Waiting for Fitzgerald

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Exactly, and perhaps you should pay more attention to what the leaders of your political party are doing and saying. Blind faith is a sad testament to the rank and file lemmings participation in the system.

So, the DU and MoveOn are populated by the "leaders" of the Democratic Party? ::Snort::

Oh yeah, I can just see Bill and Hillary, and TK, and Donna Brazile, and Dean, and the 22 governors, etc. down in their basements typing away at their keyboards.

I would have thought there would be some photos of these leaders at the rallies . . .

S_A_M

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are talking like you are part of the deluded left that at first embraced Stalin and then when they realized how horrible things went you tried to argue that what happaned was because Stalin was insane and deluded and what happened was not the logical extension of the communist philosophy.

Someone like Stalin does not stay in power for as long as he did without a signficant portion of the people underneath him believing in the philosophy of what he is doing. Everything he did could be justified as part of his communist philosophy.

Stalin took a backward rural national and turned it into an industrial power house. His country was wiped out during WWII and yet he turned it into one the most advanced and industrialized economies in the world.

He just had to slaughter twenty percent of the population to do it. But the other eighty percent ended up with a much higher standard of living.

The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few.

You are talking like a member of the indoctrinated right that first believed Stalin was the embodiment of Capital C Communism that had to be defeated as an all-encompassing ideology and to be justified required subservience by the masses to the works of Karl Marx but also ignores the possibility that much of the people's subservience was possibly obtained not so much by ideology as by the crushing rule of a totalitarian regime focused on preserving its existence, which may be analogous in some ways to Baathist rule, which we'll leave aside for the moment because of potentially uncomfortable parallells to finding yourself arguing that some Iraqis actually bought in to Baathist ideology, such as it was, and didn't actually starve from the thirst for freedom that they would've seized years ago but for the iron hand of the Evil Fucker Saddam.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
True. We anxiously await the first exercise of same.

I can lend you time machine, and you go back to the start of the Afghan war. That was the first exercise of the same in this century.

And your boys in the demo establishment are doing a great job with West Wing. Lots of new energy in the plots.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
True. As a Dem (assuming he is), it is inconceivable that SHP would ever have met anyone who loves freedom and hates tyranny.


Ah, Monday morning..... reading Penske's posts, and the smell of asshole is in the air.

Maybe that is the aroma of your upper lip that you are sensing.

I don't know what SHP is, but judging by his posts here, it is irrelevant whether he has met someone who loves freedom and hates tyrrany, the point is he wouldn't be able to recognize such a person, unless he was looking for his polar opposite.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
So, the DU and MoveOn are populated by the "leaders" of the Democratic Party? ::Snort::

Oh yeah, I can just see Bill and Hillary, and TK, and Donna Brazile, and Dean, and the 22 governors, etc. down in their basements typing away at their keyboards.

I would have thought there would be some photos of these leaders at the rallies . . .

S_A_M

Moveon and the DU do their advance work. And are claiming that Moveon and Michael Moore didn't provide coordinated assistance to the Kerry campaign? Please let's not be so naive here.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are talking like you are part of the deluded left that at first embraced Stalin and then when they realized how horrible things went you tried to argue that what happaned was because Stalin was insane and deluded and what happened was not the logical extension of the communist philosophy.

It is when you post like this that you are at your most offensive.
[I'd say, any other comments, pro or con?]

I just said that I don't think Stalin truly believed that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. I am of the opinion that he was (among other things) opportunistic, power-hungry, and quite a bit megalomaniacal. OTOH, as Bilmore argued, he may also (or instead) have been a true believer.

Go fuck yourself.

S_A_M

ETA: I am not and have never been even a socialist, much less a communist, but I have to say this: The Soviet Union was not "the logical extension of the communist philosophy" any more that the U.S.A. is "the logical extension" of the writings of John Locke.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is when you post like this that you are at your most offensive.
[I'd say, any other comments, pro or con?]

Fair assessment, but at least the post didn't also say that you needed to Pay Attention.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Fair assessment, but at least the post didn't also say that you needed to Pay Attention.

PoPD tag team. Impressive.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
PoPD tag team. Impressive.

Oh, for God's sake, stop punting with this. You're phoning it in more pathetically than Alan Arkin in Glengarry, Glen Ross.

From its use, I'm guessing that "PoPD" is Penskespeak for "you meanie!"

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
No, actually I wasn't. Re-read the original post S_A_M responded to. Why when I don't direct comments to you do you internalise and personalise them and when I do you blatantly lie or otherwise distort where I am directing them?????????????

Why are you incapable of detecting obvious sarcasm? Is it the film of shit that coats your eyes?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Oh, for God's sake, stop punting with this. You're phoning it in more pathetically than Alan Arkin in Glengarry, Glen Ross.

From its use, I'm guessing that "PoPD" is Penskespeak for "you meanie!"

It's "Politics of Personal Destruction". My anti-bias, tolerant hate-free philosophy just doesn't understand why the invective has to be so personalised. You can disagree with him without the personal disparagement and "fuck yous", the latter of which seem to be the comeback of choice here and/or irl from the lefties. Are you guys that bereft of substantive reply that "fuck you" or other like hate-speech is all that there is?

SAd. I imagine FDR is spinning in his grave.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Why are you incapable of detecting obvious sarcasm? Is it the film of shit that coats your eyes?

Because, as an mod, I look at the html code behind your post and didn't see [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] brackets. I regret the misunderstanding.

"Film of shit"? Gatti, this is not PoPD how? Is this a reference to the fact that I have (shite) brown eyes?!?!?!

Forgetting for a second that such a reference is outable, and uncool as such, Sidd, I am compelled to ask, are you biased against people with brown eyes?

Bias and hate: Not cool.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I am barely tuned into this discussion (when did the "P" in "PB" come to stand for Philosophy?), but this statement caught my eye.



Would you say the same about Saddam Hussein? Qaddafi? Castro?


Under your neo-con philosophy, assuming we could have invaded the USSR without triggering a nuclear war, would we have been justified in doing so to prevent the carnage that Stalin wreaked? Should we have told Patton to go for it, back in '45?

Yes. Patton should have gone it because we knew we were getting the bomb. Once we had the bomb and they didn't we should have told Stalin to hold free elections or face annihilation. It would have saved hundreds of millions of lives that were killed by Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is when you post like this that you are at your most offensive.
[I'd say, any other comments, pro or con?]

To be fair, this was the reaction of the hard-core neo-socialists here back then as word of the excesses (like, the first eight million were just statistics, but the REST, you know, was excess . . .) filtered out. There was a lot of support voiced for the humanitarian system of socialism, and Stalin was initially framed as the benevolent father of that meritorious movement, and thus a lot of resistance to the idea that he might be . . . ya know . . . icky.

I think the NYT still hangs a Pulitzer devoted to this theme.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
It's "Politics of Personal Destruction".

Damn. I thought it meant "Pick on Penske day."