless.
In fact, Bush's policies toward Iraq and Al Queda are a direct continuation of Clinton's - Clinton has said so himself.
This is, I believe, a lie. It could, however, just be a mistake, but given your history here, I rather doubt it.
It is definitely not the case that the Bush/Cheney administration continued Clinton's policies; in fact, it's well-documented that the Clinton administration handed Bush's people a fully drafted anti-Al Qaeda program in January 2001, which included a medium-strength invasion of parts of Afghanistan to root out Al Qaeda bases there and destabilize their Taliban sponsors, as well as special forces actions against other suspected Al Qaeda fellow traveler operations worldwide.
This plan was completely ignored, largely because of the Bush administration's ABC policy (Anything But Clinton).
After September 11th, the Bush administration started its own plans, which paralleled Clinton's fairly poorly. For instance, Clinton's plan didn't include invading Iraq on trumped-up charges of possession of nuclear weapons.
If Clinton said that Bush's policies were a "direct continuation" of his own, I suspect he was just being polite. I suspect, instead, that he did not say that, but rather said something factually correct which could be misrepresented as that.
Actually, the "'neoconservative' is the new codeword for 'Jew'" trope is presented, and ridiculed, in the Nation article cited in PNH's original post.
I can't praise the Lind article enough. It's a one-stop shop for everything you need to know about the neoconservatives.
"Poisoning the water" probably refers to the decision by the newly arrived Bush/Cheney administration to countermand the recommendations of a ten-year study by the EPA, confirmed by Bush's EPA director, to lower the allowable levels of arsenic in US drinking water. It's easy to forget how pettily heinous the Bush regime was even before The Big Terrible became their Reichstag Fire.
Dunno if "starving children" refers to anything specific.
Mary Kay, you said:
We are still unclear about whether or not Heisenberg subtly sabotaged
Well, that seems appropriate. (I can’t believe I’m the first to say that)
In fact, Michael Frayn's brilliant play Copenhagen uses that concept as its central organizing principle. So, you're not the first, but it's still a very striking thing.
Back on the question of who inspired Dr. Strangelove, I'm quite surprised that no one here nor in the alt.movies.kubrick FAQ mentioned John von Neumann, who spoke with a thick Eastern European accent, attended Atomic Energy Commission meetings in a wheelchair, and advocated nuclear first strike against the Soviets on game-theoretical grounds.
The realization that von Neumann was Strangelove came to me when I read William Poundstone's The Prisoner's Dilemma in the mid-1990s. TPD is a mixture of biography of von Neumann, discussion of nuclear deterrence and the pro- and anti-nuclear movements in the 1950s, and analysis of game theory. The parallels between von Neumann and Dr. Strangelove were instantly clear to me at the time, though I can't remember if Poundstone mentioned them explicitly.
Given the information cited on the alt.movies.kubrick FAQ, I'd say that Kahn is clearly a source, but I'd be amazed if von Neumann weren't at least as big of one. Like Kahn, von Neumann also worked for RAND, and was one of the many fathers of the atomic bomb.
von Neumann was also clearly a model for Felix Hoenikker, the scientist who invented ice-9 in Cat's Cradle--there are odd biographical details they share that I noticed at the time, including the deaths of their wives in odd automobile-related accidents and some others. Unfortunately, some of the details elude me at this late date.
According to All Things Considered yesterday, John Kerry rallies use recent U2 ("It's a Beautiful Day", "Elevation") and a lot of Bruce Springsteen to warm up the crowd.
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| 2002 | 59 |
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