Derek Lowe: Your list is much the same as that which I use to identify as "liberal".
Some of it is interpretational. I see levelling the playing field, you see an attempt to "equalise outcomes."
I suspect the greatest difference is our reactions to "property". How do you feel about estate taxes? Money is power. Aggregating money, and then corralling it is aggregating power.
When the Wal-Mart heir was found out as having been buying all her papers for her classes at USC, what harm did she suffer? None, really (what did she need the degree for?). The student who was writing them was 1: driven to it by need, and 2: not ever getting back into USC afterwards.
That's an inequality, and it's driven not by merit (the girl who was writing the papers had to work a lot harder to get into USC, and didn't get to stop working that hard once she got in, it was, in fact, that need to keep working which forced her out, she couldn't pay all the bills, and USC was less important than food), it's driven by vast differences in usuable "property."
That inequality lies at the heart of the Wal-Mart relationship to the world (and that of the employer against the union). Concentration allows one to apply the power of money against weaker (i.e. less propertied) individuals.
The gov't exists to provide things to the body politic, it has to be paid for (those roads which make it possible for Wal-Mart to offer cheap veggies from Calif. to shoppers in Michigan aren't paid for by Wal-Mart, not alone, and not; under the present tax-scheme, in fair shares).
Those who have more get no less benefit from the roads, why ought they to pay proportionally, to their means, at least as much? Right now they don't.
If thinking those who have vastly more than they need, can afford to supply some of that to those who don't, by means of the redistrubutive means of taxes makes me, "liberal" than it does. But I see these "conservatives" who are living on the public teat; paid out of my tax dollars, telling me that taking from the "rich" to help the "poor" is wrong, when they are advocating taking from the poor (and the middle) to help the wealthy, is better (and not a form of class-warfare; thought it's the term they use to decry the opposite) and telling me it's good for the poor, well color me skeptical.
I've read Adam Smith (and some other economists as well) capitalism is fine, but unrestrained it's exploitative, and leads to huge abuses (Packingtown, anyone). We tried it, raw and undadulterated, and we decided we didn't like it. Looking around the world today, where I see it running around unfettered, I see, as you say, that human nature hasn't changed much, and the needs for restraint on human desire to get more property, are no less than they ever were.
Patrick: (#121) I agree with him about that much, so something about this is an issue of self-identification.
Derek Lowe (#122) The reason Dems can depend, with relative surety on the black vote is that the Republican party (of the last 40 years) has systematically abused them, as a class. It's not in their interests to support people who, de facto, are hell-bent on oppressing them.
The odd thing about the Fundie Christianists (knowing a lot of liberals who are also evangelical Christians I can't so describe the group you are discussing) is that the things they say they want (esp. re the hot-button issue of abortion) are things which flourish under Dems, and languish under Republicans.
When Dems are in power, abortions drop, families are stronger (because a better economy means more stability), and the like.
But they vote for Republicans, who can (as you say) take them for granted.
So given that, I don't see a whole lot of reason for either group (nor for a lot of, "conservatives") to vote for the Repiblicans.
But that's me, a gun-toting, amendment loving, liberal who enlisted in the Army 15 years ago, and used to be in the center.
re civil war, parity of arms and the like:
Parity of arms is not the bugbear it's touted to be.
The single greatest change in warfare is/was the metallic cartridge, and the readily available small arm.
Afganistan, Algeria, Iraq, Vietnam. All of those were/are, rifles, and some explosives, against tanks, planes and choppers.
They were small scale (even accepting the active involvement of the NVA through the latter part of U.S. involvment in Vietnam) actions of units with small arms, engaging some of the best trained armies in the world.
The armies lost/are losing. In part because the situation was untenable, supply lines were long, and the cause's import didn't rise the the level of complete national committment.
They were/are wars of politics. The best model I can think of is the sort of border actions which were the induldgences of monarchs before the French Revolution changed the game.
The Austro-Hungarians thought they could pull off such a thing in Serbia, and it backfired.
These days the locals have rifles, and they won't stand for it.
Can a tank flatten a village? Yep. Can a rifle take out a tank? Nope. But a well made molotov cocktail can (hell, one dedicated man can mobility kill an M1-Abrams, and needs nothing more than the knowledge of what lever to pull. The crew will bail out, and... well you can imagine the rest).
And rifles can make it hard for infantry to support tanks.
Conversations about Mogadishu, to slide a little sideways, almost always has people bemoaning Aspin's refusal to let the Army bring Bradleys. The idea being that if there were "tanks" around, those drug-addled street gangs couldn't have insulted us by shooting up the troops.
It's nonsense.
If there had been Bradleys in that mess, it would have been a lot worse. Densely packed urban environments are not places for armor. Armor is vulnerable from above. The rockets which crippled the Blackhawks, were designed for taking out tanks. Topside armor on a Bradley is nothing to them.
A Bradly blocking the road can't be pushed out of the way, certainly it can' when guys with rockets are still on the roofs above.
Homemade napalm works pretty well too.
Can an armed insurrection happen in the U.S.? Sure. It's happened before. Some with more "sense" than others (The SLA were idiots, even if one doesn't believe they were just petty crooks with a snappy patter of justification, the Weathermen were also idiots).
Is it likely to be, "Gun-toting liberals" (like me)? No. Because one of the ideas people like me have is that Gov't isn't inherently evil. So we are much more likely to work inside the system (even when flawed).
It's not that I can't imagine being pushed to rebel, but I don't plan for it. Guys on the miltia end of the right, they see "the government" as evil (except when it's busy smacking down the people they don't like. They tend to see differences between goose and gander, where all I see is meat to be sauced). Because of that they spend a lot more time thinking about the need to do away with it; when it encroaches on "liberties."
Are we likely to see another sectional civil war (a la the rebellion of The South, which led to the war in 1861-1865)? No. The issues are too diffuse. There are enough people, everywhere, who; were it to rise to the level that force were needed to alter, or abolish, a government destructive to the ends of securing liberties to ourselves, and our posterity, it would be something more akin to Iraq, or Lebanon; in the 1980s, than it would be to the CSA/USA conflict.
More wars of the Roses, mixed with Serbia.
If it lasted long enough, there might be enough social disintegration, and migration, that several new countiries arose from the ashes, but if it comes to that (which I don't think likely, the scale is too great) I don't think a United States is going to come out of it at the other end.
I gave up on McCain when he campaigned for Bush in 2004. If he's stood neutral, OK, I could cut him some slack, but when the Swifities appeared, and he; sort of, wagged his finger at Bush, he lost a lot of points, because he knew it was all bullshit; not just the facts, but the "distance from the campaign," because of S. Carolina.
And he didn't call bullshit on the Bush campaign when they whined about MoveOn.org, and got the Kerry campaign to tell them to stop (which was the telling point to me, that Kerry was in trouble... knuckling under to appeals from a Rove managed campaign to "take the high road" is tactically stupid, no matter how morally right it might be).
If he had campaigned for Kerry, Bush would have lost. If he'd stood on the sidelines, Bush might have lost.
But he didn't. He got up and kissed him at the convention.
Then came the torture amendments, where he "stood up" to Bush by giving him more than he asked for.
McCain's brand of "bi-partisanship" has been worse than Norquist's date-rape. It's been a dose of GHB, because he's "working with the democrats" and that undermines the ability of the caucus to actually stand in opposition. I truly think he was more damaging than der Leibermouse.
And looking at the way he's voted, and who he's in bed with, he's Dick Cheney, and Bush, in a slicker package.
Evil is a good word for him.
Aconite: It's a lost cause. Not that it matters, but the comment about napalm proves it.
Had cya tried to make the case for WP being used in lieu of napalm, then there might have been some hope, but the assertion that we use napalm still, but paper it over by changing the formula; as though it were merely a formulation of gasoline.
Or, cya might have said the reasons napalm isn't in the arsenal anymore (not terribly effective at what it does, high-risk to the emplying element [because the pilot has to fly low, slow and flat, or the containers don't hit the ground properly, which makes them terribly vulnerable to ground fire, which was bad enough when it was only small arms; there were a few F-4 brought down by rifle in Vietnam because of this], predictable point of impact; so that targets, in anything other than an environment where the force using napalm has the absolute ability to pin the enemy in the open, can avoid the impact zone, the loss of more useful munitions from the arsenal, because hardpoints are full, and the loss of loiter time, because napalm cannisters are huge sources of drag, all of those combined to make the AF decide that napalm wasn't cost effective) are reprehensible, because those sorts of considerations aren't relevant to the weapon itself being immoral.
cya might have tried to go into the questions which underlie such decisions, could have tried to argue the only acceptable use of military force was in like-on-like, army to army conflicts.
Might have tried to argue that US Policy in Iraq was fundamentally flawed from exection, and this showed a lack of insight, backbone, moral character and human decency on the part of the generals who let it happen, and have, throughout failed to counter the tendencies to see everyone as hostile, and a fair target; who have allowed the idea of, body-counts; and all the dead were "insurgents/terrorists/VC" to creep back into the minds of the men at the front, and that from there the people leading the war, on the ground, have let themselves be corrupted by their own desires for career advnacement, or blinkered by political goals, without performing [or pehaps, a la Boykin, are fundamentally unable to perform] the situational introspection needed for the positions of power and trust to which they have been apppointed.
Might have said that the evils resultant from such a thing rest on institutional flaws in the Army, which weren't fixed after Vietnam.
Could have said that such flaws were fixed, but the spinelessness of the House, the Senate, the Press and the People allowed them to be ridden under in the bloodlust for war, fanned up by the White House, and it's Neo-con cohorts.
Might have said any number of things, all of which are, more or less, valid; and worthy of debate.
But no, that didn't happen, instead we are lectured; as though butter couldn't melt in the mouth of this person who stands on a hill, from afar; having abandoned the fight, and get moralisine speeches on how the children in the country in which they, now, live are immune from propaganda, and we, poor-benighted fools who can't see that allowing an army to torment the people in the country they occupy is trivial, because it doesn't rise to the horrors of WW2 (and sort of because we only have a gulag, not death camps) and so we ought not to care about it.
We should rather be spending all our efforts decrying all the things cya didn't mention, and that because we don't get it(not that cya did) we are less moral.
I may have been to kind in my last character sketch.
cya: oh, sure, call me as you wish - here I am actually trying to get people to look beyond the taunting of kids which their tax dollars pay for to actually look at what their money buys, which is the sort of thing a twit would do, as there is no way to have any hope of success.
Arrogant and self-righteous much? I don't think the people here need your, not so gentle, exhortations and deprecations of understanding, merit, morality and empathy, to look beyond the little things to the larger.
Not the least reason for which is there are no small number of them who aren't US citizens, and the vast majority of the rest aren't blinkered by where they live, nor so much by the, apparent, narrowness of focus you're displaying.
How, by the way, did you avoid that draft which was re-instated in the timeline you were living on? Last I checked, in the U.S. of A. I inhabit the closest anyone's come to re-instating a draft was the registration requirement Congress passed, and Carter signed, back in '82.
Here, in that same America, there's a huge outcry because Rangel has gone on record, again, with the statement that if Bush wants to keep fighting this pair of wars he's managed to screw so soundly, he's gonna have to ressurrect the draft.
That, in a word, would shut this whole thing down in a heartbeat.
As for your declared leaving... you still seem to identify with being an American. Perhaps it's because you can savor the frisson of being holier than thou to the rest of us who don't have the good sense to travel abroad to earn our bread in a sanctimonious sea of self-righteouness.
What, pray tell, from the safety of your distant place of enlightenment, have you been doing to fix things? Since you speak in such a way as to imply you are still a citizen, you are still somewhat complicit in the actions of the state, time and space notwithstanding.
Like Lizzy I don't think you are being a twit. Having spent some time with British troops, I don't think that's the right vowel.
Xopher: #119 Yes.
Not only was it wrong, because of their rank, it was a charge which flat out doesn't exist. If you look at it, they are charged with conduct unbecoming a Marine.
Since the UCMJ, is "uniform", i.e. it applies to all the services (and was written, under Truman, IIRC, to rectify the differences in chargeable offenses between the Services, and is why the JAG consists of officers from all the branches of service) there are no service specific charges.
Typical Hollywood, "not quite."
cya: You want to talk about Baen, fine, but talk about Baen, don't beat up on Drake. If I were going to single out a "big name" for writing war-fic which glorified it, made the topic palatable, I'd pick Dickson.
For more mainstream, I'd pick Harold Coyle, or Bernard Cornwell.
I don't know that I'd use the word amoral to discuss Drake, I know, that like atheist, it can mean there is no moral to be drawn, and no intent on the part of the writer to draw one, but it, like porn, has connotations. The soldiers in Drake's fiction aren't lacking in morals, they've just switched on set (larger polity) for another (local entity, The Unit, or The Company).
In that regard they are perfectly understandable. They've hired out (usually, most of Drakes writing uses mercenaries, though some are nationalistic) to kill for money; on behalf of those who want other killed for cause.
It's not a worldview I can really accept (not so much the killing, as I get more self-revelatory than perhaps is wise, as the causes. They aren't, usually, fighting some other group who've accepted that way of life, but rather one side, or the other, in some local squabble; at that point we are talking people like Blackwater, and CACI), but one which isn't new, unique, or; given the baseline, unreasonable.
Don't dick with them, and they; pretty much, won't screw with you.
Which is drifting off-topic.
As for Baen, et al, being the source of this belief... nope. It goes back to the Cold War, and that silly piece of doggerel about the soldier being the source of all freedom.
Orwell, with his quip about rough men, who stand ready to dastardly deeds in the middle of the night is part of that same myth, and that was in England. There are large chunks of that trope in Russia (and before that in the Soviet Union).
People who are afraid of some bogeyman want to believe that someone will keep away the things which go bump in the night.
abi: Not to offend, but I wasn't writing about the living, or the dead. I was writing about those who kill, and torment. Those people were whom I was writing about; and the immediate victims of their actions, the second order effects didn't seem material
In that context the question was what they do (and to a lesser degree, to whom). The aftermath of what they do is another question entirely. Though not beyond the scope of the questions we are addressing, it didn't seem relevant to the question of which was worse; on the level of affecting the perpetrator.
Which comes round to one of my arguments against torture as a tool, it degrades the torturer, more than it harms the tortured.
Re ACUs: They've been the issue uniform for deployed troops for at least two years.
Xopher: Conduct unbecoming is only applicable to officers, to wit, Art. 133 of the UCMJ, Conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman. It hearkens to the idea that the rankers (even the NCOs) weren't gentleman, and no conduct was I beneath them.
cya: War Porn... I think intent matters in the use of the perjorative porn, not the least of which is because the word has an implicit sexual connotation.
I've read a lot of war writing (both fiction, and non; at present my bedstand reading is, "The Soldier's Story" which is an analysis of the arcing narrative of the post-war writings on the World Wars, and Viet-nam).
Drake isn't trying to titilate. Arousing the reader, in a sexual way, isn't his goal. If he has a goal (aside from laying his personal demons to rest) it's probably to say, "this is what war is, engage in it at your peril; because it will debase your children, ruin your culture, bankrupt the treasury, and call the goals for which you were willing to mortgage your future into question. Those are what you get if you win, and are lucky."
If you aren't lucky, even winning won't save you from the attendant secondary horrors."
But what do I know, I'm just a simple soldier, one of the faceless masses tarred with the brush of evil that comes of a filthy job.
I've seen the dead, both in the simple, and the subtle. The bodies on the side of the road, and the faint whiff of them, carried on the breeze which sucks the smell out of the abandoned carcassses of vehicles, after the corpses have been removed from the road. That smell lingers; I swear it soaks it's way into the very metak, only t be sweated out at the merest hint of sun. I've seen them come into the hospital, not yet still, but no longer among the quick.
It sucks to get dead. It sucks a lot more to get dead painfully, slowly.
But dead is done. The dead have no more cares, or worries. They are either dust, or judged by some god. In either case, they are out of it.
The living, they can suffer. To torment the living, in my arrogant opinion, is worse than 'just' killing someone. Killing can be done without passion, without hate; even (though it's horrid to admit it) without feeling.
Torments, tortures and abuses to the living... those have to be done from some lack of empathy. They require, at some level, a dis-humaning of the victim. Mere killing doesn't require that. An enemy can be respected.
The abused cannot. The mere fact of being powerless to stop the abuse makes the victim a lesser person.
So, to sum up all that persiflage, I think this video is the sign of something worse.
As I understand it, (I work with a lot of cops): Yes, all cops in Calif. are possessed of innate powers (what we, in the Army, call "General Military Authority: which allows me to tell colonels they are out of uniform, and chide lieutenants for trying to get out of saluting).
But the question of what is, or isn't, an infraction, or misdemeanor, varies from locale to locale (what we, in the Army, call Specific Authority, my ability to tell my troops to clean a specific latrine, at a specific time).
Since, in Calif., an arrest can only be made for things committed in the officers presence (or sworn to by a witness), unless the offense is a felony; in which case he has to have, "good reason to believe" the person arrested committed the crime (this, BTW, is the same standard to which citizens arrests are held, save that one can't make one on a sworn statement; misdemeanors require eyes-on).
This greatly reduces a cops abiltity to act outside of jurisdiction. Further (as I've been told by a lawyer friend who was irked at some off-duty cop behavior) when off duty they are, basically, civilians again, with no special powers of arrest, outside of circumstances which pose threat to life and limb of others.
I do know that, from seeing them in action; back when I spent time in Westwood, I've not got much warm fuzzy for UCLA cops.
Then again, I have a decided distrust of them; as they have power, and I don't. Experience probably tells; false arrest on the statement of another, subsequently made to disappear; thus preventing a lawsuit from the clumsy way in which the arrest was conducted, etc., all combined to make me more skeptical of them than my general disrust of authority already did.
The threat to taser the person who was demanding accountable information; that bothers me more, in some ways, than the incident itself, which I suspect to be massive over-reaction by the cops.
Clark E. Myers: Police at colleges and universities in Calif. are sworn cops, POST certified, able to arrest you, toss you in the clink and all like that.
UCLA has something like 75-100 of them.
The cops at UCLA are actually more powerful than that, as they have jurisdiction in Westwood, as well as on the campus. I have seen them arresting people (non-students) on the city streets, off campus.
As for the King case, they acquitted for several reasons, not the least of which is that Simi Valley, to which the trial was moved, is a right-wing bastion of, "Law and Order" people. A significant portion of the population is cops, and retired cops, as well as a larger portion who moved out there in "white flight."
Leseee: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (of equal standing with the Constitution) says that Spanish shall be a recognized language in all the ceded territories.
So, someone who really wanted to make a stink could get that silly thing overturned.
Lizzy L It's a trait of rodents. There used to be a rodenticide which was, at heart, an emetic.
Somehow, because they can't vomit, it killed them (I'm guessing it has a mild toxicity, and that the small size of the rodents made it lethal).
The nice effect was that, should a child find it, and eat it, they just puked. A bit of negative reinforcement, and no harm done.
TK
Randolph: Without a chance in the Senate, the spin would be devastating. He'd be acquitted, and it would be spun (because there wouldn't be a Republican equivalent to Feinstein and Leiberman censuring Clinton, when it was over) as crass partisan politics.
So it's better to just use the subpoena to drag the shit into the light. Let Cheney, et al, flout the them, it will stick to the party, and make it harder to get themselves elected back to power in 2008.
And it looks really tight in Va. Webb has a lead right now, so things could flip completely.
Oh yeah, there's an avowed socialist in the Senate. Go Vermont.
God, I have hope again, for the first time in a long time.
In Virginia Steel is edging out Webb, by about 7,500 votes. The Greens managed to get about 20,000.
Thanks guys. Way to go, helluva job your conscience was doing.
I have, somewhere, a complete Owens, with explantions of the texts, drafts and comments.
Sadly, I can't lay my hands on it right now, it's in a box somewhere.
I seem to recall that, "obscene as cancer," is in the original.
One of the interesting things about the book is seeing the craft he put into it, and just active was the community of poets in the trenches.
November 11th is coming, and someone has quoted Wilfred Owen (a poem I thought of often, wearing my pro-mask in Kuwait).
But this one is my favorite, if one can have a favorite poem of melancholy rage. As I said a few years ago, when quoting it in part, I used to appreciate it, now I understand it.
Apologia pro Poemate Meo
I, too, saw God through mud -
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
Merry it was to laugh there -
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.
I, too, have dropped off fear -
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;
And witnessed exultation -
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.
I have made fellowships -
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,
By Joy, whose ribbon slips, -
But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.
I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.
November 1917
Hrmnf. I had a post, and it didn't work.
Dave Klecha: I don't think Ezra is saying all soldier are all terrified, all the time. Lord knows I wasn't. There were times of terror. Of trying to meld into the dirt and praying some bit of flying metal wasn't addressed to me.
But that passed. I don't think (little though I noticed it at the time) that I spent a waking moment (and probably some sleeping one's without a vague sense of dread.
But that's all bye the bye. Ezra is speaking to the mythologising of the troops. The sense that merely being in uniforms somehow sanctifies them. No, because when we are home we are held to odd standards, the comabt vet who gets arrested will get short shrift; in part, I think, because he has ruined the sense of nobility which he was supposed to carry with him.
So it's being a war-zone which makes them Knights Errant, and that's crap. Ezra is speaking to the humanity of them. Reminding people that soldiers are people, with loves, hates, fears, hopes, dreams, bigotries, and all the other natural shocks that flesh is heir too.
He is pleading, I think, that the rest of us remember that, because it makes us more valuable, we are not going to be, one and all, the "Lucky Man" of the EL&P song. Most of us, should we buy the farm, are just going to be another unlucky stiff.
Matthew: re Eric Rudolph
The Feds cut him a deal. In exchange for him telling them where he'd buried some explosives they let him avoid a trial, and the attendant attention to just what he had done.
As Orcinus pointed out, the sentencing allowed him to make a public statement of his manifesto. It also let him off the hook about anyone who might have helped him, either in planning, or while he was on the lam (for five years).
There's also some scary stuff in the reactions of other people. Porter Goss (yes, that Porter Goss) said, in hearings, after, That Tuesday, The trouble is, 'terrorism' is a very broad word, and it lends itself to a lot of mischief for people who would abuse common sense," He then cited bombings of abortion clinics. "To me, that's not the kind of terrorism I'm talking about."
There are people who agree with him, and aren't afraid to share there opinions, in public, "He's a Christian and I'm a Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion," said Mrs. Davis, 25, mother of four. "Those are our values. And I don't see what he did as a terrorist act." (NYT, now behind the firewall).
When newpaper editorials say things like, "Rudolph allegedly has ties to the radical Christian Identity movement and its violent Army of God offshoot. We don't know if Christian Identity truly reflects Rudolph's beliefs or merely became a convenient vehicle for him. But the easy generalization is to paint all conservative fringe religious groups as violent - even though the pastor of a church Rudolph attended as a youth insists his sect teaches non-violence," then we aren't going to see any real treatment of the problems of domestic terrorism, they are all going to be lone wolves, and the people (like Hal Turner) who are telling people to become such lone wolves, to "solve" the problems of non-ideologues being elected aren't going to be ignored, as they should be, but rather to get more mainstreamed.
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