Loading ...Under attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Vqw6GRdYI
only 143 views – right.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/austin-city-defund-the-police-budget
“Weaver, 29, is a correspondent for InfoWars, an ultra right-wing radio network founded by Alex Jones, who has used the show to spread conspiracy theories, such as claiming a 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was a hoax.”
Voila – she must be bat-sh!t crazy!
This is all very nice, but it is important to realize that this is a world where definitions mean almost nothing and for well over a century major questions cannot be posed directly. In each little mini-world “democracy” “republic” and in fact “socialist” etc has as much and as little meaning as in the Democratic Socialist Republic of North Lotklovobia.
BLM in many areas from my understanding is often largely of white demonstrators. It is funded by the Ford Foundation and that extreme reactionary Soros, and now by any number of corporations. It is an operation of global capitalists. Or if you prefer global “socialists”. From where I have tended to hang out, the relatively far left, “socialism” is rather similar to what in many parts of the right is “capitalism.” Read and study rather than point fingers and you will find out.
I could write essays, but the important think is to avoid ideology but rather stick to facts.
Now, it is nice to look at more than one side of a story. Perhaps, after all, it is a good think for having an extremely small # of people pulling everyone’s strings and subjecting everyone to a new serfdom. Maybe we should not resist. But many people who are “left” are freaking out at the possibility as much as those on the “right.” And by “left” I do not mean those hired-for-show “Antifa” types and their dupes. I certainly do not mean the blind nonthinking liberals or pwogwessives, who are frequently despised or at least pitied by people on the left for much the same reason many of you do. I mean people who are scared of big out of control authority that is getting bigger and bigger and more powerful, and is distorting everything, including the meaning of words so that people cannot communcate.
If I had more time I would communicate more clearly. The point, or a point, is not to speak past one another. Paul Craig Roberts wrote about a decade ago that the elites have mastered the ability of staying in power by keeping the left and the right at each other’s throats.
Leftist leadership is on a mission to destroy American culture and values – the difference between us Karl lies in the fact that over 35 years I believe it and you don’t or maybe have not made up your mind that the dots are at all connected. My best hope is that for most rational dems or liberals the jury is still out as to whether leftist leadership is a real a threat or not. Which political party wants to defund the Police (or at least does not speak out against defunding or perhaps not even defends law enforcement budgets?) – even if Biden can’t say it – Kamala will. Not sure why ‘rational’ dems/progressives in those jurisdictions can’t see the writing on the wall – but it’s coming, especially if their candidate wins (at any level of gov’t).
Again, much depends on definitions and not talking past one’s self. “Leftist leadership” to you means “right wing manipulators” to others. Doubt it? Look at recent postings at a site I don’t particularly recommend for the most part, mostly left-liberal, all too filled with gassy TDS.
See for example an not particularly glowing though not altogether horrible piece from the weekend — I cite it as an example more than anything else — where those who control the “Democratic” Party are called “reactionary”. It is common in leftist and even many honest, relatively sane liberal pieces to see the “Democratic” Party called right-wing, or reactionary:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/17/kamala-harris-represents-everything-wrong-with-empty-identity-politics
I might have more in agreement with you than with the author of the piece if we could get our definitions in place, but I think we could have a constructive conversation with this author for that matter. But I’m just presenting it as an example of where an author calls something “reactionary” leadership where you would call it left leadership — and I see the author as being to the right of me.
An example of how there actually can be conversation comes today from this same site (which, again, I do not like so much and generally recommend). Here one of their token right-libertarians writes in a way that I believe tends to use language that many anti-authoritarians across the board can appreciate, though neither hard-line followers of the D Party or R party brand would like:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/18/harris-problem-isnt-her-identity-its-her-politics
I see in the prior posting as elsewhere that the rightists are now engaging, as I suspected they might, in cancel culture on Marx. Of course he and Engels said naughty things about people of different ethncities. Marx was very very bad and wrote that it was useful for human progress to have colonization by the European powers. Very naughty. All sorts of horrible things. Engels was a factory owner and did fox hunting from what I have read. You can join in with shallow reactionary thinkers of MSNBC, CNN, etc and encourage burning their books or taking their stuff out of libraries because of all their naughtiness.
From what I understand, in NKorea it gets you in great trouble to even make noises of trying to read Marx. Ditto under Mao (I don’t know about now). It was hard to find Marx and Engels under Mao. If you read Marx and Engels you will read a superb critique of the leninist model of society, one that in many ways fits better than their critique of western capitalism of the late 20th century. I do not know, but I have read the assertion that Mao never read Capital and Stalin read it at the earliest only late in the 1930s. After all, this all was bad stuff — Engels wrote of Adam Smith as one of the greatest writers and thinkiers, whose work Marx was trying to develop further in Smith’s spirit. Lenin and Trotsky were cunning and knew the Marx and Engels works but at least in my opinion missed the whole point despite their erudition.
Marx and Engels had long careers. Marx for example, was a longtime correspondent for the NY Tribune, the US’s largest newspaper, the paper of Horace Greeley, subsequently President Grant’s main opponent the time he ran for reelection. What you are familiar with is not necessarily their best stuff. Some of what they wrote might blow your minds. One does not however follow it or say naughty-naughty-naught to it. One uses what is useful from it. As with Adam Smith or whatever else. Don’t be fooled by ideologues of whatever brand. Think for yourselves.
I’d write better if I had time.
I perhaps should have said Marx was a “contributor” rather than “correspondent” for Greeley. I don’t know how often he wrote for the Tribune, but my understanding was he wrote repeatedly. One of his greatest books (rather entertaining and applicable in parts to current events) I think was serialized by Greeley.
Agreed, everyone must make up their own mind hopefully based on evidence sought after and not fed to them. Thanks Karl.