tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post5772916406872401697..comments2024-01-02T02:18:30.960-08:00Comments on Israel Thrives: Obama's partners in the PA-PLO and their American victimsMike L.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06450806807610560873noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-36349622454354080982015-08-18T07:31:38.616-07:002015-08-18T07:31:38.616-07:00Phillip K. Dick, eh?
As I write this I am looking...Phillip K. Dick, eh?<br /><br />As I write this I am looking at my copy of A Scanner Darkly.<br /><br />Terrific writer and a true lunatic.<br /><br />It could not have been easy being him.Mike L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06450806807610560873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-52253306566274888662015-08-17T13:59:16.511-07:002015-08-17T13:59:16.511-07:00I rather like the fact that Corbyn may attain real...I rather like the fact that Corbyn may attain real power. It will signal a period where honest to god state sponsored pogroms will happen all over Britain. For the 190,000 Jews in the UK about half will never leave no matter what. Leaving 95,000 or so who will choose to flee. Many will have to go to Israel as no other country will take more than a tiny handful of them in. And it would be insane for them to flee to another country in Europe. This will be good for Israel and the clattering classes in Britain to say nothing of the liberal, DNC aligned press in the US will be falling over themselves to defend the ethnic cleansing, assuming they talk about it at all. But at the least it will be very entertaining to watch progressives and liberals finally put on their brownshirts and armbands and march under the Nazi flag or Monhammed's black flag or whatever. <br /><br />I suspect in decade people will read PK Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" and look at it as less a dystopian warning and more of a how-to manual. Empress Trudyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06073538968722986065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-91045697545935832562015-08-17T12:27:06.468-07:002015-08-17T12:27:06.468-07:002)
I should qualify what I said about the American...2)<br />I should qualify what I said about the American political landscape: It's the <i> climate and culture </i> that make it so polarized. The actual real political differences are slighter than is suggested. The tribalism is so great that many people - particularly young people - have a completely distorted view of what the <i> other side </i> actually think and believe. The things that bind you together are much more important. It is a crying shame that the tribalism, particularly on the left, has created this situation. Many people of a more conservative leaning are perfectly reasonable and decent people who just have some different views about the role of government in society. Some of those views are entirely understandable and well-worth listening to. Not that you'll ever hear a card-carrying Democrat admit that. Maybe they are so prejudiced that they cannot see that that many of their fellow citizens are unlikely to be wrong about everything. ( As well as being supposedly stupid and evil and racist, of course.)<br />It is similar in the UK, people on the left talk about conservative voters as if they are from another species. <br />It gets very tiring. And counterproductive.<br />khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04651898817618608477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-83799918429369814692015-08-17T09:22:41.788-07:002015-08-17T09:22:41.788-07:00Mike.
I don't think the left right division i...Mike.<br />I don't think the left right division <i> is </i> much different than in the States.<br />It is true that we have more political parties and that there is a hard-left wing of the Labour party which is always looking to take the party in that direction.<br />That's what is happening at the moment.<br />The hard-left is winning with the Corbyn vote. It doesn't help that the Labour party changed its rules and regulations on who could vote in a leadership race recently. Those changes have allowed this to happen. People who have never voted Labour have been allowed to pay three quid and sign up to participate in this election. That effectively leaves the vote wide open to manipulation by activists and Greens etc. And, importantly, has rendered the vote of the parliamentary Labour party almost pointless. <br />It's a horrible mess.<br />The left hate the Tories in much the same way as Democrats hate Republicans. I don't think the American political landscape has ever been more polarized in modern times. In reality, the centre of the Labour party is not <i> that </i> different than the moderate Tory party. New Labour rather proved that point, and won three elections in a row. A crime the left cannot forgive them for.<br />The left hate Tony Blair ( the most successful Labour leader of modern times) more than they hate anyone else.<br />The keywords are "Torylite" and "Neoliberalism" which get bandied about as the worst insults other than "Zionist" and so it goes on.<br />By the way, no-one can actually define " neoliberalism" as it doesn't really mean anything and is just the latest code for capitalism. But that seems to be irrelevant. <br />The people who nominated Corbyn did it to "broaden the debate" and have been bitten rather unexpectedly by what has happened. It's unleashed a lot of really unpleasant bile as well as infighting, and it is difficult to see how that can be repaired. <br /><br />I would say that in the US your version of the " hard-left" is very much alive and well. It just lies more in community organizing and grass-root activists. But they are very influential in your political landscape. Very. They have a lot of influence, and pressure groups which affect much of the Democratic party. I think.They just tend not to be seen as "hard-left" because they're often concerned with" identity politics" and " social justice" etc.<br />Odd how people who are supposedly fighting for " social justice" are so frequently the most hateful people around. <br /><br /><br /> <br /> khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04651898817618608477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-69614541455988740312015-08-17T08:08:52.400-07:002015-08-17T08:08:52.400-07:00I don't know why Obama doesn't tell Hollyw...I don't know why Obama doesn't tell Hollywood Jews to pay the bill FOR the Arabs. Empress Trudyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06073538968722986065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-60664758101730901492015-08-16T17:16:34.272-07:002015-08-16T17:16:34.272-07:00Kate,
am I correct in thinking that the Left - Ri...Kate,<br /><br />am I correct in thinking that the Left - Right division in the UK is considerably more intense than it is in the US? <br /><br />It seems obvious, but I simply want to put the notion out there so that maybe you will address it.<br /><br />In the US, the political divide between Left and Right can get ugly, but one thing that I like to remind people of, concerning American politics, is that we are all, essentially, liberals... in the western rationalist Enlightenment sense of that word.<br /><br />That is, in the US, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican, we all believe in the founding notions as derived, ultimately, from Magna Carta and eventually expressed in the Constitution of the United States.<br /><br />We believe in habeas corpus, we believe in freedom of the press, we believe in democracy, and we believe in freedom of / and from religion. I do not need to plunge into detailing this idea, at this point, because I know that you get me. What unites Americans is far more significant than what divides us by party. <br /><br />I just wish more Americans understood that so that they would stop hating on the other side.Mike L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06450806807610560873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-33030347853693325672015-08-16T14:06:52.690-07:002015-08-16T14:06:52.690-07:00It would be nice to see the American president sta...It would be nice to see the American president standing up for American victims of terrorism.<br />As for "social justice" that seems to be something that the progressive-left have chosen to define for themselves. It bears little relation to anything one could recognize.<br />As well as what is going on in this case, President Obama has, in recent months, promised to give enormous sums of money - and legitimacy - to the brutal theocrats in Iran.<br />And similar to the brutal totalitarian dictatorship of Cuba. Two countries that have some of the worst human rights records in the world. Both of these decisions have been hailed by the left as "promoting social justice."<br />Presumably this intervention will be seen in the same light. It does seem to be true that the more particular political organizations or regimes hate America, the more they are deserving of being rewarded. <br />After a while this sort of ideologically driven worldview gets a little wearisome.<br />At least to some of us.<br />It seems that the left's anti-Western frenzy is unstoppable and that maybe it will just have to run its course. Although, where that will lead us is really rather frightening.<br />The hypocrisy involved in all of this is breathtaking. Again.<br />At the moment in the UK the left is eating itself. While manically supporting someone who has cozied up to every dictator you can think of and who hangs out with Holocaust deniers, 9/11 truthers, and people who advocate stoning women to death for adultery and killing gay people for being gay.<br />Not to mention Jew-hating terrorists. But that last one is par for the course.<br />Somewhat amusingly, the liberal media and social media are now jammed full of leftists denouncing their own as "Tories" and various other aggressively unpleasant insults if they happen to not be supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. The Guardian newspaper has now been denounced as a "Tory rag" by much of its own readership. ( The only reason the Guardian is not supporting Corbyn is because they don't think he can win a general election, otherwise they would.)<br />Their belief in their own moral purity is absolute. <br />Whatever commitment to "social justice" used to be, it isn't <br />that anymore. But one wonders how much of it really meant anything in the first place when you see all this unfolding.<br />Some of us have been wondering that for some time now.khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04651898817618608477noreply@blogger.com