From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Sep 06 2004 - 05:11:19 BST
Hello DMB
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buchanan" < >
To: < >
Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 7:26 PM
Subject: RE: MD Political Correctness
<snip>
> dmb says:
> By taking the long view, you are changing the subject or at least shifting
> the ground of the debate. That would be ok if you'd taken my specific
> arguements to task first, but I hardly see that.
mel:
Please let me know which pieces I missed addressing,
that you feel are so needed. It was my intent to anwser
generally rather than point-by-point.
In part, I DID hope to loosen the focus of the debate
by showing where in small part I saw ALL current
campaign debate failing...at least a hint of it.
> dmb says:
> A few of your comments,
> reproduced above, seem to come close, but mostly you've dismissed it
again.
> And even if we do take the long view, which I also apprecitate, I still
> disagree with you're dismissive attitude.
mel:
Anything I dismissed was done so not out of disrespect
to you, but to redirect to a possibly more important point
of understanding. (Kind of like sitting in the back seat
and the two in the front are fiddling with the radio...
the oncoming 18 wheeler is REALLY more important.)
> dmb says:
As a matter of fact, the
> know-nothing nativists and bigots have been a powerful part of American
> politics since the very beginning. Not only was there hundreds of years of
> race-based slavery and near genocide against the natives, there are also
> lesser known examples. The KKK pretty much ran the country during the 20's
> and there was a strong fascist movement in the thirties. But now these
> regressive forces have taken over the Republican party, which has control
of
> all three branches of government and is supported by a well-oiled media
> machine as well. I sincerely wonder if the Republic will survive much
more.
mel:
True enough about the past...and don't forget regionalism.
This era of the Republicans is NOT regressive, as the
specific formulation being pushed never existed before.
A plan from which Reagan and subsequent Republicans
operate was a creation of the 60's and 70's in reaction
to those times and movements. It is still addressing those
now irrelevant concerns of an imaginary social balance
that never was.
Within the GOP there is rather less unity than you imagine,
as is the case in the Democrats. Anyone in power who
actually believes they have control over all three branches
is purely dillusional. Controlling our state of Federal
government is more akin to hearding houseflies than
the simpler example of hearding cats.
As to a well oiled media...I believe there is more
of a well greased up public about to get a painful
insertion. The media is both more liberal and
more conservative in spread than the populace,
but as I pointed out they failed to do anything more
than mouthpiece the partylines. Tim Russert
may be an exception...Charlie Rose would be
excluded as well...a few others and not in-your-
face-front-line.
> dmb says:
> Again, I can't help but wonder if your grotesque even-handedness, where
> those who are intolerant of intolerance are also considered bigots, grows
> out of an unspoken sympathy. I wonder how it is you don't see a monstorous
> thing, just a marriage of conveniece. (That's what the German
industrialist
> said about Hitler, by the way.) That's what my silly little poem asks. I
> wonder if you're really so above it all, or secretly in league and was
> asking you to come clean.
mel:
If you are wondering about my being a DITTOO-HEAD,
well I listen and laugh as I do to Franken, each side
has a gem or two in the slop and some genuine humor.
Most of what passes is chaff. Thought I'd given enough
of an indication to show that I stand outside the continuum
which you seem to be caught within. Where it seems to
me you see,
Republican to the Right
and
Democrat to the Left
with everything the dirt over which your political rainbow
shines, I see two adjoining facets of a larger more
interestingly faceted structure.
> dmb says:
> By co-incidence, a friend just sent me an article by Garrison Keillor. It
> pretty well expresses the horror I see in all this. It starts out talking
> about REAL Republicans, nice, decent Republicans like Ike, but then
> describes the reactionaries that are calling the shots now. Enjoy.
>
> In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward
> down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public
> service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against
the
> Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and
> fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed
> flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in
> World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon
> moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry
> white men who rose to power on pure punk politics.
mel:
Interesting. I would submit to you that the very energy that
the Republicans currently put into change and their own
concern with their specific ideology IS the very set
of actions betraying them as Liberals. These are just
not Liberals of the progressive stripe. In true conservative
terms pushing massive change is just not done.
No one I know who IS truly conservative finds
W and company anything but disingenuous
Classical Liberals... one even called them
ICE CREAM LIBERALS...they attract a lot of nuts.
Sorry, I know you don't like Demos being categorized
next to them.
> dmb says:
"Bipartisanship is
> another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the
> GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to
the
> size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
The
> boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
>
> The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of
> hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based
economists,
> fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance
> racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax
cheats,
> nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons,
> hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who
> believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico,
little
> honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their
> Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow
of
> information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of
> badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the
> rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.
>
> Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine
> crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on
a
> massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation
> to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat
turds
> in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and
> behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great
wealth
> as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
mel:
LOL Good Rant! You forgot the part about Fluoride in the
water. Now take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit
hole goes.
BTW where did this come from?
(Hypocrisies shine like cat turds
in the moonlight!) If it is yours,
can I borrow it. I LOVE IT>>>
thanks--mel
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