A Transcript of Abu Bakr’s Speech
It’s an interesting document, and worth reading yourself. Contrary to media intimations of evil, and raving, it’s a pretty sane document.
I’ll highlight this bit:
Terrorism is to refuse humiliation, subjugation, and subordination [to the kuffār – infidels]. Terrorism is for the Muslim to live as a Muslim, honorably with might and freedom. Terrorism is to insist upon your rights and not give them up.
But terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in Burma and the burning of their homes. Terrorism does not include the dismembering and disemboweling of the Muslims in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kashmir. Terrorism does not include the killing of Muslims in the Caucasus and expelling them from their lands. Terrorism does not include making mass graves for the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the slaughtering of their children. Terrorism does not include the destruction of Muslims’ homes in Palestine, the seizing of their lands, and the violation and desecration of their sanctuaries and families.
Terrorism does not include the burning of masājid in Egypt, the destruction of the Muslims’ homes there, the rape of their chaste women, and the oppression of the mujahidin in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. Terrorism does not include the extreme torture and degradation of Muslims in East Turkistan and Iran [by the rāfidah], as well as preventing them from receiving their most basic rights. Terrorism does not include the filling of prisons everywhere with Muslim captives. Terrorism does not include the waging of war against chastity and hijab (Muslim women’s clothing) in France and Tunis. It does not include the propagation of betrayal, prostitution, and adultery.
It sort of speaks for itself, in the “you call me a monster? Look in the fucking mirror” vein that is rather hard to argue against when your leaders have just invaded multiple countries on flimsy pretext leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, minimum and the creation of millions of refugees, the vast majority of whom just happen to be Muslim. And when the leader of the “free” world brags about how great he is at killing, while he force feeds men who, in many cases, haven’t been convicted of a damn thing.
I despise everything ISIS stands for. But it’s simply impossible to defend what the West has been doing to Muslims for the past 20 years, or to note that ISIS doesn’t exist as a force worth worrying about with George Bush’s illegal invasion of the Middle East.
You look back to the 50s and 60s, to Iraq and Iran, and you see states trying to be democratic, whose version of Islam is mild and moderating; whose women are becoming more and more free and educated (the same is generally true of Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Pakistan goes really off the rails when it starts being used as a throughfare for arms and money to Afghan Mujahadin.)
Prosperity, and democracy, and hope of a better future. A belief in truly universal human rights, and that Muslims get to have elections and keep the results of them too. Or that if they have democratic elections and do manage to keep the results (Iran), that they won’t be enbargoed so their children die due to lack of medicine.
If you won’t offer people freedom and prosperity and autonomy; if you won’t respect their democratic decision-making, why would you be surprised if, after bombing them into the ground, they become unpleasant people? They are only learning the lessons you have taught them, that might makes right, that there are no “human rights” that apply to Muslims which aren’t bought at the end of a gun (perhaps there aren’t any for anyone, but there certainly aren’t for Muslims.)
Abu Bakr is Bush and Blair’s love child. He is the the great grandchild of the CIA spooks who overthrew democratic elections in the middle East. He is the step-child of the Egyptian police state, which has proved over and over again that Islamists can”t take power peacefully, because the people with guns won’t allow it. He is the grandchild of Madeline Albright, who throught that half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.”
An evil man, to be sure, Abu Bakr. But a man who does not exist absent the great and extended efforts of men who were, judged by the number of dead and wounded and dispossessed, even more evil than he.
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Spot on, Ian. But looking into a mirror is an activity too many Americans — and others in the West — aren’t interested in doing.
As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, “Oh, why do they hate us?!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AviADrhX-v8
“As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, ‘Oh, why do they hate us?!’”
For their comeuppance to be just, they should turn on one another, practicing the violence they have waged on the world’s most vulnerable for generations.
And this active wishing for a comeuppance on the clueless for their obliviousness is why y’all never win.
Win what? The right to kill poor brown or yellow people, instead of the other evil warmongering mo-fos, so markets will stay friendly, goods will stay cheap, and big oil et al can stay in command. At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…
A profoundly stupid, contemptuous and presumptuous statement Mandos. Pointing out the perfectly predictable consequences of policies (in advance as well as afterwards) doesn’t mean I want ISIS to do anything in particular.
The win stuff is particular incoherent. Winning has nothing to do with anybody being nice in any particular way, or ISIS, the Taliban, the Tea Party, Assad, Putin and many others wouldn’t regularly win.
I’m not in the active politics game any more. I just tell the truth, and people whine about it.
Even if I was, your particular theory about losses would still be laughable. The only people sort of on the left who are winning anything on any sort of regular basis are the gays. No one else is.
jcapan
July 6, 2014
Win what? The right to kill poor brown or yellow people, instead of the other evil warmongering mo-fos, so markets will stay friendly, goods will stay cheap, and big oil et al can stay in command. At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Damn well said! My sentiments exactly!
C-233, ironically, I’ve made the counterargument on this very site numerous times, that there are those truly responsible and those who are largely innocent or ignorant. I don’t retract that argument, but the brainwashed partisan hypocrites in recent years, down with whatever their own vaunted leader wants to do, simply for the sake of tribal identity, has begun to bring me around.
@ jcapan
July 6, 2014
I don’t post much anymore because I see it as pointless. There are no innocent’s. Last I checked, America is still a democracy, albeit a broken one, nothing happens without the consent of the people. Either by commission or omission…
@ Ian
Your second to last paragraph is the chicken come home to roost. Nice…
His statement is interesting. For a number of reasons. His putting Islam forward as the one ideology that will bring unity to people all over, which will solve the problems of poverty and suffering. The power of his doctrine lies in its moral force. ISIS commits brutal atrocities but its no worse then what the west does. What does the West offer now? Capitalism and violence. Wars without end. Extraction of all wealth. Corruption in everything, civil society, politics, daily life. The very death of the natural world….
For nearly 70 years the great powers of the west did everything they could to destroy socialism in the world. They massacred the Left, the real revolutionary Left, and look what happened. The forces of reaction are powerful everywhere, from the Mid West to the Middle East. Latin America is holding out, flying the red flag proudly.
Perhaps I’m just young and inexperienced but we can only fight. You’re doing well…telling the truth. Some preach the Gospel with words, others with action. All necessary in this eternal struggle.
Ian,
I was not referring to you. Obviously, with half a brain, anyone can see that you’re not literally supporting ISIS.
I was referring instead to jcapan,
And jcapan’s hardly the only one to express this sentiment around here. There’s a nontrivial “comeuppance caucus” among “guns-and-butter” leftists, Not All Of Them, of course.
Look: there are in fact a lot of clueless and oblivious people among Americans (and Westerners in general). There are a lot of people who just live their lives and believe what approved forms of authority tell them. This is true everywhere that isn’t an outright war zone! I have long doubted that, even figuratively, approaching and considering these people with a kind of generalized contempt is the answer (and I’m probably sometimes guilty of it).
I think a lot went off the rails when that guy came up with that whole “authoritarian follower” meme. It’s satisfying, and probably even true. But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not a sound basis for a political practice.
If the gays are the only group that’s currently “winning”, it has at least in part to do with an effort to get the ordinary people on board. Which they do. The basic plea of the gay rights movement is that they’re just, well, Queer as Folk.
The right is right about one thing: they too have contempt for the masses but they’re better at putting themselves in the shoes of the people just trying to get by. Even if it’s just to rob them. I’m sure it’s a useful talent for con artists.
It seems relatively common when applied to the American far right.
I would caution that it’s important not to go overboard on idealized versions of the past. Reality is a lot less clear cut than the (for lack of a better word) “traditional” progressive narrative on Near Eastern political development.
All of those governments (including Iran and Iraq) had very pronounced authoritarian tendencies. Yeah, there’s some truth to the notion they were trying to be more democratic, but this is not a clear cut case of a strong trend cruelly cut short by external forces – external drivers didn’t help, to be sure, but the notion that a lot of these were going to overcome internal contestation is pretty speculative. The issues they were dealing with were huge – those positive developments were happening only in the largest cities and they were sowing even then the societal cleavages that *internal* authoritarian actors were able to exploit so effectively later on.
Similarly, the notion that the CIA wandered around downing governments at will is one that the early folks in CIA would love everyone to believe, but really their influence and success was a lot less in reality than the traditional narrative asserts. The most recent work on TP/AJAX sees profound disconnects between what Roosevelt (and a young agency that needed a success in the covert action field to justify its position) sold as history and what actually happened [it strikes me as being rather akin to hard core Petraeus-ites trying to take credit for creating the political developments that enabled the “surge” – they didn’t create it, they surfed off it and influenced it rather than directed it]. That AJAX “worked” was in very large part luck and due to indigenous actors.
As I keep saying, someday, there will be a reckoning. And when it happens, millions of Americans will turn to each other with that familiar wail born of denial and willful ignorance, “Oh, why do they hate us?!”
No there won’t be any reckoning so if you’re waiting for it with bated breath don’t hold that same breath, and no thanks, I won’t be reading what this fruitcake has written. He cannot tell me anything I don’t already know, but I can surely tell him something he doesn’t know and will never know. If there really is a him, and I’m not convinced there is.
In fact, one could argue that the transcript was strategically prepared with the audience that frequents this space in mind, but certainly not for magnanimous reasons.
At all levels of American society, there is a complete lack of empathy for the 100s of 1000s of innocents we have murdered or left with butchering cunts for dictators over so many decades. Why I should have one iota of concern for their well-being when they clearly don’t give a shit about legions killed in their names…
Which is it? I, we or their? Are you the “we?” If so, are you saying you have no concern for yourself and will gladly walk to the gallows for the we (if you truly believe you are of the we) and sacrifice yourself to the ISIS leadership (or any other rebel group that at its heart wants the genocide of all Americans and even Westerners) for your (once again, if you consider yourself the we) lack of empathy?
If so, have at it, but please don’t mind if I don’t care to join you. I have every much right to fight for my right to survive as the scumbag leader of ISIS regardless of his idealist strategized rhetoric. ISIS leaves you two options. One — surrender and be annihilated or two — annihilate before it annihilates you. Or, you can see it for what it really is. I leave what it really us up to your imagination.
While I agree totally with Cold re: Islamic totalism, I might also note that the religion of the West, Mammonism, demands totalistic capitulation as well. That is the point Cold is missing.
Cold has never been personally bombed or his family slaughtered by drones. Bully for him.
But we cannot expect those who HAVE experienced this to not turn to horrific ideologies who seem successfully able to oppose Mammonism.
Brian,
Cold does not miss that as much as he believes the west deserves authority through superiority.
Holefield clarifies time and again that his problems with American imperialism are not so great that he wants the Empire dismantled. Or out of the Mideast. Or Europe. Or anywhere in particular.
He would rather lie about the least little thing, hoping none catch his lies, or, rather, that he has a clever response ready to contextualize his lies with those he believes are telling other lies.
He even tell unnecessary lies about ISIS…”surrender and be annihilated.”
Actually it would be surrender, pay the dhimmi tax, don’t rock the boat, and live.
It is not so fuzzy a picture if you are talking perfect justice, which is not practical to apply here but certainly not merely theoretical. If revenge attacks occur in the United States, clearly an individual who had opposed intervention in the Mideast would not deserve to be the victim, and an individual who was apathetic, or in favor of such would be less undeserving.
Not that an ultimate imperialist-defender like Holefield really cares.
So the “caliph” of ISIS invokes American terror and aggression to justify his own terror and aggression? So what. Hitler invoked America’s dispossession of the Indians to justify the Drang Nach Osten and the quest for Lebensraum. S0 what.
Let the “caliph” of ISIS tell it to ISIS’s targets and see if they feel better about it.
One difference is the “caliph” finds recruits because of direct impacts on the populations he operates within.
Hitler was not recruiting among American Indians.
This is not even fully a “moral” issue. The psychopaths who run polities, be they states, tribes, drug gangs, or religious cults don’t typically care about morality per se. Or their morality allows them to simply other the “enemy” in pursuit of power and other aims.
No, rather than a moral issue, this should be a “practical” issue: stop trying to run the world. Stop dropping bombs on civillian populations. Stop funding pet authoritarians.
People like Cold are complete imbeciles who believe in the impossible. No empire lasts forever, that is just a law of nature, and America, by consent of their population, has been ratfucking the world since WW2, and now many developing countries are coming into their own, and are going to take their piece of the pie, whether Americans like it or not. Our giant pie share is going to shrink, jobs are going to be replaced by artificial intelligence, including white collar jobs, and there is no plan in place to make sure this transition is smooth, and there’s not a damn thing psuedo intellectuals like Cold can do about it. Oh, and they know it too. They know their power is waning. In America, brown people like me ARE going to take your white privilege, and smash into a million pieces. Cold, whatcha going to do about that? Not a DAMN thing.
Even our neoliberal overlords do not object to the downfall of the incumbent well-off working classes.
In America, brown people like me ARE going to take your white privilege, and smash into a million pieces.
Are you a TSA agent? If so, it’s already happening. White people are being accosted at airports all across America by authoritarian brown people in uniforms. The movie The Reader (recommended) comes to mind.
No war lasts forever, but there are many cases where you will not live to see the end of it. For example England versus France with for 800 years. Now you may think you live so long, but almost all of the readers will not.
I was born in Sarajevo five years before the civil war. My parents and I got out before the closed the airports. The Mujehedin who came to fight claimed to be protecting Muslims like my family, but had absolutely no respect for the local culture of tolerance and moderate Islam. They have been attempting, for the last twenty years, to radicalize and harden religious differences in a region that does not welcome twisted Arabic tradition masquerading as Islamic teaching. I have no sympathy for animals like Abu Bakr, because despite their claims they do not fight on behalf of the disenfranchised or the victims of violence.
They certainly didn’t fight on behalf of Bosniaks when they were torching peaceful villages and performing atrocities to ‘avenge’ a people that they didn’t understand and a culture that they hated. These people will use any excuse to sate their lust for violence and their need for control.
I understand that you are mainly focused on the atrocities committed by Western countries, and that is a laudable aim, but I wanted to give you a perspective from the side of the ‘victims’ they are claiming to represent.
No war lasts forever
But war does, or so it seems, it just keeps changing name plates.
Now you may think you live so long, but almost all of the readers will not.
It’s just around the corner, Stirling. Yes, you and I may be a little late to take advantage of it, but it may be available to the next generation, and of course, if and when that time comes, “to live” will have to be redefined.
Will Kurzweil be right? Is immortality within the grasp of humanity? If it is, what a nightmare. Can you imagine the essence of Abu Bakr being uploaded onto a hard drive where he and his ilk can perpetually seek to establish a virtual caliphate of bits and bytes? See how that works? Technology is so far apace of social evolution, the implications are mind-boggling and frightening. Where once death was, amongst other things, a final and sure refuge if you could jettison the yoke of religion, it could be, in due time, just a transition from biological to electronic with the attendant social proclivities and the implications of those proclivities following Mankind into the silicon circuitry.
@Celcius233
“nothing happens without the consent of the people. Either by commission or omission…”
Sort of damned if we do and damned if we don’t, huh? What does anything I’ve committed or omitted have to do with with the fact that Obama (for whom I did not vote, which would be a sin of omission, I guess) chooses to take the advice of Russophobes like ZBig or neocons like Kagan?
Wake me when we start to beat up on the actual criminals.
Another view of this discussion may be had by reading Jay Hanson’s (of dieoff.org fame) essay, Overshoot Loop, Evolution Under the Maximum Power Principle, that was linked today via Naked Capitalism and The Automatic Earth.
His basic view seems to explain what is going on regarding radical Islamists and almost any political actor, radical Capitalist and crazy Christians included. The actions seem predictable under his view of the mechanics of evolutionary biology and overshoot in biological systems. And no one gets to opt out of the craziness.
The big question still remains, as someone posed, “Are humans smarter than yeast?”
Or will humans turn the planet into a big, acidic, ruined bottle of wine, all piss and vinegar and dead? For humans, at least.
Western and Modern Industrial Civilization people tend to confuse WesterModern Industrial Civilization with human culture. Many non-Western peoples have shown themselves to be much smarter than yeast. Prior to Columbian Contact for example, many Indian Nations of the Amazon Basin were terraforming the Amazon to make it sustainably better for humans and nonhumans alike. We are beginning to discover and understand evidence of that fact.
Maybe isolated groups of HandiCraft Smart Man will survive Industrial Yeast Man’s slide to the bottom of Hubbert’s Pit. If the Ituri Pigmies or the Alpaca herders along the shore of Lake Titicaca are the last human survivors on Earth, then the future of Humanity will be in their strong hands.
One cannot dismiss what people with direct experience like Toni makes clear.
It is the tragedy of our age that the only current alternatives to modern Mammonism seem to be particularly vicious religious nuts.
Or will humans turn the planet into a big, acidic, ruined bottle of wine, all piss and vinegar and dead? For humans, at least.
Unfortunately, in the event of human extinction, the many poison pills we’ve created in the form of nuclear reactors will melt-down and poison the planet irrevocably for millions of years. Unless there are life forms that can quickly evolve to survive in a highly-radiated environment, it won’t be just us that will be doomed. It will be all of life on the planet.
Fukushima alone might have already started the process….
It seems that cold is just omniscient he’s also omnipotent. For example he brushed over one of my object lessons, obviously it doesn’t amuse him.
madisolation
July 8, 2014
Wake me when we start to beat up on the actual criminals.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There you go. And it is in the power of the people to do so; so, where the hell are they?
Look around the planet, there’s a lot of rebellion going on. But not stateside…
There you go. And it is in the power of the people to do so; so, where the hell are they?
Some have run away to Thailand where anything goes, especially if you’re an expat. Go figure. America’s like the Hotel California, though — you can check out any time you like, and you and your ilk obviously have, but you can never leave.
It’s why you have to keep checking back in. The allure and pull is too great — like a massive Black Hole. There’s no way to ignore it. It also explains why people keep Coming To America rather than leaving it. In fact, that’s the title of my next blog post — Coming To America. People loves them some Mammon and will risk life and limb to get it because Mammon is much more than White Privilege. Much, much more — but it will gladly have you believe it’s just that — and many do, and in doing so unwittingly serve Mammon further.
Mammon’s got it all covered. Collapse won’t save you — it won’t save any of us, but Mammon will have you believe it will. Dmitry types his nocturnal emissions in zealous vain. The collapse will not be televised. It’s already happened and is happening — it’s like flowers growing — you can’t see it in real time, but by God, there’s a flower when just moments before there wasn’t one and you never saw it happen.
It seems that cold is just omniscient he’s also omnipotent. For example he brushed over one of my object lessons, obviously it doesn’t amuse him.
Stirling, my comment wasn’t a refutation of your bemusements, but rather an addendum. I look at all this as a group project where we collaborate like Howard Cosell and Al Michaels in calling the Monday Night Shadow Play on the cave wall.
And you’re wrong, it does amuse me — all of it. Life is tragic comedy — increasingly so — and maybe that’s just me getting older but everything these days is ironic satire, or so it seems.
@ madisolation July 8, 2014
Certainly damned if you don’t. Whether you like it or not a basic premise of democracy is that the citizenry are responsible for their government. They may or may not be culpable but they are responsible. Failure to act on this simple principle is to travel on the road to serfdom at ever increasing speed and with increasingly defective brakes. This failure of the overwhelming majority of Americans including apparently you is good evidence for the case made by oligarchs and technocrats in your ruling class who argue that serfdom is all that the overwhelming majority of American citizens again apparently including you are capable of.
mfi
Mandos
It’s certainly true, scratch most Americans particularly “liberal” “progressive” or “socialist” Americans and you’ find a raving authoritarian underneath. This authoritarianism becomes pronounced when it comes to how America and American armed forces — including mercenaries, are allowed to behave towards non-Americans.
mfi
Toni M’s point is an important one, there are barbarians on all sides.
mfi
Finally and despite what the usual establishment apologists will try to tell you the fact is that the overwhelming majority of people in Irak, and Syria were far better off under the Ba’ath – monstrous though those governments were than they have been since.
Under Saddam Irak had a superb health system which functioned right throughout the country, it had the best educational system in the Arab world, and members of the minorities and women had opportunities to educate and better themselves. They could also live their lives free from fear of being targeted for rape and despoliation simply for being members of the minority communities or women. The same applies to Syria.
What they have now is so close to the Hobbesian state of nature as to be indistinguishable from it.
In Iran since the revolution the living standard of the poorest in society has rocketed as has their access to education and healthcare. A fact usually ignored by Westerners is that the majority of Iranian university students are women. Nor although the female presence in such disciplines as bio-informatics is pronounced is this confined to the “hard sciences”.
The fact is that Western intervention has consistently made life drastically worse for the inhabitants of the region and no amount apologetics or strawmen will alter that fact. The rise of fanatical Islamic military activism is a direct result of the actions of Western governments and of governments allied to them.
mfi
It might be true, but acting on directly on this knowledge is not useful. Holding up a mirror to people’s foibles just as often pushes them back into their comfortable shells, if you hold the mirror up in the wrong way. It’s not morally satisfying, but it is the way it is.
I think for anyone railing against the american people (the ubiquitous “we” or “they”) being complicit/responsible for imperial aggression, they should consider a few uncomfortable facts:
Foreign entities including states (such as Israel) corporations and individuals have more influence on US policy than all the citizens of the US. Think supranational imperialist class in operation.
The US is not a democracy and the preferences of its citizens have zero effect on policy, especially imperial wars, but also social security, health care, employment rights, etc. Even republican voters are consistently to the left of democratic party politicians on every issue. Except gay/abortion/creationism stuff.
If anything is the “peoples” fault, it is, like the Jews in Germany, a failure to seize state power.
By this measure, it makes no difference if you voted or not, if you wrote angry letters or stood on picket lines. It only matters you didnt stop the machine. You are as culpable as anyone else.
Having said that, i also agree diversity-addled liberals are the worst closet case toture worshipping, authoritarian sadists. They loveed the teevee show “24.” They suck.
Here’s a wonderful method to feel morally superior to everyone. Take the “brave” and daring and controversial position of damning regular working class or lower middle class Americans for the crimes of their government. Needless to say there’s no need to remind anyone of the so-called “Deep State”-that army of career bureaucrats and courtiers that do the business of actually running the government and setting state policy. I’ll take the influence of some asshole who was groomed for the civil service over some clown on tv that represents Nowhere, VA like where I live.
Do the American people deserve blame for the state of affairs. Yes, surely. But do they also deserve to suffer? I would not wish pain on anyone but the powerful. Before anyone starts complaining about “Well Americans ARE the powerful when compared to such-and-such”, remember well that the Elite in the Republic of Such-and-such still live much grander lives than most Americans and most people around this website.
Why must folks continue to try and outdo each other in violent denunciations of the common people? Again, I don’t think my fellow “citizens” are blameless, they are responsible for much evil by their ignorance and apathy.
Also, why must liberals be thrown under the bus? If the liberals are really as authoritarian as assumed then doesn’t that mean they are not liberal-but hypocrites?
@Spinoza
Agree that blaming the plebians for the crimes of the Caesars, or the slaves for the crimes of the plantation masters is well, crap.
But you have a higher opinion of liberals than I. Liberals have long provided ideological cover for the crimes of empire. I dunno, Wilson? Kennedy? Johnson? Disraeli?
Cripes; Jeez. I thought I was a doom and gloomer. (Hence the regular visits here) You make most of seem like Little Mary Sunshines.
Since we are ALL GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY….mass suicide seems the only answer!
You go first.
@ cripes
July 9, 2014
@Spinoza
Agree that blaming the plebians for the crimes of the Caesars, or the slaves for the crimes of the plantation masters is well, crap.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who’s blaming the plebeians for *for the crimes*? Now that’s crap!
I’m blaming them for continuing to allow the crimes.
MFI is one of the few who *gets* it, fuck all…
MFI for the win!
c’mon, everyone, is this a deliberate effort to seem dense, and not “get” a rather simple point? You may agree or not, but have the civility to read and understand what I am saying. And respond like adults.
In response to comments above (Celsuis and others) I make the indisputable point(s) that:
The american people have zero influence on policy, especially imperial wars
Foreign countries, corporations and individuals have more direct influence on US government policy than US citizens.
Corporations, which function like foreign, hostile, countries–ditto.
“a basic premise of democracy is that the citizenry are responsible for their government. ”
Really? You have to fall for the fiction that this is a “democracy” for that to have any bearing on our current situation. Seriously, the US government was always designed to be a “democracy” of Oligarchs, now more than ever. Do try to keep up.
If Celsius blames Plebians “for continuing to allow the crimes.” I’d like to know what class he puts himself in, and how he’s exempt from responsibility here. Let me know when you “stop allowing” so I can come to watch you work your magic.
Seems like the people saying that the “people” are “responsible” for crimes of the capitalist state (not your fictional democracy) never seem to think they’re responsible, too.
Why is that?
Those aren’t indisputable points. I don’t intend to argue it out (I’ve written the articles in the past), simply to note that saying it’s indisputable does not make it so.
Nor do those who make that accusation usually think they don’t bear some responsibility. Noam Chomsky, to use a prominent example, certainly does so.
Nor does it seem that everyone is against you, many agree, as they always do, that American citizens have no responsibility that it’s all the elites fault and nothing the citizenry could ever have done would ever have made a difference.
Ever.
Rest assured, you stand with the majority of American on the left on this issue.
Seriously, this spurious idea that the people are to “blame” by “allowing” imperial crimes serves no purpose other than to deflect responsibility from the actors behind the crimes. The tiny, powerful, manipulative criminal class that runs this and many other countries (see what happens when Venezuela or Cuba try to buck this system) are directly responsible. The issue is whether the “people” can build institutions capable of challenging the power of the oligarchs, period.
Goering said it years ago, and Machievelli and others before him: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship”
You’re buying into their deceit and fictions.
@ cripes
July 10, 2014
Okay, stop talking and think about it. I’m one of the plebeians and my *action* is simple; I have withdrawn all, all, material support from the U.S..
You figure it out as I have and I’m not giving any details for my own protection.
But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from policies I cannot support. I’m a grumpy fuck because I’m sick of all the bullshit and blah, blah, blah; do something goddamn it!
And posting is not action…
Addendum: What Ian is doing is action, information (accurate information) garnered from hard research and study. Putting out truth to power about governments and their lying, cheating, torture, spying, and stealing the common.
Ian:
I don’t think everyone is against me, I am replying to those that replied to me above.
If Celsius or others are ready to blame common people for “allowing” crimes of state, he should state where his responsibility lies here.
I’m not talking with Noam Chomsky.
I think the facts I stated are indisputable. A recent Princeton U study seems to establish the accuracy of this.
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. ”
see: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn’t surprised by the survey’s results.
“American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media),” he writes. “The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral’ ‘democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.”
Celsius and markofireland, both of whom I like in many things, are operating on the ridiculous idea we are living in some sort of “democracy” or representative electoral system. We. Are. Not. You never had a choice.
As Goering said, “the common people don’t want war (insert austerity, mass incarceration, etc)…that is understood.” As I said, the only issue is whether people can build institutions capable of challenging the dictatorship of the capitalist oligarchs, full stop.
But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from policies I cannot support.
Make that: But, I’ll say this (I agree Ian), most Americans wouldn’t take the steps I have to withdraw all support from my government and its policies that I cannot support.
I’ve read the studies. What they state is true, but doesn’t answer:
1) how we got here from not-here
2) why Americans don’t take actions to hold their elites to account which would be effective.
“We cant’ be assed to control the primary system, to do effective strikes, to refuse to serve in the military (in fact the military has the highest approval rating of all US insitutions, which tells you what ordinary Americans think.) “we buy your goods from evil people even when we have other options”. Etc… Yes, if you don’t take effective action to control politics, those who do will have measurably more impact than you.
Imagine that.
Now, you can make an argument that the control mechanisms are so clamped down that effective resistance is impossible EVEN if Americans wanted to, but that requires an actual argument.
The evidence is that if right wing Americans want to influence one of the two main American political parties, they can do so very effectively. So why can’t left-wingers?
It could be, as some have argued, that Americans simply don’t agree with left wingers (they agree on many policies, but don’t consider themselves left wing). It could be that the Tea Party has enough institutional backing to make the difference (institutional dems have vastly MORE money, though). It could be other things.
But it’s not beyond argument that ordinary Americans couldn’t affect things if they actually were willing to do those things that would have an effect.
What does even less good than writing articles is having an opinion in an opinion poll.
I don’t think I’ll write more on this, you can argue it out in comments if you wish. I’ve written multiple articles on this issue, some google searches should get you them if you care.
People who admit no responsibility, admit no power to change anything. You’re consistent in that.
Ok, Celsius, I’ll bite. Tell me how someone withdraws all support from the system, stays out of jail, and still manages to live and eat. I’m all ears. Skip the personal details for your own protection. Remember, most people can’t. They have children, wives, ailing parents, chronic diseases, no way to start life over. A few can grow bud in Humboldt county and come down for supplies, live in squats, panhandle and ride the trains. Still there’s that pesky jail thing, and a shrinking commons, so that won’t do for most and won’t last long.
But I should head to bed soon, so I can go to my plebian job and avoid homelessness.
I appreciate the conversation and offer all my comments in good spirits. We can oppose the idea and respect the person.
Stockholm Syndrome is an ugly thing to behold.
Ian, I’m sorry, but you misrepresent me. I didn’t even suggest that I or other commoners have no responsibility, or no (potential) power. I have done many things in my life to further that cause, and have scars to remind me.
What I said is the only issue is whether common people can build institutions capable of challenging the power of an entrenched, international, armed-to-the-teeth oligarchy.
Living off the grid, or buying green, may give those able a sense of moral purity, but doesn’t challenge much.
Oh, and Dan, blaming your cellmate because he “allowed” your captors to mistreat you isn’t too attractive, either. And that, to me, is exactly what this argument sounds like–a shifty way of placing yourself out of the range of responsibility for failing to change the world.
@ Dan H
July 10, 2014
Stockholm Syndrome is an ugly thing to behold.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain’t it though…
I think these are two awful flavours that taste awful together — it is, as so many things are, a false dichotomy. The American voter *is* responsible, in a narrow but important sense, for what has proceeded. But it is partly because “the worst are full of passionate intensity”, the “left” or “progressives” or whatever have never managed to sell their agenda to a large portion of the population, who even, as Chomsky never tires of pointing out, might actually mostly already agree. That too is not actually a contradiction.
But the right has very much managed to convince a bunch of white retirees and “local notables” that their local positions are threatened: “Get the government out of my medicare.” These people have a reason to care: they worship the State as theirs, in its incarnation of the military and police. But the Government belongs to Those People.
@ Mandos
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/debt-rattle-jul-7-2014-overshoot-loop/
This covers it quite well, IMO:
Jay Hanson: I have been forced to review the key lessons that I have learned concerning human nature and collapse over the last 20 years. Our collective behavior is the problem that must be overcome before anything can be done to mitigate the coming global social collapse. The single most-important lesson for me was that we cannot re-wire (literally, because thought is physical) our basic political agendas through reading or discussion alone. Moreover, since our thoughts are subject to physical law, we do not have the free-will to either think or behave autonomously.
We swim in “politics” like fish swim in water; it’s everywhere, but we can’t see it!
More at the link and for the most part I agree with Hanson plus or minus a few caveats.
I reserve judgement on the rest of Hanson’s “take”, but the part about swimming in politics rings very true. A great many lefties, particularly of the variety that I’ve taken to calling “guns-and-butter” progressives, are enthusiastic policy wants. Policy is what they want to do. Policy is what they want to change. Policy is what they think is important.
Politics, on the other hand, is a dirty thing for many. This is a mistake. The reality is that politics is what primarily is done, and primarily matters. Policy is at best a kind of by-product or effluent of politics. Actually worse: politics can exist happily without producing policy for a long time. The problem is that politics is not optional: you can’t not “play” it, and you can’t accomplish policy by withdrawing from it, but you can’t play it under the explicit expectation that there will be some point at which good policy will emerge. It may, it may not, but it won’t ever without politics.
A lot of guns-and-butterists, the more apocalyptic ones at least, like to talk about thermodynamics as eventually trumping these piddling political games, because the former is “real” and the latter an artifice. They’re wrong. Thermodynamics may (will) kill us all (somehow), but politics is also a force of nature in some sense.
“enthusiastic policy wonks”, I should have said. (sigh)
“A lot of guns-and-butterists, the more apocalyptic ones at least, like to talk about thermodynamics as eventually trumping these piddling political games, because the former is “real” and the latter an artifice. They’re wrong. Thermodynamics may (will) kill us all (somehow), but politics is also a force of nature in some sense.”
And you like to peddle a sort of relativism that flies in the face of biology. You did this a while back in the identity politics discussion with a comment along the lines of guns n butter progs refusing to acknowledge blacks having a significant difference in common with other blacks. Here it is again. Youre half admitting to physical limitations while still pimping your pet issues. The “guns n butter” point is that any difference existing between races is trumped by the massive similarities between them, and thus harping on the typical identity politics talking points is actually divisive. We all need to eat, sleep, and shit. Every day, rain or shine. There is a hierarchy inherent to the human experience.
I’m not “half-admitting” anything. I am admitting to “physical” limitations quite happily, while suggesting that other limitations-deemed-nonphysical get short shrift.
If that were the only point—that we’re all human—raised by the guns’n’butterists there would be no disagreement. But we’re not all *just* human, and people have a way of making the “unnecessary” and “artificial” things matter. What you’re pleading for is unilateral disarmament with no guarantee of cession of hostilities.
@Mandos
Precisely. Much of what passes for the “left” spends their time debating which humanitarian intervention to support or how to rejigger criminal laws to target men instead of women for transactional sex and so forth.
There is a groundswell of dissatisfaction and rage seeking an outlet that right-wing faux populism is moving to co-op. So Rand Paul becomes their voice.
Failing to sell our agenda to a population that already mostly agrees, we end up saying things like “I withdraw my support” to the government instead.
Well, then,I I dint know who the “guns n butter” progs are.
And people wonder how genocides are possible. They start many years in advance as dispersed seeds like we’re seeing at this space. This talk of “we” is a set-up for the Small People to, once again, take the fall when and if that time comes, and the apparent wish of many here appears to be that time can’t come fast enough.
To be called an “American” is quickly becoming every much the pejorative “Jew” was for centuries. And if you’re a Jew and an American, well, God help you if these people have their way — the gas chambers and crematoriums will seem like a vacation in Aruba in comparison to what they have in store.
As the American machine tramples the earth, Cold worries that Americans are in fact the REAL victims.
In the real world, Cold, who will be operating the “gas chambers”? Who still has the biggest guns?
Cold worries
Not a chance. I don’t worry at all. Just observe and postulate. I’ve graduated from the worrying phase. Never again.
Who still has the biggest guns?
Russia since it has more nukes than America. I think nukes suffice for biggest guns, don’t you?
Cold Holefieldmorrocobamaetc
believes it’s all a group game, commenting, so why point out his periodic transparent lies?
they are all designed to bolster the “American imperialism is flawed but must be maintained
to avoid a multipolar world which would be much much worse” line.
here the lie is
America’s like the Hotel California, though — you can check out any time you like, and you and your ilk obviously have, but you can never leave.
It’s why you have to keep checking back in. The allure and pull is too great — like a massive Black Hole. There’s no way to ignore it. It also explains why people keep Coming To America rather than leaving it.
Firstly, not a few come to America, discover either that it’s much less easy than it used to be to acheive the Dream, and leave.
Then there are the considerable who come, find the Dream wasn’t worth the culture-draining
rat race required to get it, and leave.
Then there are the expatriates who de-Americanize themselves quite well, thank you.
There are even the Inner Expatriates who are part of a quietist and-or not so ultimately quietist
revolutionary core.
I was particularly curious about these statements by Ian:
First, has there ever been a period when an oligarchy has not ruled the United States? Is it even possible to conceive of non-oligarchic popular rule under the Constitution as written and interpreted over the generations, especially as it is being interpreted by the current SCOTUS majority?
In other words, has there ever been a “not-here?”
The Populist movement came closest to overcoming the oligarchic rule of the latter 19th century, and it was crushed — in some instances, quite violently — but the populace was mollified somewhat by the oligarchy’s own Progressive movement which many liberals still look back on with longing, awe and wonder. But the Progressives served the oligarchy no less than the current setup does.
Second, what actions could Americans legitimately take within the governmental system as it is to “hold their elites to account?” There are various pressure points, to be sure, and it is possible now and then for popular clamor to penetrate the hermetic seals around our rulers, but as an ordinary thing, the People go unheard and unheeded. That’s by system design and very long practice.
The only times that has changed have been when a significant and influential element within the elites and oligarchy allows and requires accountability from their peers. The People don’t usually have a say in it, any more than the British common people had a say in their elite’s behavior during the hey-day of the Empire.
As for Chomsky, his argument was that the elites and those who are privileged within the system as it is (such as intellectuals like him) are the ones with the responsibility for what happens to a far, far greater extent than the common people — who don’t have that privilege or status.
Well, since you seem to have declined the opportunity to offer, Mandos, I will explicitly ask. Can you provide some substantive precision re the “guns n butter progressives” trope you keep pushing?
I didn’t decline anything! It’s hardly been a day! I have a life off the internet, you know. But of course I’m not obliged to bow before your demands for definitions. I’m tempted to say, “you know who you are.” But anyway, I will foolishly rush in where angels fear to tread for your entertainment.
I mean: the sort of people who frequent Ian’s comment section and other web sites who are all about the harsh moral judgement and Cold Hard Survival Logix. The sort of people who, when presented with a world in which most of the human race doesn’t behave rationally in the sense of some grand order of species survival, are tempted to try to impose a hierarchy of human needs as a kind of political rubric or a criterion over and above the observed, actually existing determiners of political performance.
The folks who think of themselves as unheard Cassandras, who find themselves nodding when, I don’t know, the Black Agenda Report writes another article about how Obama has betrayed the ordinary black American, and shake their heads over the fact that both blacks and white liberals feel proud they voted for the first black President. The people who are probably “right” but are only willing to go so far as to put the voter under the microscope rather than try to imagine themselves in their shoes.
That sort of people. There seem to be not a few of them? It’s hard to keep track.
There’s a thing I keep coming back to, that dates from when Obamacare was being hotly debated. Obamacare, as I recall, was partly driven by a lot of focus-groupy things, which used measures that sounded like silly Hallmark greeting cards. And I vaguely remember a certain amount of derision from the crowd who thought/think that the USA would just steamroller over its gargantuan private health insurance industry and establish single payer in one swell foop. I guess some people just aren’t willing to face the reality: that the feelings of their fellow-citizens might be adequately described by things that sound like Oprah segment titles or Hallmark greeting cards, and that this just a neutral fact about the world.
Cassandra was cursed by Apollo never to be believed for refusing Apollo’s advances. Which being did the guns’n’butterists repudiate?
I cant find any consistency to what you say, other than the earlier noted relativist bent that keeps you the constant contrarian. More fool I for engaging.
@Che Pasa
“I was particularly curious about these statements by Ian:”
Yes, I noticed there was a large dollop of unproven assumptions in that. When has this empire ever been other than a dictatorship of oligarchs and what actions does he propose the “people” take that they have not tried? If I recall, every genuinely populist, pro-labor, anti-imperialist movement in this country–and there have been a few–have been co-opted, mercilessly smashed, or both.
Really, we’re talking the difference between politics and Clauswitz’s other means. I sure wish Joe six-pack and Wanda the waitress would get it together.
Again, I’ve written many pieces about this. Google is your friend. I notice also the common assumption that a blog post or a comment should cover every single argument, with footnotes, which is not possible.
More interesting to me continues to be how many on the left will go to virtually any lengths to deny any responsibility for virtually anything.
If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die.
“…but that requires an actual argument.
If you want to nit-pick, you’ll find fault with anything. That’s your problem: picking nits. By the way, did I ever tell you about the time…oh, never mind.
Also, hi!
(waves flag)
More interesting to me continues to be how many on the left will go to virtually any lengths to deny any responsibility for virtually anything.
If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die. Ian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain’t it so, ain’t it so. Cripes just oozes helplessness…
Well I guess there’s just no pleasing you. You asked that I describe the ideology, so I did. And all I got for it was the “relativist” boogey-word.
If you have no responsibility, you have no power and you can make no change. Curl up, and die. Ian
You can’t make yourself responsible for something for which you are not responsible. That’s the essence of being an aplogist and it’s tantamount to a false confession which is more common than many perceive.
Informational awareness, with the advent of the internet, is at an all-time high and yet the plot of carnage thickens, or so it seems. Meaning, all this information is not only useless, but it may be a hindrance to effective change because its immense power can be and is co-opted by the very forces that deplore any form of change. The status quo of power must remain unchecked in perpetuity so any notion of dissent is usurped in the womb before it develops, or better yet, it’s artificially inseminated and implanted in the womb so said dissent is the containable brainchild of the focus of that dissent.
Most people who think they are activating and resisting, whether it be in word, deed or spirit, are chumps who will never know it because the mechanism described above plays on the ego.
An Indecent Proposal
Try to be independent. You’ll get my fate. Tell me that’s not the mechanism I’ve described above. Even if my attackers don’t work for The Man, The Man uses them to destroy their own heretofore healthy tissue and organs — like an auto-immune disease.
I sure wish Joe six-pack and Wanda the waitress would get it together.
What about all the Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Africans who are legal U.S. citizens? They’re often left out of this big L Left versus little l left argument, but they’re every bit “American” as all the rest. The hypocrisy of this purposeful oversight is stark. At its core, it’s racist as is Liberal Apologia (voting for Obama because he’s Black). Ethnic minorities are like pets to the Left and left; they’re nice to have around but they’re never really equal except in word only. Gender minorities, on the other hand, are a goal and right of passage to the Left and left. If it’s not there yet, it soon will be; where it’s to your power advantage to be considered LGBT. So it is with any special interest designation. You want to change the world, become LGBT. It’s the responsible thing to do because then your voice will have access to power and you can finally make a difference and in doing so make yourself responsible.
Again, your arguments would be stronger if they were true.
I have kind of an spoiled, oily taste in my mouth right now. I mistakenly read the comments in Cold’s link. I won’t do that again.
As for his LGBT comment. Whatever. It’s a pretty narrow fragment of the world where it makes any sense at all. What is his solution to this problem? Black shirted violence until the “queers” all crawl back in the closet and the real work, purifying the Master Race, can begin in earnest?
Brian M is a case in point about the destructive ineffectiveness of the Left and left. He’s a militant who seeks not a greater understanding and truth, but instead lives to fight and argue because that is what defines his existence. Without it he would be dead for all practical purposes. In pursuit of his addiction, he carts around a wagon full of Strawman he keeps replenished as he plants them everywhere and anywhere like a virtual Johnny Appleseed.
Read the comments at your link, Cold. No straw manning needed. Sometimes nonsense is nonsense. Gay people are taking over the world. Leftists rule everywhere. The dusky hordes are coming for us, the pure white race.
Reassure yourself that you are the voice of truth and reason. We will point and laugh.
What’s next…Stormfront?
Brian M on July11, 2014
I am amazed, in shock and in awe that you’ve entered that universe of cheeto-dust. Admiration for the courage. It’s easier just to elide, elide, or elide, abridgment is your friend. No need to feed the dark dwellers from under bridges or rocky caves. Notice how some subjects are repellent to such creatures such as the later posting about bookstores, like garlic and vampires it would appear.
Notice how some subjects are repellent to such creatures such as the later posting about bookstores, like garlic and vampires it would appear.
I find the discussion as it’s proceeded related to bookstores to be shallow and misguided. It seems obvious to me why bookstores are going the way of the dodo bird, and it has nothing to do with what Ian mentioned. It has to do with attention spans. Most people don’t buy books these days to read them but rather to say they’ve read them. There’s too little time for in-depth reading these days. It’s all Evelyn Wood skimming of huge swaths of repetitive nonsense.
But I will say, if you’re representative of well-read, and I think you are, you’re the poster child of impotency. Because you’re there, immersed in your world of books, you can’t be here wherever here is. Books take you away and if you read beyond moderation you don’t return — to here. Not to mention, well-read peeps like yourself, or autodidacts as you like to refer to yourselves as, wear that reading like a red badge of courage as opposed to the refuge that it is.
As well, if you’re reading beyond moderation, you’re not thinking for yourself, but rather you’re assimilating already predigested thoughts. Meaning, someone else has done the thinking for you — kind of like buying jarred or canned applesauce rather than cultivating an apple tree in your back yard and picking the fruit from it when it’s ripe and eating it yourself.
But don’t let me stop your obsession — I’m sure if you keep reading incessantly you’ll eventually figure it all out, if you already haven’t, before you pass from this mortal coil, and maybe even you’ll provide the solution if only you can reach across the divide you’ve created to implement it effectively.
They wrote this for you.
Jesus, i go away a couple of days and find more straw man misrepresentations and personal slurs. Ian, included. “Take no responsibility” “curl up and die”
Whats wrong with you?
Heaping blame on the commoners for failing to follow the feeble left intelligensia is hardly courageous or responsible. Maybe its your intelligentsia that fails to lead? Lenin, I think wrote about this phenomenon with scorn.
If ya’ll feel better lobbing insults and knocking down strawmen in your little echo-chamber, blame yo’selves. As far as reposibility (a mealy, blame shifting word) and power, i was, repeatedly clear: The main question is can working people build institutions capable of challenging oligarchic dictatorship?
Leaving aside the thorny issue of the Official Laying of Blame for everything that has gone wrong, I can only agree with the implication of this rhetorical questions:
The question always then turns to “which intelligentsia?” Which is actually the rock on which the whole discussion founders, generally turning to the failures of the Obama-supporting soft-liberals, rather than the inability of the, hmm, “hard left” or “guns’n’butterists” or “serious progressives” or whatever one wishes to call them to make any headway. (People will go so far as to blame a combination of thermodynamics and evolution, apparently, when the question is asked.)
Thanks Mandos, for reasoned discussion and engaging the topic. Looking back on the comments, I still can’t believe the vituperation directed against common people and anyone who dares to question the wisdom of it. In addition to wishing for their comeuppance there is the laughable premise that lies at the heart of their, well, argument:
“Last I checked, America is still a democracy, albeit a broken one, nothing happens without the consent of the people.”
I have to wonder what the serious pwogwessives think will happen to them when the commoners get their richly deserved comeuppance? It strikes me they are operating under the stale assumption that US capitalism is operating as a national enterprise, extracting colonial wealth to the benefit of a privileged labor class. That’s so 19th century it’s kind of nostalgic. You know, coal miners in Cornwall should pay with their blood for the crimes of British Empire in India kind of thing.
There is still a residual advantage of citizenship in the old industrial economies, but Capital now is internationalist if it’s anything, deploying resources across borders without restriction and parasitically using American armaments and bodies as mercenaries, while depleting the economy of the host. If only the Left was more internationalist.
Of course, having decimated the Left in North America and Europe, there is a resurgence of the right globally, Europe included. I guess we’ll have to add Europe’s struggling workers to the list of those who must pay for the crimes of Empire. Oh yeah, they already are.
That’s the shame in periods of economic crisis, the fake populism of the right steps in to assume leadership of the unemployed masses. Failure of leadership?
When someone states outright that their argument is beyond question, people tend to react to that.
And that is before we come to the fact that this responsibility is for the deaths of at least hundreds of thousand of people and you are saying that a large number of people have NO responsibility for that whom other people think do.
Go to Iraq and try out that argument. I doubt you’d make it back to the US alive.
Not this “debate” again. Okay, let’s stipulate a couple of things. One, we Americans are responsible for the government we have and two, your average coal miner in West Virgina has little, if any, direct control or responsibility over or for the actions of the empire.
But really, so the F… what!? This entire debate misses a gigantic point and is a good example of the internet meme of “First World Problems”. We have the luxury of this debate which is really just a way for us to score empty rhetorical points against each other. The point that is missed is that why should the victims of our policies care about this debate and how we parse blame amongst ourselves?
If I’m an Afghani burying my relatives because somebody sitting at a console in VA. or NV. made an “oopsie”, I should care that somebody is taking in the shorts in Appalachia or the ‘hood from the empire because…what? We’re all in it together? Well maybe from our perspective but damn sure not likely from theirs.
@ ks
July 13, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As with so many, you manage to completely miss the point.
Celsius 233,
No, I’m not missing the point at all. What I’m saying is that whether one withdraws their support from the empire or whether one hold average joes/janes relatively blameless for the actions of the empire is really besides the point. Sure, intellectual posturing and naval gazing is always fun but the pov that should matter is that of the Iraqi or Afghani examples I an and I mentioned above.
Yeah, yeah, you withdrew your support and cripes average joe is just trying to make it day to day. Nice. You both get a point. So what.
@ ks
This comes to mind, an iteration of Matthew 7:6;
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”
Celsius 233,
Seriously? I get your stance and honestly don’t disagree that much but, goodness gracious are you proving cripes and Mandos’s key points.