Rhetoric of Hate

5 Comments

1. 

   Don Durito on February 27, 2018 at 10:09 am

   Actually, the period post in which you chose was one in which there was anything but civility. If you actually go back and check the context that led to Sallycat writing what she wrote, you’d realize that it was anything but. That was not a golden age. I remember that period quite well. To this day I still second-guess whom I chose to support.

   If the point of this combo meta/all-hat-no-cattle diary is to guilt trip those of us who are fed up with AG’s antics into giving him another chance, forget it. He had his chance for 10 years or more. That ship has sailed.

   Remember another Frogpond directive: “Don’t be a prick.” Who said that, I wonder? Having a different perspective does not by definition make one a prick. If someone is perceived of that way, a good question to ask is what is different about that individual’s observable behavior? Could they make the same point without being so damned inflammatory? Are we looking at a consistent pattern of misbehavior? Are we looking at a consistent pattern of an individual ignoring what were supposed to be norms here? At some point, folks will say “ya basta” (enough is enough). I think we’ve passed that point as well in this case.

   But thanks for that lovely trip down memory lane, and a reminder of another prolonged flamefest that probably could have and should have been nipped in the bud before it went out of control.

2. 

   JoelDanWalls on February 27, 2018 at 8:11 pm

   You could contribute to the community feel by commenting in a succinct fashion on other people’s posts instead of just writing lengthy, stand-alone, stream-of-consciousness posts full of denunciations.

3. 

   jolzkie27 on February 27, 2018 at 9:30 pm

   Even the best fall down sometime.

   small business payroll software

   • 

     Don Durito on February 27, 2018 at 9:32 pm

     Okay – we actually have a spammer. We all know what to do.

4. 

   Marie3 on February 27, 2018 at 11:51 pm

   Why did you dredge up and endorse a twelve year old, simpering (“we all just need to get along”) meta-diary?  (Meta-diaries are 1) boring and 2) useless since they first appeared at dKos in 2004.)

   Neither SallyCat’s nor your diary cited the conflict that that gave rise to her diary.  Not until halfway through the comments thread to SallyCat’s diary did a background clue emerge.  (Before then, someone claimed to be shedding real tears because Lt. Watabe was being court-martialed.  While I respect Watabe’s decision and sacrifice, the Bush administration didn’t strip and hold him in solitary confinement before his trial.  And he later got off.  Then there was plenty of angst about how bad everything was — which seemed curious to me because as of July 2006 it was clear that there would be large GOP losses in the mid-terms; so, I was rather upbeat that point in time.)

   The clues came from “catnip” and “supersoling,” but thankfully, the target “DuctapeFatwa” showed up and I was able to quickly find the “offending” diary and thread.  Diary didn’t grab me — perhaps due to stylistically not being my cup of tea — but “Arcturus’s” comments did. (Was she/he run off?  What a shame.)

   Attacking the Messenger

   That steaming, pungent pile of crap lieing [sic] on the carpet of our collective living room is our own product. Yes, it’s conisdered impolite by some to point it out, but it bears repeating.

   What I read here is that Americans are unable to disabuse ourselves of that exceptionalism manifest in Manifest Destiny that has directed our policies & infected our understanding of ourselves. That those of us who are opposed to this deeply embedded conciousness are largely impotent.Perhaps that’s just my POV super-imposed in DTF’s words, but I doubt I’m far off.

   To celebrate the fourth last night, we watched Why We Fight, where Chalmers Johnson points out how resistant Americans are to seeing ourselves as the AGGRESSORS on the world stage that historically we have been, not as the benevlolent force we see ourselves. In what was one of the more terrifying remarks in the documentary, Richard Perle says (& I find it hard to argue with) that Bush has set the foreign policy agenda for years to come & it will be the blueprint for future actions by administrations of either party.

   Those of us who see electing Democrats in th ’06 & ’08 as merely the first step in transforming America, not an achievemnet itself, must embrace and learn to HEAR the sort of criticism DTF (in hyperbolic, satiric fashion) delivers here.

   It’s in that light that self-examination as a nation is crucial today. Your reaction to DTF here is little different than Bush’s reaction to the European polls showing their belief that the US is more of a danger to world peace than Iran — all Bush could manage in response was to proclaim it absurd. We need to be able to hear the validity of ‘Other’ voices.

   Don’t attack the messenger. You’re treading dangerously close here to that old chestnut of xenophobes:

   Love it or Leave it.

   We can do better than that.

   “. . . the more educated you are, the more indoctrinated you are. After all, propaganda is largely directed towards the privileged.” -Noam Chomsky

   Recall — this was July 2006 — and it’s worth highlighting and repeating one of his/her points:

   Those of us who see electing Democrats in th ’06 & ’08 as merely the first step in transforming America, not an achievemnet itself, must embrace and learn to HEAR the sort of criticism DTF (in hyperbolic, satiric fashion) delivers here.

   It’s one thing (and to be expected) for the institutional Democratic Party to stop with the achievement, but stupid, naive, etc. for “the people,” including bloggers, to do so.  What did most “liberals” do?  Stopped and declared the Obama was the bestest POTUS evah and only a Republican would say otherwise.  And to this day, they can’t see, much less acknowledge, that lefties were correct in their critiques and forewarnings that complacency and more of the same would erase that big “achievement.”  And as it turned out even faster and decisively than I could have imagined.  Donald -fucking- Trump is POTUS!

   To use another example

   I don’t think American post-war imperialism was wholly unjustified, largely based on religious reasoning, or racist in nature. [that sounds like a neo-con to me, but Arcturus dealt with the content]

   The Cold War can’t explain Haiti (nor much else in this hemisphere).

   Jefferson, while happy the Haitians weakened Napolean for him, was unable to contemplate a newly freed, self-determined nation of blacks, a policy which through many twists & turns has an identifiable continuity right down to today.

   leads to an inevitably nails-on-chalkboard anti-Americanism

   There you go again!  🙂

   His/her response to DFH bashing (by our esteemed host; so, nothing has really changed much here, except Arcturus and catnip aren’t around anymore):  

   “anti-american leftist”

   What utter bullshit labeling!

   That is the most offensive, condescending dismisal, Booman. I’m not anti-American. I’m a ‘strident’ believer in an American Outrider tradition that would love to see America’s finest dreams realized. That entails a ‘strident’ recognition of the lies & distrotions that we have been fed about our foreign policy. That has the ability to trace an American consciouness from the original colonists, through the 19th C expansion, & 20th C tragedies. I’m just as capable of critiquing Japanese, German, Russian & Chinese immperialism, but I CARE most about America because I’m intimately implicated — it’s all I have to call mine — & I live here.

   My background isn’t politics, but the language arts, and I find that critique & dream in the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy and the writings of Tom Paine. Being married to a habeas attorney had given me an intimate appreciation of the unique strength of our Constitution. Dreams & critques found in the works of Melville & Whitman, Hawthorne & Poe, Thoreau & Muir. Found in the poetry of Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, George Oppen, Gary Snyder, Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Amiel Alcalay & many many others.

   It’s a dream found in countless activists in this country: Emma Goldman, the NW wobblies, MLK & Malcolm X, Ed Abbey & thousands of others I’m now neglecting.

   To radically critique American foreign policy isn’t to say that there aren’t “good things” about America; that’s a phoney argument that only deflects. How often is Chomsky dismissed as “anti-American?”

   While you may reject it, there is credible scholarship that finds a continuity from the Manifest Destiny of the 19th C to today’s form of economic/military imperialism. As I suggested before, the Spanish-American war & its offspring can be seen as the crucial hinge. As Chalmers Johnson expressed it in the doc last night, the increase in military spending after the Soviet colllapse in 1991 put the lie, for him, to much that was hidden behind Cold War rationales.

   A similar sense of entitlement through ‘super’-power status led both the US & Soviets to treat the Middle East as its priavte domain, ignoring the valid desires of its peoples & continuing the injustices brought on by the West’s divvying it up post WW I. I find little noble in either parties’ actions.

   One of the more treacherous linkages in the American consciousness, soldified in the rhetoric of the Cold War, is the equation of democracy & capitalism. Despite the example of nazi Germany staring us in the face, we all too easily neglect to see that much of what is happening in this country today is the result of an inherent tension between the two. I’m not suggesting that totalitarianism is a natural result of capitalism — any more than it is of a socialist model — but that we ignore that tension at our peril.

   Ultimately, I’d like to think that I stand with humanity against injustice of all sorts, from all quarters.

   Anti-American my ass!~

   Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy is essential reading for anyone that wants to engage in US foreign policy conversations.

   One more — because seeing clearly often sounds so prescient later:

   yes

   I give up. You win. whatever you want.

   you’re a dishonest debater.

   I do object to my opinion being first twisted & then described as kgb derived propaganda & you’re being disingenuous that label doesn’t place it outside the parametters of reasonable discourse in today’s USA — it frankly smacks of McCarthyism

   I concede nothing Booman — we disagree

   & I still maintain that you can never adequately explain two centuries of US domination over Haiti in Cold War terms — nor much else in this hemisphere post WW II

   As I said, nothing has changed here.

   (There’s may be more goodies in that thread, but I don’t want to wade through another 250 comments to find more nuggets.)