Leftinesses Unite!!!
Someone’s talking some sense out there.
Gotta defend ourselves immediately!!!
The poster massappeal and I have been having a little colloquy on the thread Why Romney is Likely To Win Nomination regarding Ron Paul. Massappeal is a typical kneejerk leftiness clone in this regard, accusing Paul of being consciously allied with right-wing “racists,” “nativists” and the like.
With all due respect to you, and to the power of the Corporate PermaGov, and its paid media, how is Ron Paul, longtime cozy friend of racists and nativists, in any way someone for progressives to celebrate?
—snip—
Ron Paul and his followers sound familiar to these ears. Not unlike the last time the US had this level of income inequality (1920s, and there was a vibrant neither-left-nor-right popular movement that united against (in their words) Koons, Kikes and Katholics.
And so on.
I answered massappeal at some length, but the blather just kept on spewing. So now I am going to try to make my point on a slightly larger stage.
Read on if you have even a shred of an open mind still available to you after consuming the various leftiness journals, blogs and media outlets that are the analog of Fox News for dedicated Dems and their like.
As Shakespeare wrote:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Bet on it.
Y’know what I hear here, massappeal?
I hear the pot calling the kettle black.
You are in a sense doing the same thing that you accuse Ron Paul of doing. You are using “code words” to paint him as a white supremacist just as you are accusing him of using the same code word method to identify himself to the haters as “one of them.”
You write:
I’ll just observe that the language the Pauls use in talking about the 1964 Civil Rights Act is strikingly similar to language used by many segregationists at the time, and since.
For me, that sets off a warning signal—not unlike the one that Ronald Reagan set off when he opened his general election campaign in Philadelphia, MS with a speech endorsing “states’ rights”.
—snip—
The fact that the political faction of which he’s a prominent leader has a long and ongoing history of being a haven for many followers with racial, ethnic and religious prejudices that have as their target me and many of those I know, like, and love—that matters to me.
Oh.
He believes that the federal government has gotten much too intrusive into the lives of its citizens. Not “just” the Civil Rights Act…in fact, his son states quite emphatically:
Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.
Ron Paul is saying that the solution to this problem of intrusive government is to take away a great deal of the federal government’s power and give it back to the states, the basic idea being that localized government is more easily controlled by its citizens. In a representative democracy those citizens are supposed to be the ones who ultimately decide what it can and cannot do.
You then say that many white supremacist types have also used the words “State’s Rights.” This is true. Then you say that because Ron Paul uses those words, you suspect that he is allied with those forces that “have as their target me and many of those I know, like, and love.”
Apples are round.
Oranges are round.
Therefore apples are oranges?
Please.
Your thinking is extremely cloudy here.
I believe that the federal government has accrued way too much power over the past 30 years or so. I further think that the rapidly burgeoning surveillance state in which we and much of the rest of the world now live is the greatest threat to the concept and effective practice of democracy to have appeared on the face of the earth since the European fascist movements of the ’30s. I really do. I also think that a possibly workable halfway measure to stop that surveillance state from becoming even more intrusive is to take power away from the federal government…especially from its intelligence services…and return it to more localized control.
I say “halfway measure” above because I really think that the entire United States of America should be broken up into its 5 or 6 component parts as sovereign states that govern themselves, but I cannot imagine that happening any time soon. The massive power of the USA has been a regressive force in the world, a vicious killing machine responsible for the death and/or ruined lives of literally millions of people for well over 60 years. Time to stop that shit, massappeal. Time to stop it. For our own sakes as well as that of our millions of victims. Why for our sake? Because it just isn’t working, that’s why.
It just is not working anymore. If it ever did.
In a recent post here I wrote about my upbringing in the Long island, NY area in the early ’50s through the early ’60s. Here is what I said:
I lived in Freeport (on Ray St. right next to the Baldwin border) from 1st grade through 3rd grade. Early ’50s. For me at that time it was a paradise of sorts. There were docks and boat basins at the western end of Ray St. and I went snapper fishing and/or crabbing there almost every summer day. Kids were everywhere and Casino Pool (a salt water swimming pool near the waterfront) was my other hang. Freeport was almost Tom Sawyeresque then. Little adventures that seemed so big. Lots of friends, a functioning extended family…my mother’s parents lived with us and my father’s parents were a 15 minute drive away. Bicycles, little girls to pursue (No one had actually been kind enough to explain sex to me, but it was everywhere.), Little League baseball, a really good library, what I remember as a very happy school experience…even the year that I had to deal with crabby old Mrs. Duntley.
And later on I wrote:
Merrick was…different. It was a couple of years later in my life…we had moved to Pittsburgh (a disastrous decision on so many levels) and Merrick (North Merrick, to be precise…not as affluent as the waterfront areas, to say the least.) seemed as if the same kinds of people who lived in Freeport were trying to be middle class and not quite making it because they had to try so hard. And it was violent, Supe. I do not remember a single violent incident amongst the kids when I was in Freeport…well, there was a fat bully who lived on our block but the older kids and the mothers pretty effectively nullified him right out of the box…but from 6th grade on out in North Merrick it was “Danger on the playground!!!” and “Danger walking home from school!!!” almost every day. Kids sharpened the buckles of their garrison belts and fought with them, carried razor blades in their pomaded pompadours…it was really funky. Look at Joey Buttafuoco’s face. Like dat. Italian, Irish and working class Protestant versions thereof.
Like dat.
—snip—
A strange little town.
Upwardly mobile and at the same time downwardly moral
This got me to thinking…maybe I lived through a sea change in the American psyche during that period and that was the real reason that Merrick…about a mile due east from Freeport…seemed to be so different. I wonder if any child in the US…constantly surrounded by the immense forced socialization machine that we laughingly call “the media” since then…has had an extended period of ease and innocence in which to safely grow.
i wonder. I really do.
Ron Paul apparently thinks the same thing, and he is trying to stop that massive killing/socialization machine using electoral means to do so. He’s a moderate in this sense. Believe it. If he fails to do so…and I am beginning to think that his efforts are doomed, not by any fault of the ideas behind them but rather because of the absolutely effective mind-control power of the mass hypnomedia (another factor in the surveillance state’s successful rise)…if he fails in this attempt, it is going to take much more radical means to stop this federal/multinational creature from gobbling up the lives of every human being on the planet.
i do not want to see that radical means come to pass, but neither do I wish to live on a lockstep planet. Clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp, mentally goose-stepping off into that Brave New World that Aldous Huxley so presciently envisioned 80 years ago and Shakespeare saw through another age’s glass 320 years earlier.
MIRANDA: O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!PROSPERO: ‘Tis new to thee.
Prospero knew.
Clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp.
Not me, baby.
Not me.
Bet on it.
I’ll go down dancing first.
Bet on that as well.
Wake the fuck up.
You been had.
Later…
AG
