delrem
delrem's JournalBetter yet, the US could demilitarize it's acting and thinking.
*ALL* countries have cops and vets, police and military. It's a necessity.
These are, or ought to be, honourable jobs.
In both cases honour dictates that the most strict regulation and second sight is also a necessity, in any viable civilization. That's just the way it is.
The USA has gone OTT in this regard. The USA cannot be stopped from without - it spends more on military than the rest of the world combined. You might be the most badass m-f-er in the universe, in your support for the police and the military, but you should have some sense of proportion w.r.t. how the police and military deal with the world.
He's a very up front face of FOX/Republican media.
It would be pleasant if people like that didn't exist, and media networks like that didn't exist. But they do exist, and it wouldn't do us any good to ignore it.
Hannity is hard to take that's for sure, and I can only take his product as a per-choice singular visit. Because it isn't nice. It just isn't. Not something one yearns to re-visit.
Yet still, I have to ask why Hannity is on the air with fair to passing ratings, which give him a certain cachet?How is it that Hannity sells?
The only way to know that and to counter it is to be somewhat aware of what Hannity does and is doing, so we're stuck with pushing our noses into the foul mess, so we can best clean up after it.
Focus on issues, and on demanding that candidates and their supporters be honest about issues.
That should be agreed on by everyone.
No ad hominem.
I say that it's an ad hominem argument to say that someone who focuses on an issue that speaks apparently to the disfavor of one candidate or another, is "hating" or whatever ad hominem smear is handy.
Rebut the argument, don't rely on smears.
Even in face of ad hominem smears, the response should be to continue focusing on the issue that's important to us all, and ignore as much as possible the baiting ad hominem... trolls.
So e.g. I say argue contra Ted Cruz, but argue vs. his position, his history, his trajectory, on the issues dear to us. Reject the politician Ted Cruz for well reasoned principles, not because you're fired up with ad hominem insults. Just taking as for example a politician few on DU would have empathy for.
Everybody knew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
Everybody saw it, and everybody knew.
The knowledge, the protests, had no effect whatsoever.
Everybody knew that would be true too.
But now, going into a '16 election, the call is for everybody to forget.
The call if for everybody to deny.
The call is for everybody to blame the victim.
But everybody knows.
I don't think the USA has been hit yet, like some other countries have been hit.
It's like, the USA hasn't been bombed yet, like some other countries have been bombed.
The USA is a winner in the international marketplace.
The USA is the only power that can drop bombs anywhere in the world, with impunity. If you don't like it then you'll be sanctioned, you shitheads!
The USA has a military oriented economy, which produces a gov't controlled commodity, military hardware, providing secure jobs in areas where military hardware is produced. It's largely paid for by taxes, a war budget that dwarfs the whole planet, a war budget that almost equals that of the rest of the world combined. This economy doesn't owe to a "free market", it owes to political decisions propelled by lobbyists who are now embarked on a $4billion smoke and mirrors show, which they call an "election".
The US arms industry is paid for by the US national debt.
Haliburton didn't win its obscene profits from a fair and free market, in a peaceful world of folk trading goods.
Not even close.
Internationally, US gov'ts haven't cared for democracy, as such, except for isolated cases like during the Carter administration. The US has mostly used the term 'democracy' as a charade, a self-glorification ("they hate us for our freedoms"
, even while overthrowing democratically elected gov'ts across the world and installing right-wing despots who march to their tune. Think Kissinger and Chile. Think Hillary Clinton and Honduras. What a picture that makes.
But this hasn't come home to the USA, yet.
The karma is still brewing.
The issue is democracy itself,
whether democracy can exist if the population as a whole believes in some story that only big money can win elections, if the population "pre-emptively caves" and in effect takes democracy off the table, to use an expression from Tom Tomorrow.
ymmv
What a sad reflection on the USA.
Other democracies work to change things for the better, through elections.
That's the whole purpose of elections.
When did that change into the syllogism "you can't win an election if you don't have the money, only the oligarchs have the money, so only the oligarchs can win elections"?
I like the attitude you bring to this place, H2O Man.
Calm and reasonable and open minded.
Anyway....
Jeb vs Hillary will be +$2billion vs +$2billion, from more or less the same donors. It might be seen as win-win, or lose-lose, depending on what side of the $$ divide you stand on.
But which candidate/party would win?
First thing I think of: the more or less thoughtless Republican voter wouldn't see the 18 month $4billion smoke and mirror show as odd, or distasteful. These are jackasses who think that American Enterprise Institute "tea party" astroturf is "grass roots", even while they stand in the shade of the bus they rode in on. They can't even feel their nose rings. Democrats and Independents, even third-way democrats, know that e.g. OWS, however disorganized and disjoint (perhaps in part *because* of that), is truly grass roots action. A +$2billion campaign, marketed like some "gets your laundry cleaner than the second leading brand" soap, will be hard for a lot of Dems and Inds to swallow, given who's paying for it. Most everybody understands the concept of an IOU and that when the money is that big the dues will have to be paid. To Wall St., to war profiteers, to the scum of the earth.
Second thing I think of: Anyone who identifies as "left" or "progressive" remembers being treated like shit by the third-way and their supporters (remember "fucking retards"?). Never listened to, ideas dismissed before hitting "the table", before even being voiced, all in a spirit of so-called "bipartisanship" that profits the wealthy. There seems to be NO attempt to explain/justify/defend recent history -- the ascension of the bankers, of the %.01 (TPP etc), or the PNAC war that started with Afghanistan, moved to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen,... and which the new war resolution being promoted would extend indefinitely, arbitrarily, forever. Third-way has been openly hostile to "the left" on these major fronts, and this is true of third-way supporters at DU as well as elsewhere, and taking $2billion from the banks and %.01 to promote yourself as in "you're Everyday Americans and it's your time... to vote for Me!" does nothing to address the problem that this has created. How many times has a third-way supporter, now a Hillary supporter, said that their team doesn't need or even want "the left"? Well, just look at how third-way, on DU, has rolled out the Hillary campaign, with the one unifying mantra "haha, we have the money, the money is needed to win, and the left will never have the bankers/war-profiteers money".
Third thing I think of: both #1 and #2 above provide the total opposite of the "hope and change (for the better)" consciousness that drove Pres. Obama to victory. Jeb, on the other hand, has no such problem. Jeb's problem will be the opposite, will be convincing the diehard Republican voter that he's a big enough asshole - an even bigger asshole than his brother and father. Which isn't such an immense problem for Jeb to overcome. What I'm saying here is that in Hillary vs Jeb, $2billion each on a perfectly level Wall St. and war profiteer funded playing field, Jeb's route is already slicked whereas Hillary has GOTV problems. Unfortunately, Hillary chose this particular $$$ defined playing field and it defines her as much as it does Jeb.
Fourth thing I think of: gender and, secondarily, LGBT issues. Hillary has an advantage here, not because she's a woman, but because she's a Dem. IMO she's not the strongest voice on either (I think just about any solid progressive Dem would be a stronger voice). But I can't say... I'm ignorant. I recall defending Bill Clinton during the "sex scandals", more or less saying "c'mon, Bill Clinton is a total improvement on that demented warmongering Ronald Reagan, and Republican operatives are cooking these scandals up, offering rewards...", whereas none of the women in my family were having any of that. The women in my family, every one of them, looked at me with disdain for my dismissive apologetic attitude. They didn't like it, they didn't think it made for a good role model, they didn't like how Hillary was spinning it, it contradicted everything they believed in.
Might it not be that at least some addictions
and perhaps all of fanaticisms are themselves events owing to consciousness?
Regarding fanaticisms, consider the existence of "think tanks". Entities that media empires go-to uniformly and (almost?) exclusively to inform the population about what is real in the realm of politics, economics and war.
Could anything better fit the definition of 'fanatical'?
Regarding physical addictions, IMO consciousness hasn't been all that much of a boon.
Consider crack cocaine. From wiki:
"Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant is grown as a cash crop in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful.[2] It also plays a role in many traditional Andean cultures as well as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (see Traditional uses)."
In the original plant, coca is ... benign. In benign form coca is part of a thriving culture.
What degree of "consciousness" had to emerge, to concoct crack cocaine from the plant, and sell it on the streets of our cities as a quick fix for hopelessness?
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