Room at the Top wasn't just any typical love story gone tragic. Like A Place in the Sun, it dealt with class issues. It covered how greed can be the root cause of downfalls. It starred Simone Signoret, known for only playing in movies she could respect. She also didn't select roles based solely on her own character. She was interested in the picture as a whole.
Another point to be made is that older movies tended to be realistic and were often adaptations from good novels and short stories. They made people think about the actual world they lived in or actual history with an emphasis on universal themes. Let's take a looksie at the predicted 2010 top ten list according to UK Times Online.
#10 Eclipse
Oooh, a teen vampire movie. Give me a break.
#9 Alice in Wonderland
How original. Not.
*8 Inception
Aaah, more of the Batman schtick.
#7 The Expendables
Oh great, Stallone teams up with Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others to form a team of mercenaries sent to South America to take care of a warlord. That's the ticket.
#6 The A Team
Wow. I'm sure this will rank up there with Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. [/sarcasm]
#5 Toy Story 3
This sounds like another stupid cartoon targeting minors.
#4 Shutter Island
This one might be a winner. It's directed by Scorcese. Ben Kingsley is in it. It's a psychological thriller involving a character borne of war and violence. I got this info from a review at imdb.com. I like flicks that portray stories about how the influences of war carry on well after those have ended. Taxi Driver was good in this respect. As was The Pawnbroker. Many of the old films were very rooted in accentuating fissures brought about in society via war. This is one I look forward to watching someday. Of course, out of principle I don't pay money to watch movies. I will wait until it comes out on tv or youtube. It appears Shutter Island will make one think, that it is anything but chewing gum for the mind. That is the sole criteria by which I base spending any time watching a movie. It better have content and make one think.
#3 Robin Hood
A remake in and of itself is inherently stupid. I truly believe this. Come up with your own stinking ideas, or who the fock do you think you're fooling? If the original was good enough to give one the idea of remaking it, then leave it alone.
#2 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
I've never gone near any of these. It seems like pure exploitation of something I don't care about. As Clara Peller asked, "Where's the beef?"
#1 Iron Man 2
This is another sequel. The movie industry isn't even trying to hide the fact that it is mostly about money and unrealistic plots. Here's the synopsis for this one from the aformentioned imdb.com.
Billionaire Tony Stark must contend with deadly issues involving the government, his own friends, as well as new enemies due to his superhero alter ego Iron Man.
There's nothing wrong in theory about science fiction or plots that aren't plausible. I just found out about Soylent Green, Edward G. Robinson's final movie and also starring Charlton Heston. I won't give away the ending, but it's one that has become part of pop culture history. The year is 2022 and the Earth has been run into the ground by war and industrialisation. The movie was made in 1973 but covered the profound topics of environmental degradation and the greenhouse effect. One numbnut at youtube actually put out a video claiming this movie coined the phrase greenhouse effect. That's propaganda from a useful idiot or worse.
In the 1890's, Nobel Prize winning scientist Svante Arrhenius published findings showing that excessive CO2 emissions would warm up the planet. His numbers may have been coarse, but the vast majority of scientists agree with his basic premise that dirty energy is heating up the Earth. According to the EPA:
Since the 1860s, people had known that by absorbing outgoing infrared radiation, atmospheric CO2 keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be (Tyndall, 1863). Svante Arrhenius (1896), who coined the term "greenhouse effect," pointed out that the combustion of fossil fuels might increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and thereby warm the Earth several degrees.
Numbnut Propaganda
The phrase Greenhouse Effect first of all was coined in Soylent Green. I'm afraid global warming was coined first of all by Newsweek Magazine, when the world was busy researching the next Ice Age.Uhm, no, global warming was coined by scientist Wallace Broecker.
What is Soylent Green?
76 comments:
Mr. T pities the fool who produced the new A-Team movie.
lol
yeah, what a list. what a vintage!
See - I was right. :D
----
I will watch that other one, but haven't has a moment to do so yet. My free-time has been spent on this flotilla thing and related stuff.
I came across some interesting stuff.......
But here's one for you - knowing how you like the paystubs stuff.....
Rivero - funded by radical Islam?
I found some muslim lawyer's article, and it had a tag inviting email responses - the email address given was wrh@whatreallyhappened.com!
The lawyer works for CAIR - and used to Edit a journal founded by ISNA.
CAIR and ISNA were both setup by Muslim Brotherhood.
Muslim Brotherhood is American muslim thing that was intent on destroying america - setup a load of "front groups" -apparently including CAIR and ISNA.
Muslim Brotherhood also involved with Union of Good - whom support HAMAS (whom wish to destroy Israel).
Union of Good and Muslim Brotherhood are behind the flotilla organisers - IHH.
Mulsim Brotherhood grew out of 1930s associations between Arabs and Nazism - the Grand Mufti stayed in germany through the war - Berlin had a SW transmitter blasting anti-semitism and whatnot to N Africa and ME.
HAMAS, Al Qaida, Muslim Brotherhood - all root from the same ie ties to Nazism.
Rivero has never uttered a word against Islam - not even its most radical extremist violent incarnations.
Soylent Green or Celtic green?
Sorry, couldnt resist.
[:o)
Didn't actually get to watch last night's game and listened on the car radio only up until halftime.
You probably don't want to dissect the game for me today and I understand.
What an odd series. I think we are seeing the birth of the NBA coach's art in what used to be a players league. Each game so far has been a well-executed set of adjustments based on the previous game.
I will say that I have never seen a point guard quite like Rondo in terms of style of play. He has that sixth sense that only the very best players have, like Bird and Jordan, Havlicek and Magic, to somehow always be where the ball is at crunch time, as if by willpower alone.
Another oddity is the Celtics poor home record. They actually have a better road record, which is unheard of in the NBA.
I think we are going seven.
I did see TLNL not taking offense at my wisecrack from the other day. Good on you TLNL. I hate it when the site moderator takes offense on behalf of the users.
That is so MSOC.
No harm meant on my part, either BTW. I was just responding to TLNL's own wisecrack and Socrates like a "good" NBA ref ignored his move and whistled me on the retaliatory follow up.
I disagree that all movie sequels are worthless, there have been some excellent ones over the decades.
The original Toy Story was a good flick, too. The last Batman with Heath Ledger as the Joker was a very good movie, with a lot of social commentary thrown in, wlthough it was understated. That was the best of all the Batman movies that I have seen, although I havent see all of them.
I agree that the sequel schtick is way overdone.
I also agree that Hollywood movies are 99.99999999% rubbish.
But its more a reflection of the audience (ie, society)than the filmmakers.
Many excellent movies were made during the 50s-70s when society demanded meaningful entertainment.
The Amerikkkan and Euro Left is definitely being manipulated by the Muslims just like they were manipulated by the Soviet Union, the ultimate in "fake leftists."
I'm well aware of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Baathist Parties.
And of course the Iranian Revolution is purely nazified in nature, if you replace "state worship" with "religious-state worship".
TLNL, thanks for that. I apologise for not posting more often at your blog. I just read your response to mine on the flotilla thread. It was a good one.
You weren't condoning the Israeli action but aptly pointing out the what did you expect to happen aspect.
There is a formula to certain blogging. Donkeytale just mentioned Iran, related to how the theocracy responded with an iron fist to a people's movement.
Over at Pffugee, there are a bunch of fake lefties who one can easily predict how they will blog about certain events. Their take was that was US or CIA sponsored. I am surprised how such fools can get in bed so easily with douchies like Ahmadinejad and Mugabe. And their support for Huey Long really took the cake without soy milk.
One of the things I most admire about Frankfurt School intellectuals like Fromm and Marcuse was their ability to comprehend that both sides can suck. They were fully jacked and pumped to come to America. But then once they got here, they could see that all shit smells. They would fully agree with your Rubbish Theory on cinema. I think it was Walter Benjamin who coined the phrase culture industry, but I'm not sure. Memory is a bitch.
That is quite bizarre how some Muslim lawyer is pimping for Rivero. That reminds me of your earlier find linking Rivero to PMC4. My take is that these people know there are only a few of us who seek out the truth about such connections. So if they slip up once in a while, they have no worries. Just think about why Rivero had an email account with McDonnell Douglas. That's fried.
I just read your new entry on Rivero and his conspiracy schtick on Al Qaeda and other things. He was linking to Holocaust denier David Irving and the now defunct Liberty Forum. I'm thinking Rivero should be Alex Jones' downfall.
I've a few ideas for a new blog entry. I was thinking of tracking down some of my best screenshots and links and making sure these things are front and center once again, such as Rivero working with the largest military contractor at that time.
As for good movies, I was thinking maybe I'd put up a bunch of youtube links to some of the best I've tracked down. There's always the chance they will be pulled, but then again, there's a chance they won't. For someone like yourself who doesn't have much time to be watching movies, you'd have a good variety of classics to pick from. I don't think you should necessarily watch The Pawnbroker, if you're going to watch one movie. Then again, I think you'd like it. My only advice if you do is try not to let your own biases get in the way. Watching Steiger as a pawnbroker will probably get your knickers in a bunch thinking here's another stereotype of Jews as only being concerned with money. There's a lot more to it than that.
It's tough for me to stomach any basketball talk after last night. I'm not giving up, until it's over. The Celtics were down 2-1 to the Cavs also. Unfortunately, this series is in the grotesque 2-3-2 format. Fortunately, the Celtics are a good road team.
I watched Raisin in the Sun last night. That was pure brilliance. You'd think Francis Holland would be aware of that one. But noooo [/Belushi], he's keyed in on the KKK nature of Hollywood. Too bad Francis has never heard of devil's advocate. It would have saved him a lot of grief with his Moulitsas schtick. The big finds on Markos (CIA lovin', the Townhouse Memo payola scheme) got lost in the shuffle of blog owner as CIA agent drama. There's no paystub for that claim. There's no need for one either, although one of those would easily blow the stockings off of the Hal Turner as cointelpro story. In 2006, Markos kissed CIA ass. That in and of itself sealed his legacy of being a fake leftist.
Bynum has been great considering the injury. I played baseball with the same injury in high school and it was brutal. Had the knee drained too. Ouch, it still hurts just thinking about it.
You cant really get much push off without a great deal of pain and even then you cant get much.
Bynum deserves alot of credit, but he reinjured it last night.
If he cant go the Celts should bounce right back. I think they will bounce back anyway.
Pierce has been playing poorly. He should improve and if Garnett keeps playing like last night this series is far from over.
Allen goes from all world to all worst in one game.
That was the oddest two game stat line of alltime.
Think of it this way. Of the Celtics big three, Allen had one great game and two horrible games. Pierce has been subpar for three straight games. Garnett has had one game and two horrible games.
If the three of them just combine to play respectably for them in the same game they should be fine, especially at home.
Some of this no doubt is defense and NBA finals pushing and shoving. I read a pretty good article today about the need for the NBA to change the rules on blocking/charging and basically making only the truly obvious calls a foul. Most of the time its such a thin line between the two calls or contact occurs after the shot when the offensive player comes back to earth that it should be a non call. Now, the calls are almost always wrong or ticky tack. Let them play!
The other point was the players are so big and the court is still same size that they should allow more than six fouls before fouling out.
Lastly, the league needs to start the season by setting a firm line against holding and grabbing off the ball. Whistle that one until the players just stop doing it.
One thing they shouldnt do is go to the replay camera.
Let them play!
I did see TLNL not taking offense at my wisecrack from the other day. Good on you TLNL. I hate it when the site moderator takes offense on behalf of the users.
Oh - I get worse stick than that, believe me. :)
And honestly, I like criticism. I half hope someone will showup and prove everything I believe to be wrong. Even the most vicious stuff is a challenge. Not that I can't get hurt - awwww - but.....
Socrates showing his maternal side?
;)
Toy Story was good - I have seen that. And Ants..Shrek..and all them. That's what comes from childminding.
They are "good" - funny, a pleasure to watch. I've never been one for that sheer amusement thing though....most everything has to have a point for me. Probably makes me overly intense and "serious" for most folks....and I know some people think I fake it, imagining I must think it looks impressive or something, when all it usually does is irritate people.
lol - I'm doing it now.
I'm well aware of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Baathist Parties.
yeah? do go on?
S: TLNL, thanks for that. I apologise for not posting more often at your blog. I just read your response to mine on the flotilla thread. It was a good one.
Thanks - but hey! no pressure on the audience! You do as you see fit - no obligations at all. :) I only posted that as I have been full of far-right/islam for days and I then I stumbled on that link which seemed inevitable, but shocking. I don't make that much of the link tbh - the email addy given as WRH, i mean. but it really shocked me as a completion and confirmation of the narrative I'd been pursuing for several days.
I'd come across the nazi/islamic connections before, but I'd never much concerned myself with it. I'd always found ME politics incomprehensible, and I didn't really want to get into it much. Just dealing with N America was enough!
I am surprised how such fools can get in bed so easily with douchies like Ahmadinejad and Mugabe.
Yeah! On the other hand, I am uncomfortable finding myself saying the same thing as the Weekly Standard......lol. But facts is facts?
--
The Frankfurt stuff, especially Benjamin is on my to-do list I guess. And yes, from what little I know, I suspect they would agree with the films (culture?) is rubbish thing. Hmmm - perhaps my dismissive but very vague and unformed ideas about all that are covered by the Frankfurt lot? I'm intrigued.
And yes, please do put up some links to films someone might like. I really can't promise to watch them all, but I'll try some. Maybe I'll like it - and chill.
World Cup in two days - woohoo! USA vs England on Sat.
There's different levels of meaningfulness, I guess. Toy Story I saw with my son when he was like 5.
Believe me, when you are forced to sit thru so much rubbish for tots you really appreciate a movie that keeps the parents entertained as well.
No time to go into the MB and Baathism now. I shouldnt have left it dangling like that. (thats what she said). I assume that you already know the herstory.
If not, theres always wikipedia.
MB still a potent force in Egypt, essentially keeping the PTB there pinned down farther right then they probably would otherwise be.
Baathism has a socialist patina, but its truly of the Stalinesque "fake" variety of leftism. Authoritarian gangsterism, more like the SA variety Nazis.
(Godwins alert).
Socrates is very much the Mother Courage of the whiteysphere....by Bertold Blecht.
Yes, political correctness is the path to all evil on the left. You can never agree with
Mother Courage here falls for it from time to time, with his sweeping unthinking approval for much of "good lefty" dogma, particularly when a subject bores him.
Dont ask me to cite an example. I dont really mean to kick him while he's down.
I'll wait til Boston wins another game first.
[:o)
haha - in future I am going to sign up everywhere as "Godwins alert". I might as well.....
But if you checked my reading material over 20 years, and thus my interests, you'd understand. (Not trying to claim expertise here, just declaring my interests.)
Godwin and his bloody law follows me around.....ah - how they mock! What do they do in fascist studies about it?
(I once fucked-off an essay which was supposed to get me into some grand university so as to really get into all this stuff - but I went on holiday to Paris with a chick instead. Doh! So think yourselves (and Godwin) lucky. She did have a quite fantastic bottom though.)
I know a little of the herstory, not much. For one thing, I am terrible at Arab names. I am pretty good with Russian ones, but Arab? Ack! They're all the same....(yes, I'm Welsh for chrissakes! ask an arab to trace 100 Jones' and Evans' across a narrative?)
I've learnt a lot in the last week - I guess I had to let the background stuff percolate through and build-up enough interest to bother.
On the Baathist thing, I thought Saddam H. had smashed the communist elements? Baathist thing is wider than Iraq? I have no idea what makes Baathist Baathist btw. I could go look....I'll get there eventually, perhaps.
anyway - in your own time, or not at all, but I'm all ears for stuff like that atm.
d: Yes, political correctness is the path to all evil on the left. You can never agree with
Am I missing something there, or is your post? Am I missing a joke?
Donkeytale can be a definite moron when it comes to discussing idealism. One can be anti-war, into universal ideas of housing, food, jobs for all and equal education, and he'll label such as pie in the sky political correctness, if I'm not mistaken.
He's the ultimate fake lefty who would never hold Obama's feet to the fire.
He only recently figured out right woos left.
He's at his best when you avoid those kinds of things and talk pop culture.
He has no true concept of the real left as exemplified by such people as those coming out of the Frankfurt School. He's middle of the road for many things.
It's easier for him to ridicule things as a socialist peacenik schtick than understand and support it.
He's not as bad as I just made him out to be, yet there's some truth here. The thing is, he gets a buzz out of having anti-social discussions, so I try to avoid these slugfests.
Plus, it's been a real coup de e'blecht to get him to blog at DFQ2. He's one of the originals from Daily Kos who first could see how slimy that blog empire has been. He's also been good at shooting down fake lefties at the offshoot soablox blogs. He's just like a lot of Americans who don't understand the peace movement and social equality. He talks a good game but continues to label many as left who really aren't. I don't think he understands what left values truly are. I don't think he's a bad guy but is philosophically challenged.
As for good movies, here goes. A lot of my favourites have been scrubbed due to copyrights. Sorry. I can find more of these too, if you like these.
In This Our Life (1942)
The Snake Pit
Love Affair 1939
Gaslight (1944)
OF HUMAN BONDAGE 1934
The Little Foxes 1941
The Heiress (1949)
Network 1976
waaay off topic - but look at the title? :D
S, I was just thinking, and I thunk that you're right to draw attention to my commenting on I/P, as I always try to avoid taking a position. I try to avoid the entire subject really - - it's a hot potatoe, I'm ignorant, and I'm more interested in nazism and socialism than the ins and outs of I/P conflict. I'm often more interested in that than sex. but I didn't feel I could avoid taking a position in this case (the flotilla incident and the frenzy around it) nor over HAMAS and all that terrorism and nazi stuff in the wider sense.
To not take a position? I felt it would be abdicating some sort of responsibility to do to. But now I wanted to take that position. Approaching it from the (my) angle of nazism and all that (I loathe it), I've obtained a perspective I'd been lacking.
I'm uncomfortable that adopting a "neutral" position can mean, for example, not having a positive acceptance of the holocaust. Or that Hitler was "bad news". That slavery is *bad*. etc.
It's a cop-out not to take a position, at times? Generally though I do refuse to take a position on I/P - not out of any ill intentioned wish to cop-out of the issue - just that I don't know know enough to be righteous, and I don't want to cloud my wider nazi gig with particulars and interminable arguments about I/P.
Anyway, I raise this only because it's interesting to me....and so I imagine the wider issue is...I had been thinking about it, stimulated by your comments apparently. I realised I had never taken a definite position before. Well, at least I don't think I had particularly.
I know it's kinda off-topic, but.....I know it raises your suspicions about me, or at least has done before. And I think it's interesting. lol. The beer and grass is good :D
S: One can be anti-war, into universal ideas of housing, food, jobs for all and equal education, and he'll label such as pie in the sky political correctness, if I'm not mistaken.
well, if he does think that, he has a point? it is a genuine effort to get those things, and we're not exactly swamped in it, are we?
whether one wants those things or not is a different matter? perhaps DonkeyTale wants those things as much as you, just thinks there's no way to get it? What people want is somewhat separate to how they want to achieve it? (I try to look to integrate those aspects.....my personal aphorism(?) goes: "it isn't that the ends justify the means, the means *are* the end.")
I think vanguardism and Leninism tend to break my own rule. I'm a conservative revolutionary! ha
Lenin on nationalism - I'd like to understand that. Will someone teach me? Seems not - yet apparently (according to ALex Jones) the NWO is desperate to feed it me.
Don't you find that? Agents of the NWO trying to stuff Lenin down your throat in the high street? Tedious. What is to be done?
S: He's the ultimate fake lefty who would never hold Obama's feet to the fire.
Is the Donk a lefty? (leftie?)
He doesn't have to be? Better that people are I guess, but not necessarily if they're idiots and don't have any integrity? I don't mind liberal rightwingers so long as they're honest and....."good". 'Course, I'd slit their throats in the Bloody Revolution, but nevermind that?<----kidding. (just to be clear)
And Obama is only left in so far as he's left of the right. Err.....
You know what I mean? I'm confused. What's this holding feet to fire?
He only recently figured out right woos left.
Well, it is a pretty obscure topic isn't it? We don't get exactly get top-billing for it, do we? ;)
We're self-educated "experts" on Mike Rivero? hehe
We have to be amongst the world's top several hundred Rivero and associated Kook-watchers list?
Will you stay in my lover's story? If you stay you won't be sorry, because we believe in you.........just a couple of Kooks, we're rock and roll....errr.....(I'm not saying that!)
He's at his best when you avoid those kinds of things and talk pop culture.
I thought it sounded more interesting. But that's me, of course. That's my interest. But if he knows.....? And how does he know?
If he already knows, and I don't, his views are post-knowing what I know........ :D That's always good? In ways I am very ideological, I'm innoculated/
But I think you like to dig at each other, right? And you're not so different?<---my blatant attempt at provocation. :) and exploration. lol
He has no true concept of the real left as exemplified by such people as those coming out of the Frankfurt School. He's middle of the road for many things.
Well, I don't know much about the Frankfurt school at all. It's all pretty academic left stuff? Few outside of anyone who really wants to get into all that will have much idea of the specifics of it? But you mean it as just an example of left-ism?
Still - as much as I wish the world were some socialist paradise I find everyone agreeing about everything awfully dull. A conundrum for angels.
It's easier for him to ridicule things as a socialist peacenik schtick than understand and support it.
Yeah, well, it is a position to ridicule? I think it's perfectly game for ridicule. Not that I support the ridicule - it can make me burn - but......
I have astonished myself at times with the passion of my......communism. And yet I suspect if socialism were to become fashionable enough for it to happen I'd still find myself railing against something and everything. I'd be going "You fickle bastards! What's wrong with capitalism all of a sudden? At least we all disagreed then!"
Just my luck to become a liberal 24 hrs after the socialist revolution.
He's not as bad as I just made him out to be
Ah. That'll teach me to comment without reading the entire post first. lol
he gets a buzz out of having anti-social discussions, so I try to avoid these slugfests.
Where's the slugfest? (what is a slugfest?)
anti-social-discussion is odd. anti-social-shouting.....ok....but discussion? Cannae be such a ting?
it's been a real coup de e'blecht to get him to blog at DFQ2.
what does that mean?
or
what does that mean?
He's one of the originals from Daily Kos
Oh - he's CIA? Ah.....
He's also been good at shooting down fake lefties at the offshoot soablox blogs.
I have no idea.
He's just like a lot of Americans
legs...arms?
He talks a good game but continues to label many as left who really aren't. I don't think he understands what left values truly are.
That sounds like a great discussion - all in there, just like that......? left values......what are they? I like the marxist thing too, which I imagine is pretty...err....what's the way to say it? Well, marxism doesn't have much regard for human rights. Not that humans aren't gentle, delicate, and emotionally sophisticated creatures deserving of rights, just that the whole idea is pretty bourgeois and rests on bourgeois legal systems etc. It's all operating under a bourgeois capitalist legal framework, whereas genuine justice from a socialist state needn't require a framework of individual human rights in opposition to some state or private power - it would be infused right throughout the system.
Crazy man.
[Reading this I imagine it could be taken as somewhat vicious towards you S, but it isn't meant like that. Any perceived viciousness is actually a warm poke. I only say this to be clear - I'm sure you largely get it/me/what i say]
And thank you for the movie links too.
TLNL-- Socrates worldview is warped right now by the fact that his team has played like crap for most of the NBA final series.
Losing to the Lakers to a Boston fan would be similar to the British losing a war against the French, if you need a frame of reference.
Socrates in many ways embodies eternal adolescence. The Left of the Frankfurt School?
Marcuse taught school in Calif back in the day. He taught Angela Davis I believe. Otherwise, he was barely a blip on the leftist radar screen.
He was considered a Marxist. I'm also a Marxist as well as a Freudian. Check out Marx. He held nothing but scathing contempt for leftist idealism. Did that mean he wasnt a leftist?
The Left, as Socrates depicts it, is simply a dead religion. It worships dead Gods at the altar of idealism which provides nothing for nobody except an obnoxious sense of self righteousness. Change? What change?
The Left's condescending self righteousness is why it shrinks instead of grows in times when it should grow: like today with the spreading crisis of capitalism in the west.
I have made note of odd left right coalitions in the past (Godwins alert) whose vector is populist anger with the PTB.
Greenwald recently is making similar noises these daze. If you want to get things done in reality you have to get up from the computer, shake off your purity and join the muck.
Julien Assange is another who claims that he is driven by non-ideological passions agains the abuses of the elites.
A post-ideological coalition is slowly taking root in Europe. In the US populist anger exists on the right and is controlled by the Republican Party. In Europe we see left/right coalitions in power in Germany and England. The right controls both I believe but the left has a seat at the table, unlike in the US.
Obama himself used a post-ideological schtick to win election but since he has not strayed mush past his own Ivy League elitist roots and has missed several opportunities to take a populist stand which could re-order the political formation: MIC, Wall Street and Big Oil, for instance.
Shame on Obama. I believe his failure is less ideological and more personal. He is not a tough guy willing to take on the PTB. He's a compromiser. We probably needed that after Bush but when the Recession hit the game changed. We dont need to compromise with the PTB, we need to kick their ass, FDR-style. Churchill-style, as two examples from polar opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Yet, it was WWII that made both men and afforded them the great opportunity to kick ass. Does Obama have that opportunity today? Are things as bad as the 1930s-40s?
There is a chance that they will descend to that level in the coming years, no doubt.
***********
Baathism also is the controlling party in Syria, also in the form of a family dynasty protected by thugs. It has shared roots with the MB.
Stalin murdered a lot of socialists and communists too. Saddam is something of mini-Stalin of the tribal Arabic variety.
Ideology, whetehr left or right always ends at the doorstep of fascism (Godwins alert):
lies accepted as truth for the hold of power by the few over the many.
Human. Nature.
There's a lot to get to. I'll do my best. Yawn. Not bored. Can't one have an innocent yawn? Coffee's good, but it isn't a miracle drug. These things take time. Think of Letterman's treatise on the pyramid of comedy. You just can't blurt out the punchline and expect results. What was the question?
The title of this essay was an original way of saying two blog entries in one. I had run that three or four blog entries in one schtick into the ground. Speaking of human nature, going off-topic is way up there. We ain't in no fancy schmancy seminar room. I tend to agree with donkeytale that off-topic is the spice of blog life. So why not get right to it with the title?
One thing you'll notice with donkeytale is his ability to cherrypick. He doesn't think global warming is that big a problem, or he thinks the jury is still out. So he avoids it here, even when I busted some tool. Or maybe I'm taking too much from one stinking thread on the topic elsewhere.
That was pure socrates, nailing that youtubage guy on each lie. Now one thing I just did was one of the worst blogging sins. I spoke of myself in the third person.
What is a coup d'eblecht? Here's the lowdown. There was this dude Peeder and some crazy whench MSOC. Peeder ran the software and whatnot at Daily Kos. MSOC had some ranting schtick that worked. Donkey was one of the guys sacrificed in the 2004 Dana Houle Purge. That guy's a political operative who was a top DKOS blogger before finally being banned this year. Another guy banned was Arthur Gilroy.
By the way, this type of talk is referred to as Meta, kind of going over the blogosphere zeitgeist. It's what probably links all three of us and lurker cheese. It's the off-topic, the hierarchical nature of 99.9% of blogs, and existentialism which has made it very difficult for the few of us including lurker cheese to create much more than pockets of awareness.
Just look at the Agent99-Biggie Dan neo-nazi NWO schtick. By the time we made inroads in linking that crap to BradBlog, Agent99 was shown the moderating door. By the time we exposed BradBlog, he's yesterday's bullshit.
Ok, I'm almost ready to explain coup d'eblecht. MSOC created My Left Wing. Peeder went there. He quit DKos after unsuccessfully trying to reform it. MLW became a smashing success. Then this guy Holland really started to mop the floor with Moulitsas. But he took it too far. He wouldn't back down from claiming Moulitsas and Daily Kos were CIA plants. It wasn't really his fault. He had never taken Paystubs 101.
MSOC went on to become like the pigs who took over in Animal Farm, of the all people are equal yet some are more equal than others variety. Peeder started The Political Flesh Feast. It was a great idea at first, but it eventually fell beneath the weight of the trolls who occupied it. Peeder white walled the place.
FSZ then stole PFF's legacy. The MLW-DKos cycle continued. A place started out seemingly with its heart in the right place only to fall under the weight of the administrators' hubris. You wouldn't believe the convolution generated by this cat MattyJack. He made up that he was married. He made up crap about Dave Weintraub. There's a whole history that goes under the title of Regular Guys. That's been written about before.
Anyway, pffugeecamp was formed for one last Lucy taking the football away from Charlie Brown blog. Myself and donkeytale were two of the more interesting bloggers. We developed some real dialogue between us. It was real. We did the same at DFQ. Long story short, Pffugee turned out to be nothing more than an affiliate of FSZ.
(continued)
To get to the coup d'eblecht. One day at pffugee I came up with my bagel and cream cheese schtick. I told everyone to WAKE THE FOCK UP. It was a funny bit, though I might have added too much cheese. Well, it was actually raisins. Anyway, I would later whine to Donkster about Noom stealing my schtick. Donkeytale explained to me that was an original PFF thingie, where people would co-opt others' ideas, a kind of take the football and run with it satirical kind of theft. Milton Berle 101 so to speak. He said something about panties in a bunch. I was like ok.
There is a blah, blah, blahg line that has crept into the blog world vernacular. I basically co-opted that a day or two ago with my blah, blahg, Bertold Blecht. Now we see Donkeytale acknowledging the pure greatness of that line. Problem is, when we are blogging in 2044, he'll be claiming he's the one who coined it.
You spelled potato with an E. Is that how it's done on the other side of the pond? Dan Quayle got into some serious public relations trouble when he did that.
Now on this your coming to age in recognising why you must take a stand on Israeli Palestinian politics, I too find it fascinating. Our biases can get in the way. The Nazi schtick is spot on. Canadian Bob and many others fully understand what we've been on about. He has been coming from the satanic panic angle. We see it because we have used Rivero as a guide. You came up with a lot of links of his to guys I never heard of like Curtis Maynard. Donkeytale knows of Alex Jones. Both are from Texas. Now he has been given the tools to see how Jones is tied to the hip of Holocaust deniers and other riff-raff. It takes a Meta village.
I took critique of your Nazi schtick perhaps a bit too far. Sure, your avoidance of censoring Israel opened the door for claims of you being Mossad or something goofy like that. Perhaps you feared giving aid to the enemy or somehow legitimising their neo-nazi existence. Whatever the psychology going on there, I think it's to your credit that you're finally acknowledging the need to hold Israel's feet to the fire. And don't tell me you don't know what holding feet to the fire means. I think people like Rivero and Tinoire are the Palestinians' worst enemies. They make it seem that Israel is doing what it has to do to protect herself from hostile neighbours.
I've never really had a big problem with yourself. Well, there's one thing about you that's kind of annoying, that excessive use of question marks at times. But we all have our quirks, and I've learned to let that one go.
I am also no expert on the the Middle East. And I do see your dilemma in wanting to expose the neo-nazi bloggers without looking like a supporter of Israeli apartheid.
(continued)
Now that's where the dumbasses truly messed up. They never should have equated Israel with Nazi Germany. South African apartheid would have been a better analogy, imho.
Anti-semitism is real. This is a very complex topic. Just because there are all these numbnuts like Michael Rivero and the fake leftists from soapblox doesn't mean there isn't a need to discuss the Middle East. It's just not going to take place on the internet the way these blogs have been set up.
At this point I'm not sure if the proper spelling is lefty or leftie or both. That's another thing I need to resolve.
I agree with donkeytale that the internet is the last place activism is going to take place.
And now we see donkeytale holding Obama's feet to the fire. This is cool. It shows that one can't generalise or put too many words into others' mouths. I agree with his analysis that Obama is missing the opportunity to be an FDR. I've written that very same idea myself. Hmmm. Maybe we are the same person! Not. It was ok for Obama to start out slow. But he needs to lead with more of a sense of urgency. You can't play to not lose. He needs to take some chances. Health care is one thing. He needs to get the economy moving and promote job creation. That's what is needed for him to be re-elected. That's what got Clinton a second term. Economics. If jobs come back, Obama will get his second term. Period.
I also find it riotous how in one sentence he downplays Marcuse, yet in another he speaks of himself as both a Marxist and Freudian type thinker. That was Marcuse! That was Fromm and pretty much the whole of The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.
I apologise for this rambling, probably mostly incoherent prose. I do need a win for the home team tonight. Sports is fried just like movies. In theory, as a socialist peacenik I'm not supposed to care. I think we're the kind of lefties who the ptb's are afraid of. We're tough to box in. What's a slugfest? I didn't mean like slugs as in bugs. That's a boxing term. I can't think straight. Today is gloomy and rain cold. A week ago it was hot and muggy. I wish God would make up her mind. Yes, I believe God is some hot chick. There I said it. There I said it is another one of those overused blog lines. Someday the same will be said of blah, blahg, blecht. Bet on it.
I cherry pick while what you do is misstate other peoples thots on subjects and spread your misapprehension as if you were spreading useful knowledge.
Oh wait. Thats a form of cherry picking, too. Its just that your cherries are covered in yur own chocolate BS which you insist tastes better than mine.
Prove it.
Global warming: My take is that it exists but that there is no political solution short of a good population cleansing of global proportions. The political solution is just so much fake leftist baloney, as perfectly symbolized by the heavily air conditioned hot air and private jet chemtrailz of the idealistic multimillionaire opportunist Al Gore.
As symbolized by a breathlessly concerned leftist west living in ease and luxury that has helped itself to the worlds spoils for centuries but now wants the emerging darker peoples to back off so they cant have theirs too.
Should the billions in formerly poverty stricken nations care more about the environment that we ruined than they care about escaping poverty?
Can the world's actual success at feeding itself into overpopulation ever be reconciled to the fact that we are poisoning ourselves in the same process?
Pretending that there is a way out of the human dilemma leads to full-on catastrophe every single time.
The irony is that the catastrophe caused by delusional good intentions is actually a necessary element of human nature. If we were more perfect there would be no death disease and starvation and the planet would fall out of orbit from the weight of so many fat, happy humans eating drinking and fucking merrily in a socialist paradise.
This is the fallacy of those who place belief in such things as "enlightened rationality" "technology" and "science" to deliver us from all evil.
Catastrophe is the mothers milk of redemption for those who arent annihilated in the process.
The grand socialist notions don't hold an ounce of weight against the greater flood of humanity which no one can tame, control or reform through politics.
Jesus, any dimwit over the age of 18 can see this, why cant you?
As for the rest of your blather, its not often I have to roll past your schtick, but this was one of those times.
Dude, just stay in the moment. Game 4 tonite is do or die for the Green.
Pierce, Allen and Garnett must show up all on time.
Pyrrhiod.
Take notice that this person has no idea that health care, housing, equal education, jobs, and an end to illegal wars is not delusion or fantasy. He is just spouting more survival of the fittest nonsense. He might as well register Republican. While Obama was accelerating the Afghanistan War, this person wasn't saying anything about Obama being a failure. Now all of a sudden he's talking about Obama's personal failures turning into political ones. This guy has more in common with the DLC than lefty Democrats. This guy hates himself and everyone else. He is a kinder and gentler form of the Pawnbroker. He's got his, and its his hobby to spew his form of nihilism on the internet. As for his passing over my last posts, here's the crucial part he probably missed. He was saying Marcuse was nothing special. He wrote that he views things from a Marxist and Freudian perspective. Well, that was Marcuse's bread and butter. I guess he never heard of Eros and Civilization. He probably is also unaware of One-Dimensional Man, seeing how he isn't fond of peaceniks or their ideals. He ripped into that dude from Wikileaks. Now what was the big thing that dude revealed, was it something about war crimes? Hmmm. He ends up trying to make blogging an opportunity to be cruel to others. That's donkeytale's blogging legacy, to always eventually say something mean. He doesn't realise how stupid and nasty all this makes him look. Marcuse was nothing special. Donkeytale is adept at looking at things from a Marxist and Freudian perspective. That's the ticket!
Whatever, dude.
I ripped into Assange? Where?
I characterized his philosophy accurately. He stated in the New Yorker that he doesnt view the world through a lense of ideology.
You, as usual, mischaracterize me and provide nada to back it up, just because your panties are in a wad.
Are you trying to turn me into a Lakers fan?
There is nothing wrong with being an idealist, just dont try to pretend that your in with Marcuse or anyone on the left when you do so.
Your much closer to the fake left with this nonsense.
I'm reading a great deal more intelligence regarding leftism from than I have read recently. Not too much an ability to reflect accurately what he's reading instead of going off like a little schoolgirl having her first pyrrhiod.
Read Marx instead of pretending like you actually understand leftism.
Read me and stop mischaracterizing me through your own lense of ignorance.
Then come back and talk to me.
Or go watch the game.
Have fun
Besides, you have to love a bespectacled Welshman in a Bullwinkle suit....
Intelligence regarding the left from TLNL than I have read recently, meant to say
You should drop your habit of dropping nasty posts. You have now told me I have much in common with fake lefties. Trouble is I have always been consistent with saying what I believe in. I am against war and for equality in housing, employment, education, and health care.
You don't realise how ridiculous you looked downplaying Marcuse's intellectual accomplishments while spinning yourself as some Marxist and Freudian thinker. That's what Marcuse was. Instead of acknowledging the brain cramp, you ignore it.
Now you expect me to understand what you're talking about in regards to Assange and Greenwald. I've seen you at least once put down Greenwald. Above you were talking about Assange being post-ideological. You also spoke of how people need to put down the keyboard and do real activism. Pardon me for thinking you were ripping into him.
So maybe you are saying post-ideology is the way to go and that right and left should join forces. That makes you sound like a pimp for the Democratic Leadership Council and their third way. It sounds like triangulation.
Sure, now all of a sudden you have held Obama's pinky toe to the fire. Before then, I've never seen you do that.
You pretty much call me a poser. That I should read some Marx and stop pretending I am in with Marcuse. I studied Critical Theory. I do understand historic lefty thought. You've been talking out of your ass.
A fake lefty is someone who is against affirmative action or calls Richard Nixon the last liberal President. A fake lefty is someone like Lyndon Larouche who spreads whackjob conspiracy theory.
A fake lefty is someone who is tied to the hips of Joo haters like Willis Carto and Mike Rivero. A fake lefty is anyone who promotes Daily Kos or Democratic Underground. Example of that is Al Giordano, who promotes both Markos Moulitsas and kinder and gentler imperialism. Oh wait, you're the one who said Giordano mopped the floor with me.
You're full of shit. I don't think you're paid to post, but I'm not surprised if anyone thinks you work for the DLC. Without the paycheck, that makes you a useful idiot.
I won't ban or delete you. I'm not saying that makes me a cool person. It's just myself doing what I should. But don't for a minute think I appreciate your sometime over the top sadistic approach to blogging. You're the best at it. You live for flame fests. That's why perhaps you should go back to soapblox. You know that's what you want and miss.
I studied the Frankfurt School. I got into Fromm, Marcuse, and others. I didn't continue, but was into it back in the day. So you can take your belittling of me and my mannerisms or whatnot and shove it up your ass. I'm not going to proofread this. You're not worth too much of my time. Grow up.
U.S. Military Threatening World Peace and Economic Stability
I was drunk. I scarcely wanna read what I wrote. :D
Thanks for the compliment, Mr/s Donkey.
The only things I know about Benjamin and all that come from here:
http://www.radio-rouge.org/Users/resistancemp3/walter_benjamin_-_culture_and_conformism-chris_nineham_and_esther_leslie.mp3
There's a whole pile of good stuff here:
http://www.resistancemp3.org.uk/cgi-bin/allfiles.pl
Contemporary marxism conferences in London....all mp3'd.
Some excellent stuff.
Who was it that said tourism turns culture into junk? I think that has to be true - once it becomes a commodity, it becomes false - rather than a way of life, it becomes a play, a theatre of repetition, static and fixed in aspic. Is this sort of thing anything to do with Frankfurt School stuff? I don't know.
Few seem to know that the Welsh national dress was actually invented in Victorian Britain, deliberately as a tourist gimmick.
I think commodification must have an impact on all cultural produce. all cultural produce must reflect the 'culture' it's produced in, and delivered into? every cultural product must be thoroughly infused with the culture that produced it? flaws and all.
When culture is as privatised and marketised as ours....and everything is commodified, even the experience of nature itself, then....no surprise to find it's an oversweet sickly candy floss.
Lenin-burgers. Happy meals.
Hollywood seems the ultimate blend of theatre as commerce - it's all a branch of advertising, even the criticism.
I did a stint in a multimedia degree and I was flabbergasted to find all class discussions about "art" were totally dominated by references to advertising. whenever the students were presented with some artistic artifact, the only things they could find with which to relate to it was through adverts.
I found it quite disturbing, if only vaguely so. I don't really have a language to talk about art either, and I've no great aesthetics...but these students, only about 10 years younger than me, seemed products of a much more televisual life and a far, far more commodified one. In 10 years?
I went for a look at the Frankies - at wiki: dense, academic stuff, discussing culture. A lot of that sends me to sleep - often I suspect people aren't really saying much when they speak like that about culture. Or maybe it's just too subtle for me, or it's a language I just can't grasp.
However, this (logical analysis) bit makes an awful lot of sense to me:
Drawing upon Max Weber, Horkheimer argued that the social sciences are different from the natural sciences, inasmuch as generalizations cannot be easily made from so-called experiences, because the understanding of a "social" experience itself is always fashioned by ideas that are in the researchers themselves. What the researcher does not realize is that he is caught in a historical context in which ideologies shape the thinking; thus theory would be conforming to the ideas in the mind of the researcher rather than the experience itself:
“ The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself (sic) as receptive and passive in the act of perception.
That's clearly put. That's the kind of perspective that I always found so powerful in Marx. And it's useful and insightful even if things like the Iron Laws prove somewhat less than laws, or the the transformation problem persists, whatever.
Wiki says they were dissident marxists. Freud/psycho-analysis shows up? hehe - I bet that can get barely comprehensible quickly ;)
Freud is impossible to dismiss, but hard to take hugely seriously. I can see the materialism of it, but it runs the risk of mysticism all the time. And usually falls into it, I suspect.
And psycho-analysis must be subject to the same conditions as mentioned earlier - theory conforms to the ideas of the researcher rather than the experience itself.....?
"Critical theory defends the primacy of neither matter (materialism) nor consciousness (idealism), arguing that both epistemologies distort reality to the benefit, eventually, of some small group. What critical theory attempts to do is to place itself outside of philosophical strictures and the confines of existing structures. However, as a way of thinking and "recovering" humanity's self-knowledge, critical theory often looks to Marxism for its methods and tools."
I seem to be a very crude materialist.....
Indeed, the material tensions and class struggles of which Marx spoke were no longer seen by Frankfurt School theorists as having the same revolutionary potential within contemporary Western societies—an observation which indicated that Marx's dialectical interpretations and predictions were either incomplete or incorrect.
I always think such conclusions are premature. Hold on? the story isn't over yet....is it?
is class division really less important? why did they think so?
I won't pretend to be well-versed in some of the philosophies you've been discussing. I took a History of Socialism course in college, (absolutely fascinating, I thought), but I gained only a tiny speck of knowledge from that in comparison to the ocean of my ignorance about it. Since then, I've been inspired sometimes to look up people or movements others are discussing - for my own interest. That's all, but I'm content with that.
I've told this story before, many times on many forums:
A friend of mine, who is a Very Serious Socialist, attended a Socialist Youth conference in the early 70's. There were hundreds of delegates from all over - marxists, marxist-leninists, trotsky-ists, anarcho-syndicalists, social libertarians, social democrats, situationists, etc.
Everyone seemed joyous of the large turnout, but once the debate on issues began in earnest ALL of the groups squandered their time denouncing the philosophies of various other groups in attendance.
Except for the Maoists. There were only two of them, they arrived separately, and they spent the whole conference loudly denouncing EACH OTHER as 'revisionist scum'.
:)
I find that a healthy and endearing trait of the left. argue. disagree. get furious. :D
That sort of perspective also encourages one to overlook the fact that all those people can have a conference and agree on a lot of very principled progressive stuff.
A bickering conference of lefties seems to meet a lot of enlightenment ideals. though yes, i guess it's easy to (cynically?) wonder if it's actually helping bring about socialism.
I use that condition of disagreement amongst socialists as an argument against the (far-right) belief that communism was "a jewish plot" designed only to set people against one another......I ask, could a mere stage prop of history sustain such an intellectual culture as produces conferences full of fiercely arguing socialists and marxists? Seems impossible to me. Hard to invent total bullshit which will sustain 200 years enquiry? Of course, some will say socialism hasn't produced that at all, and the surprise is that it has managed to persist at all. :D
I had a sociology lecturer who was a former communist organiser for local dock workers. I wonder if he Satanically abused us? Sadly discussions always seemed to centre around if homosexuality was "ok" or not.....or some such. I just wanted to talk about Marxism - bugger the rest of it. We used to go to the pub afterwards....it was good.
The biggest problem with marxism, I think, is that it very quickly veers into academic gobbledegook. Well, that's my excuse.
You're right about there being a tendency towards producing gobbledygook, TLNL. But you hurt your own argument by linking to and extensively posting crap from Wikipedia. Critical Theory was not about downplaying class issues.
Your ideas about commodification are more to the point. That's precisely what the problem with this world is. C. Wright Mills called it circumscribing. Some professors are doing good work, but for the most part, they actually are merely making money off of information. They are usually mere bricks in the wall. Mills was also brilliant in explaining how social science is nothing like natural science. He thus coined the phrase sociological imagination. One must get a feel for people and their times. That's where the truth is to be found.
The Frankfurt School was into interdisciplinary thinking. They carried on the work of Max Weber. That they paid respect to Marx shows that they were concerned with economic inequality. Marx was critiquing capitalist England during a specific time frame. His flaw was that he had a blind spot for cultural influences. Critical Theory is about getting a more complete picture by studying both material and cultural.
Al Giordano is the perfect example of someone who has turned being a lefty into a product. Those types are actually all over the internet. There's BradBlog and Kimberlin with their hoax scams along with Arianna Huffington with her fluff. She thinks we're going to forget she was a Republican? Markos Moulitsas is another fake lefty. Same with the people running Democratic Underground.
I recommend you go to the actual sources. Go to your library and find Fromm books. The Fear of Freedom and Escape from Freedom are good ones. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness would be right up your alley, since you have a keen interest in Nazism.
Commodification is everywhere. Mind games are everywhere. It's tough not to become either a cynical nihilist or drink koolaid.
I think education is the solution. Unfortunately, since it is so unequal, commodified, and stresses standardised testing and personal finance, it has become the most effective divide and conquer tool.
The poser label is thrown at anyone who fights the status quo. I'm talking about the "you are only able to say these things because you are not going hungry" card.
Everything and everyone is under attack. There is no discipline. There are no common threads. Everything is falling apart. Alienation and feelings of being powerless are on the rise.
I watched a very good pre-code movie called Baby Face. Fortunately the Library of Congress found the uncut copy and restored it from its butchered Hays Code state. It was a somewhat realistic take on sexuality, child abuse, sexism, greed, and other themes centered around morality. It was pure Freudian Marxism so to speak.
I'm thinking it takes extra effort to put together a good blog piece that is accessible to anyone interested. So much is existential. So much info is difficult to share with others, even when we try to listen and stay civil.
My take is that Hollywood of today is ramming sex down our throats in the guise of it being a sign that we are not uninhibited like past decades. But when I see those rare pre-code movies that haven't been molested, I can see that folks back then were less inhibited than we are today. It gets me thinking of how perverted social reality is. Hollywwod was thoroughly raped by censorship for about 30 years.
I am seeing this world as being the ultimate butterfly effect. Look at what happened to Africa. Or look at the Holocaust. Or look at nearly anything past or present. It will shed light on what we are truly experiencing, but only if we strive to be intellectually honest.
TLNL said: "I find that a healthy and endearing trait of the left. argue. disagree. get furious."
I agree, I think that's healthy.
I enjoy studying academic analysis of a topic, less enthusiastic about participating in severely academic discussions. With respect to "left-ism", I most enjoy practical application of what I perceive needing to be done; people in my community asking for help with some life challenge - how can I contribute? people in my community being targeted for discrimination or persecution - how can I support them? then joining with others to DO it.
I THOUGHT I was "a communist" when I was in High School, but of course I really understood very little about that philosophy. I knew that poor people were getting screwed by wealthier people and that made me angry.
My grandmother had a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica from 1928 I believe - being written so close to the Russian Civil War the article on that was far more detailed than the encyclopedias at school. For example, Granny's EB was much more up-front about Soviet territory having been invaded by Australia, Canada, British India, the UK, the USA, Italy, France, Greece & 8 other "Allied" nations - that Western nations essentially "declared war" on Soviet Russia, invaded them and never formally rescinded their intention to overthrow the Soviet state.
I searched, in vain, in the school's EBs, for evidence that the Soviet Union had ever done something similar - had declared war on Western States & invaded them...but there was nothing. I was dumbfounded. WE had acted on intent to overthrow them and never renounced that intention, while THEY had never invaded & attempted to overthrow our nations. So...this perpetual military build-up and preparedness we were doing, that was supposed to be a response to THEIR perpetual intention to destroy US?
I think I was 12 then, and I experienced my first revelations about political propaganda, about majority opinions based on lies or ignorance, about irrational Western "imperialist" aggression against other nations. I said to myself: "Oh yea? Communist nations are the source of all evil - I'm supposed to believe that? Well, f*ck you then - I guess I'll be a Communist"
TLNL:
Vis a vis the historical failure (or not) of Marxism, I read a funny line at the New Yorker website that fits your comment well.
In the 1950s, a journalist asked Mao if thought the French Revolution had been successful.
"Its too early to tell," replied the inscrutable Chairman.
RIOTOUS!
Of course, neither Marx nor Freud were 100% accurate and especially their prescriptions for remedy seem "off." But there analysis of history and human psyche seem to be to stand the test of time.
Socrates is correct that Marx (and Freud too, for that matter) was probably too close to his own epochal age to predict the future with any degree of certainty.
Show me someone who isn't prejudiced by his own particlular circumstance of time and place....
However, it is still "too early to tell" IMHO whether the cultural factors will themselves eventually "wither away and die", as the world grows ever more homogenized through the world wide web, through the multinational corporations that have grown unboundingly in the glow of the infoboobtubes and the corresponding trend towards interracial marriage which is ubiquitous today in the most "advanced" societies, especially in the social/cultural high tech bellweather AKA Californiadise.
Believe it or not, I'm an optimist over the distant long term for the future of humanity, but that may simply be the illusion I must maintain in order to persevere into old age.
I'm also a realist thinking there will be huge dilemmas, massive catastrophes and extreme crises to navigate along the path to the eventual enlightenment of the next historical age that will replace our fossilized Roman Civilization in decline.
Normal long term we're probably ok. You'd think at some point a Star Trek philosophy of peace and justice will emerge. But don't we eventually get eaten up by the sun?
Marx gets blamed for a lot of stuff. He'll be blamed if the Lakers come back. Before there was but, but, but Clinton, it was blame it on Karl Marx.
The guy had nothing to do with any of those communist revolutions. Even the great philosopher Homer Simpson said, "Communism in theory..."
I've always thought Trotsky was probably the real deal, and that's why he got knocked off.
Capitalism versus communism was the ultimate divide and conquer. They are both window dressing for exploitation and totalitarianism.
I saw a flick you'd be into. It was called Meet John Doe by Capra with Stanwyck and Cooper. It was similar to the TeaNuts forming or even Huey Long. It was pretty wild. The phrase fifth column was involved. So was the phrase New Order.
Then you had the ultimate conspiracy angle with the media covering up the true story of Johnny Doe.
I bet it was because of movies like that McCarthy went apeshit. You wouldn't want the masses thinking for themselves.
Those pre-code movies are pretty good. You wouldn't believe how much censoring was going on. Baby Face was wicked awesome but only if you see the uncut version. The whole child abuse part of it was deleted, so one wouldn't understand why Baby Face Barbs acted the way she did. They turned some dimestore philosopher's words around too. He told Stanwyck to use men. He gave her a copy of Nietsche. The censors flipped it around so the old man was telling her will to power is cool but you have to make moral decisions. The dude never said that.
I forget the name of a silent Greta Garbo movie I saw a few months back. I thought it was pretty good but not much to it. I went to imdb.com and found out two thirds of it was deleted and Garbo's part of the story was only secondary. The main gist was white walled.
When we yanks have the information, we do the right thing. Unfortunately, we are not living in a free society. That's why I'm not goo goo gaga over an African-American winning the White House. I'm sure TLNL wasn't whooping it up either when Thatcher won election. It figures that when these great social barriers are conquered, they're accomplished by fakers.
Women in pre-code flicks were themselves. I'm thinking of how you are saying everything is becoming homogenized. Modern movies have the illusion of uninhibited sexuality. I'm not buying it.
In Baby Face, there's a very hot African-American lady comfortable as a sexy dame in a natural way. Same with Stanwyck. I ain't talking no over the top Madonna or Sharon Stone skank city.
Miscegenation wouldn't be such a bad thing. It'll take a good 100 years though I bet for it to really make a dent. There's still a lot of segregation, not forced of course. You can change the laws, but there will always be a gap of time before the behaviour changes in relation.
Saw the DVD of "The Hurricane" over the weekend. Brought back fond remembrances of the "Friday Night Fights" from MSQ with the immortal Don Dunphy announcing at ringside.
Dunphy is also the announcer for the Thrilla in Manilla that you have seen on ESPN Classic.
Carter was a staple of these bouts, along with many, many great middleweights in my recollection, including even a washed-up Sugar Ray Robinson. Luis Rodriguez, Emile Griffith (the champ who killed a white fighter in the ring and who Carter Ko'd in non-title bout depicted in da movie), among others.
Many of these fights were surprisingly competitive, before the era of the obvious mismatch that protected the champs but ruined boxing. Carter lost like 10-12 times but he was considered a top contender.
These were bouts during the height of the Civil Rights era, JFK assassination era, Cassius Clay era.
They never showed champeenship bouts on TV in those days as a I recall, they had closed circuit where you paid big dollars (like $5) at a movie theatre. I remember istening with my parents to a radio broadcast of the first Clay-Liston fight where Clay shocked the world down to the bottom of its white hooded Klan frocks.
You cannot overemphasize the cultural sea-change that Clay's success brought about. It was huger than huge.
Anyway, if you havent seen the Hurricane movie read up on the saga.
Nelson Algren's last novel depicts the Hurricane story and is much more even handed, portraying carter as something less than the Buddha as Dylan's (excellent) ballad portrays. Liberals tended to forgive the black man his transgressions back in the day because the black man was absolutely brutalized by the system.
The Carter of the movie is fictionalized, glossied up and way over-glorified. His dark side is only hinted at. In real life Carter was not nearly a saint but the murder case was pretty clearly trumped up because the local police long had an axe to grind against the uppity ex-delinquent, ex-criminal turned celebrity prize fighter.
It is not an even handed rendition at all. But its still a very powerful melodrama in the old school Hollywood style you so love.
Yes, Obama is not the Black Moses. The remarkable thing is that he is
I have no frigging idea what people expected of Obama. As if Ralph Nader or Hillary would do any better in taking on the system and turning a fascist American society around on a time.
Why do American liberals always better always from somebody else while all the while giving themselves a free pass from doing anything because they hold the correct leftee philosophical positions the do _zero_ to advance in the world. Why did LBJ advance civil rights? because regular people were on the streets forcing the issue, thats why.
This country isnt moving left because of one elected official no matter who he or she is or what they represents. Politics only changes society after society changes and demands the PTB catch on.
Pyrrhiod.
THAT is why I hold no truck with the empty belief system of todays pampered progressives who are unwilling to do anything besides whine and demand someone else do it for them. Then they grow disillusioned with someone they didnt vote for our support in the first place, while their enemies gleefully take advantage to turn the country even farther to the right.
This is what Marx meant when he termed the Utopian socialists of his time (roughly the equivalent of todaze socialist peacenikkk keyboard commandos) the most reactionary enemy of the working class.
Sorry hit publish when I meant preview, as I was in the throes of a good head of steam.
But read it loud and clear.
Those on the left who blame Obama have nobody to blame but themselves.
Oh and forgot to say that the Federal Judge who finally overturned Carter's conviction on a surprising and rarely used legal gambit was played excellently by none other than one Rod Steiger.
RIOTOUS!
D: "Its too early to tell," replied the inscrutable Chairman.
RIOTOUS!
:D
hehe - reminds me of Ghandi's "it's a good idea" and Churchill's "I'd eat that food!"
D: Of course, neither Marx nor Freud were 100% accurate and especially their prescriptions for remedy seem "off." But there analysis of history and human psyche seem to be to stand the test of time.
There's definitely some truth in both. I think there's much more in Marx though - Marx's radical materialism over F's psychoanalysis, the major one.
D:Socrates is correct that Marx (and Freud too, for that matter) was probably too close to his own epochal age to predict the future with any degree of certainty.
But that's what Marx was saying? He told us how to think like that? Plus, in ways his position was a much better one - right between feudaism and the advanced, entrenched capitalism we have now. He could see better from there than we can from here. A lot of it has been (purposefully) obscured by bourgeois liberalism! :D The growth and power of which is attendant on capitalism - which is greater now than then. So.....
D@ Show me someone who isn't prejudiced by his own particlular circumstance of time and place....
well, yeah, exactly! ;)
D: it is still "too early to tell" IMHO whether the cultural factors will themselves eventually "wither away and die", as the world grows ever more homogenized
Well, I don't think class will simply wither and die. This is where I have problems - as a pacifist, democratic socialist. You won't find me burying people for the triumph of socialist dogma. No way. But how to do it then? Square one....
I'm an optimist over the distant long term for the future of humanity, but that may simply be the illusion I must maintain in order to persevere into old age.
Why the optimism? I'd like to hear some reasons for it, however easily trashed they might be. (I don't intend to trash your reasons - just saying that reasons for optimism can often be easily trashed. I'm optimistic about that! hehe)
Better to be an optimist than pessimist, maybe. But only in so far as they are material factors......my crude materialism.
D: I'm also a realist thinking there will be huge dilemmas, massive catastrophes and extreme crises to navigate along the path to the eventual enlightenment of the next historical age that will replace our fossilized Roman Civilization in decline.
hehe - sounds all too reasonable.
S: don't we eventually get eaten up by the sun?
long time to go yet - though it is only a calculated average. lol
S: Marx gets blamed for a lot of stuff. He'll be blamed if the Lakers come back.
Not here he won't - I don't even know what "the Lakers" means, nor why they went away.
S: I've always thought Trotsky was probably the real deal, and that's why he got knocked off.
Same. but.....head of Red Army in civil war? His appears to be a fabulously impressive record on behalf of socialism --- but it's the RedArmy. He got good at killing people.....or at least running an army whose goal was killing people to defend the revolution. That's tough stuff from which to draw examples of the moral highground.
One thing I hold against Trotsky - and all the others - is that they spoke in such complicated fashion. I need more simplicity (I like Engels more than any others founders - he was the "populariser"?)
But I do have a great admiration for Trotsky, and Lenin. Not that I don't have my complaints - i do, about almost everything - as Donkey mentioned Leftists do. lol
I don't like Vanguardism at all. And I don't like The Party at all. But, you know, they did what they did, I didn't, haven't and won't.
S: Capitalism versus communism was the ultimate divide and conquer. They are both window dressing for exploitation and totalitarianism.
I don't think like that. Stalinism was state-capitalism, that seems reasonable. Other avenues are possible and go further.
S: Those pre-code movies are pretty good.
I'm only vaguely getting this notion of "the code" by context. What was it? What is not allowed is very interesting - to see why it isn't allowed. (For which you have to see it, right?)
S: When we yanks have the information, we do the right thing.
People do? For me that's (my sooooper crude) materialism.
I had a big problem for a long time over the source of morality.......there is no source under atheism. But in fact, it comes from nature (materialism again) --- sociability and even altruism can be explained through evolutionary strategy and "the selfish gene". ]Dawkins regrets that phrase........he didn't mean to imply an evolutionary superiority for selfishness amongst social hierarchies.....only that selfish genes could explain altruism. I took that out of it anyway, but it was good to see him make the point explicit.[
Marx was Darwin's contemporary - and was very aware and interested in evolution. Apparently he seemed delighted with Darwin and offered to dedicate Kapital to him, I think, as it seemed to MArx to be the physical science equivalent of what he was saying (inventing) in social science. Marx and Engels did a lot of work on herstory of primitive tribes etc. One of the most fascinating things for me was Engels' saying that women were the source for heritage, because everyone knows the woman's line.....not the man's. [I had already seen this as a central difference between men and women, and the cause of "jealousy" in men) This material fact led into property, and it changed alongside the change in property relations and the forces of production. Development of private property runs alongside the rise of the male line, and its inheritance, the subjugation of women, etc. interesting stuff, I think. Anthropology (and all social sciences) owe a heavy debt to Marx and Engels (and whomever they had a debt to, too)?
[I know you don't like many of my question marks......and I umderstand why? lol I just hate being dogmatic, and I wanna open things up.......? hehe. It even confuses and irritates me when I read it back years later..........? ARGGGGHHHHH!!!!]
S: we are not living in a free society. That's why I'm not goo goo gaga over an African-American winning the White House.
Well, it makes no difference, right? That's true, but at the same time the other thing has some truth too. It is a bit different. I take all that sort of stuff as being "dialectic" - it's all flux and feeding into itself and each other.....complicated.
Is that "dialectic"? I have never seen a succinct definition nor any I can understand suffice to say I know what the term really means. Which is a shame, because for whatever the reasons, "dialectic materialism" once stood as a mighty thing I had to somehow understand. The materialism I really dig, it arose in me without my knowing it. Powerfully too. But dialectics? If it doesn't mean what I think it does then I suspect it's largely mythical. And Hegel is no good to me at all.......it might as well be Greek (it is German! I was close?)
I'm enjoying reading the comments btw - thanks. it's interesting.
I'm sure TLNL wasn't whooping it up either when Thatcher won election. It figures that when these great social barriers are conquered, they're accomplished by fakers.
I lived through Thatcher but I wasn't a conscious socialist.....i was an unconscious child. An unconscious socialist getting a good education from his class enemy.
Hmmm. I sound like a relic. lol
One of the most powerful memories of my life is from a regular trainride I took across the rusting red of South Wales in Thatcher's Britain - my inheritance.
Where once there was a steel works, and a whole civilisation resting upon it, instead there was flattened barren land, just rust and fallow turf....with a large solitary-white concrete pile on which was written "Thatcher's been here - it could be your job next."
I'd never had a job but one couldn't escape the power of it. The people who had demolished the factory and everything else even left it there. It was left to stand untouched amongst all the destruction - and so it spoke its message to every crappy railcar that creaked by. Including me.
So, whilst Donkey appears to have had some socialism at 12 (?)....I certainly didn't......but I was living in conditions and a culture that potentially was - because it was so anti-socialist in many ways.....and yet that wall still stood. The post-war dream. Whatever happened to.
the Great British Empire!
See.....no-one except the British can understand modern times properly.........because we're largely the cause of it all........because it happened here first.....and "we" exploited it all.
haha - that's also why we're the last to understand anything that's going on right now.
and we shan't like it, whatever it is.
S: You'd think at some point a Star Trek philosophy of peace and justice will emerge.
yep. I really like this discussion - the universe is rational....why...what are the implications.....why put question marks in funny ? places etc? etc
But..........why do you think peace and justice will simply emerge? The real sceptic argument would be that it's illusory. I don't think so.....but.....I am just an illusion, right?
S: Women in pre-code flicks were themselves.
I don't think so. Maybe relatively, in ways, but.....not really...not totally.
S: I'm thinking of how you are saying everything is becoming homogenized.
Ah - I don't know if I ever complained about that. I like the idea of homogenous diversity, for example. I want everyone to be the same......and everyone dig difference. To a degree. Instinctively I don't want anymore homogenous a world than the Libertarian nuts idealise......those are some of my most primitive political/philosophical positions. Child of the universe - get OFF me! That's how I became conscious. And then a recognition of others, empathy? Socialism. Still - I deeply respond against homogeneity, conformity, regulation, commmmmmmodifuckingcation. etc
S: Miscegenation wouldn't be such a bad thing. It'll take a good 100 years though I bet for it to really make a dent. There's still a lot of segregation, not forced of course. You can change the laws, but there will always be a gap of time before the behaviour changes in relation.
I spent last Summer in one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world - Hackney, Norf London.
I watched a few families hold birthday parties......and I watched the crowd. The white kids had predominantly white parties and the coloured/black(?) kids had almost exclusively coloured/black/whatever parties. Very few whites, children or adults. I had no idea what conclusions to draw - and I don't mean to imply anything by stating what I have. I don't know what it means - just my observations. I was kinda disappointed - as even though there is this fabulous crazy mix of peoples.....they can get on....but they ain't especially close. But some are, and it takes time, I guess...... Still...the barriers are real?
Socialist Labor Party from age 17-20, roughly 1967-70, in its final incarnation before the death throes of leftism.
These were Marxists, hard to the core and they were not into debating whatsoever. You are talking about academic Marxists, which is something altogether different. Theoretical Marxists. Masturbating Marxists.
The SLP were into promoting revolution but not violence. Active in protests against the War, for the UFW, with the minorities, among the minorities. Amer Indian reservation volunteering, documenting the human devastation and reporting it back to whitey's uncomfortable face.
I grew up in working class LA, whites in the minority. No middle class in our town, dude. A social studies teacher introduced me to the party. He was hardcore, a WWII vet, heavy smoker of unfiltered camels, lived with a hispanic woman and her four kids in a run down neighborhood. I remember the crappy stucco LA style house had a swimming pool, so that was cool.
I meant cultural in the way I think Socrates used it in relation to Marx, as opposed to socioeconmic class with which Marx was fixated.
As for Freud, the psychonalysis as a curative is the part of Freud that doesnt work for me.
But the descriptions, the oedipal complex, I remember having the moment of sexual attraction to my mother in one of my earliest memories.
"Civilization and its Discontents" had a major impact on the young Dr. Tale who read that book in lieu of the Rousseau I was supposed to read for a class at UCLA. This was the story of mercifully brief academic career (undertaken entirely to grab some free money from the state and avoid bleu collar wok): go to the bookstore to buy required reading texts then stealing the books that really intrigued me.
Freud kicked Rousseau's ass all day every day as far as I was concerned.
Ditto Marx, Kafka, Celine, Henry Miller, Bukowski, Algren, (who published a novel serially in the LA free press for awhile).
This blogspot format sucks for long threads....Bukowski published serially, not Algren. But Algren was the man.
The man Hemingway could only pretend that he was.
D: I have no frigging idea what people expected of Obama. As if Ralph Nader or Hillary would do any better in taking on the system and turning a fascist American society around on a time.
well, y. I was amazed he got elected. I found I had commented in 2006(?) that he could win - I'd never heard of him before.
I could see he could win. expecting him to do much is a different basketball game? (I imagine)
He never gave the least suggestion he was against the basic tenets of capitalism. He never once said he wouldn't be a nationalist (He never said he'd only be one either?)
Better than Bush. I saw Prof Nim Chimpsky just the other day saying lesser evilism is better than more evilism. a point that needed making imo. yah - so I'm a reformist socialist when it comes to it! I'd rather the working class are free to choose to eat shit than demand they shoot people - damn right.
S: Why do American liberals always better always from somebody else while all the while giving themselves a free pass from doing anything because they hold the correct leftee philosophical positions the do _zero_ to advance in the world. Why did LBJ advance civil rights? because regular people were on the streets forcing the issue, thats why.
I have no idea. I always find Americans reference a load of stuff I have no idea about. All the reference points are different.......and yanks just assume everyone knows who PLJ is.
(my wider view on Americans --- generally they're mental products of a more visual age....(yah - u gotta read a book, but you know what i mean))
It's a shame everyone hates Americans. But still, the Americans don't mind.....it's our right to hate them, apparently.
That's pretty good - looking from here, on AirstripOne, of course.
Politics only changes society after society changes and demands the PTB catch on.
Well......we'd have hanging back if that was the case. No ta! Sometimes the class is ahead of the party - sometimes the party is ahead of the class!
todays pampered progressives who are unwilling to do anything besides whine and demand someone else do it for them.
Well, I don't do anything other than argue and agitate. Rather than "Life is art" my life is politics....to the extent it even pisses people off.......though I don't DO anything atm. I am hoping to get a job/volunteer thing as IT dude at a local charity. That would be the closest I have ever come to synthesising the elments of my life into some whole. And even then, only barely. I don't think it's solvable under capitalism - why would it be? I hate that fractured sense to my self and others. It's right throughout the stuff about alienation, isn't it? I'm just a monkey (ape, actually, but, who's quibbling?)
Yikes, a lot of new comments to wade through. Not that I'm complaining. Any misunderstandings between the few of us are nothing compared to the type of shite that is landing in the archives. Someone just posted about gang stalking. That's some form of nutjob conspiracy theory. Talk about not being able to escape one's era or millieu. That stuff is all over the internet. There's no way to avoid it.
This is what Marx meant when he termed the Utopian socialists of his time (roughly the equivalent of todaze socialist peacenikkk keyboard commandos) the most reactionary enemy of the working class.
Did he say that? yeah, well I can be harsh on Utopians too. I loathe mysticism.....in adults at least. At least socialist utopians are better than any other sort of utopians? Surely they must be, flawed though it clearly is?
I went with my brother to buy his (my?) first electric guitar - from a Welsh guy named Robert Owen......purposefully named after the famed Welsh utopian socialist, Rob Owen.
For me - the utopian socialists (like Christ) were ploughing the ethical furrow, as they were without a scientific one. We're not in the same position anymore, at all. Marx opens up so much..... Sure, less scientific and rigorous than imagined at the time, but everything was. Modern Darwinism is neo-Darwinian. Marx wouldn't mind - but he'd insist you were rigorous and didn't corrupt the materialism? I think I hold to the materialism more than anything, actually. I think that's the best of Marx (what I get out of it, at least)
Donkeytale, that boxing stuff sounds like good material for a new dairy product. I liked your take on Gimme Shelter. It's good to get the lowdown on things. Maybe Cass Sunstein should look up your number. You've got some decent cognitive infiltration skills.
I like talking sports for two reasons. One, it can just be like two drunks in a bar spewing out opinions. Like talking about the weather. But there's also a way sports can be discussed academically.
I guess I should get a few TLNL misconceptions out of the way. It was Donkeytale who mentioned interracial relationships being on the uprise. Also, the Lakers are the basketball team the Celtics are facing. Sorry for any confusion.
Ok, here's an example of the two different ways sports can be discussed. I'll rely on boxing since it was raised. Howard Cosell made his bread and butter announcing bouts. At the end of his career, he came out and advocated that boxing be banned. Or one could talk boxing without it having anything to do with social issues. There's this one boxer I will watch any chance I get. His name is Emanuel Augustus. He has a mediocre won-loss record, but that's only because he would never shy away from fighting anyone. Check this out. The dude not only boxes but reggae dances while performing the sweet science.
DT, you're right that Obama is pretty much what his record indicated. I had never looked into it until late in the game. We want to believe. We want to have hope. I also agree with your general take that talk is cheap.
Generation X was the last attempt at speaking schtick to power. The Bush Administration was an anchor punch. There are no easy solutions. I share your general cynicism towards positive social change via politics happening anytime soon. I also agree that long term things should improve.
Perhaps worse of all I share your idea that we are holding onto such hopes as a way to stave off utter despair as old men. No one wants to end up like the bitter pawnbroker played by Steiger. Love to humans is like sunshine and water to plants. It's a necessity. That was actually one of the main messages from Meet John Doe. Love thy neighbour. Have some compassion and empathy for one another. If that ever dries up completely, we're cooked.
D:These were Marxists, hard to the core and they were not into debating whatsoever. You are talking about academic Marxists, which is something altogether different. Theoretical Marxists. Masturbating Marxists.
My ideas are bred in almost total isolation - I have no idea about all these different Marxisms, and certainly no experience.
D: I grew up in working class LA, whites in the minority. No middle class in our town, dude. A social studies teacher introduced me to the party. He was hardcore, a WWII vet, heavy smoker of unfiltered camels, lived with a hispanic woman and her four kids in a run down neighborhood. I remember the crappy stucco LA style house had a swimming pool, so that was cool.
hehe/ a million miles away......
As for Freud, the psychonalysis as a curative is the part of Freud that doesnt work for me.
Why not? I think there's enormous potential for self-healing of the mind. It needn't be Freudian (I feel sure it isn't but I know nothing about it) but if psychoanalysis can lead to it, why not? [I like Jung much more than Freud, though I know little, so....)
I remember having the moment of sexual attraction to my mother in one of my earliest memories.
yeah? I remember trying to see what my mother looked like naked. I'm uncertain of my motivation - i don't discount Oedipal thing - how can anyone?)
avoid bleu collar wok
lol. aye, tis hell. :D
though moving stuff from here to there gives a certain satisfaction missing from more cerebral adventure.
lol - listen to me?
go to the bookstore to buy required reading texts then stealing the books that really intrigued me.
y. that's quite a conundrum. But hell! university in the city of angels? What a gig!
Freud kicked Rousseau's ass all day every day as far as I was concerned.
ah - doesn't make sense to me (my ignorance)
Ditto Marx, Kafka, Celine, Henry Miller, Bukowski, Algren, (who published a novel serially in the LA free press for awhile).
I like Kafka, though sometimes I'm not sure why. it's not even bloody finished! lol
Don't fucking burn what I am supposed to read? Get with the program! ;)
His mindless interminable quests are a perfect metaphor for bureaucracy though - and modern life in general, I feel.
I have secured a temporary living by exploiting my consciousness of this. Thank you Kafka - you gave me a way out - even though you said there wasn't any way out.
Yikes - more than any other characters and scenes from literature, my life resembles 1984 and Kafka! No wonder I don't like it!!!!
Wales is full of castles and Kafka did "the Castle" - it's called something else in some verisons, I think.
Wales' castles are central to our heritage - they're all around us, and now we exploit them to make some cash from tourism. But they're icons of Wales' subjugation. They're the remnants of defeat - the instruments and proof of it. Yet now those castles are what it means to "be Welsh". The physical destruction of Wales becomes an icon for ....Wales.
Anyway, they stand on their hills and man are they are spooky! For me, there's Marxism in them thar hills. In the castles.....
I can't see how I could understand all that stuff without having (materialist)marxism to organise and structure it by. How would you see it otherwise?
I like to ask why slavery ended. Nobody except marxists have any reasonable answer. why did slavery "end"? why? someone tell me? please?
TLNL, on pre-code versus code movies. Talkies started around 1930. From 1930-34, there was no censorship. Then something called the Hays Code was put into law. Picture yourself as a pre-teen at summer camp having fun and then all of a sudden the counselor says everyone out of the pool, it's time to do your chores, but worse.
The women pre-code were definitely down to earth sexy and comfortable in their skin. That all changed with the Hays Code. But the Hays Code went beyond enforcing anal retentiveness. They came up with goofy rules which forced movies to totally butcher plots and endings. If they weren't, the movies would never make it to the big screen. It is fascinating to look at some examples and see what was censored and why. I was thinking of writing something on that. I guess I did above concerning the movie called Baby Face. I should've mentioned about that Greta Garbo movie that it had a definite socialist slant or harsh rebuke of capitalism in Italy around the time of the Depression. Two thirds of the flick are gone. People think Farenheit whatever by Bradbury or Orwell's stuff was overblown. But not so. And this type of fascism was taking place in the West. We can hold Russia's and China's feet to the fire all we want, but if we can't clean up our own houses, there's no point. And the censorship continues to this day. Albeit it's a kinder and gentler form of censorship. It does still exist. Money rules what makes it to print.
I certainly don't know that much about Trotsky and was going on a hunch. Same with Lenin. Though I never liked that dude. Your take that the Soviet Revolution was really state capitalism makes sense.
I read a bit of Trotsky long time ago. Maybe stuff got lost in translation or it was too avademic. Marx is probably a tough read too for most people. That's why the Communist Manifesto is recommended for the unwashed masses. It was Marx'sw down to earth explanation.
Wilhelm Reich wrote one of those too. It's called Listen Little Man. For those who don't want to get bogged down in college words, that's the one for them.
I think if we can't explain things in readily accessible ways for masses of people, we're just adding to information as commodity.
S: Howard Cosell made his bread and butter announcing bouts. At the end of his career, he came out and advocated that boxing be banned.
haha. I don't know what point you're making, but.....that's funny.
The dude not only boxes but reggae dances while performing the sweet science.
Pugilism as sweet science? hmmmm/ hehe
The point made about Marx and Freud is this. It's not to do with any of their theories. We're just saying that one needs to understand the times they were living in to have a sense of why they wrote certain things. Freud was Mr. Cynical. He lived in between world wars. I guess he was also a cokehead. Marx was around during the Oliver Twist era. He was critiquing industrialised England and capitalism more than having anything to do with how his ideas were co-opted by totalitarians like Stalin and Mao.
Of course Marx felt socialism was inevitable. His blind spot was that he wasn't too bright in covering cultural influences. Hence, that's where Max Weber came in. Just look at how he combined religious and economic analysis to develop a more cogent picture of social reality. The Frankfurt School took over that schtick. They were very interdisciplinary and were focused on both cultural and material. Durkheim was too into the cultural. Marx too into the material. Durkheim, Marx, and Weber are considered the three classic sociologists. The Frankfurt School is where it's at for modern sociology. C. Wright Mills got the job done too in regards to American sociology. A lot of this goes back to looking at positivism versus the noble savage. Positivism has won out, and that's why most universities aren't worthy of their accreditation. Academics got circumscribed into the wheel of oppression. Academics in itself is a noble discipline. One needs to pick a side. Either go with Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Rene Descartes. I went wsith the former.
the Hays Code went beyond enforcing anal retentiveness.
Ah - I have asked about this. Anal retentiveness? part of some oral.anal developmental thing? Personalities get stuck at certain places? Or something? I think it's a far more American liberal notion than a British one. Not many people here have ever heard of anal retentive --- they'd think you meant constipation.
It is fascinating to look at some examples and see what was censored and why. I was thinking of writing something on that.
it's a good topic. it's easier to see outside our time, and so doing makes it easier to see ourselves. and just interesting anyway. I think you might be very good at that sort of writing.
(I couldn't possibly offer criticism, realistically, as I know nothing about any of it. But I am sure you could do it. ;) )
Your take that the Soviet Revolution was really state capitalism makes sense.
Not mine, just something that makes sense. It does make a bit of an issue though - all failings of supposedly socialist states can be attributed to infinite degrees of "state capitalism" and its corruption. Hmmm....I don't think so, but the argument is there.
The people who do the Marxism conferences in London are closely connected to that idea of USSR as state capitalist.....Tony Cliff?
He's very good. Was very good. Dead.
I get your question mark schtickie. I'm just ribbing ya. We yanks are like that. Google Dave Letterman. He's as American as apple pie in regards to being a josher. The Irish like Blarney. We Americans like to razzamatazz.
Wilhelm Reich
Didn't he get into Orgone and all that? A load of codswallop if you ask me.....mysticism....corruption of materialism.....get it away from me! ;)
S: I get your question mark schtickie. I'm just ribbing ya.
---------
Yeah, but?
(it annoys me too)?
I think it's natural to be good and show love and compassion. Now we can start discussing Hobbes versus Locke. I am a clean slate kind of dude. I don't think the world's a jungle. I go with Paulo Freire's thingie where he said the main difference between us and animals is that we can reflect. Or take buddhism, a topic donkeytale is into. If there is material and spiritual, and spiritual is the truth, then any attempts at hurting or exploiting others goes against the laws of nirvana.
Racism is pretty stupid. Civlisation started in Africa. While Whitey was acting like a barbarian, Africans were way above the curve. Racism is a social construct similar to gender. As one Prof told us, sex is biological, gender is man-made.
Yikes TLNL, every time I think I can get off this thread, you've more posts to respond to. But this is cool. It's a lot more fun than trying to explain to neonazis that the Holocaust really happened or that there really was a satanic panic.
Dr Soc: "most universities aren't worthy of their accreditation."
---------
haha
I've no idea if that is true or not, but likely nor do you.
There are more working class kids achieving an education than ever before, surely? China is pumping out millions of graduates? Like 1000 times more engineering graduates than UK, or some such.
Is it a threat or emancipation? Both. ?
And now Donkeytale's in the house. I agree blogger is limited.
S: I think if we can't explain things in readily accessible ways for masses of people, we're just adding to information as commodity.
I have a lot of faith in science and scientific method - academe and all that. So I don't think so. Just because I can't understand doesn't mean it's worthless. Doesn't mean it's worth anything much necessarily either....
Aside from that - there's an issue of communication. If I can't understand what Marxists are saying then who can? No great shakes that I should understand it or not, but.....if I can't, who can? It isn't coming through.....it isn't there to come through? If it doesn't make sense to peoples' life immediately in some way then it is likely never going to.
I always want to find some good Marxist perspectives on issues...........and yet where is it? WHERE? Is it all up to me? Oh god, is that it? Are you serious!
Where is everyone? Not speaking English, or what?
Actually, if you read the texts, Buddha was very materialist and not really spiritual at all in the ways he's been perverted by the new age goobledydookers who came after.
His take is that the material is not the essence and neither is the spiritual. For him, the question of whither God isnt even relevant, just another form of self oppression.
Material is not substance, it is illusion. What you think about a thing is not what the thing is. The thing will be changing all the time anyway until finally it dissolves into something else altogether, which we understand to be "nothing".
Buddha was an early scientist who rejected the illusion that science will somehow solve this condition we know as "humanity."
TLNL, Marx lashed out at the utopians within the Manifesto itself, if I recall correctly. This criticism of his fellow early socialists was central to his schtick. Surprised you missed it.
Kafka was something of a Buddha. He made such fundamental good sense with such ease and he understood himself well enough to know that none of his product really mattered to anybody anyway. The epitome of literary enlightenment.
I suspect that had he finished those stories we would have been disappointed, like watching a hack ending to a Hollywood movie. Ultimately, he would have been forgotten. Instead, his missing finales and his up in smoke reputation are more remembered than the words he wrote.
There is no ending, as there is no beginning. The middle is everything and it is also nothing, so saith the Swami donkeynanda, patting his ample belly in the shade of the jacaranda tree.
To me, Wales is a Childs Christmas and Tom Jones and that Prince of dude everyone always fawns over for being such a dork.
Tom Jones was a huge star with teh ladeez and he was as ugly as Richard Burton. But he had the little hip move working and the big black guyz voice booming.
Its Not Unusual.
Music more than visuals were the essential element for the baby boomers. But the visuals of course aided and abetted until finally, with MTV, the visuals conquered and destroyed the music.
Crappy three chord music at that, original Amerikkkan music reconstructed and regurgitated by British hipsters for the commercial televised consumption of a gullible mass audience of teenaged looosers who were scared out of any hope for a rational existence by the Cuban missile crisis and the JFK assassination.
I was drunk, again. ;0
[Not sure why you think I missed Marx's attack on utopians.]
Anyway......this was fun:
http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/letters/20100612_Letters_to_the_Editor.html
Rivero had a letter published at some online newspaper.....and he suggested his readers thank the paper etc.
So I did. ;) At one point I had him pretty good on several fronts - proved he was a liar several times. He's a holocaust denier - we made that plain.
The place is now crawling with his 'troops'....all claiming I am some slithering zio-beast or whatever. Nutters.
TLNL- this is what you said:
"Did he say that? yeah, well I can be harsh on Utopians too. I loathe mysticism.....in adults at least. At least socialist utopians are better than any other sort of utopians? Surely they must be, flawed though it clearly is?"
Maybe I misread you there. Utopians are fairly difficult to differentiate.....since all their blather starts from good intentions of one sort or other and leads inexorably to either:
a) nothing
or
b)catastrophic ruination.
Bush was even something of a utopian, wasn't he, believeing that liberal western democracy could be successfully transplanted into the arabic middle east? His fine work definitely resides in the B category, at least according to all the dead, maimed and wounded in the formerly fertile crescent.
So, I guess you could say that socialist utopianism is the best as long as it leads nowhere and has no impact on reality.
Hey! The infoboobtubes do have some value, then, dont they?
Keep utopia in the ether where it cant do any harm!
TLNL, I forgive you for confusing myself and donkeytale a bit. It happens.
As for shooting the breeze with dtale, you might want to catch up with him in his new entry. From how he has described it, he does a lot of his Bertold Blechting on a blackberry while driving around Texas. I picture him steering the car with his toes while squinting and whining about having to refresh these pages. In short, he's asking us to provide him with some cheese on a new page to go with his whine.
He's used to fancy, schmancy blog software.
I'll continue on the new one. I'm enjoying the name dropping and attempts to put high-powered ideas into vernacular.
D: TLNL- this is what you said:
"Did he say that?
I was just asking about that particular quote - not the whole anti-utopian thing, which is one of the things I so like about Marxism - the materialism - the (supposedly) scientific socialism.
I was getting at the thing that everyone except materialist socialists are utopian - even libertarians, or fascists.
It's only by chance/personal ethic that people are socialist Utopians as opposed to any other sort. Whereas scientific socialism.......if one agrees with the science (which should be objective).....one has to be a socialist. I think the scientific socialist people overplayed their hand, overplayed the Iron Laws etc - so they were disppointed - and there followed all this questioning. But I have never taken the "immutable laws of history" so seriously - not so rigidly, at least. It's still all true, just it ain't clockwork. Obviously, I'd have thought - but we're talking of Victorian times, deterministic times.....where animals were often considered automata, etc.
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S: TLNL, I forgive you for confusing myself and donkeytale a bit. It happens.
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When did I confuse you?
Rivero and his minions are still biting away at me on that comments page. It's a good show :D
There was one time you wrote a donkeytale quote as if it came from me. Don't worry about it.
I somehow got through that comments section. You thoroughly made Rivero look like shit. I'm thinking of a new entry based on your work there. It could take me a while. Wow, I didn't hear that Curtis Maynard went nuts and killed his ex-wife and himself or whatever the fock happened. Bizarre.
Of course Rivero never responds to your complete exposure of his disinfo racket. He's like that's all in the past. He speaks of the Holocaust as if it might as well have happened during the Middle Ages. He totally ignored your posts about his supporting Maynard or putting up lies concerning alleged "Joo" quotes.
I'm sure the moderators at that paper have their work cut out for themselves. Did you see Rivero called them gatekeepers? I see his minions are calling you GIYUS, code for Mossad. I'll cover that in my new entry. I sincerely believe there is a concerted effort to spin us as such. I think they are trying to circumscribe us into their craziness about Jewish cointelpro acting as anti-zionists. But I don't know when I'll get to it. To be honest, I have never felt more burnt out as a blogger. Great point about how the stuff on Rivero transcends whatever is going on in the Middle East. That's how all criticism of him is being deflected. As if you are trying to change the subject. But the subject must be Rivero and who he really is. He tries to make it seem it's his forum members posting that stuff and not him. He's a liar, and you were correct even heroic to confront him.
As for donkeytale, you might want to catch him on new threads. I've a feeling once these threads go to a certain point, he's done with them. You can't teach an old blogger new tricks. The software here is not what he's used to. He's used to being able to respond directly underneath posts not farther down like here where it tends to get a bit mushed.
Yes, the fascists are definitely utopian, ditto the Tea Partiers (basically same thing) who visualize a pristine Amerikkka without those pesky coloured folks trying to run the country or those vile Mexicans standing on the street corner trying to mow our lawns.
I'm not convinced however that socialism is scientific.
Science of the social variety must conform to human nature to be valid and I think a strongly persuasive argument can be made that capitalism more closely reflects human nature than socialism. As we have seen and you have reported on this thread, most all attempts at communism or socialism are in fact "state capitalism." Ditto, fascism.
The marketplace runs back quite far into human history, as do Haves and have nots, rich and poor, weak and strong and all that dualistic hooey that appears to be the human lot in life.
Now before Socrates accuses me of being a Republican again, let me hasten to add that I say this not out of love for capitalism, just a scientific observation based on my knowledge of human nature and history.
The utopian dreamer in me would like to see all the wealth shared equally according to need.
The realist sees that the state controlled production formula has failed time and again and has been junked by the overwhelming percentage of the worlds economies, most notably those whose controlled production economies failed to produce much except famine, death, severe repression and misery before the people finally said "enuff".
Today its very hard to see socialism overtaking capitalism, except as a guise for "state capitalism," meaning capital forms to create products and services perceived as valuable by people and govt regulates and (hopefullY) controls the abuses or in the dystopian sense, confirms and solidifies the abuses, until the people rise up and make the systemic changes back to an acceptable equilibrium.
Socialism scientific? y - I think they overcooked the claim. IT's scarcely even made anymore.
I do think we're much better positioned to accomplish it now, what with IT making information available for complete system of production/distribution, thereby removing the main power of price signals.
I have a lot of respect for capitalism - it has kept us going to here, and on balance, even accepting the problems, it's better we're here than not. Surely? :D
I first went to university in the 1980s -- on a Business course, finance, accountancy economics, all that shit. So I have been well indoctrinated in that sense, and I can make the capitalist argument as well or poorly as I can the socialist one, probably. I get irritable if people don't recognise the power of capitalism....its achievements, its opportunities. I do tend to loathe it though.
This has been an interesting discussion. Ta.
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On the Rivero thing and our argument over at the honolulu advertiser.....Rivero has made 3 posts at WRH about it. Amusingly, and irritatingly, Rivero claims he was using me for "target-practice"! haha - like I hadn't rebutted almost everything he said, and proven he was a liar respeatedly?
They closed the thread tho. Not before I had time to post a couple of real corkers laying out Rivero's dishonesty and hypocrisy -- like saying he wants Israelis treated the same ways they treat Palestinians......which totally negates his "principled" opposition to such treatment, and reveals himself to be just as vicious as those he criticises (more - he isn't trying to defend against existential threat to his nation and culture, is he?)
What a WANKER!
TLNL, when I get the chance I'll write up a diary devoted to your new battle with Rivero. I would hate for any good stuff to come out here and get lost in some run on diarrhea of the mouth thread. Sure, this thing is probably a nice read. We are the three stooges of historic trolls who have gone Popeye style after downing cans of spinach. But I don't like the fockers to think their internet schtickness is sticking one bit to the zeitgeist. I mean zeitgeist in a good sense in this case.
Donkeytale, we've been two of the most shat on bloggers in internet history. There is no doubt that frustration will lead to some dumbass pissing matches between us. But we've had too many good interactions for us to be anything other than cyber buddies.
Myself and TLNL have had the same kind of relationship, though it's been a long time since we knocked heads.
TLNL, I encourage you to try to catch up with donkeydude on newer threads. I like his idea of approaching blogger with the goal of avoiding loitering too long on these scroll city productions. 'Tis best to move along at some point to the top of the page. I've also taken a chug of his off-topic, koolaid methodolgy. The best threads can often end up having little to do with the main entry. Soon enough, in fact after tonight, basketball will be over. Then you guys can talk soccer or your artsy-fartsy intellectualism or whatever you like.
Donkeytale, the cool thing about TLNL is he's not averse to shooting the breeze on American politics, and a lot of his schtick is up your alley. It's like how myself and Bob hit a middle ground going over the satanic panic. We can both relate to the mainstream angle and with how the bad zeitgeist has manipulated it on the internet. I'm sure you and TLNL will eventually hit some kind of dimestore philosophy, thinking man's apex, if you haven't already. You guys are close, but I still think there's a ways to go before you two really hit a groove.
You think TLNL's bullwinkle avatar is funny. You missed out when he used to have some bloke with a moustache and lady's wig. It was funny, because the guy was obviously not gay [/not that there's anything wrong with that- Seinfeld schtick]. It was some kind of British humour, the kind where you end up laughing even when you don't really understand why it's funny. Like with those awkward question marks at the end of sentences?
Donkeytale is a me Tarzan kind of blogger, just lays it on the line and forces a response. TLNL is a question mark dude. He likes things to be left in the open for perusal. Myself, I'm in search of the elusive paystubs, a fighter against conspiracy theory with conspiracy theory. Donkeytale reminds me of Bela Lugosi in Glen or Glenda, "Pull the string!"
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