a little reminder... on differences...

[eyeno]

I am inclined to vote with nordic, sunny, and sounder.

The viewpoints of the people in the op have been purposely manufactured for them and they are a patsy.

Disdain for their viewpoint has also been manufactured so hating them only makes one a patsy too.

It is a two pasty tango.

So if anybody, why not save the disdain for the people who are manufacturing the illusions?

[justdrew]

So if anybody, why not save the disdain for the people who are manufacturing the illusions?

and who is that?

and I think you need to do a better job recognizing your allies. Pointing out the hatred that dominate the opposition is not the same as engaging in it. People are fed the fuck up with rightwing bullshit and they will express that. You can't assume they're just caught up in illusion, that can be said of ANYONE and EVERYONE.

[wintler2]

I hear a whole lot of delusional "why can't we just get along?", which is the motto of the weak begging mercy of the powerful the world over. I blame the lack of history in contemporary education.

[JackRiddler]

The problem with Obama is that he is the continuation of the Bush regime, but the Republican to follow (based on experience) is not going to be a continuation of Obama, but a whole new frontier of hurt.

Well, that's the booga-booga the same-old-shit is going to go by this time.

So, you see, that's why it's SO IMPORTANT that you vote for Obama — again!

Uh huh.

If you want change, you're out in the streets, and otherwise organizing for long-term democratic non-violent resistance. The year has thousands of hours in it. Voting only takes two hours.

I'd rather the PTB think, "ha fooled them again with the bogus left" rather than that they receive a popular endorsement for a further radical shift to the right, which is exactly what it means if the Republicans win.

This is so elementary that I despair at everyone who imagines they're more pure by helping the Republicans win, and thus shifting the entire system further to the right.

Imagine if the Republican candidate had lost every election since 1980 or 1968, as should have been the case. First the Republicans and then the Democrats would have ceased to exist as you know them today.

The way out of this mess is to the left. It always has been.

.

[Simulist]

It's a double bind, Jack — for everyone who imagines that electoral participation in the system (that binds us!) bears any sort of solution at all.

Chinese finger traps have nothing on American "democracy."

[sunny]

I hear a whole lot of delusional "why can't we just get along?", which is the motto of the weak begging mercy of the powerful the world over. I blame the lack of history in contemporary education.

But why does this have to be so? We can most certainly 'love' our fellow man without begging mercy of the powerful. We can refuse to give in to the rhetoric that trickles down on them like so much piss from a golden bidet. We can refuse to concede their right to tell us how to behave, how to speak, how to vote, how to love and raise a family, and we can stand there and refuse to be moved when they do the bidding of their masters and try to take what is rightfully ours, right down to our speech and the words we use. And we can do it all without ever once letting go of our love and respect for their humanity, and we can HAVE love and respect for their humanity without ever bowing and scraping to the overlords.

In fact, when we DO hate them we've already lost. The overlords will have won.

[justdrew]

who said anything about hating "them" - the call was to RECOGNIZE and face the situation.

[wintler2]

I hear a whole lot of delusional "why can't we just get along?", which is the motto of the weak begging mercy of the powerful the world over. I blame the lack of history in contemporary education.

But why does this have to be so? We can most certainly 'love' our fellow man without begging mercy of the powerful. We can refuse to give in to the rhetoric that trickles down on them like so much piss from a golden bidet. We can refuse to concede their right to tell us how to behave, how to speak, how to vote, how to love and raise a family, and we can stand there and refuse to be moved when they do the bidding of their masters and try to take what is rightfully ours, right down to our speech and the words we use. And we can do it all without ever once letting go of our love and respect for their humanity, and we can HAVE love and respect for their humanity without ever bowing and scraping to the overlords. In fact, when we DO hate them we've already lost. The overlords will have won.

I'm not advocating becoming a hater and agree with how you characterise some of what needs to be done - but its not enough. There are many responses other than appeasement (which is how i see 'why can't we get along') and passive resistance ('refusing to give in/move'), and we need to be busy on them because most struggles are won and lost years before the crisis.

Poland in 1939 was toast, didn't have a chance, had left their run far too late. Iran is currently being battered into a corner, and i'll bet there are desperate Iranians whimpering 'why can't we live in peace'. The only reason the bully hasn't come for you & me yet is that its still got other tastier victims; thats our white folks privelidge for which i'm sickly grateful, but it wont last forever. If we don't fight, we lose.

[Simulist]

who said anything about hating "them" - the call was to RECOGNIZE and face the situation.

But that's just it, Drew. Facing "the situation" isn't imagining that "they fucking hate you" — that's just playing directly into the hands of THE FEW who've gotten so good at dividing us, THE MANY, from one another.

The real "they" feel safer that way.

[Searcher08]

I hear a whole lot of delusional "why can't we just get along?", which is the motto of the weak begging mercy of the powerful the world over. I blame the lack of history in contemporary education.

But why does this have to be so? We can most certainly 'love' our fellow man without begging mercy of the powerful. We can refuse to give in to the rhetoric that trickles down on them like so much piss from a golden bidet. We can refuse to concede their right to tell us how to behave, how to speak, how to vote, how to love and raise a family, and we can stand there and refuse to be moved when they do the bidding of their masters and try to take what is rightfully ours, right down to our speech and the words we use. And we can do it all without ever once letting go of our love and respect for their humanity, and we can HAVE love and respect for their humanity without ever bowing and scraping to the overlords.

In fact, when we DO hate them we've already lost. The overlords will have won.

WERD

Don't throw another human's basic humanity down the toilet just because you disagree with their political stance.
As Buckminster Fuller said:

“...to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”

[sunny]

who said anything about hating "them" - the call was to RECOGNIZE and face the situation.

I'm sure I am not alone in feeling that an advocacy of a response in kind is implicit in the op's rhetoric:

They fucking hate you. They want you, and everyone who speaks for you, and every institution that represents your values, whether it be Planned Parenthood or food banks or ACORN- you name it. They want it destroyed.

I just do not understand why more people do not recognize this. The Republicans have declared total war on America, and people are responding like this is politics as usual. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s really all or nothing at this point. We put the birchers/tea party/conservatives back in their place and destroy the current GOP, or we deal with this shit for the next forty-sixty years.

I know I am Godwining this post, but we are at the point where we know who is going to set the Reichstag fire. Are we up to stopping them?

How does he propose we stop them? He offers no real solutions just a war cry, and a loud and obnoxious one at that. It sounds an awful lot like he's saying we need to hate these people as much as they hate us but of course there is room for plausible denial. Weaselly. I barely know this person, the author, and while I don't dispute his specific complaints on their own, an objective reading of the above tells me he is not advocating we reach up to the top of the food chain and hitting THEM where it hurts, he's trying to turn us on each other. When he writes of destroying the GOP he only means as it 'currently' stands and says so.

Hell I say we should ALL get together and destroy BOTH major parties forever and ever. One is the bulldog and the other a lapdog beholden to power. Then we might get somewhere.

[eyeno]

So if anybody, why not save the disdain for the people who are manufacturing the illusions?

and who is that?

and I think you need to do a better job recognizing your allies. Pointing out the hatred that dominate the opposition is not the same as engaging in it. People are fed the fuck up with rightwing bullshit and they will express that. You can't assume they're just caught up in illusion, that can be said of ANYONE and EVERYONE.

In a broad sense I am inclined to agree with wintler2 when he points to the lack of history in contemporary education. The "history" of contemporary education is nothing more than a carefully crafted illusion. It creates the base upon which further crafted illusions are mounted.

They masquerade their bullshit in the words of Jesus and the all-knowing free market, but it is transparent what motivates them. Not love for their fellow man, not love for their fellow citizen, not love for country- what motivates them is hate for the other.

You.

They fucking hate you. They want you, and everyone who speaks for you, and every institution that represents your values, whether it be Planned Parenthood or food banks or ACORN- you name it. They want it destroyed.

I just do not understand why more people do not recognize this. The Republicans have declared total war on America, and people are responding like this is politics as usual. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s really all or nothing at this point. We put the birchers/tea party/conservatives back in their place and destroy the current GOP, or we deal with this shit for the next forty-sixty years.

I know I am Godwining this post, but we are at the point where we know who is going to set the Reichstag fire. Are we up to stopping them?

I just find this flawed on so many levels I don't know where to begin. I don't consider this pointing out hatred. I consider it a call to arms and a directive to hate and destroy the "other." It is full of trigger words.

To me it appears to be intentional agitprop or a profound lack of understanding of how the system actually works. It seems to indicate that there is a functioning left wing of politics when the truth is that the left wing and right wing function with the same purpose and goals.

"We know who is going to set the Reichstag fire." Really? Maybe the author of that screed needs to watch both his left and right hands and see which one fills up with shit first. He might be surprised at the results or he may not be surprised depending on whether this screed is intentional agitprop or ignorance.

[Sounder]

Simulist wrote....

But that's just it, Drew. Facing "the situation" isn't imagining that "they fucking hate you" — that's just playing directly into the hands of THE FEW who've gotten so good at dividing us, THE MANY, from one another.

The real "they" feel safer that way.

Thank-you Simulist

Remember, they play on our beliefs to create a narrative that distracts attention away from the actual threat and on to an emotionally triggering substitute.

Like this;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2 ... art_9.html

Then there was the extraordinary Colonel Edward Lansdale. He was an advertising executive who invented what he called "psywar" when he almost singlehandedly stopped a communist takeover of the Philippines in the 1950s.

To do this Lansdale employed anthropologists to research into the fears and beliefs of the Huk rebels. He then used the information ruthlessly to create more fear. He described how he used the terror of vampires.

"One Psywar operation played upon the popular fear of asuang, or vampire. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol.

They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail.
When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the asuang had got him and that one of them would be next"

Lansdale said these techniques were incredibly effective.

[sunny]

The left-wing is now 'the rest of us', that vast unorganized glob of humanity who refuses to buy into the propaganda and aren't as susceptible to thought manipulation. 'They' are not out to destroy us because Joe 'Tea Bagger' Smith down the street hates us, we have to be destroyed because we're a potential threat to hegemonic power. When we turn on Joe the tea bagger because he's been brainwashed into hating us we're denying our OWN humanity. What do people think will happen if 'the rest of us' put the conservatives 'in their place' like a football team vanquishing it's rival? They will respond in kind in an ever escalating civil war. Oh glory hallelujah! Just what we need, for Johnny to come marching home.

[eyeno]

wintler2 wrote:

Poland in 1939 was toast, didn't have a chance, had left their run far too late. Iran is currently being battered into a corner, and i'll bet there are desperate Iranians whimpering 'why can't we live in peace'. The only reason the bully hasn't come for you & me yet is that its still got other tastier victims; thats our white folks privelidge for which i'm sickly grateful, but it wont last forever. If we don't fight, we lose.

Well you might want to look over your shoulder because the privilege is coming under scrutiny. What do you think all this hysteria about the white supremacy movement is about? The white middle and upper middle class is the last group left in the country that has enough left to mount a resistance. Sure, there are white haters just like there are haters in any group, but the hysterical ranting about it is the initial stages of your privilege going out the window. As a matter of fact this op serves the same function in some ways.

(Small minded people please don't try to engage me in a rant about the evils of white supremacy either because I won't participate, I already know white supremacy is an abyss of hate.)

My point is that it is a call to class warfare. It is a call to class warfare just like pointing out the statistics of crimes being committed by young black males. Instead of recognizing that young black males have been shoved into a no win situation and are desperately trying to survive in any way they can the PTB would rather you view black males as criminals simply because they are black. Now that we have a large Latino population they will get thrown in the class warfare hate festival too.