A little bit of history repeating
[W]hereas the reactionaries were beaten, and even discouraged, they were not at all reconciled to the liberal regime. Sullen and menacing, they lurked in the shadows of the liberal structure, watching and waiting for their opportunity to destroy it.
--J. Salwyn Schapiro
[A]ny American citizen concerned with the influence of his or her country in the world can see quite clearly that making enemies of a billion Muslims in order to satisfy every murderous whim of Israel is scarcely a rational investment in the future.
--Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone
I'm just going to repeat my excerpt from Afflicted Powers. As long as I keep a blog, I have to note the most obvious issue of the moment. I'll post some links under the cut, as well, as usual. I really am numbed by it all. It's better just to lose myself in McGowan's Laurel Canyon series. I don't know when he will post another installment, though.
As long as individuals can stand up outside of the tribe and claim Americanism as their own, the right is revealed as weak, because it is their own lies about themselves that they cannot stand. Proof in the form of our existence is enough to make them angry. This is why, as Digby wonders, they keep getting madder as they keep gaining power. They are not really after a conservative agenda in terms of policy; they are not even after power, really. They are after a complete and utter subjugation of the American consciousness to their tribal mentality. And they will not stop until they get it. Hence, the culture wars. And now, the real wars. And unfortunately, I don't think they are done.
--Matt Stoller--quoted by digby (1 2)
The massive corporations of our day arose, in the final analysis, in response to the needs of the productive forces--to those of large-scale industry, in particular. The older forms of small-scale business, which The Corporation holds up nostalgically as its ideal, were entirely inadequate for the new social requirements. Immense concentrations of capital were necessary to undertake the construction of railways, electrification, the creation of steel plants, the establishment of mass production auto factories, and the development of other industries. Modern life, with all its contradictions, would not be possible without this process.
--Joanne Laurier and David Walsh
The superhero ... will not be ambushed by any scandalous challenges to his authority. Call them chance, coincidence, the morals and psychology of certain characters, the absence of certain pitfalls that would entangle him in everday life--call them destiny and fate if you will; but make no mistake, the hero has more allies than Tonto and Silver. He only rushes to the rescue in a universe that promises to regulate itself with his aid, which shows a resolute capacity for internal health and soundness, which does not ask sticky or thorny questions. He is the last of many mechanisms, the most visible and awesome one, to act on a typical, identifiable crisis which invariably touches the reader's--and society's--nerves. That crisis not only turns out to be decidedly transitory but lacks real people, people who work and produce and struggle, people who could face those issues in a positive way. The superhero's triumph is based on the omission of the working class, the elimination of a community or collective which could transform the crisis and give it a meaning or new direction.
--Ariel Dorfman
The collapse of financial markets is now being matched by the decline of the real economy. Next year total economic output in the advanced capitalist economies will fall--the first such contraction in the post-war period. According to Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, the contraction in demand "could exceed anything seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s."
--Nick Beams
Even within the narrower confines of Shanley's film, does it matter whether Flynn is sexually abusing Donald Miller? Yes, it matters a great deal. Either a crime has been committed or it hasn't. Either Aloysius is a meddling busybody with a reactionary moral and political agenda, or she's possessed of remarkable instincts and is saving other children from psychological damage. Shanley's argument is simply banal and evasive, and, unfortunately, says a great deal about the general state of mind of the economically comfortable, vaguely liberal, essentially self-satisfied, upper echelons of the American professional classes.
--David Walsh
But just think of it: we can now look forward to four additional years of ignorance, stupidity, cruelty, self-abasement and self-humiliation, with the progressives and liberals filling the void that would otherwise have been left by conservative and "libertarian" writers. Maybe eight! Or even more!! Is this what people mean by "continuity" in government? Cool, baby.
--Arthur Silber
I am fully confident in predicting this: over the next four years, the world will see much more of this particular kind of shit, abetted, encouraged and often directed by The Wondrous One.
--Arthur Silber
Yet it is here, on "entitlements," that Obama wants to make a "tough stand" on government spending. It will be a "central part" of his entire economic program. Getting "entitlements" under control will be one of the first major campaigns of his administration, he says, promising plans in February, just days after he moves into the White House.
At the same time, he promises to expand--to expand--the multitrillion-dollar war machine that has literally bled the nation dry. He wants to expand a military-industrial-security complex that already devours more money and resources than every other military force on earth combined. He wants more troops, more weapons, an ever-increasing "global strike capability," an escalation of the endless, pointless "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan (for starters). He has never said a single word about "curbing government spending" on this vast conglomerate of death and destruction. He has not said a single word about rolling back even a few of American military outposts that in their several hundreds now cover the entire globe. At every point, it seems, government spending on the war machine--including the tens of billions of dollars spent in secret each year on the various tentacles of the "national security" apparatus--will be increased under the Obama administration.
--Chris Floyd
--J. Salwyn Schapiro
[A]ny American citizen concerned with the influence of his or her country in the world can see quite clearly that making enemies of a billion Muslims in order to satisfy every murderous whim of Israel is scarcely a rational investment in the future.
--Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone
I'm just going to repeat my excerpt from Afflicted Powers. As long as I keep a blog, I have to note the most obvious issue of the moment. I'll post some links under the cut, as well, as usual. I really am numbed by it all. It's better just to lose myself in McGowan's Laurel Canyon series. I don't know when he will post another installment, though.
As long as individuals can stand up outside of the tribe and claim Americanism as their own, the right is revealed as weak, because it is their own lies about themselves that they cannot stand. Proof in the form of our existence is enough to make them angry. This is why, as Digby wonders, they keep getting madder as they keep gaining power. They are not really after a conservative agenda in terms of policy; they are not even after power, really. They are after a complete and utter subjugation of the American consciousness to their tribal mentality. And they will not stop until they get it. Hence, the culture wars. And now, the real wars. And unfortunately, I don't think they are done.
--Matt Stoller--quoted by digby (1 2)
The massive corporations of our day arose, in the final analysis, in response to the needs of the productive forces--to those of large-scale industry, in particular. The older forms of small-scale business, which The Corporation holds up nostalgically as its ideal, were entirely inadequate for the new social requirements. Immense concentrations of capital were necessary to undertake the construction of railways, electrification, the creation of steel plants, the establishment of mass production auto factories, and the development of other industries. Modern life, with all its contradictions, would not be possible without this process.
--Joanne Laurier and David Walsh
The superhero ... will not be ambushed by any scandalous challenges to his authority. Call them chance, coincidence, the morals and psychology of certain characters, the absence of certain pitfalls that would entangle him in everday life--call them destiny and fate if you will; but make no mistake, the hero has more allies than Tonto and Silver. He only rushes to the rescue in a universe that promises to regulate itself with his aid, which shows a resolute capacity for internal health and soundness, which does not ask sticky or thorny questions. He is the last of many mechanisms, the most visible and awesome one, to act on a typical, identifiable crisis which invariably touches the reader's--and society's--nerves. That crisis not only turns out to be decidedly transitory but lacks real people, people who work and produce and struggle, people who could face those issues in a positive way. The superhero's triumph is based on the omission of the working class, the elimination of a community or collective which could transform the crisis and give it a meaning or new direction.
--Ariel Dorfman
The collapse of financial markets is now being matched by the decline of the real economy. Next year total economic output in the advanced capitalist economies will fall--the first such contraction in the post-war period. According to Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, the contraction in demand "could exceed anything seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s."
--Nick Beams
Even within the narrower confines of Shanley's film, does it matter whether Flynn is sexually abusing Donald Miller? Yes, it matters a great deal. Either a crime has been committed or it hasn't. Either Aloysius is a meddling busybody with a reactionary moral and political agenda, or she's possessed of remarkable instincts and is saving other children from psychological damage. Shanley's argument is simply banal and evasive, and, unfortunately, says a great deal about the general state of mind of the economically comfortable, vaguely liberal, essentially self-satisfied, upper echelons of the American professional classes.
--David Walsh
But just think of it: we can now look forward to four additional years of ignorance, stupidity, cruelty, self-abasement and self-humiliation, with the progressives and liberals filling the void that would otherwise have been left by conservative and "libertarian" writers. Maybe eight! Or even more!! Is this what people mean by "continuity" in government? Cool, baby.
--Arthur Silber
I am fully confident in predicting this: over the next four years, the world will see much more of this particular kind of shit, abetted, encouraged and often directed by The Wondrous One.
--Arthur Silber
Yet it is here, on "entitlements," that Obama wants to make a "tough stand" on government spending. It will be a "central part" of his entire economic program. Getting "entitlements" under control will be one of the first major campaigns of his administration, he says, promising plans in February, just days after he moves into the White House.
At the same time, he promises to expand--to expand--the multitrillion-dollar war machine that has literally bled the nation dry. He wants to expand a military-industrial-security complex that already devours more money and resources than every other military force on earth combined. He wants more troops, more weapons, an ever-increasing "global strike capability," an escalation of the endless, pointless "War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan (for starters). He has never said a single word about "curbing government spending" on this vast conglomerate of death and destruction. He has not said a single word about rolling back even a few of American military outposts that in their several hundreds now cover the entire globe. At every point, it seems, government spending on the war machine--including the tens of billions of dollars spent in secret each year on the various tentacles of the "national security" apparatus--will be increased under the Obama administration.
--Chris Floyd