More on facing “the truth”
Commenter “Phil D” has some questions and observations [I’ve corrected one typo in the following]:
When exactly did we lose the “courage to see things as they are”?
When FDR recognized the USSR in 1933, just after that regime murdered millions of its own people, did he “see things as they are”?…
As for Obama, he didn’t come as a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. Before you became a “neocon” did you “see things as they are”? Did the anti Vietnam war “Peace movement”?…And yet it was in that period that the coming of Obama was prepared.
I think the West has for a very long time not “seen things as they are”.
It’s not always—probably not even often—an easy or simple thing to comprehend the “truth” of events as they are happening. Doing so requires a host of elements: correct information, sound judgment, some knowledge of the past in order to put the present in context, and yes, the courage to face what you see even if it is a disillusioning departure from a previously held belief and/or hope.
That’s a tall order, and not a simple one.
In the post in which Phil D made that comment, I had quoted a letter to the editor to a British newspaper written right after the Munich agreement with Hitler, in which the author of the letter, WWI war hero F. L. Lucas, opined on something that Lucas thought was crystal clear and not difficult to understand at all—the intentions of Adolf Hitler at the time.
It’s worth revisiting what Lucas actually wrote:
No doubt [Neville Chamberlain] has never read Mein Kampf in German. But to forget, so utterly, the Reichstag fire, and the occupation of the Rhineland, and 30 June 1934 [the Night of the Long Knives], and the fall of Austria! We have lost the courage to see things as they are. And yet Herr Hitler has kindly put down for us in black and white that programme he is so faithfully carrying out”
In other words, Lucas was contending that these events and their meaning were not hard to see or to understand. He felt it was as plain as the proverbial nose on one’s face (or the mustache on Hitler’s) what the end result would be, and to ignore that or not see it was a form of willful denial which could only come from a failure of courage.
Now, we can argue here about whether that charge against Chamberlain was justified or not. Some say that Chamberlain knew but that his hands were tied by the fact that England hadn’t yet armed itself sufficiently; others say he was a naive dupe. I’m not going to get into that side issue here; what I’m interested in now is the process of trying to understand what’s happening in the world and what it might signify.
I have written my personal story of “seeing things as they are” in fairly exhaustive detail in the series “A mind is a difficult thing to change,” and if you’re interested and haven’t read it yet you can click and read the posts (they’re listed in reverse order). In them, I also discuss at length the antiwar movement during the Vietnam years, so I don’t need to recap that here, either. Suffice to say I do think the roots of today were present then; that’s why I spent so much time talking about it.
In personal terms, I believe that I always had the courage to see things as they are, but I lacked the information and the context. In addition, I assumed that I was already “seeing things as they are,” and didn’t realize my error. What I didn’t realize is how looking at things more closely and changing my mind would affect me socially; how it would set me apart in ways small and large from most of my friends and family. I suppose if I’d known that it would have given me pause, but it never would have stopped me because I was driven by something else: curiosity and a personal need to know.
I’m not arrogant enough to think I’ve got the corner on truth or the complete story even now; far from it. But I now have easier access to much more information than during those years, and I give these topics much more time and effort than I did when I was young.
It’s a work in progress.
We all now have access to a lot more information (just for starters, many more periodicals and even books can easily be accessed online) than we did before. So now, people who turn away from learning that information, or who make excuses for the destructive actions and/or lying by certain public figures they admire, either are lazy, avoidant, or already know or should know certain truths but don’t have the courage to admit that their idols have feet of clay—or to admit to themselves that they have made errors in judgement in admiring those people or voting for them. If something is obvious (as F. L. Lucas thought Hitler’s intentions were back in the days of Munich), then to ignore it is a failure of both courage and judgment, and compounds earlier errors. If something isn’t the least bit obvious—if it’s complex or hidden or needs special knowledge to understand—then it’s not so much a failure of courage as of knowledge and judgment.
Take Obama. I think many things about him are now obvious—and should have been obvious even during the 2008 campaign. I’m happy to be able to look back at my posts from then and see that, although I certainly didn’t perceive everything about him, I perceived plenty. That’s not because I’m such a psychic or a genius, it’s because I think it was obvious to any intelligent person who was paying attention. And yet, plenty of seemingly intelligent people don’t see it, even today. Is that a failure of courage? Information? Judgment? Imagination? Is it in many cases a reluctance to admit one was wrong (I wouldn’t underestimate that motivation)? Or party loyalty? Or a fear of being accused of racism, even at this late date? I think it must be different for different people. But at this point, people do know or should know that something is very, very wrong.
I’m not a relativist. I do not think that truth is completely “constructed” and exists only in the mind of the beholder. I think there really is an objective truth. But I also think we can only see it through a glass, darkly.
That doesn’t mean that we cannot, and should not, do our best to apprehend it. In fact, we must do so, if we are to make decisions in the world. It’s not an easy task, nor is it a quick one. But it’s a necessary one that many people wrongly delegate to others.
[NOTE: F. L. Lucas was also a man of great erudition, energy, and output, worthy of some attention on his own. Here are some excerpts from his Wiki profile, which is long:
Frank Laurence Lucas (1894-1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II…
His criticism, while acknowledging that morality is historically relative, was thus values-based. “Writers can make men feel, not merely see, the values that endure.” Believing that too many modern writers encouraged men and women to flee to unreason, decadence and barbarism, he condemned the trahisons des clercs of the twentieth century, and used his lectures and writing to campaign for a responsible use of intellectual freedom. “One may question whether real civilisation is so safely afloat,” he wrote in his last published letter (1966), “that we can afford to use our pens for boring holes in the bottom of it.” The writer or artist serving up “slapdash nightmares out of his Unconscious”, “in an age morbidly avid of uncivilised irreticence”, not only exhibited his own neuroses, but fed neurosis in others. Literary critics, too, had to take more responsibility. “Much cant gets talked,” he noted of the Structuralists, “by critics who care more for the form and organisation of a work than for its spirit, its content, its supreme moments.” The serious note in his criticism was counterbalanced by wit and urbanity, by lively anecdote and quotation, and by a gift for startling imagery and epigram.
There’s more—much much more—about this tremendously erudite, articulate, profound man, whom I’d never heard of until yesterday. He was, among other things, a classical scholar who knew many languages. Clearly, he had a lot of information and context in which to place the events of his day, far more than most people. When I read the sentence in his letter to the editor where he said that “no doubt” Chamberlain had never read Mein Kampf in the original German, it almost immediately occurred to me that F. L. Lucas, whoever he might be, had done exactly that. Sure enough, from his Wiki entry:
Having read Mein Kampf in the original and taken its threats as a statement of intent, he urged in September 1933 that Nazi Germany be prevented from re-arming.
Lucas didn’t just write that one letter. He was very active in urging preparedness against Germany in all sorts of ways;
As well as letters to the press (some forty in all) his campaign included satires, articles, books, public speaking, fund-raising for the Red Cross, petitions to Parliament, meetings with émigrés like Haile Selassie and Stefan Zweig, and help for refugees. In these activities he was inspired by the example of “that grand old man” H. W. Nevinson, “one of the most striking personalities I have ever known”, “whose long life has been given to Liberty”.
Lucas also kept a journal during the late 30s. Here’s what he wrote in it about Munich:
Even if what he did were the right thing to do, this was not the way to do it. The surrender might have been necessary: the cant was not. Any statesman with a sense of honour would at least have stilled that hysterical cheering and said: “My friends, for the present, we are out of danger. But remember that others, who trusted in us, are not. This is a day for relief, perhaps; but for sorrow also; for shame, not for revelling.” But this Chamberlain comes home beaming as fatuously as some country-cousin whom a couple of card-sharpers in the train have just allowed to win sixpence, to encourage him.
There’s much, much more. But I’ll just close by offering this from Lucas, which he wrote in 1936:
A hatred of war can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ”˜peace” where there is none.
Again, I suggest reading the entire Wiki entry.]
I keep coming back to the same old theme. For those of us who pay attention, what is going IS obvious. For the rest of the population, very caught up in their lives without a lot of interest in politics, they depend on the MSM to guide them.
I’m convinced a lot more people would be aware if the MSM wasn’t actively trying to distort reality. IT really is 1984, just about 30 years later than Orwell thought.
Then as now it was do-gooding ran amock.
do-gooding plus a good dose of oé¯kophobia and, infatuation with the exotic. Nazis, Communists, Facists were were exotic then …
I think the line to draw on “do-goodism” is pretty clear. It is commendable to want to help people. It is not commendable to start requiring *others* to help people so *you* can feel good, i. e. socialism/communism.
A hatred of war can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ‘peace’ where there is none.
Yes ‘peace’ where there is none.
Thats why to get married under No-Fly-Zone?
“Are our minds clear, or are we drifting foggily into another 1914? It was because England hedged then, that we all but perished in the ditch beyond.”
–  F. L. Lucas, The Week-end Review, 16 Sept. 1933
Physical fatigue had put an end to WW I. A second wind, and an American entry near the outset of WW II had provided a victory of sorts. The victory, more formidable than an armistice was still no more than half a measure of it. There followed the cold war and mental fatigue. When the Soviet waved the white flag in ‘89 it was exclaimed “The End Of History” (Francis Fukuyama)
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
… he whistled the tune while passing the graveyard.
And the people were set upon by a great moral exhaustion and
BabylonIslam smelled blood.A century and a year of drifting — had I missed the Centennial celebrations?
Physical fatigue had put an end to WW I.
Could have ended in 1916 but German peace overtures were rejected:
http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/peace_initiatives
Big mistake.
I took a long look at him, his resume and his record when he first hove to prominence in national attention — and I knew exactly what he was: one of those glad-handing and ambitious fast-burning affirmative-action benefiters, shooting up the ranks so fast that by the time the damage done was apparent, he would have already moved on.
I could see that, quite plainly – and I was not an especially shrewd and observant political commentator, one of those with a paid-for perch in the national media bird-cage. Just a mil-blogger and writer in Texas. It frustrated the heck out of me that the highly-paid and presumably intelligent and experienced editorial observers sitting on those perches couldn’t see it.
Either they didn’t have the sense god gave a goose, and therefore their opinings weren’t worth a thin dime — or they were already bought and paid for. My .02.
A hatred of war can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ‘peace’ where there is none.
We are at war with an imaginary Islam.
We’re in 1938 of 1939 I reckon ….
German peace terms in 1916 were not reasonable and could not have easily been accepted. For a start they seemed set on retaining Belgium, plus the parts of France they occupied with rights to other naval bases. Not realistic aims.
They missed their best chance in 1917, having signed the Brest Litovsk treaty, they could have agreed to surrender Belgium and leave France (keeping Alsace and Lorraine) and gained huge amounts in the East. In 1917, after the French mutiny, there would have been many voices calling to accept such a deal.
Please also read “The Gathering Storm” and the next 5 volumes after, by Winston Churchill.
I ask my friends, colleagues and political opposites the following question, which perplexed them to no end:
“If another person punches you, are you in a fight?”
Anybody who does not immediately say “Of course!” has no understanding, for whatever reasons, to see the truth.
I ask my friends, colleagues and political opposites the following question, which perplexes them to no end:
“If another person punches you, are you in a fight?”
Anybody who does not immediately say “Of course!” has no understanding, for whatever reasons, to see the truth.
“But at this point, people do know or should know that something is very, very wrong.”
And yet they do not. Indeed, millions are on just the opposite kick to such an extent it will take the execution of themselves and their families to even begin to make a dent in their skulls…. and even then they will cry out “If only Stalin knew.”
As Gary Snyder wrote in one of his early books of poetry about the mountains and rivers of the north west,
“Once a bear gets hooked on garbage, there’s no cure.”
Even more to the point is the observation many years ago about what is to be done with the “useful idiots” that support the Obamadroids. It was made by KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov in an interview after he defected….
http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/brainwashing/2007/bezmenov.htm
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The result? The result you can see … the people who graduated in the 60’s, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can’t get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.
In other words [for] these people the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another 15 or 20 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and common sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.
ED: And yet these people who have been programmed and as you say [are] in place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept – these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?
YURI: Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in [the] future what the beautiful society of EQUALITY and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy [and] frustrated people, and Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously they will join the [ranks] of dissenters; dissidents. Unlike the present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America. [Now] you can get popular like Daniel Elsburg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being a dissident [and] for criticizing your Pentagon. In [the] future these people will simply be [he makes a squishy noise] squashed like cockroaches for criticizing the government. Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their beautiful [and] noble ideas of EQUALITY. This they don’t understand and it will be the greatest shock for them, of course.
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As the poet says,
“it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell
him”
“Aim at viewing all things in a plain and candid light, and at calling them by their right names.” (Cardinal Newman, 1841)
G6loq Says:
September 26th, 2015 at 6:07 pm
I’m inclined to think we’re in a Sitzkrieg mode, circa December 1939.
The idea that a Muslim invasion is a S L O W M O T I O N event is just not accepted — even though Bush declared this to be a Long War over a decade ago.
That Salon piece is the height of taqiyya, and is an example of ideological arrogance of the first water.
Baker presumes that Muslims are harmless puppies — and that alarmists are raving bigots.
His line of thinking was pre-peated during the early Nazi era — by countless bien pensants.
What alarmed de Gaulle — during the Sitzkrieg — was that Paris was not alarmed. The reformation of the French army in light of what was revealed about Nazi tactics went on at a slothful pace.
Wiki manages to skip entirely his articles criticizing the situation which were published after the start of the war — but before the fall of France. He was appointed to the national government not on the strength of his battle record. He lost very badly.
It was his critique which was published in the French military press that carried him to national attention.
( France had gazillion divisional commanders with reputations as strong as Charles. They were just not deep thinkers. )
At this time, Geller and Spencer and Pipes, et. al. are screaming into a hurricane of taqiyya.
Menachem Begin’s anti-Nazi fighting has been zeroed out of his Wiki account. (!)
He was video interviewed about it. It was slow and painful going for Manachem to recount his utter frustration when trying to raise Jewish consciousness of the Nazi threat.
The Wiki account is all garbled up and self-contradictory. Begin was released from Soviet political prison long before 1942.
“Thus the military agreement from August 14 and subsequent Sikorski-Mayski Agreement from August 17, 1941, resulted in Stalin agreeing to declare all previous pacts he had with Nazi Germany null and void, invalidate the September 1939 Soviet-German partition of Poland and release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps. Pursuant to an agreement between the Polish government-in-exile and Stalin, the Soviets granted “amnesty” to many Polish citizens, from whom a military force was formed. Stalin also agreed that this military force would be subordinate to the Polish government-in-exile. A Polish Army on Soviet soil was born.” wiki
In his video interview he related how (as a prominent anti-Nazi) he’d been into the cauldron up in the Baltic states. During the Summer of 41, the Baltic states were just laying down for the German Army — having been invaded by the Red Army a year before. (1940)
He recounted how the number one risk to his teen age boys spreading the truth was from mature women who would denounce the kids for spreading harsh rumors about the Nazis.
Menachem Begin had organized an underground alert network which was trying to get as many Jews as possible to flee their towns an villages before it was too late.
It should be kept in mind that the battle front during this campaign leaked like a sieve. It was both fluid and long. This meant that anyone that ran into the woods had a pretty good chance of escaping the net.
Not withstanding that, most adults stayed put until the SS showed up. No matter what was said, indeed the more extreme the peril, the less credible the warning.
This is a fundamental aspect of human nature. We can’t bear to walk away from our assets and our social conventions — especially when the news is being brought by frantic voices.
Such souls are conflated with the mentally unstable, the insane.
Tales of Jewish housewives ratting out Jewish teen age boy ‘trouble makers’ dot the official SS records and various SS personal diaries. Invariably the SS records told that the entire local Jewish population was marched off and shot the very next day.
It rather boggles the mind that alarms issued in war time about a bloody regime received almost no credibility. But then I remember that USSR had spent all the previous two-years explaining to the world what a bunch of swell fellas the Nazis were.
Buried under a mountain of somnolent propaganda ( nothing to see here, move along ) the average mind just can’t shift gears.
All of the above tells us that the primary threat to the West is the MSM, CAIR and the other MB front groups.
The oil despots can’t think far enough ahead to comprehend that a Muslim America would be a nation run by the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR and the MAS. In which case, Muslim America would go on global jihad and liquidate ALL of the prior Muslim governments. This super jihad would be mandatory, per Mohammed.
A Rep Pres. won the Vietnam war with the Paris Peace of 1973, but the Democratic Party majority in Congress stopped funding the imperfect capitalist S. Viet gov’t in early 1975, and thus lost the Peace.
The DemoK-K-K-krats lost the Peace.
In Iraq, the KKK party ran away and lost most of Iraq.
The US is not the world’s policeman-no country is.
Great question to ask KKK party members – if somebody punches them, they ARE in a fight.
“When exactly did we lose the “courage to see things as they are”?”
I wonder if once a country has lost its way if it is ever possible to regain it? And I wonder if the idea “The end justifies the means” type of thinking doesn’t accelerate this loss of the way.
I see where at least one special forces soldier has been drummed out of the service and they are trying to drum another one out. What was their crime? Apparently in Afghanistan, it is somewhat common for adult males to have their way with minor boys.
“Dan Quinn was relieved of his Special Forces command after a fight with a U.S.-backed militia leader who had a boy as a sex slave chained to his bed.”
And although I’m sure I’m not in agreement with most of what is posted on the website below, we were turning a blind eye at least as far back as 2010. Who knew? Where was MSM?
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/12/a-deal-with-the-devil/
I remember a speaker saying once that a Fanatic, having forgotten the end goal, doubles the means to get to that end.
I will leave you to decide yourself if that fits the fanatic in the WH. While he may preach his concern for the common man and the country, he is double timing trying to get the car over the cliff. And yes I know a fish rots from the head. But I wonder how deep the rot goes where we drum a soldier out of the service for actually practicing what we say we believe in.
Given that it was a different age that had problems of its own but compare the semi-acceptance of a black and white evil by our leaders and this story about the acceptance of another foreign custom by another World Power- England in the 1800’s.
“A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
Which nation was more focused on the end and not the means to that end?
Oh yes, the KKK Party supports racist policies – policies that do NOT treat humans as individuals, but rather favor some people over others based on their race.
Affirmative Action is actually Affirmative Racism.
Doesn’t everybody see this?
Another startling account has come out of the Islamic State. An elderly German fellow (75) spent ten days visiting the fellows running the show there.
His report is absolutely dire.
1) ISIS is gaining Muslim fanatics from all points of the globe — and at a shocking tempo.
2) The general morale of the ISIS army is simply sky high. In fact it couldn’t get any higher.
3) The Islamic State intends to launch an atomic war upon the infidels// kafir as soon as practical. Atomic retaliation means absolutely NOTHING to the fanatics. Quite the reverse is true: they would love to die while prosecuting jihad.
4) The path from Turkey to the Islamic State is a sieve. The path from Turkey to Europe is a sieve.
5) Money and weapons are gushing in from all points, with special mention for those sent (directly// indirectly) by America.
6) Without exception, jihadis funded and supplied by America turn over their goods to the fanatics without any resistance at all. There really is no such thing as a Free Syrian Army. That creature is a media// propaganda invention in the West — and for the West. ALL of the actual fighting formations insist upon using classical Arabic martial names… and they insist upon fighting for hard line Muslim Shariah — never secular rights — never democracy.
7) His transit to Syria and back was too quick and too easy.
The journalist, Jurgen Todenhofer (75), released his findings in a book called “Inside IS — Ten Days in the Islamic State,” reports the UK’s Daily Express on Friday.
INRE above.
In 1930s everyone remembered the horrors of the Great War, and they were not eager to have another war with Germany.
In addition, the specter of the Soviet Union hovered over them. Today, few realize what a shock and fright the Communists gave the West, from 1917 onward. The Russian Revolution and civil war killed about 9 million people. The USSR looked like a real threat, with its talk of world revolution and its spies, assassins, sympathizers, and fellow-travelers all over the world.
The result was that until the infamous Pact of August 1939, Hitler was seen as an anti-Communist force between Britain and the Soviets, and ideas of fighting him as a potential threat tended to conflict with the reality of the USSR as an active threat.
As far as Obama getting elected with fawning fanfare he received was a result of a confluence of factors. The main was that he was a ‘well-groomed, articulate and non-threatening’ black candidate who’s election would assuage the race-guilt of many white libs/progs. Also, since he was the first serious black candidate any opposition was labeled as ‘racist’ and studiously ignored. His lack of qualifications and seemingly mysterious background was overlooked even celebrated in the rush to his coronation. Pretty sad overall and we’ll be paying the price on many levels for many years.
As hundreds of thousands, soon to be millions, border crash the West, there will be no Western Civilization up and until 3 to 7% rise up. It will be so unnecessary and bloody; except for the reality that 97 to 93% can not, will not face the facts that are within range of punching them in the nose. Fools must exercise their folly.
I think ones ability to see clearly in the present and over the horizon to a certain extent depends on ones worldview and the ability to think critically.
Coming of age in the 1970’s I was a hedonist and political agnostic. But everything changed when I joined the Army, got my life straightened up, got married and started a family. I became a serious student of local, national and geopolitics.
What I’ve come to learn is that people see what they want to see. In other words they tend to default according to their worldview.
If that worldview involves progressive politics, Keynesian economics, rose colored glasses, unicorns and rainbows I tend not to bother asking them their opinion, or seeking to change their views. No sense in casting pearls their way.
parker Says:
September 26th, 2015 at 8:36 pm
As hundreds of thousands, soon to be millions, border crash the West, there will be no Western Civilization up and until 3 to 7% rise up. It will be so unnecessary and bloody; except for the reality that 97 to 93% can not, will not face the facts that are within range of punching them in the nose. Fools must exercise their folly.
Not that we were not warned.
Hear the Hungarian PM
Clear.
The Left’s structure was already apparent in 2007, before Hussein got on the national ticket as a significant winner.
But it takes a lot of truth seeking to connect the dots in 2007. It took less work to do so in 2012. Even less work in 2015. But the Leftists are a bunch of zombies, “work” is not what they are allowed to do.
The result was that until the infamous Pact of August 1939, Hitler was seen as an anti-Communist force between Britain and the Soviets, and ideas of fighting him as a potential threat tended to conflict with the reality of the USSR as an active threat.
That’s funny, because that’s what Democrats said they would do, fight Islamic Jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The truth was that Hitler was allied with Stalin. And the Left is allied with Islamic Jihad. It’s all manufactured as a crisis and emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4
I watched Yuri Bezmenov there some years ago and learned quite a bit. I think Art linked him at one time, but probably after I had already seen the clip on disinformation.
It was about the same time I was studying Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness auto biography and about the Leftists infiltrating homo and Leftist agents into Catholic seminaries, to infiltrate the priest hierarchy in 1930s.
If the West’s problems could be fixed with “elections”, I wouldn’t have been talking about the inevitability of Civil War II some odd years ago. If it is a problem an election can solve… it isn’t much of a problem in the greater scope.
Re: Obama, all anybody had to do was read “The Case Against Barack Obama” by Freddoso–a mere 236 heavily annotated pages–and you would have known enough to have consigned him to the ash heap of political history. That few Americans read this book is understandable. That every single ‘journalist’ in America did not is inexcusable. Obama never hid his agenda. He just deflected and dodged the VERY few in the media that actually asked him pointed questions.
We got what we deserve for allowing the media to run amok without any brakes. It’s hard to conclude anything except that half the country are lazy fools.
“…that something is very, very wrong.”
Indeed.
Or not.
Since Obama, when all is said and done, will go down in history as being one of America’s most successful presidents.
(Given his goal is America’s destruction.)
France had Napoleon.
Russia had Stalin.
Germany had Hitler.
America is had by 0bama.
The personal bios on all four are astonishing — for they detail extremely unhappy childhoods — followed by a ruthless adulthood.
France, Russia and Germany have yet to recover from their tyrannies.
0bama’s childhood bio is by far the worst of the four.
Which is frightening.
SgtMom:
“Either they didn’t have the sense god gave a goose, and therefore their opinings weren’t worth a thin dime – or they were already bought and paid for. My .02.”
I don’t see why both can’t be true.
Good information from all the commenters here, as usual.
Thanks.
Neo is claiming to see the obvious about Obama, but she is still not saying what that obvious is: that he is a communist, racist, Islamofascist, following one of the most basic teachings of Muhammad, that Muslims living in infidel countries should pretend to be infidels, when by doing so they can help advance Islamic conquest (“for war is deception”).
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The Other Chuck Says:
July 24th, 2015 at 11:47 pm
@Tonawanda, thanks for the invite back and kind words. However, libertarian and neoconservative thought is in conflict and it’s too bad because we are basically on the same side. I should continue commenting here if only to bug that gentleman of leisure, Mr. Vanderleun. As to Y, he’s not worth the bother.
Yea, got to praise that conflict there, whatever it is. Supporters of homo gaystapo vs pro Iraq war conflicts.
This is just Chuck’s revision of his initial reactions, which fell into a trap.
The beginning of the cowardice in refusing to see truth is always close to us. Most people believe in what the majority tells them.
Obama/Hussein as you call him, is planning mass execution and “already has”? My God, you are so extreme and bonkers I’m surprised that you haven’t self-destructed by now.-C
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“The Other Chuck” then announced his attention to stop commenting at the blog.-Neo
The intentions of people who fall for the Left’s propaganda means little to nothing. When the homo communities told C that traditional marriage wouldn’t be affected, C fell for it, due to that “facing the truth” issue people have to face sooner or later.
When the homo communities told C that traditional marriage wouldn’t be affected…
We have moved forward already. The MSM is now calling pedophiles ‘Boy Lovers’:
Army Rejects Appeal Of Green Beret Discharged For Confronting Afghan Boy Lover
Soldliers dared object, soldiers dismissed ….
Probably will take their pensions away … pour encourager les autres ….
G6loq…
The US Army carefully considered the issue.
Any attempt to introduce Christian morality into a Muslim land would result in horrific blow-back.
For the insulted Afghan horn-dog would HAVE to redeem his honor by jihad against ISAF elements — and right away, too.
So, the result would be that the Christian saves a boy’s tush — and sacrifices the lives of his fellow combatants…. Probably making the entire sector ‘restive,’ if not impossible to even contain.
You have to know when to hold ’em… and fold ’em.
A beat down, such as this by this trooper, is TOTALLY counter productive.
It CAN’T work. He’s not stopping anything.
He HAS to go, has to be reprimanded. It must be done.
blert Says
that Muslims are harmless puppies – and that alarmists ?
The racists and hatred keep coming here and thier I wounder if amount of hatred leave some to think in right dirction or the make distiction what wrong and whats right.
Is Evil leave you in peace?
We sow the westen men how are they
harmless puppie in iraq in afganistan and other placed.
So is the religion drive those harmless puppie?
Let read some of harmless puppie in the the house who drove Jews in Franc or Europe even the great empire
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/99345/vidal-sassoon-streetfighter
blert Says:
September 27th, 2015 at 2:35 pm
G6loq…
The US Army carefully considered the issue.
As much as it pains me I agree.
However note that States side for the MSM ‘pedophiles’ are now ‘boy lovers’ ….
Yeah!
More on facing the truth
Swedish politician “The White Majority is the Problem in Sweden”
What will go wrong?
Facing the ‘Truth’
There may well be an objective truth, but agreeing on what that might me in real time i.e. now is a high hurdle to get over.
Back in the mid 1930’s what was the truth about Hitler and Germany? Keynes early on foresaw another war. Many people did but who could foresee the new military tactics the Germans would develop that would negate a repeat of WWI? A reasonable person back then – if they agreed on some truth about the true nature of Hitler – could hardly be faulted for expecting a replay of WWI and given what happened the first time they might also expect the Americans to come in again long before a multi-year stalemate.
And was it a character flaw – unable to see the truth- that led many people to fail in understanding the lengths to which Hitler was willing to go to exterminate Jews?
I just had a lengthy conversation with someone I’ve known for 20 some years. They told me Sanders would make a great president and Obama has done a ‘pretty good job’ and this is despite occasional exposure to my clearly superior views and greater insight as to the truth on Obama over the past few years.
And as to what were the causes of the Great Depression???? As far as getting a consensus on that we’re farther than ever. And the current Great Recession??? It’s like talking a glacier into changing direction
@vanderleun I saw the interview with Bezmenov years ago; he really hit the nail on the head. Note that the KGB term “demoralization” does not mean to demoralize people in the usual English meaning. Rather, it means to “remove morals”, so that people cannot tell right from wrong.
The Clintons are a great example.
G6loq Says:
September 27th, 2015 at 5:58 pm
More on facing the truth
Swedish politician “The White Majority is the Problem in Sweden”
What will go wrong?
%%%
Translation from doublespeak:
“The native middle class is the problem, the elites must press on them ever.”
People of the left have a powerful need to think well of themselves. When Obama was just beginning to emerge as a possible presidential candidate, a woman I knew scoffed: “Nonsense. People in this country will never elect a black man as president.” I could see the beginning of moral preening right away: she considered herself one of the few unprejudiced whites who would want someone like Obama as leader of our country.
Very quickly, people who opposed Obama were deemed racist. I had thought it could be thrilling to have a black president, but by the second time I heard him speak (as a possible candidate) I could see what I later came to identify as narcissism. Narcissism, oratory that bordered on fantasy, and just plain lies. Moreover, I had come to learn about his political history and ideology.
I didn’t want a black president that badly. But smart people I knew didn’t see any of that. He was black, good-looking, moved gracefully, almost like an athlete, and was charismatic. That did it–the perfect combination. These voters were on the “right side of history”, our moral superiors.
I think when you need that badly to feel good about yourself, you can overlook almost anything so as to be in the right. By the end of O’s first term, we heard a few of his supporters acknowledge some disappointment, but I admit I was surprised not to see multitudes with regrets. Maybe it’s embarrassing to be so wrong. If so, then it does come down to lack of courage.
The reason why McChrystal was hamstrung in Afghanistan and sabotaged by Hussein was because McChrystal was using the Counter INsurgency doctrine polished by Petraeus in Iraq.
The Leftist alliance was not going to allow their Muslim allies to be dominated by this COIN push, they needed the jihadists around for other black operations (like Benghazi, Egypt, Libya, Syria, ISIL).
So all of these policies aren’t the result of fighting rag heads in Afghanistan nor is it fear of a backlash from X, Y, or Z. It came about when McChrystal was already being dragged down, and when he left, the Hussein put in place a loyalist puppet military directorship.
The military purge has proceeded extraordinarily fast since then, and most of the people in charge of Afghanistan policy are either Hussein’s Czars like Biden or HRC, or his pet Demoncrat generals and officers that got a promotion due to “Diversity”.
“In personal terms, I believe that I always had the courage to see things as they are, but I lacked the information and
the context. …
“In addition, I assumed that I was already ‘seeing things as they are,’ and didn’t realize my error.”
You were part of an echo chamber (“I never met anyone who voted for Nixon”-syndrome?). Well yes. But the thing is, there was no threat to life or property in the USA to make you confirm. And as yet the left hadn’t taken over the institutions (though they were in the process of doing so) so the information that was always there was also always freely available (example: Gulag Archipel: Published 1974, Chambers’ Witness: 1952, Orwell’s 1984: 1949). And then there were the signs of tyranny which the communists dictatorships, with all their propaganda, couldn’t possibly hide since it is of the very nature of a tyranny, especially like no or little information available and as good none of it by independent sources but also like death-trap frontiers, restricted or even no access to travel, no free press, dissenting voices persecuted, staging of massive propaganda events (the Nuremberg Rally became a symbol but never a symbol of the left mass events, why would that be?), Mao putting everyone in the same cloths, the Cult of Personality and so on.
That’s what hard for me to understand. To recap, the information was always there. Not “seeing things as they are,” I can only see as self-inflicted.
When I do comment (fairly recently, 1 a 2 years) I tend to react on specific terms like say “Chamberlain”, or linked to
that the obsession with Hitler and nazism. Our situation of today is not a direct result of Hitler, the man has been dead since 1945. Our situation today is the result of the blindness for what the left has been up to and for the blindness of the Left itself. The education sector isn’t infested with nazis but with marxists.
A substantial part of the West has been blind for a long time, to communism (“I’ve seen the future”), to nazism and now
to islam (we are to swoon for the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” but the “muslim world”, like the “communist
world”, makes a mockery of those rights, and they get away with it). Why that is so is indeed the question and a question
of life and death. But the crimes of nazism have been used to cover up the crimes of communism (*), what was criminal for the Nazi became perfectly acceptable for the Communist. That in itself has resulted in a lack of the “courage to see
things as they are” now and I may kill us yet.
(*) To what that leads I can illustrate with a recent (26 sept) thread on Free Republic (“Poles furious after Russia blames them for starting WWII”). Money quote “http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3341520/replies?c=16”;
The fact that the communists were already mass murderers doesn’t matter. It is enough to be against Hitler. But if so then there is no such thing as morality and human life has no value.
And the comment quoted has relevance. I’ve seen the same “reasoning” used when I went against someone defending Putin in his attack on the Ukraine.
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Thank you for your reaction on my comment, and my excuses for this rather late answer and for the somewhat rambling character of it. I made a previous one this morning (morning in Flanders that is) but that disappeared (probably my mistake, I think I waited too long to publish it. Serves me right in not copying it before publishing).
In my lost answer I used a quote from the book “The Korean War by Max Hastings you may find interesting. It is part of a
speech given by Ernest Bevin in 1950 (“The Korean War”, p.215);
The book goes on “Yet the Foreign Secretary … received no ovation or vote of thanks”.
So some of the Left could see it but it always tended to disappear down the memory hole after a time (it’s like the
amnesia Democrats have for the justification of the Iraq War in 2003).
Ps. I have been a long time lurker, probably from the beginning. So I did read (most) of the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” posts. But it has been a while. I should probably reread them.