This is not your case, Neo. Well nuanced, thoughtful, literate writings are found here. Of good depth. For which all of us thank you. It’s always worthwhile to visit.

From Neo’s link. It’s nice to know the Army PR office was just as incompetent back then as they are now.

Don’t feel too bad, America recovered. Look at Britain, they drove the fatal hara kiri into themselves when they sacked Churchill after the war and instituted Labour, the Democratic Socialism that is eating the British soul even now as we speak. As bad as America looks historically, it could be worse. We could have lost, both the military and the social war.

The Democrats cry a lot of warnings about how dictators use wars to change national characters and destinies, the primary they do so is because they’ve had a lot of experience and success with Roosevelt (D) doing the same thing they accuse Bush of.

It’s just projection. Because they don’t want to admit that Roosevelt had so much success because of a war, and not because his ideas on the economy were right. The fake liberals assume Bush is doing what they themselves did. The cynical ones do believe so, the ones in denial use projection and say Bush is using war to obtain power and that this would never be something they or their party would condone.

Except there is no President in American history that got 4 terms, which means 4 X 4 which is 16 years. President for Life. Is that a democracy? Truman dropped the pocking atom bomb, don’t even talk about how Roosevelt was required for the war effort.

The Democrats cry out their whinny little lungs about Bush being a warmonger, but that’s just to mislead you into not looking at the history of Democratic Presidents. Starting with Jefferson.

Freedom from violence, freedom from hunger, freedom to worship, and freedom to life are the four freedoms in my mind. They need not be constrained by the intellectual brackets Norman or Roosevelt put up. Things of ideas, are not so restricted in history.

As to “how” humans behave in a heirarchy and through leadership, that is simple. A human being feels personal loyalty to the person that protects his family, his children, and his own self. That human will follow his leader to hell, or any where else for that matter. It is imbedded in our genetic code, you cannot remove it. This is true of EVERY human being on this planet, in ALL of history.

You can overrule the compulsion of course, just like you can overrule the urge to mate and the urge to kill and the urge to defecate in public.

But in the end, America followed Roosevelt to the New Deal because Roosevelt was a leader. He had an iron determination with an iron will. And even though his ideas donkey ballz, his will carried him throughout his Presidency and throughout the time he had been alive.

Roosevelt, in essence, was our answer to Hitler. Churchill, was our answer to Stalin and Hitler.

Given a choice between a Churchill ending or a Roosevelt ending, I’d have chosen a Roosevelt ending, regardless of the detriments. Because I wouldn’t live in Britain of the 21st century if you paid me 5 life salaries to. Money will do me no good if I am dead or a slave, which is what tends to happen if you start living in Europe.

History has a lot of dirty tricks, that the Democrats have learned. Unfortunately, the Democrats disabled our public education system by having the government run it. Thereby cutting off any possibility of a future threat, when the New Generation learns history and all the counter-tricks.

The internet, however, was not in the Democrat’s plans, nor was it in the Social Democracy’s new utopian plans either.

Technology saves the human race, once again. And may it forever go on blessing the good people of the United States of America.

My point in bringing this up is that the propaganda here is hardly right wing. In fact throwing ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’ together with the other two from the bill of rights was rather radical, and certainly not rooted in American traditions. And the images provide support for Roosevelts politics over those of his opponents.

That today these paintings can be thought of as reactionary shows the extent to which Roosevelt was sucessful. Of course he served in desperate times, but I still can’t really understand how he did it all – changing the fundamental nature of American discourse permanently.

No-one reads Zola? Ugh! I’ve read a lot more Zola than Dickens. Sure he’s much more idealogical than Dickens, but he’s also more direct. Maybe those are related.

I’ve always liked Rockwell’s works — his sense of humor and whimsy, his hyperrealism of depicting every wrinkle of clothing and crease of forehead, and, yes, his subject matter. I found his paintings, most of them, to be tremendously inspiring — they encouraged me to aspire to the best that was within me.

There is, perhaps, a fine line between art that makes you think and art that tells you what to think, as Neo said. But let’s not blur that line unnecessarily. If we depict all art as propaganda, or even potential propaganda, we effectively dismiss it all — and why on Earth would we want to do that?

Personally, I prefer inspirational art, be it paintings, music, cinema, whatever. I am not lacking for influences that speak to my baser instincts. (Have a look at TV and magazine ads.) It’s artwork that inspires me to do better that seems so scarce, and is all the more valuable for that.

Ymarsakar: I agree that a movie about Uday and Qusay, culminating in the firefight that killed them, is a great idea. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone in Hollywood to make such a film — although I’m sure it would be tremendously popular across America, except for the critics — which says a lot about Hollywood’s priorities today.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

As if the two could be casually divorced! And should if could!

If the world’s too large to fit in a mind, reduce the world!

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

– Doc Johnson

The coldest-eyed, hardest-hearted realist understands that without ideals around which to rally forces he is dead, and not in the long run…

Well, you need to try again then, Bezuhov, because I didn’t say what you quoted.

Your philosophy is based upon ideas. Mine is based upon the will.

There is a difference, even among Republicans between ideas and will.

While not being mutually exclusive, they are quite different foundations for thought.

If you don’t want to take my word for the description of my own position, Bez, then so be it.

To Neo,

I encourage you to rewrite the post about reproductive rights, Neo. Since I’m curious as to further analyses on your part. Think of this as a great opportunity, to condense your previous lost post even further.

That’s like asking what ice means, since water already has a definition of it.

You use ice to describe the solid state of water. That doesn’t mean ice means the same as water, which also encompasses the definition of water as a solid.

If you are refering to ice, you use ice, not the water word. If you are refering to the gaseous form of water, you use the word mist. Saying water means whatever you decided it to mean in one specific sentence, does not equal a dictionary.

As for Munich, I don’t watch enemy propaganda. I saw Nick Berg’s execution, simply because I wanted to see whether their propaganda could damage me on a psychological level, comparable to the damage it did to my friends and associates, who for the main part said they were disgusted and sadened and demoralized. It did not demoralize me, all mental faculties were at work deciphering the message and understanding it.

After watching Nick Berg’s execution, Munich wouldn’t be very interesting.

Suspense is propaganda, it is the art of convincing the audience to be in suspense. The ends to which it can be used, is the ends to which your breathing is used for, steve.

Should I deplore what I don’t notice?

Weren’t you noticing that the propaganda technique was rather confusing and not effective, then?

And needless to say many people had very strong opinions about it to the left and right of me.

Why would anyone be ignorant enough to have an opinion of a piece of propaganda? it is what it is.

I do not think propaganda is necessarily bad. I just don’t think most creative people are engaged in it. I think they are more interested in filling the form properly, and eliciting cash and/or emotional catharsis as well.

Speaking Truth to Power steve, Truth to Power. I hat thought you would remember that.

It is weird you ask what propaganda is, steve, especially since I had already answered that before you asked the question.

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/index.htm

All nations are represented, both friend and foe. Of course, there are the cliche Huns and the infamous ‘Belgian Milkmaids’, but I’d say the majority of efforts, from both sides, take the higher road, celebrating the courage of the soldiers, the rightness of the cause, the hope for victory.
Also, here and there the artistic quality is inspired.
Now it’s hard not to judge it all as pure and evil propaganda, nothing but the screechings and whoopings of witchdoctors in the service of the homocidal maniacs who sent millions of young men to the slaughterhouse.
But I think that’s a smug and easy way out of a hard question.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of a war, when your own country’s bleeding, what in hell are you supposed to do, if you’re an artist or a writer? Just sit on your high moral cloud? Give me those ‘propagandists’ who at least knew where their duty lay.

BTW, that’s why I hate profoundly the communicating class in America today.