When did we get smiley faces???

That’s cool.

But that’s the end result …and that’s not really what the terms are useful as in the “technical” sense.

Think of it like this. ALL fellow travelers would be useful idiots from the common usage of “useful” plus “idiots” …i.e., both were easily manipulated to a varying degree.

But not all useful idiots were fellow travelers.

Both groups were however equally manipulated by the GRU.

For example, the distinctive sub-branch called fellow travelers would be outright members of, say, Britain’s communist party in the UK. Or at somewhat of a distance, sympathizers with the party …these were the people that Senator Joe McCarthy investigated in the 1950’s (and btw: the investigation was a legitimate … given what we know now …his methods threw the investigation into disrepute, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a problem).

Fellow travelers were at least moderately knowledgeable about communist ideology. One of the most publicly infamous in American history was Lee Harvey Oswald (granted, according to the CW of the assassination).

You would say all these “fellow travelers” were at least aware of the distinction of being consciously sympathetic to the aims of the soviet, if not outright party members.

Useful idiots though, were the unknowing participants of disinformation campaigns by Department 5. They believed crap but had no idea the genesis of the crap they believed.

As merely one example of a still currently effective disinformation campaign by 1 Dir Dept 5, there are people who still truly believe that HIV was developed by the US as a targeted weapon.

…but most of those people, while falling under the technical classification of “useful idiots”, would assuredly take umbrage if you accused them of being communist symp’s, lol.

But they are still useful idiots.

…and are so, some 20 plus years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were brilliant at it.

My suspicion is, eventually, so were we. I don’t live in that world, so I got nothin’ more than guesses about that.

Btw: I actually had a detailed answer that I’d spent some time on, including footnotes, but like an idiot – though not a useful idiot 😉 – I accidentally lost it while responding to Neo’s rebuttal). I can probably, with some effort, recreate that if you’re still puzzled.

“thomass: They’re two different things. This might help: Wikipedia “fellow travelers” and “useful idiots“.”

Still not getting it. I think it is not helping that I know the subject well.

A US fellow traveler / non party member was a useful idiot from Lenin’s pov. Fodder to be used.

…yep. Time to move on.

But we are in agreement about the emotional acceptance and the ignorance, as I wrote in a post you probably haven’t seen yet because it was just published a few minutes ago (before I’d seen the above comment of yours). In it, I wrote as clarification of my position [emphasis mine]:

It has everything to do with cultural and media brainwashing, a sort of desensitization to the idea of those things, things which used to (and not so very long ago, either) make people very uneasy. They no longer do, at least for very many people (as we saw here).

I’m not at all sure that most people even recognize these things as being part of a leftist agenda (to them, they’re not “tells”), or are even aware of what that agenda might be. They know they sound pretty good though–and also have the side benefit of sticking it to the rich, those greedy bastards.

I easily accept what you think of what you said. But what you wrote is what I addressed. And I disagree with it (while admitting I could have framed it more collegially).

As to your rebuttals …please review the implications of “…intellectually and/or emotionally embraced socialism” as to whether your statement that I was addressing or – even implying – only the idea that “…that most voters had sat down and studied socialism and made a rational decision that it’s a great idea” was somehow all that I reacted to.

I wasn’t. The assertion is tenuous at best given my original comment’s latter section (after the execrably stated, and obviously misunderstood initial derision) …hence my followup’s reference to “strawman” with a “sigh”.

I think the very idea of socialism being even in the least bit understood on even a subconscious level to the vast majority of Americans is ludicrous (and whether you think I was saying that about your intent, is irrelevant). I equally think the idea they have emotionally accepted it is deeply suspect (i.e., your “feature, not a bug”, and the implication). It’s the profundity of their ignorance that is so appalling …and frightening. And that is the point I was making: it’s not “about” a socialist drift to the left at all (as you clearly suggested) …it is fundamentally “about” their ignorance of American institutions.

I don’t think they understand it in any of it’s myriad ramifications. Clearly they don’t. I don’t think they can: they don’t have the tools that an adequate education would have given them. So it doesn’t enter into their calculations …OR into the results of the election outcome …and shouldn’t enter into the analysis or lamentations as le cause du jour …in any tender or form whatsoever.

Additionally, per your last followup, I do very much disagree that we’re no longer a center-right country.

What we are is a dumbed-down country. Or …asleep.

The voters don’t understand either our history nor our institutions; they are not cultural Americans. They’re in essence “indigenous immigrants” if you will …with what seems to be less knowledge of what we are as a nation than people who’d just arrived on Ellis Island used to have. They’re the product of a thoroughly failed educational system and Fourth Estate.

You have deemed that, at least, “socialism in effect” (whether understood intellectually or simply embraced emotionally …and which finally ties BOTH our declarations of misunderstanding together). I call it simple ignorance.

And so I fret that some insistence upon combating socialism in some political aspect distracts us from the more profound problem with how to deal with a generation at least of profoundly dysfunctional and ignorant Americans. It’s not their perceived socialism! It’s their bloody ignorance!

Perhaps this will help you to understand MY rebuttal …and our essential agreement:

I’m not concerned in the least that voters seem to be embracing socialism as a feature …but in contrast I certainly AM concerned that they have ignorantly embraced an apparent simulacrum as a bug.

IF voters DID understand they were in essence “practicing socialists” (if not your point, at least your implication …and if neither, you’re still not conveying that to me very well), they would reject it out of hand. (They might not understand it, but I’d bet they vaguely feel it is something bad.)

Last, and to repeat: I think you were having a bad day …it was at least a partially ill-written post (and certainly an ill-considered title from the perspective of our disagreement), though your replies haven’t shown that you’re exactly following my criticism (and I did, after all, quite agree with the posts last sentence, and riffed on that …actually, I continue to riff on it). And my …honest …criticism is NOT meant derisively, nor as an insult.

Obviously you didn’t perceive the message I trying to convey. I didn’t think I had to spell it out in great detail; it actually didn’t occur to me that people would think I meant that most voters had sat down and studied socialism and made a rational decision that it’s a great idea. Just didn’t occur to me. But it does seem that it should have occurred to me, and that I should have spelled it out more.

I stand by my words: voters for Obama approved of those things or alarm bells would have been set off and they wouldn’t have voted for him. And it is not a center-right country any more. Leftist ideology no longer frightens people.

But that has nothing to do with whether people have made a rational and well-informed decision about these things. It has everything to do with cultural and media brainwashing, a sort of desensitization to the thought of them, which used to (and not so very long ago, either) set off alarm bells.