An alternate theory of Obama
We spend an awful lot of time wondering what’s really going on inside Obama’s mind. What motivates him? Is he a committed ideologue or a front for something else?
This comment by SteveG regarding Obama and Holder’s decisions in the KSM trial got me to thinking:
Obama is holding NYC hostage. WHY?…Obama is in the process of deliberately angering his own political base, and I think they are waking up.
Obama is doing a magical thing, something no one else in the world is capable of doing. He is creating conservatives out of life-long Democrats.
Well, I’m not sure no one else in the world has ever done this. Jimmy Carter gave it a go, for example. But Obama does seem to be accomplishing it at a record pace.
I’m also not sure it’s a truly permanent turn to conservatism on the part of the changers. It may just be something akin to the Reagan Democrat phenomenon, which I don’t believe lasted a lifetime for most people. Moreover, the majority of the Obama-voters-turned-Republican-voters seem to have been Independents, not Democrats at all.
However, musing on the phenomenon has given me a new solution to the Obama puzzle: he is a Republican mole who infiltrated the Democratic Party, got the nomination, and won the presidency, all for the express purpose of discrediting the liberal agenda for a generation.
I think HuffPo is part of the same conspiracy. Exposing the ignorance, bigotry, and nastiness of the liberal elite was it’s true mission.
Reagan democrat here, just checking in…
😀
Could this “tactic” have been coded in Alinsky’s playbook?
Soooo, when O starts moving to the middle we will know for sure…..
I agree wholeheartedly with neo that the political parties each hold about a third of the electorate and fight to grab the bigger slice of the middle third. But, something else is happening, at least anecdotally from my own experience, since Obama was elected. Not only are more persons identifying themselves as Republicans in the polls, but in the last several weeks callers to conservative radio hosts, such as Rush, start off the conversation by saying, in a most respectful manner, “I have been a life long Democrat but [ something or other ] got me to listening to you and now I agree with most of what you are saying….” The host is almost speechless in response. It is a wonderful moment to share.
I think that gives him too much credit, even if it is a joke. Your earlier observations on his hubris are more likely the real story.
Hi Caroline!
I think the President is incompetent. I used to think former President Clinton was the Republican of the 90’s. I think President Obama is inventing it as he goes along.
I think that this is one of the best readings I have seen yet. Think about it: is Obama a traditional Democrat or has he modeled himself on the Republican idea of the radicalism of the progressive left.
And, who in human history has converted so many Democrats and Independents to the Republican party in so short a period of time.
Clearly, Obama’s failure will discredit leftist thought far more effectively than any argument.
Maybe the people who thought that he was a Manchurian candidate were only partly right. They did not understand that it was really Dick Cheney and Karl Rove who were pulling the strings.
He’s a face cream AND a floor wax!
I think he is Karl Rove in disguise in an insidious plot to destroy the Democratic party.
Frankly I feel you are all underestimating Obama. He is obviously discrediting the democratic party prior to switching parties so he can run as a conservative Republican in 2012.
Think I kidding, in his SOTU he denounced runaway spending and behind closed doors dealings, I said then and I say it now, he is running against himself.
Rove= Obama? Hmmmm…I’ve never seen them together. coincidence?
Pat Condells new video on the Wilders trial:
http://aron2201sperber.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/when-the-truth-is-against-the-law/
Greetings from Europe
I dont know. right now i am reading a paper that studied the literature in the libraries of certain people. that is, what did they read.
i do know that obama read martin malia’s biography of pushkin… whether he met malia, i dont know. its interesting, because if you read what they read, you get an idea of what they used to formulate their ideas and the goals, and such. even more so if the libraries books contain marginalia written by such. often, i have noticed a common thread. the thread is a kind of focus on the one subject that puts them clearly in the camp of the fellow traveler at minimum.
if you havent read, then you have no idea. I have tried to get some of the smarter ones here to read some of them at least. for its a shoe in, that if they idolize someone, and want similar things taht they are going to read similar literature. what i find scary is that i have read so much of the same literature in passing interest. once one reads all these things, then one realizes that the people reading them are not idiots, but they often are not read wide enough to think their way out of the box that reading all this singular category gives you. ie, you formulate your world view this way.
there are 19,500 titles in the Stalin library(he is thought to have read most of them and many more from other sources. the guys into this are HEAVY readers. lenins books are 38 volumes over 700 pages each). the library was broken up and 14,000 were handed to various libraries. (mostly refernce) the remaining are in the former library of the IML…the best ones are the 390 titles containing hand written notes!!!
In May 1925 Stalin composed a systematic classification according to 32 /subjects, and twelve authors whom he wanted to be listed separately.
The handwritten document has been published in Dmitrii Volkogonov’s Triumf i Tragediia.3 The named authors were Marx and Engels, three other foreign Marxists (Kautsky, Lafargue, Luxemburg) and Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotskii, Radek, Zinov’ev, Kamenev and Bukharin. This is in itself interesting because it highlights a narrow focus on Marxism.
Roughly three-quarters of the 390 titles in the fond Stalina concerned communist ideology and tactics.
thats 300 books out of 400 that are all on one subject. marxism and tactics to achieve it. and someone who idolizes him, from say a mentor like ayers (a stalinist), would recomend much similar writing! how do yuo think they all know the same collective answer?
one book on (non-military) technology, two on juridical matters, three on languages, four on geography
eight on philosophy (including historical Materialism), 23 on military history military technology and the art of war, 27 on economic science, and 36 on history (excluding histories of the communist party and military history, but including diplomatic history). 36 on history from before the time of revisioning history!!!!!!!!!!
most of the books on history were Soviet ones, published in theUSSRafter 1917. Furthermore, nineteen out of the 36 titles on history were text-books or schoolbooks.
so waht does that tell you about the idiot theory? remember, we have people right here that are supposedly better edumacated who wont read long tracts, follow links and learn waht the people they are comemting on, thinking about, musing as to ends, are and have read!!!!!!!!! they have decided to know they enemy by only one method, knowing themselves poorly…
In sum, judging from the available titles, Stalin’s library does not give any serious indication that its owner was interested in other systems of thought than Marxism. This is, incidentally, confirmed by the almost complete absence of references to non-Marxist philosophers or theorists in the Sochineniia, even negative ones. It is particularly interesting to establish that the library contained nothing at all written by Slavophiles, Panslavists or adherents to other conservative Russian tendencies of thought. This seems to put the established fact of Stalin’s inspiration by the Russian past in a somewhat different light. He may have learned a lot about it, inspired as he was by its imperial glamour, and, admiring the tsars for their heavy-handed olicies, he emulated them, but he was simply not interested in the systems of thought which traditional Russia produced.
our president has had a similar thing…that is, he is not incompetent nor an idiot…he is the product of a sovietized history and reading focus. who cares how many states there WERE in the US? who cares what economic system that will be destroyed functions like? a complet and total focus to the one cause.
i will leave with this
I found that the Soviet dictator in his old age still read the first “classic” attentively, for instance his Critique of the Gotha Program. In a 1951 copy of it he marked large sections with pencil. One of the passages he underlined was the remark that between capitalist and communist society there can be nothing “but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
and i also cant give a link as you have to have access to the journals of the world thrugh springerlink and the other services like nexia.
(so unless everyone has that access, i have no choice but to paste)
In a 1937 copy of his Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates Engels called the ancient Athenian state a “democratic republic.” Stalin nderlined “democratic” and added “ha-ha…” The book is full of “Ha-ha,” “Not very convincing,” “So what?,” and other such remarks. Sometimes he was more explicitly critical. Where Engels wrote that in a class society every advance in production signified “a regress in the situation of the oppressed class,” Stalin added in the margin: “Not completely.”9 This different attitude towards Engels, in comparison to Marx and Lenin, which Stalin showed in his private study, corresponded to a different public posture. On several occasion the Soviet leader chose Engels as the anvil to strike on, when he proclaimed a deviation from Marxist orthodoxy. It was always Engels, not Marx or Lenin, who had been “not completely clear,” or “correct at that time” but now no more etc.
when you read aobut them you start to recognize turns of phrase that they use. and in a way, one can recognize each other by these referrences whom the others know nothing about! like a secret club they can speak in code by referencing things that you are ignorant of, and so do not even know they made the refernce. those last lines of phrase are familiar to obama. when he says, not completely clear.. let me make myself clear… what we did was ok in the past it was correct for taht time, but now… (those are not quotes) its just that we pick up turns of phrase from what we read and do, we do this with current reading. so to those IN THE KNOW, we know by thousands of little clues that we cant show others, as those others dont read.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Neo, it is an interesting question. I have wondered for awhile whether he was a puppet, or an ideologue; whether he was nefariously brilliant or just incompetent. But, I have given up on trying to analyze him. I am only focused on results.
Unfortunately, he has already done incalculable damage. Just his deficits will cause near irreparable harm. The damage to relations with allies; and the messages of weakness to adversaries may never be repaired.
What causes the loathing that the elite have for the common man? that is, why do so many in the elite sphere hate the average joe?
its not a hard question to answer…
in fact if your part of that group and dont have that hate, then why not?
The cog dis over civil trials does seem quite strong.
Now might be a good time to circulate the old arguments about the dumb O speech putting down the military trials of today while holding up past ones…
As to lefties… I think since so much of what they pressure for is based on agiprop, the longer they are separated from the collective the harder it is to go back (ie, it’s changed and morphed so much while they were gone it seems unfamiliar).
I live on the upper west side and if anyone here has converted I’ve not seen it. Not quite as gung ho? Maybe. I asked a friend if he knows of any big time Messiah supporters who’ve turned and he can’t think of a single one.
Pile on. Tell me how completely wrong I am because I really, really want to be.
OT, but many of you will enjoy this Bill Whittle link, which includes valuable graphs. I thought about sending it to my husband, but don’t want to ruin my marriage. He thinks Bush spent as much as Obama’s been doing.
http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2010/02/08/party-time/
As the saying goes, if your enemy is making a mistake, do not interrupt him.
rsb . . .
As my previous comment shows, it’s very hard to convert Obama supporters. Liberals WANT to believe because their identities are wrapped up in being liberals, and therefore people who “know what’s right” even if they don’t know a damn thing.
The upper west sides is, of course, Ground Zero for this kind of ignorant thinking.
I love to observe the people who read the New York Times at my local Starbucks (in Chicago). You can tell by the way they dress that they listen to NPR and think that they’re so very well informed. WFMT in Chicago purveys the same kind of blinkered view when it reports the so-called news.
Most liberals have only a tiny peephole into reality.
Obama can’t help it. He and all lead democrats are elitist snobs who know better how you should live your life than you do.
Pretty much the exact description of a closed minded fundamentalist come to think of it. You never see setbacks slow down the devoutly religious. They pick up the pace and preach louder.
rsb Says:
“Pile on. Tell me how completely wrong I am because I really, really want to be.”
I figure now is the time to pile on them with good arguments. It is not yet done, it is the opening.
rsb: Here’s one.
As I said, it’s mainly Independents who have converted. But some Democrats have.
Another Reagan Democrat checking in here. NEVER WENT BACK.
It WAS a conversion. Lasted a life-time wth me.
That being said, I have raher doubt that Obama is doing it on purpose. He is a Marxist Leninist.
Perhaps some people never really understood who the Democrats actually were. It would be intersting to see a generational break down of the :conservative converts”, if in fact there are any. It is really hard for me to believe any polls. We sill see at the ballot box.
Promethea, Bookworm in her blog mentioned some time back that her very liberal husband gets all of his news from the NY Times, NPR and a couple of other similar sources.
He is convinced that he is very well informed. He is tuned in to the “very best” sources. But, when she told him of certain well documented not-so-positive things that Obama had said, or done, he was astonished. You see, they had not been reported in the media from which he receives his information.
rsb, I do not doubt you at all. However, on a positive note, I just saw a poll (can’t provide a reference) that reported that Obama had lost a huge percentage of the Independents. They are the key. I know it is not fashionable in some circles, but I give Independents credit for some degree of logical thinking about where they throw their support.
SteveH: really now, cease the religious bigotry. You are just spitting out lefty agitprop. One doubts that you do know a single devout Christian. They are not like this at all–this is just a projection of Marxists onto some good and decnt people who merely vote their conscience. It is a caricature you put forward, not a reality. Shame on you.
I believe that Obama is executing his agenda to the fullest extent possible – its just that we wish that he was something that he clearly is not.
He is a Marxist juggernaut. He is pulling this nation towards socialism as a locomotive pulls a train, overcoming inertia slowly and building speed with every turn of the crankshaft.
We have attempted to pull the emergency stop with the elections in New Jersey, Virginia & Massachusetts but it remains to be seen if we were to late to the alarm.
Indeed, the damage to date has been great and will likely get worse unless and until a new Congress can be seated.
rsb wrote”
I live on the upper west side and if anyone here has converted I’ve not seen it. Not quite as gung ho? Maybe. I asked a friend if he knows of any big time Messiah supporters who’ve turned and he can’t think of a single one.”
Two quotes come to mind, the first by Pres. Wilson,
“Reason will not take out of a person’s mind what reason didn’t put there.”
The other, “when everyone thinks alike no one thinks very much.”
I suspect the upper west sidites (and many others) have a fashionthink (a useful word I invented) that is tied up with their identity in some way. Maybe at one time it confered some evolutionary advantage.
Local political opinions would probably change if some sexy Conservatives moved into the neighborhood.
This is OT, but I think it might interest people here.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676799,00.html
Remember how The Won was going to change our image in the world with a speech in Berlin. Well, that didn’t work, so now the rather useless EU is under the bus. It sounds like he is bored by it.
Gates seems to be handling all the Iran sanctions dealing, as well as Afghanistan. Where is Hillary? Whatever one thinks of Gates, he is the only grown-up in the execcutive branch. I’m glad Obama inherited him from Bush.
I live on the upper west side and if anyone here has converted I’ve not seen it. Not quite as gung ho? Maybe. I asked a friend if he knows of any big time Messiah supporters who’ve turned and he can’t think of a single one.
rsb: I doubt many big-time Obama supporters have turned, but I imagine most of them are confused, embarrassed, and holding their tongues.
I live in a blue-blue city and no one’s making with the Obama love any more.
Even from the media you don’t hear any more “leg tingle,” “sort of a god,” “three-dimensional chess” comments.
I also do a Daily Kos sweep every week or two and there’s not much Obama love there either.
These liberals married the guy and found out that he’s not the one true love and hero he seemed to be while courting. In fact he drinks and smokes and writes bad checks.
Now they’re just trying to get through the marriage and hoping that there aren’t too many more nasty surprises ahead.
“upper west side” of what town?
turfmann,
You are being way too pessimistic, IMHO, the net effect of Obamism has been to inchoate the US against his leftist rot.
Obama is a placeholder now, the smarter dems will try and avoid him. I suspect the only thing that might save him temporarily would be if he stood up to America’s enemies in crisis. Fat chance of that happening.
“”One doubts that you do know a single devout Christian.””
hattip
Who said anything about Christians? Closed minded fundamentalist infest all religions and world views. Obama and democrats no exception.
Don’t be to hard on the liberals for living in a media bubble. Certainly we have seen our share of news items the MSM has ignored or downplayed to protect the Dems and further the “script’ as Rush calls it.
I am not sure any of us are getting the full story.
It seems even Drudge Report is ignoring an ongoing series of Church fires we are having here in East Texas. Last night two burned down three miles from each other. And at least two more were broken into. This brings the total to around 9 or 10 burnt down in this area since the begginning of the year. Have you seen this covered by the national media? It does not fit the script. Every interview I have seen with pastors/ members of these churches were white people. I am not saying, non of the congregations were minority, I am just saying every interview I have seen it has been white congregations. (Not saying it is racism causing these attacks either, but i am saying the national media does not see a chance to holler “racism” so they ignore it). how often does this happen and the national media ignores it? makes me wonder? I link to a local station:
http://www.kltv.com/Global/category.asp?C=7845
I don’t have a theory about whether he’s secretly a repub or anything else. Personally though I’d like to see him be the next super bowl act. I can easily envision him doing some rock lip sinking with a guitar across his chest and where maybe he throws in some high kicks now and then like a weak Van Halen. That seems like an easy transformation for him to make. Of course, I wouldn’t be watching though.
The scales have been falling from my eyes in stages. I knew the MSM was biased years ago. Then when I discovered Newsbusters.org and read it for a while I realized it was worse than I thought. Then watching the election coverage and what the MSM was hiding alerted me to a new level of how bad it is. But now, these last few weeks, hearing of local churches burning to the ground and nary a peep I have heard from the national media, (did I just miss it?) makes me realize it may even be worse than I thought! What is going on elsewhere in the country that we are not being told about if the National media ignores this? I link to a second article with a list of fires in East Texas (I have heard one report of a fire in central Texas that is not on this list) and a facebook page that was set up for victims of the fire(s).
http://www.cbs19.tv/Global/story.asp?S=11954507
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=265327175962
Krauthammer’s take is that Obama is “at sea” and is not following any strategy. The fellow appears to be in over his head. Clinton was a much more adept politician.
“upper west side” of what town?
NYC of course.
jon baker,
I saw the Texas church burning story on Fox this evening, the Shepard Smith hour at 7 PM, EST. My first thought was that we’re not likely to see much, if anything, about it on the broadcast networks or in the major print media (which I guess together comprise the MSM). My second thought was that we’re likely to see this sort of thing increase. It would not surprise me to see a growing, and relatively uncontested, assault on Christians in the coming weeks, months, and maybe years. Christians have been the low-key bug-bears of the Left for a long time. They (we) are a good all-purpose target-of-opportunity for the Left, and the Left is going to be looking for a rich target in the near- and mid-term. They’ve been laying the groundwork on several fronts for some time, and it’s getting to the point where they seriously need an enemy. Christians are generally painted as dim-wits, and there is no enemy the Left prefers to a dim-witted lot, giving them a chance (as it does) to emphasize their preferred self-image as enlightenment’s heirs.
No one will pay much attention, at least not in terms of needing to protect Christians. You want to talk about hate? This is actual, active hate–in action.
Krauthammer’s take is that Obama is “at sea” and is not following any strategy. The fellow appears to be in over his head.
Mr. Frank: Ultimately that’s my theory.
Take this health care bipartisan summit dealie. That’s a campaign strategy.
No sensible person believes that three hours of television time between Obama and representatives from both parties is going to lead to some new breakthrough.
It’s not like the Republicans will offer some idea and Obama will say, “Oh, snap! That’s the missing piece,” and healthcare will be enacted 24 hours later.
Obama doesn’t know what to do, but he knows he can handle Republicans when TV cameras are pointed at them, so that’s what he’s going to do.
huxley: yes, I figured NYC, just wanted to remind folks it not the only city in the world. Nor the largest population.
betsybounds: thanks for the update. I agree with what you said. Though some suspect they are using the fire here to cover up thefts-but they keep hitting churches- and torching them, not buisinesses. So that says something.
Texans have to be reminded they are not the only Great state in the Union and New Yorkers have to be reminded they are not the only Great city in the world. lol
jon baker: Texas is looking mighty good, these days, mighty good.
Remember the quote:
A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.
Obama’s only tool in his political toolbox is the Alinsky political attack. From bankers to automakers to Republicans, He’s built his entire career on the Alinsky strategy — isolate your enemy. Attack him. He does this consistantly against anyone who he comes into even the slightest conflict with. Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber.
The problem for him is that his ham fisted approach to his agenda — from health care to stimulus to counterterrorism — is bringing him and his party into conflict with a majority of Americans. Obama is trying to use the Alinsky approach against a majority of the population, and is systematically mugging all the liberals in America.
You are right. He is turning them into conservatives. But not by design. It’s because his only political tool is a blunt, very bloody axe.
I can’t wait to see his face after the November elections.
RE: “However, musing on the phenomenon has given me a new solution to the Obama puzzle: he is a Republican mole who infiltrated the Democratic Party, got the nomination, and won the presidency, all for the express purpose of discrediting the liberal agenda for a generation.”
What is this, ‘Tourette’s Tuesday’? Seriously Neo, I laughed so hard I wet myself! Does this make Michelle a huckster for McDonald’s fries, secretly fighting for big-butts? After all, we Americans are notably cantankerous and rebel against heavy handedness like cats being herded.
Yet, you might be correct:
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/february-2-2010/pres-obama-proposes-cut-180-border-patrol-agents.html?jid=349012&lid=9&rid=3000&tid=958248
@Artfldgr
Thank you for your essay. I hope you don’t mind if I start keeping a library of your essays. I wish Neo-con would stop shortening them.
What has amazed me is that commentators here and at similar sights do not understand evil – Evil -: Late 19th and 20th century, even now, is educated; it is not ignorant; it is systematic; it is intelligent; it is a religion. Evil has built a citadel of intellect: the truth is suppressed under unrighteousness (Paul).
I think that the commonly held idea of evil is that its practitioners are stupid- cunning but stupid, ignorant: the thug down the alley is evil; the well dressed gentleman is just foolish; may be eccentric: so what if he belongs to a secret society: those who point this evil out are the kooks. In addition, Evil is not considered as interconnected and complex: that the king of this world exists and is active: and who will dare to believe that the opposing concepts and organized systems are sides of the same coin.
Glenn Beck has realized and is crying out that Progressivism (US Marxism) is the organizing construct: both of the parties are held in its grasp: to choose a Republican “moderate” to oppose a Democrat is merely to choose the same ideology – the same result. If done on a lesser scale, then, it is not misunderstanding to consider that the Father of Lies can and does create seemingly opposing systems of deception which have the same end.
@ jon baker
One or two church may be coincidence but this many cannot be. Someone is waging war: a religious genocide. If these were Black churches we would have heard of them.
My alternative view of Obama? QUite simple, he is the Anti-Gorbachev. Gorbachev believed the Socialist propaganda until he travelled abroad and found that his worker’s paradise was actually a prison. Then he worked to try to reform his prison and accidentally upended his country. Obama fully believes all the socialist propaganda from the intellectual left that has been hidden from view of much of the American electorate. His push to implement this socialist agenda has removed the concealing veil, enabling the populace to see the prison he is trying to build. Just like the supporters of Stalin would write letters to him thinking that if he only knew what his local thugs were doing he would stop it, the American electorate still clings somewhat to the notion that the blank-canvas image of the “post-racial, post-partisan” they projected on him will return.
However, once these pockets of clingers realize what he is, the will become very vocal, just as the convert always sings louder at church.
I think, ultimately, we may have been blessed by good luck (or divine providence) by Obama being the Dem nominee in 2008. After 8 years of a Republican presidency, it may have been an uphill struggle for the candidacy of another Republican. Theres in pendulum effect in American politics, and this notion of “change” (however vague) always comes up after one party has been in power awhile.
But Obama was like brief sugar rush… a lot of excitement on the part of liberals and the left for this smooth talking orator. But after the rush has worn off, there is reality to contend with. In office, Obama has been utterly clueless in so many ways. He has truly been in over his head, and now has 3 more years of this.
Maybe this is luck or providence: I think Hillary Clinton or some of the pother candidates would have been much more savy and effective (“effective” that is, from the left point of view). But Obama and his cluelessness, his tin-eared attempt to force through leftists programs that most of the public doesnt want, are having the effect of turning the country against him. As Steve G said, this is a “magical thing” indeed.
rsb – With regard to your neighbors and how their views might be changing I have two suggestions.
1. If you have not done so already, I strongly suggest that you read neo’s “A mind is a difficult thing to change: my change story.” It is the first article in the right hand column.
2. If you have the nerve, put on a Bush or Palin button and take a stroll through the neighborhood. You might be surprised.
There is another minor miracle that is so obvious that we tend to overlook it. Obama has brought the Maine sisters firmly into the Republican party (well, at least for this month). The apparent disdain for their independent views and the relative ease with which the Obami believe that they can pick off one or the other in a pinch has finally gotten through to them. By the way, I think they are both terrific for having minds of their own. But if there was ever a time for party unity, this is it. And they know it.
Neo, you really pushed the hot button with this topic. Good for you.
There are clearly a multitude of theories and opinions on the subject of what makes Obama tick. I am impatiently looking forward to the day when it will be a subject for historians.
I don’t always agree with Charles Krauthammer (don’t tell my wife) but, he is a trained Psychiatrist and worth listening to on this subject.
what is not understood here is the motivation. the motivation is none of the arguments public that move us to fulfill that motivation. the progressives/communists/socialists and all the various brands that PRETEND to want progress, are actually AFRAID of it. so your sitting here thinking that they are trying to choose from two systems in which they are claiming the other one is more productive, while the other side says no.
and thats not the argument, thats the cover for the argument as the real argument would not be accepted. its crazy to those who have adapted, who do adapt to it, who are not throwbacks to huddle protected by progressives. they also practice a religion, the religion of marx. and marx, like the madi’s and like other prophets, have things that have to be fulfilled. and just as iran hopes to create unnaturally the environment to usher in the mahdi, the progressives, communists, socialists, etc… all seek to force the false fulfillment of the pronouncements of marxs/engels and their saints, like stalin, lenin and mao.
its 100 years in, and 1 year into the presidency and msot of you have yet to cross from step 1 to step 2. you cant understand the thing as you dont understand the motives, and so create motives and set this as a race to a common prize. it isnt. it never was and it never will be
i bring up lots of complicated things. and what i find, is like chinese wisdom, i cant transmit WISDOM directly…that is i can try to hand one facts i can hand one conclusions, i can endlessly describe points and things and only a select few will take the time to really think about the abstractions and such i bring up.
i have brought the three vinigar tasters up before. the common man is most like lao tzu! while he hates the problems of the world, he also accepts that there is also great beauty of the world. that he is responsible for most of his problems, but not all. and in many times, the problem was not the problem, but the actions taken in respons to such was it. however there are two other people at that tub of vinnegar (which represents life and the world). there is kung fu tse (confucious), and Bhudda.
of course you guys are westerners and know everythign about everything. i also said a long time that soviets see themselves as not western, and even asian… while you see them as part of your group, and so cant fathom why they dont act right.
bhuddas ideas about the world make the world a nasty place. so nasty that one should glide through reality without caring about anything in it. that in this way, one can transcend the pain and such. however, for the progressives and such, such a philosphy will not do. they read how the japanese reformed bhuddism to create the justification for the conquest in wwii. i guess you guys never asked how could a nation of buddists accomplish the rape of nanking.. (better to hear your ideas in a fishbowl)
so bhudda does not inform here. leaders and rulers do not want a mass of peoples who dont care about anything and are not motivated to any real world interests. see why the state hates bhuddists. the state is a parasite and if their victim dont work above their base needs, what is there left for the parasite? (they create the environment for their later destruction)
so its confucious that we turn to. and kung fu tse basically holds that the world is evil. and that the pain you feel and such can be overcome by stagnation and ritual. that is, if one can stop the constant change and progress creted by the little people when they have more than the buddist minimum, then one can stagnate the system. if the system does not invent new, does not improve process, does not do any of that. then utopia is possible as we get better and better at living in a static reality. history no longer matters. everyone is born into their permanent class. lords and ruelrs are allways lords and rulers.
of course no one cares to read their philosophies and understsand them at all, and so have no idea of why we hit long static periods (dynasties). as we are looking at our conditions as a mass, not looking at their conditions as lords of a feudal state. they are afraid of the progress that moved us away from feudal control and metered forward movement… to something to them that resembles the ny marathon… how horrid that the special people who are destined to rule cant do so unless they win a merit race. dont the people know that these were born to rule (which is why so many of them are related and have ties back to history that we dont know or care about).
i have been saying its a complete inversion, yet its missed.
progressive means proceed to regress (as communitarian means communist totalitarian)
utopia means hell (rather rule in hell than serve in heaven)
productivity means stagnation…preventing constant evolutionary cahnge in favor of perfecting a static reality (always fails since the thing requires that they hold back mother nature completely. for if there is a natural disaster, the balance crumbles and there is no way to repair it)
so when you loko at russia. do not think that its a set of rulers who want what we (rulers) want our clerks (lords) to make for us. this is why there are exterminations and such. the idea is that this rabble that is we, will never sign on to a confucian future… in such a world, those who are currently on top remain there forever. in such a world, the masses never have enough capital to be able to run wild again and have no one at the driving wheel of reality.
they fear natural…they deny it in everything. we have not natures…we are blank slates. ..we are not adapted to be men and women and complimentary as we can then do more and achieve more than if we were two of the same.
everything has to be locked down, so that they can control the rate of change.. and they are motivated by a deep seated fear that comes from an education that is so specialized that they are dysfunctional in the world. what you call incompetent is the desease. their world principals are off, they think that one is the same as anotehr, and so they know that they are cargo cult and bs all the way through. and they cant believe that the rest of us are not that way!!! they thing we are all the same!! they say so.
and so, if they are afraid of progress. they dont know what thy are doing and are faking it. at least they know it!!! and so by this special knowing are superior to the others that wont admit it and are willing (to them) to drive off some future cliff gleefully…
i know that they have read clauswitz, and if you think saul alinsky had tactics, you should read the other books they read…
you are confused by political blitzkreig. “lightning war”…abstractions work outside the areas of their invention. these guys read history and glean things to do from it. they hide history from you, the same way that the opposing footbal team hides their playbook. if you knew the history, you would know the source of their ideas of what to do, waht to say, how to act, what happens when you do or dont do it.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Jon Baker: NYC is not the only city in the world and you are NEVER going to make the arrogant New Yorker charge stick to me. If I saw a comment saying “Left Bank” I would know exactly what they are referring to. Hey, do they give you a toaster when you open an account? “Bay Area,” you mean Boston? Biloxi? I’m not mad, just a bit of push back and, yes, It was quite obvious what you were doing.
Most of your responses make lots of sense. I hadn’t put much thought into the “indepenents” part of the story because I see them as fable like beings–Nessie, for instance (J.Baker: that’s a beast in a lake in Scotland). I suppose that must just be some personal quirk though, that I can’t believe those people really exist. Every day some new poll or news story comes out and they flip and flop with it. ????? Another thing I can’t figure out is these Althouse types with their Saul on the road to Damascaus moments, “How could we have known this was who we were voting for? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Gorbachev believed the Socialist propaganda until he travelled abroad and found that his worker’s paradise was actually a prison. Then he worked to try to reform his prison and accidentally upended his country.
this is not so. that position is completely made up without fact and asserted as if it was otherwise.
“Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.” — Mikhail Gorbachev
does that match what you said? how would you resolve the dissonance?
“In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.” — Mikhail Gorbachev
What you confuse as sincerity in action is method in getting you to take a different frame of mind than if you actually read his words, the words of those he praises, and so forth.
of course most discount all that as meaning nothing. which is why they dont see the oddness in this:
“The threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘international disaster key’ that will unlock the New World Order.” — Mikhail Gorbachev, quoted in “A Special Report: The Wildlands Project Unleashes Its War On Mankind”, by Marilyn Brannan, Associate Editor, Monetary & Economic Review, 1996, p. 5
That for YEARS and DECADES the KNOWN positions of these peopel dovetailed with the AGW game.however, that game was started way before in the early part of last century as a way of running the race by hobbling your enemy (and still restirciting your own people from rampant growth that doesnt have the permission of the few).
that is, the ideology requires crippling the masses as progress itself has to be put under control. it cant be allowed to runa nd create a grand canyon, it has to be grabbed, controlled, canned, and metered.
and so, the leadership has the problem of how to compete with that raging river and not let your own river rage on. that makes the cold war make sense now. no? well, they do many active maeasures and games at once and the problem is that if they dont work right away… (like the point that oil may not come from only cooking life. it can also come from cooking the ingredients like the life experiment)
by doing so, they foment the idea of peak oil. you can read all about the arguments back in the 20s and 30s, before the facts were declared by the progresives. in the same way they sought to declare the facts on some point which secondarily gives them the complete control over metering progress to THEIR controlled and acceptable levels.
its the unspoken thing. its the fear that has no name…
anyway, these have collided. the idea was to drive up the costs of production till they were as anemic as russia and completely bottled. all their tenets lead to that, including the extermination of the race of people that brought that to the world. (jews, whites, etc)
you ask the question whats wrong with the world. they assign the blame to uncontrolled progress which is destructive to them. they think buggy whip factories should exist in perpetuity, or havent you noticed?
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
rsb, I would like to piggyback on Steve’s suggestion about wearing a Bush or Palin button. Steps to conversion has been a favored topic around here, and if you browse through the links you will encounter lots of good advice. I’ve got a post myself about how to tell your friends you’re becoming conservative. (Or have been for years.)
Briefly, if there are enough witnesses you don’t have to do all that much. Dropping in a firm announcement of disagreement on a single issue, e.g. “I’ve done a complete 180 on (terrorism, gun control, health care) over the last few years” does more than you think. It opens a space for someone else to voice their more conservative thoughts in the group. It puts people on notice that they cannot just blather unchallenged around you but actually have to (gasp) think about whether their statements are defensible. It invites attacks from the unthinking bigots (some of whom, unfortunately, will turn out to be people you thought liked you), which shows their true colors.
I’m telling you what you already know, so mostly, I’m just reminding you. People who have raised 2 children to adulthood are the most likely conservative sleepers in your neighborhood.
National Review did a humorous piece about 15 years ago that Hil Clinton, Goldwater girl, had successfully infiltrated and destroyed the Democratic Party in 1994. To keep our converts, we need to hammer home that the Democrats have done this again.
The Cloward—Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation entitled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” The two argued that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would create a political crisis that would force U.S. politicians, particularly the Democratic Party, to enact legislation “establishing a guaranteed national income.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy
Artfldgr,
I think most Americans don’t want to accept that there are such control freaks in their own county or even the world for that matter. They simply can’t identify with it because it requires a totally inverted sense of morality. And all of the politics we see comes down to a battle for what is moral.
Our seperation of church and state has been the catalyst. The reality is our judiciary signed off on a seperation of Christianity and state which allowed the foot in the door for this morally inverted world view to fill the void. We didn’t argue that philosophy and state needed seperation. Or world view and state needed seperation. It damn sure needed arguing because religions like Christianity are exactly that….Philosphy and world view.
Artfldgr, I do not buy your theory about Gorbachev. Even if citation you gave is true, it was not a sincere expression of his plan, but a demagogery he used to decieve the Old Guard. Every democratic reformer in Soviet Union just had to use such explanation to outwit his conservative opponents. I knew it for sure, because I was in the belly of the beast, in Supreme Party School, when Perestroyka was brewing. I was an insider, recruited to the cause for PR purposes, and knew personally the main actors.
The main problem of the Left is unsolvable. This problem lies not only in their totalitarian instincts, but in mere fact that their goals cannnot be achieved by governing, only by despotical rule. This is just as true now as was in the days of Robespierre or Stalin. Old Bolsheviks could maintain an illusion that they are liberators, not enslavers, but Stalin knew better.
speaking of russia
“Poland withdraws ambassador from Minsk”
russia has had a thousand year poland problem
its something such young countries like the US doesnt understand (if they did their take on the crusades would be different).
independent journalists have been arrested
Anatoliy Golitsyn in 1984 predicted that the PZPR abdication of power and polands flight from soviet sphere. he said that these were to confuse the west into thinking that the satellites were no longer part of the game… (and so gained access to the technology and weapons that previously they couldnt).
Zapad-2009, the military exercise in that region was a first strike nuclear attack game on poland.
[note that medvedev signed in the first strike doctrine, and under it obamas new method is a reason for first strike tactical nuclear engagement]
study history prior to 1939..
Russia ‘simulates’ nuclear attack on Poland
Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/6480227/Russia-simulates-nuclear-attack-on-Poland.html
‘
i brought it up then. but then everyone was too busy tryuing to convince me and others that obama was something other than what he OBVIOUSLY was to those who know history.
same thing now..
you cant look at only the lower left quadrant of a chess board and ignore the rest and think you understand the game. heck undertanding the game is hard enough if you see the whole board AND you have many games as history to refer to.
The documents state the exercises, code-named “West”, were officially classified as “defensive” but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.
The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a “Polish” beach and attacked a gas pipeline.
The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus — the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.
in the rain of truth the cover washes off adn we see the leapord never did change its spots.
whiel back home, we discuss if progressive communist spocilists have evolved.
why should they? they are winning.
convincing you that they are losing is a wonderful way to get you to not act waiting for when it gets serious enough.
[edited for length by n-n]
Sergey Says:
Let me suggest another way to phrase it:
This [main problem of the left] lies not only in their totalitarian instincts, but in mere fact that their ultimate goals cannnot be achieved in the real world at all , least of allby governing, and can only be futilely attempted, with tragic effectsonly by despotical rule.
Adding to my above post:
Probably the most graphic (but not the only) example of this totalitarian impulse to impose impossible results is in the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, 1975-1979.
An attempt was made to literally “wipe the slate clean” and create a utopian socialistic society from scratch. They called the year of their takeover “year zero,” and killed off an enormous number of Cambodians for having what they called “memory sickness” namely the rememberance of the time before the Khmer Rouge took over. The results were horrifying and disastrous.
J.L. Says: Wholeheartly agree with your more accurate formulation of my thesis.
Artfldgr, I do not buy your theory about Gorbachev. Even if citation you gave is true, it was not a sincere expression of his plan, but a demagogery he used to decieve the Old Guard. Every democratic reformer in Soviet Union just had to use such explanation to outwit his conservative opponents. I knew it for sure, because I was in the belly of the beast, in Supreme Party School, when Perestroyka was brewing. I was an insider, recruited to the cause for PR purposes, and knew personally the main actors.
if only stalin knew… sergey.. you should know better. today, they do Red Scare Redux.
The following video contains a collection of great media clips on not only the debunking of man-made global warming/climate change, but evidence for the decidedly red bent of the international AGW hoax. The priceless congressional testimony of Al Gore last year is an added bonus. Additional personalities include: Chairman Obama, John Coleman, Carol Browner, Van Jones, and Lord Christopher Monckton, who outlines concisely the goals of the failed (for now) COP15 Copenhagen treaty from last December
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVm5-6H_sH4&feature=player_embedded
want me to list the club of rome quotes? the political affiliations of the people who started this stuff? how about lets compare the soviets and their leaders green ideology with what they did and still do to their country and the land. the level of pollution is incredible. many many many times higher than in the US.
total of 44% of Russians live in areas with serious air pollution, the Eurasian Development Bank said in a report on Friday.
“Toxic substances in the air exceed the maximum allowable concentrations in 185 cities with a population of over 61 million people, or 44% of Russia’s population,” the report says.
Air pollution is responsible for 17% of diseases in children and 10% in adults. The report also said that emissions of carbon dioxide by Russian power stations are expected to increase 46.8% from 2002 levels by 2010, reaching 690,200 tons. In 2002-2020, emissions will grow by 57.2%, to 739,300 tons.
real green.. maybe they shouldnt double the false number on military spending and clean up things? [how can you remove a splinter from our eyes when there is a board in your own. or in the case of marxists, a plank]
watch the recent documentaries on russia on the science channels. they keep pointing otu how whole regions look pretty as they are too toxic to live in.
Even time couldnt hide it
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1661031_1661028,00.html
Linfen, China
This soot-blackened city in China’s inland Shanxi province makes Dickensian London look as pristine as a nature park. Shanxi is the heart of China’s coal belt, and the hills around Linfen are dotted with mines, legal and illegal, and the air is filled with burning coal. Don’t bother hanging your laundry – it’ll turn black before it dries.
Tianying, China
An industrial city – though China doesn’t really have any other kind –in the country’s northeastern rust belt, Tianying accounts for over half of China’s lead production. Thanks to poor technology and worse regulation, much of that toxic metal ends up in Tianying’s soil and water, and then in the bloodstream of its children, where it can cause lowered IQ. Wheat has been found to contain lead levels up to 24 times Chinese standards
almost all the really toxic stuff like solar panels and making of magnets and even mercury for our new “green” lights are there, and they dont care much. out of the top ten, not one is in the US. (however they are able to complain that an american company following the local law has polluted an area in peru. why not blame the politicians who havent changed that law since 1922? )
Gorby the Green as you put it was their when? In office 15 March 1990 — 25 December 1991. according to the FACTS, they didnt stop making and dumping this stuff till 7 years after mr green. and if this is how it is, why is gorbachev always railing on the US, and not on places like Dzershinsk? and why dont we discuss who the city is named after? time was very ingenous to say it was from the cold war, it continued way after that. just as they admitted their anthrax manufacturing continued for decades after the 1970s treaty.
Norilsk, Russia
Norilsk was founded in 1935 as a Siberian slave labor camp, and life there has pretty much gone downhill since. Home to the world’s largest heavy metal smelting complex, more than 4 million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc are released into the air every year. Air samples exceed the maximum allowance for both copper and nickel, and mortality from respiratory diseases is much higher than in Russia as a whole. “Within 30 miles (48 km) of the nickel smelter there’s not a single living tree,” says Fuller. “It’s just a wasteland.”
all trees dead in a 50 kilometer circle. and russia and them complain about the US?
Chernobyl, Ukraine
When Chernobyl melted down on Apr. 26, 1986, the ruined plant released 100 times more radiation into the air than the fallout from the nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today the 19-mi (30-km) exclusion zone around the plant remains uninhabitable, and between 1992 and 2002 more than 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer cases were diagnosed among Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian children living in the fallout zone. “It’s the largest industrial accident in the world,” says Fuller. “It’ll be contaminated for tens of thousands of years.” Fortunately, work is being done to prevent further radiation spill from the ruined sarcophagus of the nuclear plant.
what caused this? well since there is no such thing as state liablity in soviet russia. nor in any socialist state full of the power its acquiring. so leftist liberal type politicos saved money by not making containment vessels. they saved money by dumping tailings and such from other places. you can see acres and acres of thsi stuff sitting there.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
njartist49:
Thanks for re-introducing evil as the underlying and unifying concept to explain what we see before us. I agree wholeheartedly. And the gloves must come off the good in this struggle against evil. It ain’t a game, so it must be a life-and-death combat to the finish.
“how come gorby isnt tryign to save his own people?”
He tried, but he failed. I knew beforehand that he will fail. The country was wrecked beyond repair in all possible aspects. His program had a chance to success if was launched 25 years earlier, but intervention in Chekhoslovakiya made it impossible. Gorby almost lost any control of situation in 1989, and since than the destruction of state was accelerated exponentially, untill the final collapse. Modern Russia has little in common with USSR and is much more alike Russia under Tzars.
I knew it for sure, because I was in the belly of the beast, in Supreme Party School, when Perestroyka was brewing. I was an insider, recruited to the cause for PR purposes, and knew personally the main actors.
then you shoudl know better than to think the leadership tells students their plans. your like a vietnam vet who never read about all the deatils out of their view, who thinks cause they were shot at they know it all. give me a break…if thats your source, my source was anatoly golitsyn (and i know you both personally the same).
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE
want to know what that CBE stands for?
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions. In decreasing order of seniority, these are:
Knight Grand Cross (GBE) or Dame Grand Cross (GBE)
Knight Commander (KBE) or Dame Commander (DBE)
Commander (CBE)
Officer (OBE)
Member (MBE)
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE (Russian: Ðнатолий Михайлович Голицын;born August 25, 1926) is a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR. He provided “a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the ‘Lines’ (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents.”[1] He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, as late as 1984, was an American citizen.
Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major.
i beleive a man who has earned his creds by defecting, getting a royal honor, US citizenship. and had achieved the rank of major…to be a better source than a student with the beliefes that they instilled in you, saying its not so. give me a reason a student in the school your mentioning, would know what the major who defected was part of the planning wouldnt?
you also dont know where and what my family was a part of in the past in that area before tehy fled and washed their hands of such dirt…the people who discredit golytsins stuff are people symathetic to socialism, progressivism, etc…others just do so out of hand with disbelief that a state could be that flexible. (having never actually seen how flexible a totalitarian state with no morals or compulsiosn could be).
Golitsyn claimed that Rt Hon. Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB informer. it was unbelieved and was conspiracy theory labled. however when mitrokhen partial archive came out (a second part just out)..
He continued these relationships when Labour went into Opposition, and according to material from the Mitrokhin Archive, his insights into British politics were passed to and highly rated by the KGB. An “agent development file” was opened in the hope of recruiting Harold Wilson, and the codename “OLDING” was given to him. However “the development did not come to fruition,” according to the KGB file records
so its this kind of thing they use to say that golytsin was wrong. but technically its in the grey between both. he wasnt paid spy, but he was a source. a lot of stuff is hard to sort out. so it stays in limbo waiting. for instance, you have two stories for harold wilson. oen that he died of lupus. another that he was killed.. given that the only one that says so is golitsyn, and he has been so accurate he is a problem to that side… its was easy to make it tin hat. however there were a rash of other murders in the US and UK that were thoguth to be heart attacks and other things. we never knew that they were assasinations.
how did we find out. the assasins defected and showed how it was done!!! and given that beria had a bunch of laboratories (that some exist to this day) whose purpose was poisons and such. (like using radioactive materials. the polonium was surprising as they used to use radioactive thorium for the same thing. give a man stomach cancer, which before coffee filters was common enough not to seem wrong)
so now in truth, the golytsin thing is hard to tell [its like crying wolf.
gorbachev is what he was always…and the assettions of someone that comes from the state that invented amorality as a social plus and infinite pragmatic ruthlessness and secrecy where people are completely disposable (even if they think they are important), as being a good source.
i spent too many years teaching immigrants from different eras corrections to history!!! do note the photos and such i put up. if they cant even accept history as it is, i doubt that they made a poitn to tell a student they planned on using, information that would keep him abreast of the states real intentions. i dont even expect to know this from my government which historically was orders of magnitude more reliable (thatnks to business). which is why i read all of that stuff, and our stuff, and other peoples stuff and so on. after a while, like a thousand starfield images summed to one. the lies get weeded out as teh truth is over and over and over the same frmo all voer the place in different ways taht are subtle.
I was an insider, recruited to the cause for PR purposes, and knew personally the main actors.
you were not an insider. you were a tool that believed it had a special place and so would do its job. my uncle explained this to me very carefully, as he was a man who had rank to make you think you were special so that you did your thing easier and never ever asked moral questions.
like a state that would do that to is own people would tell you the truth of what they are doing to you and such,.
the state that completely embodes the end justifies the means cant do that. it lies even when it doesnt have to
Living all this decades in Moscow, I can compare. The change is tremendous, but the road to modernization is very long and bumpy. My children enjoy much more freedom and possibilities than my generation. We do not know anymore ideological dictat, people are free to discuss openly everything. And they do. I see a whole new ethos emerging in them, social capital is created every day in terms of attitudes, customs, morals. It has not yet reached critical mass for political expression, but this is practicaly inevitable in due course.
“the state that completely embodes the end justifies the means cant do that. it lies even when it doesnt have to”
There was not properly functioning state in 1984 in Russia, but two groups of bureaucrats with very different goals, struggling for power and using everything and everybody to undermine each other. Both groups failed, and a new elite emerged. It was cynical, greedy, but totaly rejecting communist ideology and using democratical slogans to topple both Old Guard and Gorby’s communist reformers. If any historical parallels apply, France under Napoleon is the best analogue. Totaly new regime, not continuation of Royalists or Jacobines.
Asst. Village and Steve:
Man, oh, man do I ever NOT have the nerve to do that. My roommate does though. I’m pretty sure most of the UWSiders are so convinced of their total moral superiority that they don’t even want to speak to him.
Living all this decades in Moscow, I can compare. The change is tremendous, but the road to modernization is very long and bumpy. My children enjoy much more freedom and possibilities than my generation.
now THATS some of the most wonderful news i ahve heard from their in a long time!!!
with nashi and other such things, its harder for me to get a handle on whats on the ground now. back then it was easier as there was ties to family and such. now not so much at all.
thank you for taking the time to tell me that.
thats better news than anything you could have said about putin, medvedev, and other ilk that one day, i hope fades into history…
Artfldgr – I am very impressed with what you say. I am going to look up the references and begin to read. What incredible patience these people have–but they have met their match if they’re unmasked.
Katemaclaren,
thanks..
if you find somethign that contradicts what i said. PLEASE let me know!!!!!!!!!!!
i dont care what the actual answer is
i care whether the actual answer is right
thats looking at things at a higher better level
its returning debate as a method to define a better something, and not as a variation of an intellectual form of trial by combat where might makes right
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