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Writer suffers from lack of self awareness
It's like facial recognition technology: if the features match up, you conclude, "It's the same guy."Any programmer will tell you: don't trust to the infallibility of software.
See what I mean? The very slightest adjustment and it'll match the force that led to Thermidor and the Terror and the metric system. The Napoleonic wars may be upon us again. In both cases, we see an elite insisting on their "liberty," by which they mean the freedom to dominate. Worth noting: This jamoke was graduated from Harvard, the Comedy Central of the elites, from which nearly every elite who seeks to dominate discourse as well as individual freedom and choice matriculated. One man's liberty is another man's ruined lawn.
Citizens United was actually about freedom of speech, in which freedom of speech won a rare victory with the black robed Mandarins who ruled in its favor, which is intolerable to terminal fascists such as Andy. Back in the 1850s, the slaveholders insisted that their "liberty" meant that they had the right to take their human "property" anywhere in American territory, an insistence that swept aside the previously respected concerns of millions of their countrymen that there be regions of the country free of slavery. At issue was whether the states were (sovereign) states or provinces of a central government. Slavery was a symptom, not a cause. The politix of the period were pretty intricate, but it was Democrats--the same Dems we have now--versus the newly born Republican Party. In both cases, the use of the structures of American democracy was combined with a contempt for the democratic values that inspired our founders. Just like you and your fellow fascists are doing. Look into the mirror much, do you? Never having read the Federalist Papers, much less contemporary documents, the author can make the values that inspired our founders whatever he pleases. Nowadays, the Republicans have made a national effort to pass voter ID laws to address a non-existent problem of voter fraud-- a campaign that is itself a fraud whose transparent intent is to disenfranchise the vulnerable whose champions are the Republicans' opponents. To claim that voter fraud is non-existent in an age of 100%+ turnout in multiple areas, with people being jugged periodically for voting multiple times, is simple fraud. E pur se muove. Back in the years leading up to the Civil War, the slaveholders banned the distribution of anti-slavery writings, and sometimes suppressed anti-slavery talk by violence. Just as Citizens United sought to, and did resolve, to permit anyone to combine their resources to advertise their views. In both cases, the elites driving the polarization of the country justified their dominance by distorting, in belittling ways, the humanity of those they sought to exploit. "That's the guy!" Today's Republicans talk about the 47 percent, the half of the country they characterize as "takers," even though many of those 47 percent work multiple jobs just to make ends meet; and these Republicans vote to strip them of unemployment benefits, at a time of massive joblessness, in the mistaken belief that only desperation will get these lazy people to work. I think Republicans actually are talking about the 47 percent who did not vote for Barky. Back in the time of the Slave Power, the slaveholding class declared they were doing their black slaves a favor to discipline them into an ethic of work; freeing them would be cruel, the masters claimed, because those blacks were inherently too lazy and incompetent to survive on their own. In both cases, the idea of compromise became a dirty word, as the inflamed insistence on getting everything one's own way took hold of the inflamed side. Today's Republicans do not seek compromise, and the dynamics of the party are such that anyone who works toward compromise is demonized and run out of office by challenge from the more extreme, uncompromising wing of the party. Some Republicans do not seek to compromise on principles, and in fact seek out compromise from the left, which is never forthcoming. Back in the years leading up to the Civil War, the South's insistence on the unfettered expansion of their domain led to the overturning of the great Missouri Compromise, which had held the nation together for more than thirty years fracturing of the peace that instigated the return to the political arena of Abraham Lincoln, and set the nation on course to a bloody civil war. Shazam! In both cases, the powerful elite in the grip of that destructive force refused to accept that in a democracy sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and sometimes you have to accept being governed by a duly-elected president you don't like. But enough about the Democratic elites... Being duly elected means your power is necessarily limited, which this current president and his allies do not accept, just like your description of slaveowners.. Today's Republicans have done everything they could to nullify the presidency of Barack Obama, whom the American people duly elected twice. Like no other opposition party in American history, they have refused to accept the temporary minority status to which American voters have consigned them. Blocking the president from performing the function for which the people hired him has been their top priority. As the Democrats had done during Dubya's term, your side will do should another Republican gain the White House. There's nothing horrifying here. Obstruction is the game of the game under the Hastert rule of legislating. Back on the eve of the Civil War, the Southerners -- who had disproportionately dominated the upper echelons of the national government from the time of its founding -- considered the election of Abraham Lincoln an intolerable insult, and promptly made a unilateral decision to break apart the Union; they then raised an army to defend that decision, rather than accept the outcome of the democratic process and regroup for the next election. Under a civil democratic rule, you still have the right to oppose policy at every turn you can. It's called civil rights. Election of anyone doesn't mean that the game ends there and then, and you have to accept edicts. The game just changed, and you and your fellow fascists do not like that part of it. I won't accept the edicts of a fascist anymore than you would of a Republican. And I am cool with that. As with facial recognition, the configuration of the features tells us, "This is the same ugly thing, come back again." Same owner, too, as it turns out. In my upcoming series, "Press the Battle," I will be expanding on the ways in which disturbing patterns match up between these two eras. In those later postings, it will also be explained how it is that such patterns can endure and re-emerge in a cultural system over the course of generations. Good for you. I will be waiting patiently to trash it. Suffice it to say for now that, in its re-emerged form, this pattern or force or spirit has retained its destructive nature. Back in the mid-19th century, it broke the nation apart and gave us a nightmarish Civil War. And in our times, it is damaging everything in American civilization that it can reach. Posted by: badanov 2014-09-04 |
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