Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 814 Editor's Choice: 48
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it's interesting to contemplate...
[Read the article: The National Review mind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...how this happened. The nut-ball right in this country finally figured out what to do. Use the big lie until they'd confused enough people to get their vote. Then cheat, just a bit, in Florida.
Then spend the next three years essentially subverting and ruining the credibility of our Mass Media. Because MSM was the only obstacle to the Big Lie.
Then, in 2004, the Big Lie really came into its own. We who oppose these fascisti better figure out how to counter the Big Lie, or things are going to get a lot worse. You think Bush and Cheney and their enablers at NR are bad? They're just a prelude, if we don't get a handle on these tactics. There are people far worse who would like to run things.
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Here's one specific...
[Read the article: The National Review mind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...I posted Jonah asking what he meant by *ruthless* and he replied with a link to a recent post at The Corner. Here's the relevant passage:
"For example, Rich posted this excerpt from David Ignatius' column last month:
The insurgents who kill our young soldiers are ruthless, but we have sometimes been cautious in our response. Take the question of targeting bomb makers: There may be an unlimited supply of explosives in Iraq, but there is not an unlimited supply of people who know how to wire the detonators. In 2004, CIA operatives in Iraq believed that they had identified the signatures of 11 bomb makers. They proposed a diabolical — but potentially effective — sabotage program that would have flooded Iraq with booby-trapped detonators designed to explode in the bomb makers' hands. But the CIA general counsel's office said no. The lawyers claimed that the agency lacked authority for such an operation, one source recalled.
Me: That seems a good example where we had less ruthlessness than we needed"
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I must confess, I find that a pretty good idea. I'm surprised we didn't do it.
I've always felt that if we were going to go into Iraq, we should have done it the way Joseph Stalin would have. Otherwise, forget it, it'd be a disaster, and so it has been.
Of course, we should never have gone in there. But since we did... we could have pacified the place, but we would have had to violate every single ideal of what it means to be American.
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an aside to Elephantman: your taste for the non-sequiteur is really quite impressive. Do you really *agree* that "selected liberals" should be "executed." Do you really agree with that statement? We'd like to hear.
As for accusing the GOP of being full of fascists, or that it is a fascist political party, I suggest you look up a good definition of "fascist" on the web and read it carefully. The GOP today *exemplifies* fascism. I don't see how any reasonably intelligent person could reach any other conclusion. The generally accepted definition of fascism fits the current GOP to a tee, and fits many of its more vocal members, as well. I think you should educate yourself before you say that calling people like you fascists is hateful. I'd call it accurate, based purely on a consensual, common-sense understanding of the word.
To wit:
fascist
1921, from It. partito nazionale fascista, the anti-communist political movement organized 1919 under Benito Mussolini (1883-1945); from It. fascio "group, association," lit. "bundle." Fasci "groups of men organized for political purposes" had been a feature of Sicily since c.1895; the 20c. sense probably infl. by the Roman fasces (q.v.) which became the party symbol. Fascism, also 1921, was originally used in Eng. 1920 in its It. form, fascismo. Applied to similar groups in Germany from 1923.
"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." [Robert O. Paxton, "The Anatomy of Fascism," 2004]
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does this sound *at all* familiar, Elephantman? If it doesn't, you've really not been paying attention at all and there's absolutely no reason to take you seriously.
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unitary executive...and something else, maybe
[Read the article: Building the stonewall]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't doubt for a moment that Cheney kept the task force minutes secret as part of a strategy to accrete power for the Executive Branch. That seems self-evident.
But, there were likely many very delicate matters discussed as part of that task force. One was probably Peak-Oil. And Peak-Oil is absolutely something our government does not want to talk about. Not now. Not ever. And when the inevitable consequences of the decline of world production of fossil-fuels become obvious, our government STILL won't talk about peak-oil. Our government will likely just blame it on the someone or something. Anything to avoid responsibility for NOT planning for the single greatest clusterfuck in human history.
We have a government that thrives on ad-hoc management. That way, you always have deniability. The last thing anyone on that energy task-force wanted to have to explain was just what Peak-Oil is, and why it's important. That'd completely destroy all their deniablity.
Mark these words folks. They've all been said, and better than I say them. But mark them well, because you will see the truth of them, likely within three years. Our major oil suppliers are experiencing drastic declines in their production capacity, right at this moment, and the entire thing could come crashing down at any time. When? No way to tell for sure, especially when major producers consistently lie about their reserves.
When the shortages begin, take note of the way in which our government will do a perfect imitation of Claude Raines in Casablanca "I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that our oil suppliers have been lying for 20 years about their reserves. Why, we had NO idea.."
See http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary21.html for a succinct precis of the problem.