How Democracies Die

Submitted by Meteor Man on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 12:38pm

This will be one to keep an eye on, a week long series that features an interview with the authors of How Democracies Die [book review here]

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/08/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levi...

The intro to the interview:

During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed whether you need a well-thought-out plan to be a strongman, what America still has going for it, and why the Mueller investigation might be a stress test that American democracy cannot pass.

A good question:

Isaac Chotiner: Was there some aspect of Trump’s campaign, or the early months of his presidency, that made you want to write this book?

Daniel Ziblatt: That’s really the period in which we decided to write the book, during the campaign. We kind of had this eerie feeling we had seen this movie before, with (1.) accusations that Hillary is treasonous, or (2.) aggressive violence, or (3.) later on in the campaign this ambiguity of whether or not he’d accept the results of the election, and this was stuff we had seen before in the political systems that we studied. We could draw on our knowledge of other countries and other places and times to try to understand what was happening.

[numbers added for clarity]

Another good question:

What things do you guys have your eyes on the most, going forward? Is it the 2018 elections? The 2020 elections? The resilience of certain institutions?

Ziblatt: I think the 2018 elections are crucial and the Democrats need to do well in order to conserve some kind of check. I think the second point is what lessons the Republicans draw from the electoral success of the Democrats. Do the Republicans then realize they need to separate themselves finally with Trump? Because even if Democrats sweep the House and the Senate, any need to kind of impeach Trump unilaterally without Republican support is going to be damaging for American democracy in the long run. So in some ways I think it is really critical to continue to focus on the Republicans and to hope and expect that the Republicans at some point, once they see the electoral cost of continuing to align themselves so closely with Trump, will then break with him.

Livitsky's reponse:

Levitsky: So we are keeping an eye obviously on Trump, but we are also keeping an eye on the underlying polarization that is beginning to rip our institutions apart. And I think, getting back to what Daniel said, the future of the Republican Party is critical. The Republicans have to eventually become a party that represents more than small-town white Christians. It has to be a party that can represent a more diverse sector of American society. And until that’s the case, we are likely to have our parties be polarized along racial and religious lines, and that is trouble.

The final word for today's segment:

Ziblatt: I would just add to that, one of the strongest findings in social science is the level of GDP per capita and its correlations with democratic stability. Given the U.S.’s national wealth, the probability of democracy collapsing [is] very, very low. But that again, that’s based on the record of the past 50 years so who knows? Using the past as record, though, we should feel some sense of security.

Using the past as record, we wouldn’t have elected an authoritarian television star.

Levitsky: Right, there is a sense among many different observers, many different scholars, that we are skating onto some new territory.

The only problem I have so far is that the authors and the interviewer have failed to point out the joint liability and accountability the Democratic Party and the MSM have for enabling Trump. I hope they focus on that aspect of the pending collapse of the American Empire later this week. More at the link:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/the-state-of-american-democr...

Tags:

#HowDemocracyDies

Vote

Comments

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 3:18pm

Do you do any due diligence at all?

The article's slant (not one word about Hillary cheating Bernie out of the nomination, while painting Putin and Chavez as mere thugs) should have set off all kinds of alarm bells for you. It did for me. So I did five minutes of Googling and here is what I found about Steven Levitsky:

1) He is a member of the Weatherhead Center (founder = Henry Kissinger) [REF 3]

2) He is a member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (a.k.a. Center for Controlling Latin America with Coups and Crooked Bankers) [REF 1]

3) He is a member of the National Endowment for Democracy's "International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council.[REF 2] (background on NED = [REF 4]

Both authors are Harvard elitists with a long history of whitewashing America's looting and murder in Latin America and non-stop condemnation of Putin (while ignoring our Shock Doctrine looting of Russia and ignoring Yeltsin). Their book seems to be a one-sided attack on Trump, pretending that Hillary's actual crimes are nothing more than Trumpian lies.

Too bad the Guardian caved to TPTB right after they published the Snowden papers.

Call me back when you get a clue.

REF 1

At Harvard, Levitsky also serves on the Executive Committees of both the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs[3] and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.[4] He has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.[5]

- Wikipedia, Steven Levitsky

REF 2

International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member
Steven Levitsky, Harvard University

https://www.ned.org/experts/steven-levitsky/

REF 3

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is a research center for international affairs and the largest international research center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[1]

The center was founded as the Center for International Affairs in 1958 and assumed its current name in 1998 following an endowment by Albert and Celia Weatherhead and the Weatherhead Foundation. The aim of the Center is to confront the worlds problems as diagnosed by its founders Robert R. Bowie and Henry Kissinger in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (1958):

Current and Former Scholars
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Samuel P. Huntington
• Henry Kissinger
• Robert D. Putnam
• Dani Rodrik
• Kenneth Rogoff

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

REF 4

NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.”

The secret hand behind NED’s creation was CIA Director William J. Casey who worked with senior CIA covert operation specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to establish NED in 1983. Casey from the CIA and Raymond from his assignment inside President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council focused on creating a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 3:44pm

Oh, the interviewer is Issac Chotiner

@arendt @arendt

Issac Chotiner is a Senior Editor at The New Republic. Yet another dubious operation. Again, due diligence.

I remember TNR from the 80s, it was neocon-lite. At that time, it was funded by Martin Peretz.

Media critic Eric Alterman wrote in the American Prospect regarding Peretz's tenure as editor of the New Republic: "[D]uring his reign, Peretz has also done lasting damage to the cause of American liberalism. By turning TNR into a kind of ideological police dog, Peretz enjoyed... [playing] a key role in defining the borders of "responsible" liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic — in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism."[14]

Peretz has used the editorial page of The New Republic to attack people whom he perceives as enemies of Israel[15][16]—"sometimes we attack people unfairly" according to his close friend and TNR literary editor Leon Wieseltier.[16] For example, Peretz attacked I. F. Stone after the journalist signed a public appeal for water and medical supplies for siege victims trapped in West Beirut during the 1982 Israeli Siege of Beirut: Peretz editorialized, "So this is what I. F. Stone has come to, asking his admirers to put up money so that the PLO can continue to fight."[16] In an editorial titled "Blacklisted", Peretz claimed during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 that he was "the only writer on the Middle East not invited by PBS or NPR to speak about the Gulf."

- Wikipedia, Martin Peretz

In the 1980s, TNR positioned itself between a Reagan administration whose anti-communism it considered dangerous and a Democratic Party it didn’t consider anti-communist enough.

That search for a third way had deep historical roots. Although too young to have witnessed the heyday of the Old Left in the 1930s, Marty still nursed a grudge against those progressives who had apologized for Stalin. Long after anyone except for a few octogenarian anti-anti-communists on the Upper West Side still cared, TNR kept trying to prove that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been Soviet spies.

TNR’s historical indignation toward the Old Left was nourished in the 1980s by battles with the remnants of the New Left born during Vietnam. The magazine avoided the crackpot revisionism of Norman Podhoretz and other neoconservatives who insisted that, absent a failure of American will, Vietnam could have been won. But neither did TNR believe Vietnam had discredited the Cold War. While critical of Ronald Reagan, the magazine still believed he was right to seek ways of pressuring the Soviet empire. That led TNR to editorialize against the nuclear freeze and in favor of Reagan’s missile deployments in Western Europe and aid to the Nicaraguan Contras—all stances that placed it at odds with most of the intellectual left, and with some of the magazine’s own writers.

How The New Republic Lost Its Place

And it was more of the same from the 1980s to today. TNR has come to stand for Third Way propaganda, tolerance of neocons, and generally stabbing the genuine left in the front and in the back.

And you think this interview about this book is something a leftie like me would be interested in? What are you smoking?

The article's slant (not one word about Hillary cheating Bernie out of the nomination, while painting Putin and Chavez as mere thugs) should have set off all kinds of alarm bells for you. It did for me. So I did five minutes of Googling and here is what I found about Steven Levitsky:

1) He is a member of the Weatherhead Center (founder = Henry Kissinger) [REF 3]

2) He is a member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (a.k.a. Center for Controlling Latin America with Coups and Crooked Bankers) [REF 1]

3) He is a member of the National Endowment for Democracy's "International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council.[REF 2] (background on NED = [REF 4]

Both authors are Harvard elitists with a long history of whitewashing America's looting and murder in Latin America and non-stop condemnation of Putin (while ignoring our Shock Doctrine looting of Russia and ignoring Yeltsin). Their book seems to be a one-sided attack on Trump, pretending that Hillary's actual crimes are nothing more than Trumpian lies.

Too bad the Guardian caved to TPTB right after they published the Snowden papers.

Call me back when you get a clue.

REF 1

At Harvard, Levitsky also serves on the Executive Committees of both the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs[3] and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.[4] He has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.[5]

- Wikipedia, Steven Levitsky

REF 2

International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member
Steven Levitsky, Harvard University

https://www.ned.org/experts/steven-levitsky/

REF 3

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is a research center for international affairs and the largest international research center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[1]

The center was founded as the Center for International Affairs in 1958 and assumed its current name in 1998 following an endowment by Albert and Celia Weatherhead and the Weatherhead Foundation. The aim of the Center is to confront the worlds problems as diagnosed by its founders Robert R. Bowie and Henry Kissinger in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (1958):

Current and Former Scholars
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Samuel P. Huntington
• Henry Kissinger
• Robert D. Putnam
• Dani Rodrik
• Kenneth Rogoff

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

REF 4

NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.”

The secret hand behind NED’s creation was CIA Director William J. Casey who worked with senior CIA covert operation specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to establish NED in 1983. Casey from the CIA and Raymond from his assignment inside President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council focused on creating a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:03pm

Again...

@arendt

What are you smoking?

See my comment below.

And you think this interview about this book is something a leftie like me would be interested in?

This is a nonpartisan site, if you don't like what's posted, please push back without the insults. That's all we ask.

#1 #1

Issac Chotiner is a Senior Editor at The New Republic. Yet another dubious operation. Again, due diligence.

I remember TNR from the 80s, it was neocon-lite. At that time, it was funded by Martin Peretz.

Media critic Eric Alterman wrote in the American Prospect regarding Peretz's tenure as editor of the New Republic: "[D]uring his reign, Peretz has also done lasting damage to the cause of American liberalism. By turning TNR into a kind of ideological police dog, Peretz enjoyed... [playing] a key role in defining the borders of "responsible" liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic — in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism."[14]

Peretz has used the editorial page of The New Republic to attack people whom he perceives as enemies of Israel[15][16]—"sometimes we attack people unfairly" according to his close friend and TNR literary editor Leon Wieseltier.[16] For example, Peretz attacked I. F. Stone after the journalist signed a public appeal for water and medical supplies for siege victims trapped in West Beirut during the 1982 Israeli Siege of Beirut: Peretz editorialized, "So this is what I. F. Stone has come to, asking his admirers to put up money so that the PLO can continue to fight."[16] In an editorial titled "Blacklisted", Peretz claimed during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 that he was "the only writer on the Middle East not invited by PBS or NPR to speak about the Gulf."

- Wikipedia, Martin Peretz

In the 1980s, TNR positioned itself between a Reagan administration whose anti-communism it considered dangerous and a Democratic Party it didn’t consider anti-communist enough.

That search for a third way had deep historical roots. Although too young to have witnessed the heyday of the Old Left in the 1930s, Marty still nursed a grudge against those progressives who had apologized for Stalin. Long after anyone except for a few octogenarian anti-anti-communists on the Upper West Side still cared, TNR kept trying to prove that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been Soviet spies.

TNR’s historical indignation toward the Old Left was nourished in the 1980s by battles with the remnants of the New Left born during Vietnam. The magazine avoided the crackpot revisionism of Norman Podhoretz and other neoconservatives who insisted that, absent a failure of American will, Vietnam could have been won. But neither did TNR believe Vietnam had discredited the Cold War. While critical of Ronald Reagan, the magazine still believed he was right to seek ways of pressuring the Soviet empire. That led TNR to editorialize against the nuclear freeze and in favor of Reagan’s missile deployments in Western Europe and aid to the Nicaraguan Contras—all stances that placed it at odds with most of the intellectual left, and with some of the magazine’s own writers.

How The New Republic Lost Its Place

And it was more of the same from the 1980s to today. TNR has come to stand for Third Way propaganda, tolerance of neocons, and generally stabbing the genuine left in the front and in the back.

And you think this interview about this book is something a leftie like me would be interested in? What are you smoking?

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:09pm

I understande about the "get a clue" comment, but this one...

@JtC

And you think this interview about this book is something a leftie like me would be interested in?

What is wrong with citing all the facts about why this is a complete turnoff and saying I have no intention of agreeing with this or letting in stand?

If, as you say

Folks are free to post what they want. You are free to push back if you disagree

What is wrong with saying that I am totally not buying this?

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:25pm

Nothing wrong...

@arendt
with not buying it, we encourage rebuttal, without the insults. The insults are the problem.

I blockquoted this:

And you think this interview about this book is something a leftie like me would be interested in?

to emphasize the fact that we are a nonpartisan site. You don't have to agree with anything said here, but because we are nonpartisan don't expect everything to be of "leftie" persuasion. Again, if you don't like it then push back, and you did a great job of supporting your viewpoint, just please, do it in a civil fashion.

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 3:56pm

Please refrain...

@arendt
from using language like this:

Call me back when you get a clue.

Folks are free to post what they want. You are free to push back if you disagree, as long as you do it in a civil fashion.

The article's slant (not one word about Hillary cheating Bernie out of the nomination, while painting Putin and Chavez as mere thugs) should have set off all kinds of alarm bells for you. It did for me. So I did five minutes of Googling and here is what I found about Steven Levitsky:

1) He is a member of the Weatherhead Center (founder = Henry Kissinger) [REF 3]

2) He is a member of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (a.k.a. Center for Controlling Latin America with Coups and Crooked Bankers) [REF 1]

3) He is a member of the National Endowment for Democracy's "International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council.[REF 2] (background on NED = [REF 4]

Both authors are Harvard elitists with a long history of whitewashing America's looting and murder in Latin America and non-stop condemnation of Putin (while ignoring our Shock Doctrine looting of Russia and ignoring Yeltsin). Their book seems to be a one-sided attack on Trump, pretending that Hillary's actual crimes are nothing more than Trumpian lies.

Too bad the Guardian caved to TPTB right after they published the Snowden papers.

Call me back when you get a clue.

REF 1

At Harvard, Levitsky also serves on the Executive Committees of both the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs[3] and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.[4] He has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.[5]

- Wikipedia, Steven Levitsky

REF 2

International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member
Steven Levitsky, Harvard University

https://www.ned.org/experts/steven-levitsky/

REF 3

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is a research center for international affairs and the largest international research center within Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[1]

The center was founded as the Center for International Affairs in 1958 and assumed its current name in 1998 following an endowment by Albert and Celia Weatherhead and the Weatherhead Foundation. The aim of the Center is to confront the worlds problems as diagnosed by its founders Robert R. Bowie and Henry Kissinger in their specification of The Program of the Center for International Affairs (1958):

Current and Former Scholars
• Zbigniew Brzezinski
• Samuel P. Huntington
• Henry Kissinger
• Robert D. Putnam
• Dani Rodrik
• Kenneth Rogoff

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

REF 4

NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.”

The secret hand behind NED’s creation was CIA Director William J. Casey who worked with senior CIA covert operation specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to establish NED in 1983. Casey from the CIA and Raymond from his assignment inside President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council focused on creating a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:06pm

I hear you, but the lack of insight in the OP is infuriating

@JtC

I gave four solid references to who the authors are and two references about the interviewer.

The author has chosen not to speak to all of that. I'm waiting for a substantive response.

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:29pm

I understand...

@arendt
I regularly get infuriated too. All we ask is to remain civil. Please.

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:33pm

As I said below. I will be civil. n/t

@JtC

Submitted by Big Al on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:17pm

Heh, I drafted an essay last night and titled it,

"We Do NOT Live in a Democracy, Dammit!"

I don't know if I'll finish it now. It doesn't seem to matter.

I did try to read that and got this far:

"measured by the journalists and media, and they have been incredible. So in this sense, these are the kinds of institutions that have risen to the occasion."

According to these guys, the journalists and media have been "incredible".

Just goes to show there are two realities out there, the real one and the one that's all made up.

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:31pm

"This is a nonpartisan site"

I get it about snark; I'm sorry. I will refrain from that no matter how upset an OP makes me.

But I do not understand about nonpartisanship and what it has to do with this thread. I tried to answer it on my own. I read Dreaded Metas 1-3, and went looking for a FAQ, which I could not find.

All I got out of the DMs was that one should play nicely and should not advocate for candidates. This thread is not about candidates. It is about a book and an interview.

Are you saying I can't self-identify as a "leftie" (a fairly broad term)? If this isn't a left-leaning site, then it has me completely fooled.

Setting aside the obvious snark issue, could you please unpack how I seem to have offended against "nonpartisanship"?

Thanks.

Submitted by JtC on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 5:02pm

This is a left leaning site...

@arendt
by far, but we also wish to make it accessible to non-lefties. An echo chamber is pretty boring. We've had our share of folks on the right over the years but they don't last long because of the massive push back that they get. We do have several members here that have right and libertarian tendencies and they are welcome, as long as they are civil. The key to participating here is civility. We can have opposing views without rancor or we can have fight club like you can find in the comment section of zerohedge. We have chosen civility.

I consider myself a solid leftie, ask anyone here that knows me well, but sometimes I get defensive when it's suggested that only lefties are welcome here and your comment struck me as such especially when followed up by "What are you smoking", that's why I stressed the nonpartisan thing. I apologize if I misunderstood you intent.

This site has always been touted as nonpartisan from the very beginning as we wished to escape the Democratic Party dogma that we all witnessed at other sites, cough, cough. We strive to be open in discussion on all sides of the issues.

Submitted by arendt on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 4:46pm

MM - Sorry for the snarky remarks. I forgot where I was.

I appreciated your article on the Carillion debacle and voted it up.

Trying to be a good c99p person with this apology.

Submitted by Meteor Man on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 5:20pm

This Just In

@arendt @arendt
I've been off line for a few hours since I posted at 10:38 a.m.

I thought I was simply drawing attention to what might be an informative interview. I read the Guardian review of the book and it did not set off any alarms. I was not aware that my OP could be interpreted as an endorsement of the authors, their book or the rest of the upcoming interview snips.

I added a couple of cautionary notes at the bottom of my OP and may or may not choose to follow up. I don't agree with every viewpoint at Slate, but it's a readable site. If the authors go off the rails I may post a critical review or choose to ignore the rest of the "story".

I accept your apology, but it was hardly necessary. Living on Skid Row thickens your skin after a year or two. In fact, I appreciate your research and background on the authors and institutions.

TNR has undergone a recent change of ownership and I have reposted an article or two. Don't even recall if I was critical or agreed with the TNR slant. Here's the recent compressed history from Wiki:

The magazine’s literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, resigned in protest. Subsequent days brought many more resignations, including those of executive editors Rachel Morris and Greg Veis; nine of the magazine’s eleven active senior writers; legal-affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen; the digital-media editor; six culture writers and editors; and thirty-six out of thirty-eight contributing editors (including Paul Berman, Jonathan Chait, William Deresiewicz, Ruth Franklin, Anthony Grafton, Enrique Krauze, Ryan Lizza, Sacha Z. Scoblic, Helen Vendler, Sean Wilentz). In all, two-thirds of the names on the editorial masthead were gone.[32]

The mass resignations forced the magazine to suspend its December 2014 edition. Previously a weekly for most of its history, immediately before suspension it was published 10 times per year[33] with a circulation of approximately 50,000.

Chris Hughes ownership and editorial crisis, 2012–2016

[Omitted text]

On February 26, 2016, Win McCormack bought the magazine from Hughes, with Hamilton Fish V taking over as publisher.[5] McCormack assumed the role of editor in chief, and named Eric Bates, the former executive editor of Rolling Stone, as editor. On September 25, 2017, Bates resigned to become editor at large and was succeeded as editor by J.J. Gould. On November 3, 2017, Fish resigned amidst sexual harassment allegations.[38]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic

Where is TNR going? I dunno. Not really important. We'll see what the next excerpts looks like tomorrow. Please feel free to attack the next excerpts of the interview at your liesure. Trust me, I will not take it personally.

Peace Out,
Meteor Man

—

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by travelerxxx on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 8:57pm

Red flags

Like poster arendt, I was somewhat upset with the Guardian article. However, I was nevertheless glad I read it. For me, it's important to keep my finger on the pulse of other viewpoints. Often it's not a very palatable chore, but necessary for me as my day-to-day activities keep me in the midst of ardent Trump supporters, extreme right-wingers, and religious fundamentalists/authoritarians/Dominionists, I attempt to understand their views. I most certainly don't agree with them often, but if I have no understanding of the basis of their views, I have trouble arguing against them. So, I bite the bullet and delve into often distasteful theories.

Evidently like poster arendt, I found this Guardian article to fall into the "distasteful" category, although not on the same side of the fence as right-leaning work. Much of what I read was certainly right, but it was in the details that I had trouble. There was this:

...not just Lindbergh, but Huey Long, Henry Ford and George Wallace could have been contenders, but the Republican and Democratic party establishments would not give them the chance to run for national office. Imagine how reprehensible their backroom manoeuvres would appear in the 21st century.

Well, yes, just imagine how reprehensible that would seem today. The paragraph continues:

Privileged men in smoked-filled rooms – not that they would smoke today, nor would they all be men – denying the people a choice. Who defends such elitism?

Indeed! Who would defend such antics today? Answer: The Democratic Party, that's who. These few sentences jumped out at me immediately and a red flag was hoisted. Wikileaks showed us via the DNC emails that exactly the same reprehensible ... backroom manoeuvres were employed to torpedo the candidacy of Sanders. Mentioning the Sanders derailment by the DNC should be obvious as hell and totally in context, nevertheless it was completely ignored in the article. A lie by omission, and the article tainted (in my view) -- yet the article remains valuable to read.

I didn't do due diligence in respect to the authors involved with the interview, but once I hit the (above mentioned) text, I understood that I wasn't exactly in home territory.

I do appreciate the post, Meteor Man. I also appreciate arendt's fiery retorts ... although jtc is right regarding the tone.

Submitted by Meteor Man on Tue, 01/16/2018 - 11:43pm

It's All Good travelerxxx

@travelerxxx @travelerxxx
I read Digby and The American Conservative for precisely the reasons you listed. Both sites have intelligent and thoughtful writers whose comments are frequently right for all the wrong reasons and compel me to analyze my own opinions and beliefs.

Check this out:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blogs/

Maybe the writers are sincere and maybe they are dancing The Centrism Kabuki. I dunno.

I haven't been to TOP in years because the opinions are too intellectually dishonest and intolerant of dissent. I put TOP in the same category as Drudge or Breibart, because second hand reports tell me all I need to know.

I like c99p because there is lots of elbow room for dissent and criticism. Hell, I don't always agree with my own comments or OP's I wrote a week or a month ago. Like my AA sponsor said when I was still in the program:

The only thing you have to know about God is that you ain't Him.

Like poster arendt, I was somewhat upset with the Guardian article. However, I was nevertheless glad I read it. For me, it's important to keep my finger on the pulse of other viewpoints. Often it's not a very palatable chore, but necessary for me as my day-to-day activities keep me in the midst of ardent Trump supporters, extreme right-wingers, and religious fundamentalists/authoritarians/Dominionists, I attempt to understand their views. I most certainly don't agree with them often, but if I have no understanding of the basis of their views, I have trouble arguing against them. So, I bite the bullet and delve into often distasteful theories. Evidently like poster arendt, I found this Guardian article to fall into the "distasteful" category, although not on the same side of the fence as right-leaning work. Much of what I read was certainly right, but it was in the details that I had trouble. There was this: ...not just Lindbergh, but Huey Long, Henry Ford and George Wallace could have been contenders, but the Republican and Democratic party establishments would not give them the chance to run for national office. Imagine how reprehensible their backroom manoeuvres would appear in the 21st century. Well, yes, just imagine how reprehensible that would seem today. The paragraph continues: Privileged men in smoked-filled rooms – not that they would smoke today, nor would they all be men – denying the people a choice. Who defends such elitism? Indeed! Who would defend such antics today? Answer: The Democratic Party, that's who. These few sentences jumped out at me immediately and a red flag was hoisted. Wikileaks showed us via the DNC emails that exactly the same reprehensible ... backroom manoeuvres were employed to torpedo the candidacy of Sanders. Mentioning the Sanders derailment by the DNC should be obvious as hell and totally in context, nevertheless it was completely ignored in the article. A lie by omission, and the article tainted (in my view) -- yet the article remains valuable to read. I didn't do due diligence in respect to the authors involved with the interview, but once I hit the (above mentioned) text, I understood that I wasn't exactly in home territory. I do appreciate the post, Meteor Man. I also appreciate arendt's fiery retorts ... although jtc is right regarding the tone.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn