> i like eugene deb's axiom, i'd rather vote for what i want and not
> get it, than vote for what i don't want and get it.
Debs was certainly a great figure, and worthy of praise. This axiom makes sense in some situations and not in others; it's not on the level of the Euclidean axioms (which themselves are only valid for Euclidean geometry :-) ).
> i'd submit the economy is pretty much on the ropes as it is unless
> one's very wealthy. the deficit is actually taxing today's children,
> as they are the ones who'll be paying and paying. privatizing social
> security and destroying medicare will, simply put, kill people. no
> one will have the money in a health savings account to pay for a
> catastrophic or chronic illness except the very rich. a misjudgment
> or two in a retirement savings account means an early death.
This is all very clear to the likes of us -- the challenge is to make it clear to more people, so we can have an actual effect on the course of events.
> i think bankrupting govt, destroying entitlement programs, stacking
> the supreme court, and etc, is what he wants to do. and that's what
> he will do.
Well, I'm not so sure that bankrupting the government is what he wants to do, but if it is, I think even Wall Street is going to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Hey, buddy, not so fast!" Capitalism actually does not want a bankrupt government.
Destroying entitlement programs -- reducing them as far as possible might well be a capitalist objective, but at some point they run into the problem that a whole bunch of starving people running around the country is not very cool. The fantasy of the Bush people seems to be that pushing their economic program to the utmost will stimulate so much investment and economic growth that there won't be any poverty any more. Whether they seriously believe this nonsense or not I'm not sure, but I bet they are more than half-serious about it.
Stacking the SC they surely are serious about. This is a very important area in which we will see whether the surviving Demos in Congress really do mean to function as a true opposition party or not. If they won't filibuster or otherwise derail Shrub's nominees, it will really be time to toss them into the dumpster.
> people's brains function pretty much the same everywhere, jon. it's
> not their functionality that's the problem. it's what's in them
> that's the problem. and their fears.
Well, that's what I meant. Their fears, by and large, are not ours.
>> and we sure wish they didn't have those convictions. But a very large
>> part of their furor and aggressiveness which they have just finished
>> demonstrating comes from their belief that the Left has only contempt
>> for them and sees them only as objects of ridicule.
>
> how much contact with the left do they have? what i'm driving at is
> the question do they really see the left in this way or is this
> something the corp mass media, the right wing echo machine, or ??? has
> put in their heads?
Doesn't matter. It's their *belief* that I'm concerned with. It's like the good old myth of the hippies spitting on the returning Vietnam War troops. It might have happened once or twice, or not at all. But it became fixed firmly in a heck of a lot of people's heads. That's the problem with myths -- they're impervious to empirical arguments, and therefore very hard to combat. It doesn't matter whether mass media, the right wing echo machine, or the Little Man Who Wasn't There put this image of the Left into their minds; the question is how to get it out.
> i'm also curious about what you mean by the "left."
I use it in a very broad sense -- everyone who has impulses which might be considered "progressive." Defining political terminology is notoriously difficult, and we could have a long thread on the subject (in fact, it's often been done before), but I have a very broad definition, including moderate, militant, and way far-out radical.
> also, i don't believe there is much of a "left" in the USA: we have
> varying degrees of right of center, and a tiny group of people who'd
> like to bring people toward the center and left of center, if that's
> possible.
I guess the "tiny group" you mention would be a large part of what I call the "left." But I don't think it's such a tiny group. It probably includes the 48% who voted for Kerry, for instance. If you rule them out of the Left, you're dismissing a lot of people who the Left, however you understand the meaning of that term, had better have on its side in the coming period.
> i think the USA is the titanic. it hit the iceberg three days ago.
> we'll see if anyone makes it to the life boats. i understand those
> who like cold weather are eyeing canada.
And those who don't want to freeze their butts off are packing to go to New Zealand. I hear that that's the destination of the truly hip. But I don't see anything as apocalyptic as the US "sinking" happening. (I may be wrong, especially if China, etc., stop lending us money.) More like a process in which things get harder and harder for the working class (more bankruptcies, etc. (BYW, I wonder what's going to happen with the pending legislation for tightening up the rules on consumer bankruptcy? If that gets passed, it will really piss off a lot of the working class Republican constituency.) And eventually some really impressive recessions, which might start to prompt some economic commentators to experiment with reviving the "D"-word.
> by the way, you wouldn't know how i could get in touch with kate
> winslet would you? i think she's smashing.
Oh, she and I are tight as two sardines in a can, but I promised not to give her number to anyone. But if you send me your best cheese-cake photo, I'll forward it to her, and we'll see what happens. :-)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche