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Monday, October 14, 2013

Angry America

"Life is choice."
That's what life is to me, anyway.  While not the standard definition of human life, the dead make no choices. Someone in a coma is alive in some sense, but we don't hold them up as an example of vigorous human life. I think of someone in a coma as more "existing" than alive.  To be fully alive is to make choices continually and experience the consequences, good and bad, of those choices.  No choices, no life, rather mere and bleak existence, which for me, is little or no better than being dead.

The choices that form the basis for human life need not be rational choices.  They can be choices made by, or for the purpose of satisfying, the lower brain.  As far as I'm concerned, the usefulness of the rational, conscious portion of the brain in the vast majority of decisions is hugely overrated and often counterproductive.
"Human sociality involves something like an adaptive evolutionary arms race in the capacity to deceive and the capacity to reveal deception." Joseph Carroll
I subscribe to the hypothesis that the large size of the human brain is in large part due to the huge evolutionary advantage of being able to deceive others and detect being deceived by others.  Consciousness is an emergent property of that capability and is thus an indirect artifact of the tool of deception used by the lower brain to further its agenda.
"Building on Byrne and Whiten's concept of "Machiavellian intelligence," [in Why We Lie, David Livingstone Smith] presents a scenario for a genetic 'arms race' in human evolution between deception and detection, and its implications for the development of our big brain and its capacities. If the reader finds this something of a stretch, Byrne and Whiten's most recent data show that among infrahuman primate species, frequency of deception is directly proportional to size of neocortex." [emphasis added] Irwin Silverman
A critically important part of modeling deception and therefore deploying and detection deception, is self-deception, and intelligence seems to significantly increase the likelihood of self-deception:
"More than 90% of professors think they are in the top half of their profession."
As an indirect artifact of deception, our consciousness, the thing each of us refers to as "me," is mostly just along for the ride and is pretty much at the mercy and command of the lower brain which is where the real "me" resides.

The illusion of conscious control, while overwhelmingly strong (very possibly due to self-deception), is unconvincing when I give it careful thought.  Anything our conscious mind wants to do is at best a request to our lower brain since the lower brain comes between "us" and the control of musculature via the nervous system.  The opposite isn't true - the lower brain can completely ignore the conscious brain and do whatever it chooses without any interference of conscious thought.  Consider the many important life situations where it is clear that our consciousness plays a minimal role.  These include:
  • Love: Falling in love is in no way a rational process.  We don't make objective measurements and consciously decide to fall in love.  It's our lower brain that determines our attraction to potential mates and then we rationalize why we fell in love after the fact.
  • Sex: Need I say more? While I, of course, have always been in complete conscious control of my sex drive and have never ended up in situations that my rational self would consider non-optimal (if you believe that one, I'm better at deception than I thought), it seems that the vast majority of men and a non-zero number of women end up not infrequently motivated to do things by their lower brain sex drives that are nearly certainly counterproductive by any rational analysis.
  • Acts of high stress, emotion, altruism and heroism: These pretty much happen with our conscious self just going along for the ride with little or no influence on our own actions.  For these sorts of actions, there's often just not enough time for us to consciously process the situation, so our lower brain just takes over completely.
  • Food:  Have you ever been on a diet and found yourself eating something, like a piece of cake, that you're sure you didn't consciously intend to eat?  Usually, we just sort of zone out when we do stuff like that, but next time you're in that situation, try consciously focusing on the experience.  I've found it to be very odd.  You might be able to fight it and win (i.e. stop yourself from eating the piece of cake), but I find it disconcertingly difficult and that it takes an enormous amount of energy.
And that's the rub.  While our consciousness can sometimes negotiate with our lower brain and influence the outcome, it's very tiring and wears us down.  Any time our conscious analyses are in conflict with our lower brain desires, we eventually run out of stamina and the lower brain gets its way.  That's why so many people fail on diets, for example.
Sartre goes into a cafe. He says, "I'd like cup of coffee, no cream." 
The waitress says, "I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, but we're out of cream. Would you like that with no milk?"
In 1992, California enacted a mandatory helmet law for motorcyclists.  I've always worn a helmet when riding a motorcycle and I had ridden motorcycles for tens of thousands of miles prior to 1992.  Yet I remember being angry with the passage of that law.  Why, you might ask, would I possibly care since I always wore a helmet anyway?  I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that it's because it took away a choice. Every time I got on my motorcycle, I chose to put on my helmet.  That choice had been taken away. And with that choice, a bit of life.  I felt a little less alive and a little more like I was just existing.
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." Robert Heinlein
Emotions emanate from the lower brain.  We feel anger, for example, and then try to figure out why we're angry, and that makes us a rationalizing animal.  Sometimes it's obvious.  Sometimes, as in the helmet law example above, it's not obvious at all.  Sometimes, it's unfathomable why we're angry, yet we still try to figure it out.  That's because it's painful, as in emotional pain, to be angry, and like every living thing with a nervous system, humans are designed to escape and avoid pain.
America is angry.
On one side, conservatives, tea-partiers, libertarians, etc. are angry, and while they rationalize it into different reasons, a common underlying theme is destruction of choice. A myriad of regulations and abuses interferes more with their lives, and even when the growing effect of those isn't direct, it's more and more noticeable and in-your-face every day.  Obamacare is the latest insult and many consider it a direct and massive destruction of choice.

That analysis may be completely wrong, of course.  They may be angry for some completely different set of reasons.
Or for no reason at all.
What is certain, is that they are angry.  And that they'll do anything possible to escape the pain of being angry.  Including, for at least some of them, finding that a significant risk of destroying America is perfectly acceptable.  The anger may or may not be rational or even rationalizable.  The response to the anger, which is to destroy that which is making them angry, is perfectly rational.

This makes America's progressives angry.  This anger is perfectly rational and explicable.  After all, they are the majority, they have the mandate, the power, and the moral high-ground to enact programs that will make the country and the world a better place.  And this relatively small minority of conservatives and their allies is getting in the way, resisting at every step, gumming up the works, and purposefully damaging the country with their  temper tantrums and other reactions due to their uncontrolled anger.  Who wouldn't be angry at that?  I certainly would be.
Everybody is angry.
What should be immediately obvious, is that there is no possibility of a rational, reasoned debate.  This is about a strong difference of opinion of lower brains.  This is an emotional conflict, not a conflict of reason. Even if you believe that the Democrats are completely rational, the Republicans certainly are not, nor can they be, about the intrusions of the progressive agenda into their lives.  There are no solutions, within the structure of American government, that will alleviate the anger.

Can a society with so much anger survive?

137 comments:

Clovis said...

Yes, it can.

Survival instinct always beats up angriness.

When they start hurting themselves for real with this fight, they will know better.

Bret said...

Who's the "they?" House republicans?

Fear forms the basis for "survival instinct" so I agree, I'm just not sure which group you think is, or will be, afraid - and why.

Harry Eagar said...

It isn't a zero-sum game. It isn't really true that Obama is coming for their guns (I wish!), or was born in Kenya or that maranatha is around the corner.

It also isn't true that anger cannot be deflected. There are plenty of examples in history, especially recent history, of angry people who decided o be co-opted -- my great grandfather after the withdrawal of the bluecoats in 1876, fr example.

Anonymous said...

Bret;

We don't make objective measurements and consciously decide to fall in love.

Some of us do :-). I picked my current wife by that process and it's worked out quite well. The same with my sex drive - I made the choice to be lifetime monogamous and that also has worked out quite well. Perhaps I'm more libertarian than you, Bret, because I project my own self too much.

There is also the point that the best way to overcome the non-concious part of you is through habit, which adjusts those other parts to go along with your concious desires even when you are tired. This is why ticks me off about the "you're not really conscious school", because they look only at the moment. Yes, in the moment, that's probably true almost all of the time. But conciousness can shape you before the moment so that you do what your concious self desired even when it's not directly involved. But yes, that's hard. Simple, but hard (like dieting :-)).

Clovis;

Who is "they", and what is "hurting themselves for real"? One of Bret's points is that the factions define the latter very differently.

Bret said...

AOG wrote: "But conciousness can shape you before the moment..."

Maybe. I think that's only true to the extent that your lower brain allows it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure mind-control and brain-washing are possible. But that's done by inflicting so much pain on the lower brain that it relents and allows itself to be reprogrammed in order to avoid the pain.

Instead of saying "consciousness can shape you," I'd say your subconscious lower brain shapes the consciousness and sometimes allows the consciousness to affect it. But only if it's open to it.

If you think it's always possible, consider someone with fear of heights. With conditioning, they may be able to get near a window in a tall building, but they'll never, ever be not on the verge of panic. Or stage fright for others. Etc.

Secondly, the rationality of the change needs to be very strong. It's very obvious that being terribly fat it bad by any set of reasoning, yet that's not strong enough for many people. I'm able to diet just fine, but when I look at training myself to not be angry at left wing policies, I can find absolutely no net merit in the left's position, so my lower brain isn't going to find any conscious argument convincing.

Anonymous said...

If you think it's always possible

I would never make that claim. My claim is "it's not always impossible".

Your "fear of heights" example is interesting, because it describes me quite well. I would argue the fact that I can stand next to high drops, even though I feel all that fear, is a very clear example of the conscious mind overcoming the lower mind. I can say for me, with practice it gets easier as I condition my lower mind. Also, of course, I must do some mental work before reaching the edge, so the battle is won before the moment, not at it.

Bret said...

AOG,

You sometimes portray yourself as being significantly more robot and significantly less animal than most.

There's no doubt a spectrum, so perhaps it's true.

To the extent that "it's not always impossible," but rather just rare to some degree to overcome the lower brain, I still think we're in for a long and emotional conflict.

Bret said...

Harry Eagar wrote: "It also isn't true that anger cannot be deflected."

Sure. It's possible that conservatives capitulate and somehow learn to love the liberal agenda.

Do you really think that's a good bet?

Harry Eagar said...

You mean if not means ruining the world economy? I sure do.

You are correct, I think, about the anger of a few, but I do not believe that most Republicans are angry. The few who are angry are really angry, and because of entirely upper brain decisions (about, for example, how to organize a political party), they have the whip hand.

I find your conundrum wrongheaded. The question is, why are the non-angry not getting angry at the teahadists? They should not be getting any lower-brain goosebumps out of watching the ultras push them over a cliff.

As a New Dealer, I would not describe my attitude toward the rightwing as anger but contempt.

I would ask you, also, to be more sympathetic to the working man than you have ever been, because in our setup, he has little choice about many things.

In fact, after writing that, I am led to wonder if the anger you detect, if related to choice, has not been displaced. The areas of most anger are right-to-work states -- that is, the places where people have least choice and also least practical ability to increase choice (especially if they have been indoctrinated that using their First Amendment rights to organize unions is immoral).

Racism and child-beating offer the model for how people prevented from venting anger against real offenders displace it on innocents.

Further points: I do not think Cruz is an angry man.

There is plenty of altruism done after long, thoughtful contemplation. This morning's Maui News, for example, has a front-page story about how some friends of mine, through church, spent 6 months thinking about ways to assist the homeless and eventually came up with a 'roving community care van.'

erp said...

... how some friends of mine, through church, spent 6 months thinking about ways to assist the homeless and eventually came up with a 'roving community care van.'

And so Harry proves my point again.

Anonymous said...

Bret;

Heh. When I say to She Who Is Perfect In All Ways, "But *I* would ..." she cuts me off with "You're a freak. We're talking about normal people.".

So, yes, I expect we are in for a long and emotional conflict. Eventually, though, the Gods of the Copybook Headings will sort it out.

Clovis said...

Bret:

"They" = "Angry people" (of whatever party and ideology)

AOG:

"hurting themselves for real" = taking real trouble in their everyday lifes from the acts they've done motivated by anger.

---
One of Bret's points is that the factions define the latter very differently.
---
Bret defines the pain one side atributes as inflicted by the other. I am talking about feeling pain about your own actions, or of the overall consequences of the fight.

If the GOP really creates a catastrophe in the economy, it will back down. If the Dems really create a catastrophe in the health care sector, it will later on back down too. At least if the parties do not, the voters will.


Had I to bet, I foresee the GOP backing down before catastrophe, and Obamacare being no disaster at all. In a few years the fight will be on how much subsidies the low-income people may get, not if the ACA should be deleted or not.

I also foresee the next president will be a Republican. And govt. spending will be once again not so decried by you guys, just like before Obama. Had Romney won, ACA would be cosmetically altered and implemented without much of this noise.

Sorry if I do not take so seriously your Anger, folks. Maybe I know little of your souls, foreigner as I am. Or maybe I've seen worse things in life and know you are still far away from the limit people can take before blowing up.

Harry Eagar said...

erp, do you think a roving community care van will make them unhomeless?

No.

I take it your point is that private charity would do all that publicly-funded charity tries to do. You are wrong, though.

My only point is that some people decided to do an altruistic (though not very impactful) thing without using their hindbrains.

Using the hindbrain would be giving a panhandler a dollar because he looks so pathetic, which he would then use for Mad Dog 20-20.

People do that but they are not compelled by their hindbrains to keep doing it after they figure out that the panhandler wasn't really truthful about needing bus fare to get to his new job.

Full disclosure: I got ambushed by a new and presentable-looking bum a few months ago who wanted bus fare to get to a job. It seemed plausible.

I was mistaken. He used it to drink, and some weeks later had an alcoholic seizure and died. I contributed my little bit toward that outcome.

Further inquiry revealed that the bum had $160,000 in the bank, which he was saving to buy a new knee.

erp, you really should get out among the lower orders sometime.

Anonymous said...

And govt. spending will be once again not so decried by you guys, just like before Obama.

And your evidence for that is?

Had Romney won, ACA would be cosmetically altered and implemented

Clearly. Oh, there I go with ideology over empiricism again. Silly me!

Clovis said...

AOG,

You link states:

---
With the Capitol over his shoulder and standing in front of a podium with a sign that read “Repeal and Replace Obamacare,” [...]
---
Repeal and replace? That's what I call "cosmetically altered".

---
And your evidence for that is?
---
Can you point to me where in your blog you decried the trillion dollars spent in wars?

Harry Eagar said...

Not just one trillion. And we lost the wars.

It's hard to argue that a private insurance program is worse than that, but some will find a way.

erp said...

Harry:

More than a trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) dollars later and still the homeless are with us. Clearly the guys in the van are no less effective and may actually be helpful in a person-to-person way. Kudos to them for trying.

Peter and all:

Sorry for interfering with reasoned discourse here, but I couldn't resist this once.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

You can call it whatever you like.

Can you point to me where in your blog you decried the trillion dollars spent in wars?

Um, that's not evidence. Try again.

P.S. I have always maintained that military spending is a legitimate function of government.

Bret said...

erp,

Come on. You know you're always welcome to comment here.

I'm tremendously pleased with comments people make here. Not always reasoned discourse, but it would be awfully dry and lacking in humanity if it were.

erp said...

Thank you Bret.

Clovis said...

AOG:

---
P.S. I have always maintained that military spending is a legitimate function of government.
---
Does it justify any level of spending?

And what makes your preference on spending 1 trillion in wars better than your fellow citizen's, who prefers to spend it in Healh Care?


Erp:

For my part, I am happy to see you back.

Peter said...

As am I, erp. I'm sure you understand I am not stupid or dishonest, I'm just WRONG! :-)

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

No.

The Constitution. Military spending is a specific power of Congress. Health care spending is not.

P.S. The trillions I wrote of were not spent on health care.

Bret said...

Harry Eagar wrote: "The question is, why are the non-angry not getting angry at the teahadists?"

The ones who are angry, just leave the party. In what is probably a first, I'm going to link to a NY Times article. :-)

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/anger-can-be-power/?_r=1&

You'll like it Harry, because it manages to link republicans attitudes to racism and bigotry at every turn.

For the rest of us, we can decide how much weight to put on the racism and bigotry thing, and look at the anatomy of the Republican party (through the eyes of a liberal columnist). It's pretty good I think.

It focuses more on "worry", "concern", and "fear" than anger, but still the same class of strong negative emotions as anger.

The thing is, they fear or are angry at the liberal agenda and power, but they don't fear the country (while being led by liberals) crashing and burning. I'm not sure why they would either. They'll still eat and they'll still have their communities and, for many of them, churches.

It would cost me an awful lot, but I'm also not even vaguely worried about the government shutdown. A default will cost us something, but not all that much. There are no realistic alternatives to the dollar as a reserve currency, and even if people stop using the dollar, it'll cost us, but won't be catastrophic.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "...the bum had $160,000 in the bank, which he was saving to buy a new knee."

Did you mean $16,000? Full fare new knees are about $40,000. In India, about $10,000 (including air fare and hotel).

Harry Eagar said...

Nope, it was $160,000. He was heir to a pizza chain fortune.

You are wrong, erp, about the trillion (or whatever) spent on the homeless not working.

My county has perhaps the finest homeless-transition program in the country. At one time, it housed 1% of the entire population.

It is a private non-profit but almost all its money is from taxes.

While it has excellent facilities and programs, its (private) fiscal management has been atrocious. The county had to bail it out for $8 million.

There are still homeless -- but about 1,400 fewer -- because Ka Hale A Ke Ola will not take substance abusers.

Harry Eagar said...

Oh, it'll cost us. The debt service increase will be terrific.

I cannot square that with your worry about too much government sending.

But I want to go back to the original post. What, exactly, is the choice being lost to ACA?

You are on record, as I recall, as saying we already have universal, governmnt-paid health care in the form of emergency rooms and mandatory hospital care.

So there are, as I see it, 4 conceivable "choices."

1. Buy insurance or have enough money to pay as you go.

2. Don't buy insurance, don't pay and don't get treated when you are sick.

3. Ride free. No insurance, but force someone else to pay your bills through the emergency room. As I understand it, this is what you want to preserve. How it matches with your announced standards is a mystery.

4. ACA or, better yet, single-paper.

I am totally cool with amending the ACA for constitutional hardliners to opt out completely, as long as they carry a card that says: If I should need treatment for injury or illness that I cannot pay for out of pocket, I refuse to be so treated at public expense.

As for the Times piece, it doesn't add anything to what saying in 2010, or earlier.

What I find puzzling is the migration, first of Guy, then Skipper, now you to this alarmist ideology. I understood it easily enough when considering low-information rednecks and evangelicals. But you guys are not low-information voters.

Peter said...

It's our lower brain that determines our attraction to potential mates and then we rationalize why we fell in love after the fact

Bret, I'd love to see the anniversary cards you give your wife.

The anger is worrisome and I'll grant you alarmingly fevered, but I don't quite understand your lower-higher brain dichotomy. Both sides start with metaphysical assumptions and axioms that can't be deduced from any objective reality and both are unyielding in the face of the other's intransigence. We can argue the metaphysical assumptions, but I see nothing irrational about strategies here(remembering that rational and irrational are not synonyms for good and bad). The fact that Tea Party types are more splenetic and rough in language can be explained by cultural factors like Dem dominance of academia, government, the professions, etc., no? The horsey set doesn't curse like stevedores. The classic exemplar is Obama himself. He obviously believes that if he can only get his adversaries into a room and serve them a beer, he will prevail with his admittedly suave and congenial personality and his years of experience as a community broker. He calls it negotiation, but what he means is he has the skill to charm and out-argue his opponents and wear them down, which he undoubtedly does. A similar approach underlies a lot of modern tools like community consultaion, "dialogue', etc. It strikes me as very rational and higher-brained to refuse to play that game when you suspect bad faith and hold to "No, means no". My experience in arguing with leftists is that they are so convinced of their superior intellects and virtues, and so wedded to "What's the Matter With Kansas?" analyses of the right, that the only rational way to deal with them is to draw lines in the sand. C'mon, after thirty-five years they still see Reagan and Thatcher as some kind of cognitively-challenged wingnuts who hoodwinked nations that hadn't a clue what was good for them.

Then there is AOG, who has no lower brain and is plenty angry. Either he is a refutation of your theory or we should try to get him some funding support under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

erp said...

Oh Peter. This isn't the place, but I've dealt with the horsey set, the high brows, etc. and rather than charming, they are smarmy. Sneering isn't a convincing line of argument and is only effective with those with little self-esteem.

Look at the great pundits among us whose main line of argument is to call those who disagree with them names and accuse them of base motives, etc.

There isn't a single success story to support their high minded views. Wishing doesn't make it so even in their world of unicorns and fantasies. Corn, wind, sunshine, etc. aren’t substitutes for oil or nuclear energy no matter how much of our money is thrown at those who say they can “make it so.”

Harry: I am confused as to why you never mention Medicaid which, you may remember, was the previous cure for the inequality of quality medical care between the "haves and have-nots." It's a hugely expensive nightmare which will be dwarfed by this new uber-nightmare which will be swamped by the complete takeover of single payer health care waiting in the wings.

The reason things like medical care, drugs, cars, fuel, etc. are so expensive and in many cases less effective, to wit Bret’s daughter’s inhaler, is that our lives are being controlled by bureaucrats, not by fair competition among those who know what they’re doing and only tunnel-visioned ideologues can’t seem to see or understand this simple fact.

Harry Eagar said...

Bret, you chose a particularly unfortunate day to try to distance the what -- wimpy? -- right from the racists, since that was the day of a big rally at the White House feturing the white racist flag.

When leftists -- the sneering class according to erp -- pointed out that it was pretty evil to wave a racist flag in front of a house occupied by a black family, the rightwing (Instapundit, for example) responded with, who, us?, no that was a leftist provocateur.

The Internet is a wonderful thing.

It was soon shown that the flagwaver is in fact a rightwinger.

The key point, though, is not that one racist showed up, but that he set up center stage and stayed all day without anyone's objecting.

The rightwing is under the control of racists. There's really nothing the left can do about.

You own it. Time to take responsibility.

Clovis said...

Harry,

I was waiting to see if the flag incident would be cited here.

I think the Anger will also justify tihs one. "You do not want to listen to our demands? We can make it the 50's all again!".

erp said...

Freedom of speech is just that and it includes waving a piece of cloth with just about anything on it. Like for instance when the pink ladies had signs exhorting soldiers to shoot their officers in back pictures of which were proudly printed in the msm. I can't remember Harry. Did you do an article decrying that?

Gosh I'm so shocked??? Google can't find a single mention of that on the entire internet. Did I dream it up? Anyone else remember it?

Harry Eagar said...

You probably dreamed it up.

Even if you didn't, the pink ladies did not have 2 of the most prominent politicians in the country standing around and endorsing by their presence and silence what was going on.

Of course, anyone can wave any flag in front of the White House he wants. To make a statement.

He did.

We understand what the statement was.

erp said...

It was Code Pink and I didn't dream it up, but those pictures and references to them have been cleansed from the internet. No doubt there are screen shots somewhere. I hope you are not denying that Code Pink advocates soldiers shooting their officers in the back. If you say you didn't know about it, you are either outright lying or suffering from dementia.

Free speech is still allowed in the vicinity of prominent people, except of course, Obama whose public appearances are closely managed.

Harry Eagar said...

Nothing is ever cleansed from the Internet, erp. If it's not there now, it was never there.

erp said...

Quoting Steinbeck, "Sure Lenny, lots of rabbits."

Clovis said...

The only thing I could find along these lines on Code Pink is this link:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7217.html

Which states that the photo was photoshoped, and gives the link of the forgers.

To differentiate between information and disinformation is, unfortunately, a non trivial task most of the time.

erp said...

Whether that's photoshopped or not doesn't matter. Code Pink wasn't coy about their philosophy and if you notice Harry doesn't dispute that it's true. There were many demonstrations and signs asking soldiers to shoot their officers in the back. The lunatic left supported them and the media covered it gleefully.

Harry Eagar said...

I thought you said it was suppressed. Now you say it was covered 'gleefully.'

I never saw it. As far as I know, it is just another of your ludicrous fantasies.

erp said...

Balderdash. It was all over the papers at the time, but now that Bush isn't president and their annointed one is waging war, information of their insanity has been cleansed from the ether (I find the pathetic link Clovis unearthed terrifying because of the lengths being taken to change history), but that doesn't answer my question about why you never speak to Medicaid.

Clovis could use an education on why that earlier attempt to even the medical care playing field was such a dismal, but hugely expensive, failure.

Surely you thought it was a good idea when he was first launched.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Although many govts., yours included, have been doing tremendous efforts to control and censor the Internet and its users, it is still pretty hard to hide things largely covered by the media that made it to the Internet.

Even after pages go offline, they have their content stored in time machines largely accessible to everyone. If you do not trust me on this, ask AOG, who probably better understands it all and is a Conservative you can trust.

Now, on Medicare, I really know very little about it. Wikipedia tells me it is from 1965 - I guess only you, and maybe Harry, are in conditions to tell any first hand information about it here. Was it polemical then, as ACA is now?

AFAIK, today it is a program favored by the majority of Republican voters, who also happen to be largely favored by the program. Your last Republican candidates had no proposal to repeal it, and Paul Ryan even needed to amend criticisms that could be interpreted as touching medicare.

Anonymous said...

I think erp may have been referring to this where Code Pink came out in support of the Ft. Hood shooter as an anti-war protestor.

We could add history of the founder of Code Pink for context. As erp said, they're not coy about their views.

However, I have to agree that it's unlikely that Code Pink, specifically, did that with record on the Internet at all.

erp said...

I referenced Medicaid, not Medicare. For the record, I was and am opposed to both.

erp said...

How were things before the sainted martyr went to his reward and Johnson pushed through as much of the leftwing wish list as he could before he crashed and burned?

We paid for services and ordinary people like my working class immigrant parents and everyone else could afford to go to the doctor, get medications, have surgeries, etc. My parents never had health insurance until they were forced on go on Medicare.

Care for the indigent was better before we indulged the left’s obsession for expanding the federal bureaucracy and creating millions of jobs for union thugs and we can thank the sainted martyr for allowing federal employee to join unions bringing us to the sorry state where they have now become Obama’s Brown Shirts. This was predicted by many at that time (including me).

There were free clinics for those who were poor and that meant in those days, women left with small children, people with chronic health problems, substance abusers aka drunks, etc. Able-bodied men worked. These clinics were in various parts of the city and at the best hospitals at least in NYC.

Although we didn't qualify for the free clinic, my son had a chronic ear infection and we were unable to get help from the local doctor, so we took him at age two to the free clinic at Manhattan Eye and Ear hospital where he was seen by one of the foremost specialists. We paid for the visit and made an appointment to have him operate on our two year old. I have no doubt that our son would have lost the hearing in that ear had we not gotten help then.

Clovis said...

AOG,

Please take a closer look on that picture with the banner "We support our troops when they shoot their officers", accessible in the link you gave, or here:

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7217.html

Zoom in on it and pay attention to the difference in pixel patterns. I say it is a clear candidate for being photoshop altered too.

I never heard about this code pink before, I am just saying: caution with non verifiable internet pictures and information.

Erp:

Ops, the names are so close I've got it wrong. I don't know much about either. I can read their entire wikipedia descriptions, but I guess I won't learn there why you think both are bad programs.

erp said...

aog: you may be right, but I have a distinct memory of watching Code Pink creatures on TV marching with signs beseeching soldiers to shoot their officers in the back. This was when Bushitler was in the White House and Clovis is right that nothing leaves the atmosphere of our planet, but wherever it is, it's hidden from ordinary googlers and is reminiscent of the old Soviet trick of airbrushing non-people from official photographs, monuments and documents.

There is a long tradition in the left of reinventing history. I've long said, everybody should hold on to their pre-60's reference books because history belongs to the victors and it sure ain't the truth.

Harry Eagar said...

Well, you could go to the Library of Congress and read all the newspapers on microfilm.

Or do you suppose there really is a Minitru that changes all the libraries?

Let's focus. Even if you are right, Code Pink represents exactly 0% of the Democratic party. What elected leaders show up for Pink protests?

The racist demonstration at the white House had Palin and other rightwing stars.

I am not inclined to discuss Medicaid because it is not a failure. The idea that before Medicaid poor people got free care from charity clinics is another of your delusions.

erp said...

If Medicaid is not a failure, why aren't the downtrodden glowing with good health?

You are more comfortable lashing out at my "delusions" than explaining why the huge bureaucracy created nearly 50 years ago to bring health to the needy did not do the job and why another even more expensive Rube Goldberg insurance scam is needed.

The reason health insurance and medicine in general is so expensive is governmental meddling.

erp said...

Clovis:

The link you found may very well be photoshopped. That changes nothing about what I said. Harry would like to walk away from over-the-top radicals like Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan. It amuses me that all the racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, etc. I've ever met have been lefties, not conservatives.

Clovis said...

Erp,

The Left was the main ally of Jews up to Israel's creation. After all, it was the Right in its most extremist form who tried to exterminate them - and it is amazing I need to remember you of that.

The change of sides happened afterwards. The Left has this universal tendency of adopting the weaker side, so the Palestinian cause fit better this cognitive preference. Israel is too strong to elicit the "lost cause" sentiment many in the Left look for.

Now, to say racists and homophobes are usually Leftists is news to me. You pretty much deleted the last 100 or so years of history to believe that.

erp said...

Clovis what are you talking about?

What right?

You mean the fascists. They aren't the right, they're part of the left.

Please don't lecture me about Jews or the left and right.

I grew up in NYC where even though I went to a Catholic school and was taught by nuns, practically all of my friends were Jews, many from Orthodox families (there was an Orthodox synagogue near where I lived as child) as were our next-door neighbors.

An awful lot will be news to you if you are lucky enough to unlearn much of what you "know." If not, so much the better for you. You'll be one of the cogs in the vast wheel of socialism perhaps at some level wondering where all that planning and perfecting the system went wrong.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I know you have your own particular definitions, but the rest of the world calls Nazism and Fascism as extreme Right movements.

BTW, it used to be that most Jews in the US were (or still are?) Democrats. Are they all anti-Semites?

erp said...

The rest of the world can define fascism anyway it likes. The fact is that it isn't right wing or conservative, but a form of socialism as it's name plainly states.

BTW - I said most of the anti-Semites I know are lefties. I didn't say all lefties are anti-Semites. See the difference.

Howard said...

Clovis,

You have lots of company in blindly accepting a Big Lie:
(see right side of linked page)

"The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course."

Clovis said...

Howard,

There is a simple story about Richard Feynman I like.

Creative as he was, when a kid he did not accept why he needed to call, in a triangle, the division of the opposite side by the hypotenuse a "sin". Or all the other terms like "cos", "tg", etc.

He then invented his own symbols for all of them. And started to make his own deductions in geometry in his new language.

He probably learned a lot exercising his curiosity. The only problem was, when he went to do the tests of geometry, he got it all messed up trying to translate back to the language de teacher used, and got his first bad grades ever.


The lesson he took from it was that, fun as it is to exercize your independence, people need to establish standards for communication - and this is a good thing.

Now, I understand why you may want to classify fascism or nazism as Left policies - the state was too strong.

But the methods of production, apart from the war effort, were not kidnapped by the state. The business onwers were not against Fascism, by the contrary, most were in favor of the system, for it provided only more order and stability for their business. It was never a threat for their properties and social positions. They were more than happy to use it to suppress what they thought to be the real threat (comunism).

So, there is nothing wrong, and it is historically accurate, to classify Fascism as extreme Right. It is only in a very narrow definition of "Right" that it would be wrong.

When most people accept this classification, they are not being fools who can not differentiate details and differences. They are only acknowledging that it is harder to communicate if everyone has a different name for a "sin".

erp said...

Fascism is an earlier version of the crony capitalism we are now enduring and if it's not stopped very soon, we'll make Hitler look like a piker.

We are not inventing a new language, we are calling things what they are... and BTW, in English, the word is sine.

The reason the left doesn't accept fascism as their own is because Hitler broke his pact with Uncle Joe. Have you forgotten about that or did your history books just omit it as did the AP World History book my granddaughter had last year?

Perhaps the rest of world has decided there was no such thing, so we should all erase it from our memories. It would be embarrassing not to be on the same page as the "rest of the world."

Harry hasn't been able to do it. Perhaps you have a fresh take. What about fascism is right wing or conservative? Free markets, individual responsibility and freedom, rule of law instead of despots, free speech ...

You know very little about us in this country. We don't believe something because everybody else does. If it's wrong, it's wrong and calling fascism right wing is not only wrong, it's like something from Orwell's, "1984" called newspeak.

Bret said...

Clovis,

Oh goody, a definitional argument!

fas·cism

noun

1. a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. [emphasis added]


so·cial·ism

noun

1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. [emphasis added]


As per the emphasized portion, there is at least some overlap between fascism and socialism - "regimenting industry, commerce" and "control of the means of production" are pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell.

But let's consider it another way. I think you'd agree with that statement that I'm more right-wing than left-wing?

So let's see how I overlap with the definition of fascism.

A government system led by a dictator having complete power ... (nope, I'd vigorously oppose that)

... forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism ... (nope again)

... regimenting all industry, commerce, etc. ... (surely you've noticed that I'm so against that as to nearly completely define my outlook as being the opposite of this part of the definition of fascism)

... and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism ... (since the government shutdown we've been relentlessly accused of being willing to destroy our nation to serve our own ends, so apparently not)

... and often racism ... (while Harry believes most conservatives are racist, I don't, and I think it's certainly stretching it to believe that racism is a central tenant of conservatism, even if you believe that many of its members are racist)

So either the concept of the "Right" is wrong, or fascism simply isn't a right-wing ideology and, if anything, has a little more in common with socialism.

Your pick.

Bret said...

Peter wrote: "Both sides start with metaphysical assumptions and axioms that can't be deduced..."

LOL. I'm pretty sure you're joking, but I'm not totally sure. I mean the image of politicians and their constituents thinking about metaphysical assumptions and axioms, etc. has me laughing hysterically.

I agree that the ensuing strategies are perfectly rational - that's where the deceptive brain kicks in.

Peter wrote: "Then there is AOG, who has no lower brain and is plenty angry. Either he is a refutation of your theory..."

He's the exception that proves the rule? Is he angry or just bemused because he can't quite understand the foibles of the rest of humanity?

Harry Eagar said...

Clovis, Howard and erp have bought into a meme that is fairly new on the right fringe circuit.

They know so little about fascism that they don't know that it was originally (and in most of its manifestations, for example, Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, Japan) monarchist.

Not a lot of leftist monarchists around.

Bret is using a definition more akin to later uses of the word fascism, but the fascist parties were almost all monarchist.

The point, of course, is that they need some way to shine light between themselves and a previous generation of rightists. It doesn't make any sense to anyone who knows anything about European history in the 20th century, but their audience can be relied on to be invincibly ignorant about that.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "Not a lot of leftist monarchists around."

Ummm. Not a lot of rightist monarchists around in America either.


Harry wrote: "Bret is using a definition more akin to later uses of the word fascism."

You mean the modern, current definition in the dictionary? Yes, that's true.

The meanings of words evolve over centuries. The word "liberal" is a good example.

However, here is the definition of fascism from a Merriam-Webster dictionary that I got from my grandfather that was published in 1951.

--------------------

fascism, n.

1. The principles of the Fascisti; also, the movement or governmental regime embodying their principles.

2. Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.

------------------

So pretty much the same definition as now. That simply does not describe the vast majority of the "Right" in the United States at the current time.

And again, the "regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance" has much more in common with socialism than conservatism and especially libertarianism which is pretty much the exact opposite of fascism by the common definition of fascism in the English language, according to standard dictionaries, for at least the last 62 years.

Harry Eagar said...

Well, I never take it upon myself to tell other people what they are. I think we should allow, you know, actual fascist parties to be fascist. Who else would want to?

How close are today's American rightists to European fascists?

Identical in their nationalism, censorship, xenophobia.

How close are today's leftists to European fascists? About as close as they were at the time, when they battled in the streets.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I am not sure what you mean by "Uncle Joe". If it is the USSR, I can assure you I know well about their pact and how, why and when Hitler broke it. I do not think your knowledge of history prior and up to WWII is necessarily better than mine, you were too little by then and need to rely on the same sources I do.

And thanks for the correction on sine, I use it so much as sin(x) in mathematical language that I have forgotten the right name in English.


Bret,

To tell you the truth, I try to run from definitional arguments. Standard words in plain language are all defined in truly sloppy ways. None of your arguments above are decisive, for we did not establish a common axiomatic frame for that. And even then, it would lead to possibly undecidable questions, as Godel famously demonstrated. Then, so far as any objective truth is concerned, this is just a loss of time.

Indulging in this loss of time though, I can tell that your equalization of "regimenting" and "control of the means" is not granted, there is a whole lot of possible differences going from one to the other. This is basically the same discussion we had before so many times on the sloppy definition of socialism a few here work with.

There is no close definition of "Left" and "Right", it changes from time to time, from society to society, from groups within any society. In the end, what is the simplest thing to do is to adopt the standard use - and there is nothing wrong with that. Only hubris can explain why a right-wing should be offended by the idea that people "in their side" can be extremists - surely only "the other side" has them!


Erp:

----
You know very little about us in this country. We don't believe something because everybody else does. If it's wrong, it's wrong and calling fascism right wing is not only wrong, it's like something from Orwell's, "1984" called newspeak.
----

I will be your Copernicus and tell you a great news, that may shock you after all these years: there are other places outside your country, yes, and the U.S.A is not the center of the universe. In these other places, people may even have their own definitions and think all by their own too. I know, it is shocking, you won't believe me but it is true.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

picture [...] in the link you gave

Um, neither of my links had pictures in the articles.

Let me say specifically that I have followed Code Pink for a long time and I would find a banner such as erp described completely plausible.

erp said...

Clovis:

My country is not the center of the universe, it is where I live literally and figuratively and while I'm happy to have people who want to become Americans legally emigrate here and jump into the melting pot, I really don't care how other countries do things. I like to travel and see the world, but I am very glad to come back home, even from Canada (sorry Peter).

The difference in our educations, other than the many years between, is that in my day there were many sources of information and schools were not the propaganda machines they are today. We had access to many and opposing views.

What do you mean by ”Only hubris can explain why a right-wing should be offended by the idea that people "in their side" can be extremists - surely only "the other side" has them.”

I don’t have a side. I have a set of values shared by others, so I am only amused, not offended, when people who have no information about me make assumptions based on their own skewed IMO values and put words into my mouth that have no basis in fact.

Harry:

Since you know absolutely nothing about me, please stop making yourself look foolish but assigning to me the absolute nonsense you’ve conjured up in your feverish brain. I’m especially fond of my elitist life style and only wish it were true. :-)

I don't plan to detail all my readings of the past 79 years, but you may assume that I know and have read at least as much as you have. The difference is I have also experienced life in a totally different way. My childhood wasn't scarred by “memories” of tar paper shacks and whipping of the coloreds by the KKK that colors everything for you.

Your comment that it’s beyond the pale that someone was waving a Confederate flag at a demonstration at the White House when a black man is president is so telling. Only you leftwing ideologues see a man with skin somewhat darker than the average Nordic as his defining characteristic. Perhaps the demonstrators see only a man elected to uphold the Constitution who is doing everything in his power and usurping power not assigned to him to destroy our country.

As was demonstrated yesterday, the RINO’s in congress are even more despicable as the openly leftwing Democrats.

Your definitions and comparisons of U.S. & European fascism are especially entertaining. You might put your golden years to good use writing fantasy potboilers. I hear there’s good money in it as the younger generations aren’t burdened by any accurate historical perspectives.

Howard and Bret:

One of my favorite sayings is that lefties are masters of semantics and apparently, they’re at it again. Keep those old reference books. I have a Grolier’s Encyclopedia, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary both from the ‘30’s and this 1940 set of The Book of knowledge

In future generations, these books and others like them could well become the Rosetta stone of their age.

erp said...

aog, your comment about my probably being right about Code Pink. came up on Feedly, but doesn't appear here?

Anonymous said...

How close are the American right and Euro-Fascists?

One of the reasons Europeans are so fearful of the Tea Party is that they assume that because it is right wing and populist it is like the National Front in France or Golden Dawn in Greece. Today’s small government American Tea Partiers are much farther from Huey Long and Father Coughlin in their political views than some European right wingers are from the darker demagogues of Europe’s bloody past, and until the European establishments understand this, they will likely continue to misjudge the state of American politics.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Only hubris can explain why a right-wing should be offended by the idea that people "in their side" can be extremists..."

I think that's upside down. The problem is painting most or all non-Leftists as fascists.

I've personally been called a fascist dozens if not hundreds of times. And to be clear, just as being called a dog is apparently insulting in Brazil, being called a fascist is an extreme insult in the U.S.

Why am I called a fascist? Simply because that's what a fair number of people on the Left, at least here in the United States, call people not of the Left. They do it specifically to be as insulting as possible and to paint a picture of us as Nazis.

In 2008, Jonah Goldberg, coalesced a trend of the non-Left into a book called "Liberal Fascism" which makes the argument, convincing enough to me, that the Left, including its history in the United States, has a LOT more in common with fascism than the non-Left.

So I now freely associate fascism with the Left.

It's all just part of another day in Angry America!

Harry Eagar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harry Eagar said...

erp, I know you live in Florida, so your claim not to have ever met any rightwing racists is incredible.

I also know you went to Catholic schools, so your claim to have been exposed to many points of view in your education is also incredible.

There has been so much said in this thread that is manifestly incorrect that it is hard to keep up, but I endorse Clovis's view that there is a big gap between 'regimenting and 'control of the means.'

In socialism, workers control production. In Fascist corporatism, they don't.

So when Howard carries on about how the NSDAP must be socialist because it called itself a 'workers' party, you have to ask, what did this workers party do to the labor unions?

Destroyed them. Was that socialist?

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Keep those old reference books.
---
You have the most interesting worldviews. The other day you were saying libraries are now useless and should not even be funded anymore. Now you want to store all the old books you can - because, once they are in digital format, they will be all deturped by the Left. I guess when they finally make your wish true and close all Libraries, as consequence of some other GOP shutdown, you'll then say it is one more step of their domination. Also, Wikipedia is already part of all that manipulation.

I will keep collecting your thoughts, they make my day.



Bret,

---
It's all just part of another day in Angry America!
---

I guess you said it all. Angry Right calls anyone Left-leaning as socialist, communist and so on. Angry Left calls anyone Right-leaning as fascists, nazists or whatever.
Then in the next escalation one calls the other both things.

You gonna soon run out of curses.

erp said...

Clovis: Again, what are you talking about? I never said we should do away with libraries. Apparently you have caught Harry's disease of reading into my plain prose whatever biases you entertain. I think libraries as repositories of printed matter will be gone to be replaced with ??? Who knows what's in the future. I want people to hold on to old reference books because if the left succeeds in destroying us and history continues to be rewritten by them, those old books will hold the truth.

erp said...

Harry:

I grew up in NYC not rural Georgia. Figure the rest out yourself.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "I endorse Clovis's view that there is a big gap between 'regimenting and 'control of the means.' ... In socialism, workers control production. In Fascist corporatism, they don't."

Yes, that's the theory. And there are differences in practice to, but let me tell you how it looks to me.

In some sense, workers always control production. In any system, if they all stop working, nothing gets produced. The old soviet joke is "we pretend to work; they pretend to pay us."

When I consider a socialist system like the ex-U.S.S.R., I see party elites controlling the means of production in the name of the workers, and awarding themselves wealth well beyond that of the workers. The party elite collectively controlled and benefited from the means of production.

When I consider a fascist system like Nazi-Germany, I see party elites controlling the means of production in the name of the good of the nation, and awarding themselves wealth well beyond that of the workers. Individual members (or small groups) would control specific bits of the means of production internal to their companies that they "owned," but subject to the will of the dictator and other members of the elite via the dictator.

A lot of similarities, some differences. If you wish to focus on the differences, sure, go ahead. I choose to focus on the similarities.

Harry Eagar said...

Well, why not look at a country not in the hands of gangsters? Present-day Germany would do.

I detect a difference between German corporations with union representation on their boards and US right-to-work states.

And when I look at the US today, I see see financial elites controlling the means of production in the name of the good of the nation, and awarding themselves wealth well beyond that of the workers.

Harry Eagar said...

And here, for erp's benefit, is a description of how the vulnerable were helped by non-state charities in the wonderful days of yore:

The History of 'Ski' (from the diary of a naval officer on whose ship Ski served n 1921)

'Ski told me his story -- very interesting. He is the child of Polish parents, and his father died when he was one month old. His mother turned him over to an orphanage, Catholic and eight miles from Pittsburgh, when he was two. For twelve years he was shut up in this place with about ten trips of less than three hours away from it.

At three they put him into the orphanage uniform, straight waist, straight short trousers, no cap, shoes or stockings, except for three months of the year, and turned him over to an older boy to be looked out for by him.

In due course of time, Ski in turn was given a baby to care for, and then another, and another.

At six he ran away and was returned. At eight he ran away and was captured and returned after only two hours of freedom. He had no pockets in his clothes, no newspapers, no books, no pleasures except games invented by himself and his messmates.

His ideas of the world were of the vaguest. The Sisters had a school for them, but the most advanced textbook that he saw was a Fourth Reader.

Twice a month was adopting day, and on that day all the children stood in a row and were looked over -- but nobody ever adopted Ski. Each occasion was a bitter disappointment to him, for he longed desperately to get out of his prison.

At last came his opportunity. A youngster who had been in the place returned to call and got Ski out by promising to look after him. His release came in 1917, when he was fifteen. For two years he worked at odd jobs, but finally fell into success as a bellhop in a Pittsburgh hotel.

Then his mother traced him. She had remarried again -- a worthless fellow -- and she demanded that Ski support her now that he was earning enough. He told her to go to the devil -- that she had let him go through that childhood hell without extending a helping hand -- and then he ran away from her and enlisted in the Navy.

-- "Gunboat on the Yangtze: The Diary of Captain Glenn F. Howell of the USS Palos, 1920-1921."

erp said...

This couldn't happen in today's world because all the pregnancies would be aborted. Problem solved.

Harry, if this is all you got, give it up. With little trouble, I could come up with dozens of tear jerking stories of people helping each other.

Harry Eagar said...

That's nowhere near all I got.

I could, for example, go back to your disgusting claim never to have met an antisemite who wasn't a lefty and combine that with your claim to have grown up going to Catholic schools in New York in the '40s and '50s and point out that all the bishops and a majority of the priests there and then were rightwing Jew-haters.

Everybody knows it,too.

That's why your claims are so weird; who do you think would fall for them? Even Eugene Volokh disdained them; I believe that is the only time he has ever done so at VC.

Howard said...

And here, for erp's benefit, is a description of how the vulnerable were helped by non-state charities in the wonderful days of yore:

Let me tell you a story about a young lady born in 1909. Her parents both departed czarist Russia as teenagers in the 1890s and settled in America. After establishing themselves well enough they began to raise a family. Things were going quite well until misfortune struck. First her mother took ill and eventually died of cancer. A year later in 1918 her father had a burst appendix and died from the infection. At the age of 9 years old she was orphaned. She and her brother were taken in by an orphanage. The orphanage was supported entirely by private donations. Life in the orphanage could be a bit lonely but she and her brother were very well cared for. They got a good education, there was plenty of cultural enrichment and even music lessons. She also got training as a bookkeeper. She went on to marry and raise a family. Even during the depression the family prosperred as her husband expanded his auto repair business and she worked as a bookkeeper. Her brother was sent to college and then to dental school greatly aided by the privately supported orphanage. He too went on to have a good family life.

I could have added a lot of flowery language to that description and produced a most heart warming narrative but I chose not to. This was not a story lifted from some damn book. That was not necessary. The young lady was my maternal grandmother!

erp said...

Harry, this comment is a new low even for you.

Harry Eagar said...

Howard, do you pay the slightest attention to what erp says? She says there was no need for state-supported social services because private charities did it all, and that, furthermore, state care resulted in worse and more expensive services.

I, too, can tell a heartwarming story about how my grandfather started a children's hospital; but I could also tell what his sister-in-law had to do at the same time.

She had to extort clothes and shoes so that children could to go to the school where she was principal, because they children were naked.

Literally naked. no clothes at all. Couldn't leave the house.

erp's description of mid-20th century America is delusional. (BTW, did your prospering ancestors try to buy a house among erp's Christian Americans? She says she never met a rightwing antisemite. If your prosering ancestors did try to move into a swell neighborhood, I bet they did.)

Howard said...

Harry, funny you should mention antisemitism. Anybody with even half a clue can see that nowadays it resides not exclusively but overwhelmingly on the left.

erp said...

Harry your attacks are getting old. Why is my life such a threat to you? My school days were very different than yours. I had great adventures in a place and time no longer available to kids and after I grew up, the adventures continued until now my husband and I have retired to a very simple life in the sunshine. We worked and saved to this end and our children have succeeded far above even our most optimistic hopes -- the grandchildren – well they’re the icing on the cake. Every anecdote and memory I’ve related is the truth.

If only you knew how telling it is that your side has no arguments and can only attack, make accusations and name call. Things were bad for some in the bad old days, but most were able to pull themselves up and even help those who couldn’t. Now those in custodial care are doomed by the nanny state to stay right where they are as hostages to the continued dominance of left in government.

Re: To re-clarify my statements: I said most haters, i.e., racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, etc. that I have met were lefties.

Re: Everyone knows all Catholic Bishops are anti-Semites: I never have met a bishop of any denomination, so I can’t comment on how many Catholic bishops are anti-Semites.

Re: My Catholic Grammar School Career: You seem to have a real problem with my attending Catholic school and feel that because I admired greatly the nuns who took me in, that I became a practicing Catholic. Nothing could be further than the truth.

My attendance as a first grader in the nearby Catholic (my parents were Eastern Orthodox, not Roman Catholic) school was supposed to be temporary because an injury made it difficult to get to the far off public school (no school buses in those days). However, after I was able to walk again, I was invited to stay and as I was happy there, I accepted their invitation. I was never a Catholic. The nuns did not force me to attend services nor even study the catechism, nor have I attended any religious services other than weddings and funerals since my teenage years.

Re: Jews purchasing homes in the working class Queens neighborhood where I grew up. I have told the story that our next door neighbors were practicing Orthodox Jews who owned the house and there were many, many other Jewish homeowners as well. They chose to live there because there was an Orthodox synagogue within walking distance. However, we had relatives living all over NYC and outskirts and I had lots of cousins. There were Jewish homeowners in those neighborhoods as well and all us kids played together... and before Harry goes all compassionate again, no there were no Negro* homeowners. However, there were students of every creed and color at the public high school I attended and in the four years of my attendance, there were no instances of tensions among any of us.

It must be a bummer Harry when reality interferes with your tenderly held fantasies.

*That’s a story for another day.

Clovis said...

Howard,

---
Anybody with even half a clue can see that nowadays it resides not exclusively but overwhelmingly on the left.
---

And could you provide examples, please? And I mean significative ones, instead of some fringe group of five people scattered around.

There is more sympathy for the Palestinian suffering among the Left (or better yet, the not-Right), and that comes together with condemnation of Israel's policy in this matter.

But unless you equate the above with anti-Semitism, I am puzzled by not easily seeing what you state to be so obvious.

Harry Eagar said...

No question in my mind some of the Left Euro sympathy for the Palestinians is flavored with antisemitism. But to say that the left has taken over antisemitism requires you to ignore that the most devoted antisemites are still flocking to neo-nazi parties (New Dawn, Society of St. Pius X etc.); or are rightwing Arabs.

erp, I did not say Jews could not buy homes. I said they could not buy in the swell neighborhoods.

Those laws were opposed and eventually overthrown. By conservatives? Of course not.

It wasn't just 'a few' who were not doing well when you were a girl. It was tens of millions. And the conservatives were opposed to helping them. Said it would bankrupt the country and end our freedom.

Nevertheless, they were helped, setting off the greatest boom in wealth and freedom the world has ever known.

Farid Zakaria has an eloquent statement in the Post:

'But what has been the result over these past 60 years? The United States has grown mightily, destroyed the Soviet Union, spread capitalism across the globe and lifted its citizens to astonishingly high standards of living and income.

'Over the past 60 years, America has built highways and universities, funded science and space research, and — along the way — ushered in the rise of the most productive and powerful private sector the world has ever known.

'At the end of the 1961 speech that launched his political career, Ronald Reagan said, “If I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” But the menace Reagan warned about — Medicare — was enacted. It has provided security to the elderly. There have been problems regarding cost, but that’s hardly the same as killing freedom.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-conservatism-needs-to-lighten-up/2013/10/16/49418e5c-3692-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "...when I look at the US today, I see see financial elites controlling the means of production in the name of the good of the nation, and awarding themselves wealth well beyond that of the workers."

Indeed. We're in agreement that the United States is leaning towards fascism in the form of corporatism. Since we currently have a left-leaning regime (Obama certainly isn't right-wing), we have a Leftist Fascism.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "And could you provide examples [regarding Antisemitism]..."

Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson coupled with the fact that "The 2005 survey found "35 percent of foreign-born Hispanics" and 36 percent of African-Americans hold strong antisemitic beliefs, four times more than the 9 percent for whites". Blacks and hispanics vote overwhelmingly for democrats and are substantially more Left than whites on average.

Secondly, I'm in complete disagreement with the concept that antisemitism and anti-Israel are distinct and unrelated or nearly completely unrelated. For example, "A 2009 study entitled "Modern Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Attitudes", published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2009" finds that "those claiming that there is no connection between antisemitism and hostility toward Israel are wrong." (This one could just be my lower brain speaking :-), but I do strongly believe that a great deal of Anti-Israel sentiment is Antisemitism by another name).

erp said...

Harry said: "erp, I did not say Jews could not buy homes. I said they could not buy in the swell neighborhoods." ... and I didn't say all our friends and relatives were working class. Many were professionals who lived in Westchester Co. and other "swell" neighborhoods on the island or Connecticut where were Jewish homeownership was well represented.

Clovis: perhaps one of the reasons "Palestinians" aren't generally viewed sympathetically is the media lied about them so outrageously and depicted their pitiful camps as being caused by the Jews who threw them out of their homes, etc. Lots of us knew that wasn’t true.

Bret: Intellectually I could have been anti-Zionist and had Hitler not “settled the question,” I probably would have held out for that ideal, but I was ten year old when I saw the first pictures of the concentration camps in Life magazine and that changed everything for me. Even now almost 70 years later, I get tears in my eyes and shudder just thinking about them. Perhaps that’s why being called a fascist or a nazi really infuriates me because those who use those words don’t understand what they mean.

Clovis said...

Bret,

Can you point to particular incidents of anti-Semitism, from people you would classify as Leftists, that you witnessed in person?

Your line of reasoning above is an extended version of Erp's. It is a hit and run. You postulate a general prejudice to a particular group (Leftists), but if confronted with particular points (e.g. if Leftists are anti-Semites, how to explain the majority of Jews being Dems?), you can always run away by denying the converse identity.

There are a few obvious weak points of your argument above - e.g. the fact that "foreign-born Hispanics" mostly do not even vote, for the majority are either illegals or have green cards but no citizenship - and others not so obvious (e.g. the definition of anti-Semite views of the studies used). But the main fault is, this is no different from the reasoning Left (or Black) people would use to say most racists are Right-leaning.

---
Secondly, I'm in complete disagreement with the concept that antisemitism and anti-Israel are distinct and unrelated or nearly completely unrelated.
---
Well, I did not mention anti-Israel (as being contrary to its existence), but against a particular aspect of its policies.

But there again, you are doing no different from people who supress Obama's criticism by invoking the race card.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Can you point to particular incidents of anti-Semitism, from people you would classify as Leftists, that you witnessed in person?"

I live in California where the vast majority of people are somewhat to very Left leaning. So the fact that the vast majority of Jew jokes, snide comments about Jews being dirty, cheap and untrustworthy, etc., and anti-Israel tirades that I've directly experienced (and there have been dozens over my decades as an adult) come from the Left is the only possibility. I'm a libertarian island in a sea of Leftists. So my personal experience can only be used to say that, yes, at least some leftists exhibit some antisemitic behavior. Fortunately, I have not personally witnessed anyone actually being violent against a Jew nor have I personally seen any vandalism against property owned by Jews that seemed to be related to their being Jewish.

So what I witness in person, while perfectly supportive of my supposition that antisemitism is more prevalent on the left, is not useful for this discussion since I pretty much only witness behaviors and actions of Leftists.

Clovis wrote: "...if Leftists are anti-Semites..."

Whoa! I didn't write that. I believe that a majority of antisemitism emanates from the Left, not that all or even a majority or even a large percentage of Leftist are antisemitic. Radically different.

Clovis wrote: "I did not mention anti-Israel (as being contrary to its existence), but against a particular aspect of its policies."

Good point, that was sloppy of me.

There is a bit of a grey area, in that being against its policy of self-defense, for example, while not technically the same as being against its existence, is in essence the same given the geopolitical realities of the region.

But I see your point. Conservative white racism against blacks and the accusations of that is sort of the mirror image of Leftist bigotry towards Jews.

However, my point (which I think Howard shares) is that those on the Left aren't all angels either and we have a hard time taking them seriously when they accuse those not on the left of being racist.

Harry Eagar said...

'in the form of corporatism'

Not a form of government corporatism.

More like corporationism.

What happened to you? The US is not socialist, nor fascist.

You did not use to talk like this.

Was it the tax reductions? Your taxes have been reduced again and again over a generation, and the result is you are unhappy and angry. I certainly would not want to increase your misery by cutting taxes again.

Harry Eagar said...

Well, I grew up in the South, and outside my house I almost never encountered anybody of the left, but I for sure encountered plenty of Jew-haters. Much of it from people who lived in counties that were judenrein.

So I do not think your experience in California is dispositive.

In the US, antisemitism is more divorced from other political stances than it was/is in Europe. And it is extremely widespread here.

Right after World War II, a survey found half of Americans had negative views of Jews (Survey taken after the publicity about the camps.)

Obviously, at that point anti-semitism was mostly decoupled from other political beliefs.

The antisemitism of blacks originates in the churches. The churches also preach, stridently, against homosexuals.

Yet, in the voting booth, those Christians are voting against the antihomosexual party. It's a complex thing.

I would be very glad to think that only 9% of whites are antisemitic, but I don't believe it.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Here is a starting point for your question on Judenhaas and the modern Left. My experience is very much in line with erp's, Bret's, and Howard's.

Here's a quick test for being anti-Israel vs. anti-Jew: does the person object more or less to Palestinians being killed by Israel vs. by other Arab nations? My experience is that it is a rare leftist indeed who is upset by things done to Palestinians by anyone other than Israelis.

Mr. Eagar;

"you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free"

That is what I, and from what I have read Bret, are already doing.

"Your taxes have been reduced again and again over a generation"

Uh, no. Look at overall tax rates (federal, state, local) vs. GDP. It's certainly not true for me personally, either. In 2014 I will be hit with a massive ($5K-$10K/year) increase called the "Affordable Health Care Act".

Clovis said...

Bret,

So all you've got to shown are a few dozen jokes heard during (five?) decades? And the relationship to the Left is that, well, you live in a place where Dems are majority - although a Republican, by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger, was the governor for 8 years not long ago.

OK, I rest my case. I guess Blacks accusing many white Republicans of being closet racists can show a lot more than that.


---
Clovis wrote: "...if Leftists are anti-Semites..."
Whoa! I didn't write that.
---
I know you didn't, that's why I called it a hit and run. It is about hitting the other side without actually showing up your gloves.


It all started with Harry's pointing that it did not play well for Reps. that their demonstration had a guy with a Confederate flag in front of Obama's house.

Erp's counterattack was to postulate that almost every bigotry she has seen came from Leftists. Couple to a defense of the right of speech and demonstration of any good citizen.

I would like to see your resctions in this alternate picture: a President of Jew background having a demonstration at the White House with some guy waiving the Nazi flag. And no one of his side noticing or doing much about it.

Oh yes, those would be all rabid anti-Semites.

But the confederate flag and Obama? Oh no, that is only free speech at its finest. No matter the KKK used the same flag when burning blacks at about the same time they were burning Jews in Europe.


The main lesson I take about Nazi Germany is not only about Jews persecution. It is best represented in that famous writing by Niemoeller:

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

I subscribe to Harry's view on this one: You own it. Time to take responsibility.

Anonymous said...

No matter the KKK used the same flag when burning blacks

Just to be clear, if a group of brutal thugs use a particular symbol while committing their brutality, any one else using that symbol can be presumed to be of the same low moral character?

What about a group that supports and admire Hitler explicitly? Would any politician who supports and associates with that group be tainted as well?

erp said...

I guess Blacks accusing many white Republicans of being closet racists can show a lot more than that. How about some documentation showing that many white Republicans are closet racists and please not from Sharpton or other poverty pimps.

Erp's counterattack was to postulate that almost every bigotry she has seen came from Leftists.

Counterattack?

I related my experiences which were corroborated by Howard, Bret and aog all of whom come from very different backgrounds and are at least a generation younger than I.

Of course I defended a fellow citizen’s right to wave whatever kind flag he likes even one with a swastika. It's our inviolate right to be wrong.

Finally, we own only ourselves and our actions. We don’t own the actions of others. Have you missed the point? We here oppose collectivism.

Harry Eagar said...

If waving the Battle Flag wasn't a racist insult or threat then, what was it, Guy?

If a left politician campaigns in a Che shirt, what does that suggest?

I think Clovis' quotation of Niemoller is apposite here. Last night I read Buckley and Bozell's defense of McCarthy. Vidal was wrong when he called Buckley a crypto-fascist.

There was nothing cryptic about Buckley's fascism. erp is right. Keeping old books around can be very important.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

If waving the Battle Flag wasn't a racist insult or threat then, what was it, Guy?

I wrote nothing about what it was. Perhaps you could deal with what I actually write, and not your Narrative. Not that, based on your history, I would expect you to do so.

If a left politician campaigns in a Che shirt, what does that suggest

That that politician is personally fine with mass murder and brutal suppression of his opponents.

I am simply wondering whether, in the latter case, you would tar the entire party to which he belongs as you do to the GOP.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "You own it. Time to take responsibility."

How exactly would I do that? In other words, what words or actions would you expect from to show "ownership?"

Harry Eagar said...

Did I tar the whole party? I did not.

But I did point out that important party figures were there, and they did not object; nor did anyone present object.

It is the same point I made about the email blasts of racist jokes. Those don't prove everyone who got the emails is a racist, but they do prove that those who sent them think they are.

Your best defense would be to note that very few Republicans came out to that rally.

It wasn't Clovis said that, Bret. Me first.

The party could start by cutting its links to fringist organizations, like the Value Voters. And individual members could indicate to responsible leaders (if you can find one) that sending leading lights like Cruz to whoop up the troops at rallies organized by Klayman makes the whole party look crazy.



erp said...

Read this h/t Ace. It's a comment written by a self-identified Brazilian named, Rodrigo Del Cistia Andrade which appears on the blog of that Yale professor who was shocked that Tea Party people are scientifically literate. There is no direct link, but it appears on p.4 of the comments about the middle if the page.

Apparently there are some young Brazilians who haven't drunk the Kool-Aid.

erp said...

Harry, didn't you get the memo? McCarthy was right. :-}

Clovis said...

Bret,

As stated, I was backing Harry's position. IMO, at the very least it means not to discount the act and move on to say that the other side is the bigot, as in Erp's style.



Erp,

I am happy to see that, apart from your self stated lack of interest for anything outside your country, you are in fact learning that there are other Brazilians. Nearly 200 million of them. And you can even find some of them rooting for the Tea Party, pretty amazing no?

His description of Brazil is half-true and very incomplete. The way he describes, it gives the impression that bizarre soccer event (in some little known shacky place) is usual. It is not, our Northeast, as I stated before here, has pretty serious problems even to our standards. The origin of our problems, debited to socialism in that fellow's discourse, are way older than that. And no, our constitution has nothing to do with the Soviet one.

But, well, congratualtions Erp, you probably have found a Brazilian very much in line with you.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

Did you smear the entire party? Yes -
The rightwing is under the control of racists - based on one incident. I am inquiring if that is a general standard, or whether it can be applied only to your political opponents.

erp said...

I didn't find him. He found out about freedom all by himself. Funny you only care about some bizarre killing when the point of the comment was a young man without the benefits of an elite education, who found the truth.

I don't care if you agree with me or not, but stop misrepresenting what I said. If you don't understand, say so and I'll try to rephrase it.

Harry Eagar said...

'based on one incident'

Based on many incidents, some of which I have alluded to in this thread.

If it had not been for the long litany of incidents in which racists have been seen directing the party, then one man with one flag would hardly have been worth noting.

It was his surroundings that made him significant.

Harry Eagar said...

Wow. I read the Brazilian. You would not guess -- and of course erp would not know -- from his post that for most of the mid-20th c. Brazil was run by a gang of rightwing murderers.

Anonymous said...

Like all those racist Tea Party incidents you "alluded to" as well. Apparently it's not erp who constructs fanciful claims out of nothing at all.

But, after all, what else do you have except if you can't argue with facts, just yell "racist". You read your talking points well.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "But I did point out that important party figures were there, and they did not object; nor did anyone present object."

If I were there and noticed (unless someone pointed it out to me, I wouldn't have realized it was a confederate flag - there's not a lot of them here in California and it's been decades since I thought about what one looked like) and was feeling confrontational, I would've let the flag bearer know that I found it offensive and that I thought he should put it away. And if he refused, then what?

I don't see any evidence that things like that didn't happen. (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). So I'm going to reject as unproven your contention that nobody objected.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "I was backing Harry's position..."

Which is that "The rightwing is under the control of racists."

Sorry, one guy waving a flag doesn't prove that and, no, I will not own that because it's definitely not true. Anymore than you'll own that all leftwingers are antisemitic, yet I believe that's far closer to the truth than the rightwing is under the control of racists.

Clovis said...

Harry,


Erp believes Pinochet was a hero, so rightwing murderers are pretty much OK for her. I will not try to explain here to what extent our Rightwing dictatorship, from 1964 to 1985, contributed to our present problems. The kind of answer I could get would give me heartburns.


Bret,

I reproduced literally which words of Harry I was backing.

Usually, people are way more acute to detect bigotry towards themselves than towards other groups. I can understand your feelings, and I can see how much of Israel related polemics can lead to your present views of anti-Semitism among the Left. But Ido believe that much of what you read as prejudice is not racially motivated.

Erp,

Amazing you can conclude so much about that young person. Anyone throwing a few lines you want to read already "found the truth". No wonder you believe any photoshopped picture around...

erp said...

I take Rodrigo's comment at face value and until I learn differently, will continue to do so just as I took your comments at face value until they started to "not compute" and am now becoming more and more convinced that you are dissembling. I’ve been around physicists all my life and every one of them knows a syllogism when he sees one and none would translate “most haters I’ve met are lefties” into “all lefties are haters” and then continue to say it over and over even after the error was pointed out several times.

The allegedly photoshopped picture of the vile Code Pink ladies has already been covered. Pictures of signs similar to it were in circulation. They have disappeared as has other information I had compiled. I now know enough to take screen shots of things I think may be sent to the re-education gulag.

Any comment on the link I provided that went into great detail into Code Pink associations and activities?

Pinochet saved Chile. Too bad there weren't more like him. The rest of South America might be enjoying peace and prosperity now instead of continued murderous thuggery.

BTW Clovis perhaps you will define right-wing murderous gangs. After many many years of requests, all Harry can come up with is fascism, nazis, Russian czars, monarchies, Democrats who mysteriously become Republicans when they perpetrate Jim Crow laws or vote against the Civil Rights Acts... Perhaps you can do better.

None of Harry's definitions is remotely connected to conservatism or libertarianism as our host prefers to call it. My preference would be Classic Liberalism, but that word has been tarnished by being usurped by an earlier incarnation of lefty-talk.

Harry Eagar said...

I am not expert in Brazilian affairs, but when the army barges into a nightclub and machineguns the partygoers, I detect some problems in governance.

In the '60s and '70s, there was some attention paid to the problems of northeast Brazil in mainstresm American publications, like Time, but then Brazil dropped off the radar for literate Americans.

I don't know why.

Guy, since you said you refuse to look at sites that make an effort to track TP racism, it is no surprise you don't know about it.

erp said...

To use Clovis' logic: the media love to expose right-wing (whatever that is) murderous gangs. These events were not covered by the msm here in the U.S., ergo they are not the work of right-wing murderous gangs leaving only left-wing murderous as the likely culprits.

There you have it. Done and Done.

Glad to be of service.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Eagar;

since you said you refuse to look at sites that make an effort to track TP racism

I looked at the website you recommended and found nothing, after you claimed it had reported many such incidents. By "refuse" do you mean my refusal to see what you want me to see, instead of what's actually there?

Clovis said...

Erp,

I also have been reading you time enough to understand what you really mean when you state a syllogism like that. It is the same kind of low tactics of hit and run you are practicing, again, on implying professional inability based on my political views here.


Harry,

I do not remember our Army using machineguns in a party during the dictatorship - what they did was to implant a bomb in a music show. Maybe Erp can tell us which one is better - I guess she prefers the machinegun style of Pinochet.

erp said...

Harry: Perhaps I'll tell you that I'd like much better to know what you are talking about. Oh and BTW after countless requests that you do so, you still haven’t defined right-wing in general and right-wing mid-20th C. murderous gangs in Brazil is particular.

Clovis: As I simply and plainly stated, your apparent inability to comprehend simple declarative sentences and to confuse their meaning to the extent you have demonstrated here is inconsistent with that of physicists and other scientists, engineers, etc. I’ve known. If it’s a language barrier, I am willing to restate things until you do understand. However, I am not willing to allow you to make ridiculous accusations* and to misstate what I say for reasons unfathomable to me.

*In the U.S. “hit and run” means leaving the scene of the accident. Please provide evidence of my doing any such thing.

Clovis said...

Erp,

You are probably right - I am just a third world resident who must be incompetent in what I do, and who lacks the ability to understand the higher level of your arguments. I am also a mad socialist who teaches subversion of world order instead of Physics at my classes.

The other day you implied pretty much the above and run away, spending weeks out of the blog, never addressing my reply in this matter. But to call it a hit and run is just one more error in my poor English understanding.

Sorry if, given the above, I can not take your opinion too seriously now, to the point I may "make ridiculous accusations and to misstate what [you] say for reasons unfathomable to [you]".

Harry Eagar said...

Search for wonkette + tea party racism

erp said...

I hope you don't let your students get away with answering science question the way you answer questions about what you say here. Why do you continually mistake what I say? Do you not really not understand or are you dissembling? Instead of answering my questions, you hurl more accusations.

Why are you so defensive? Nobody here (in the U.S.) cares where you came from whether it is a third world country or not. People from every part of the planet are Americans and live here in harmony.

That's the fact. Harry can sneer and give obtuse examples of cruelty and whippings, but the plain fact is I am responding to you as you present yourself. When things you say don't compute, it's not my fault.

You may be a teacher, but I would be very surprised if you're a scientist.

As for my comings and goings, I can't imagine why you think I need to explain them to you

... and Harry, Clovis citing Moore and Krugman as sources was silly, but the Wonkette. That's a real knee slapper.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

The curse of the duplicate comment is loose upon the land again. Sorry.

Clovis said...

Ok Erp, keep hitting and running.

Anonymous said...

Wonkette, eh? The column that made its name talking about anal sex in Washington DC? The one that is easily fooled by hoaxes? That produces quality journalism like this?

I have to agree with erp, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel these days. I can now laugh at any comment from you about the "fever swamps of the right".

Also, since following you putative links last time was a waste of time, why don't you do the search and point out an example?

I think it's very telling that you rely so heavily on innuendo ("alluded to"), vague statements, and unverifiable sources. One might be lead to think you do not want any one be able to see if your claims are accurate.

Harry Eagar said...

The thing about Wonkette and LGF is that they link through to the source reports.

There are several other places that aggregate reports on TP racism. They are easy to find.

If you don't like reading about anal sex you're going to have to give up Bryan Fischer.

He's a rightwinger, erp.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you do the same then - link through to the source report? If you cite Wonkette, it's quite reasonable to presume that is the source.

As for such aggregation, that's what you claimed about the LA Times. It's always "out there" but never here. Honestly, you're basically a conspiracy theory crank at this point.

erp said...

I still don't know what right-winger means in your lexicon. Why not enlighten me?

The Wonkette, LGF ? A walk down memory lane. I didn't think Charles was still around after his stunning left turn. I can't figure that one out unless he thought he'd get a job with Obama.

Harry Eagar said...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-don-yelton-daily-show-racist-remarks-voter-id-north-carolina-republican-20131025,0,677853.story#axzz2ilNzq0Iw

and

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/gop-senate-candidate-spoke-neo-confederate-conference-august

Extry points for finding an LA Times version?

I suppose erp will call these plants.


Harry Eagar said...

It is worth pointing out that when I supplied evidence of TP racism, the response of Guy and erp was not to dispute it but to complain about the tone of the source.

QED

Anonymous said...

No, my response was to wonder what the threshold was for being "under the control of racists". I also wondered why you needed recent events rather than dipping in to what you claim is a long history. Just let me know when is a good time to talk about Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright, if we're looking at racists associated with party leaders. Or someone bigoted enough to say about Obama, "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy". Or a Department of Justice that thinks civil rights depend on having the right skin color. Or Senator Robert Byrd.

But of course, you'll just weasel about all of that, how it's different.

Next up, the Muslim Brotherhood, judenhaas, and the Obama Administration.

Harry Eagar said...

Next time Wright pushes a bill through the Illinois legislature, let me know.

You don't have to school me about the many faces of racism.

Anonymous said...

Exactly as expected. The original claim was some guy waving a confederate flag at a rally indicted all of the GOP leadership there. But Obama spending 20 years in Wright's church, having his children baptizing by Wright, using a quote of his for the title for a book, doesn't count. This is why I laugh at you and your claims on this subject. It's not about racism, it's about political rhetoric, all show and no substance. So, yeah, whatever.

You don't have to school me about the many faces of racism.

Clearly not. You need to be schooled about not excusing them when it's politically convenient.

Harry Eagar said...

I didn't excuse Obama for his association with Wright. Since coming into office, he has shown no connection in his policies to Wright.

And flag guy's presence does indict the leadership, just as the roster of TP speakers at racist forums does.

Anonymous said...

You did excuse Obama's association with Wright by ignoring it. Obama attending such a racist forum doesn't indict him, but it does indict Tea Partiers (not that I believe your claim of "racist" forum in the first place). That's excusing.

As for flag guy, next time he pushes a bill through a legislature, let me know.

Harry Eagar said...

I didn't ignore Obama and Wright. So there's that.

Cruz was there. He is widely credited with organizing the passage of several bills through the House just lat month.

Anonymous said...

Obama was there. He literally signed many pieces of legislation in to law.

erp said...

aog, Obama actually signed them all didn't he? I don't remember that he vetoed anything?