You are perpetually outraged. Dont be so angry...its not an attractive quality...its not sexy.
Life in general, this is advice well taken, and true of myself; about
this stuff, I'm not actually that angry about most CE&P stuff, because all in the end it's just what you'd expect, even if there are some surprising results from time to time, like Trump, which did electrify me a bit; but one of the virtues of being a political/philosophical pessimist and being essentially apolitical in the casual sense is that I don't get too excited or too butthurt about the way these things go; although, I do get really, really outraged about one or two things ... the
Times and other Democrat-mouthpiece media's histrionics about Russia are, more than anything else, funny. Although the absolutely
blatant and grotesque nature of the propaganda currently involved and the degree to which it treats it's readers like idiots (most TV news does treat it's viewers like idiots, but I don't typically pick up the
New York Times and expect to be written down to to that degree), is one-sided beyond belief (even in the
Bush v Gore scenario, a
genuinely disputed election and arguable constitutional crisis, we did not see this degree of bias and blatant propaganda … and that ought to show you something … about the media, and about Trump … and, as I've said elsewhere, one of the things that pleases me the most about Trump is the level of histrionics he sends some of my least favorite editorial pages, commentators, and "public intellectuals" into ... but this shit's not even just in the editorial page ... seriously! Check out the
Times's coverage of the alleged Russian interference. It's bizarro-world. Truly.)
Like I said before, I don't even really think Donald Trump is doing to do anything good for me, the office of the President just isn't that powerful; and if I had my pick of three issues, it would be anti-globalization, anti-Zionism, and anti-"social justice" identity politics (a pretty broad thing, granted; to just break it down into another couple of wishes I'd like to see our police empowered to deal with problematic groups without having to worry about being turned into villains without any sort of inquiry, and turn the pronoun-and-marriage revisionist tilt-a-whirl a good bit firm thumb placed on ontological reaity, and cut all "restorative" crap like "voting rights" [in a very specific U.S. sense, not literally the right to vote] and "affirmative action.") Trump is certainly better than Hilary on all of these, but not by far on certain of the issues, way too bellicose on Iran, with whom we should've been seeking
rapproachment ten years or more ago and who's getting ahold of a nuclear weapon actually might serve the balance of power and the interests of peace in that part of the world quite nicely, and, as I said before, on Zionism, which got me told off for this being a particular preoccupation of mine, which it is (so I'll take the time for an aside)
dude, i'm about as pro-israel as Hamas - but seriously, what's the deal with this anti-semitic stuff you've been spouting of late?
it's not a good look.
"anti-Semetic" has been rendered more or less a meaningless term, mostly by overuse by Jewish defenders of Israel and other issues in Judaism and Jewish culture that have been subject to criticism; if "anti-Semitism" means that I hold an antipathy towards (e.g.) mgs here, much less anyone I meet IRL for that matter, because, and only because, he's a Jew, then that's ridiculous; if it's meant in the ca. 19th century political sense, then yes, much what I post could be construed as "anti-Semitic" (which is not really the greatest term anyway seeing as
Semitic is a much larger category than
Jew and
Jews are not even a 100%-overlapping category with
Semites); do I "hate Jews?" absolutely not. do I consider Israel to be genocidal, terroristic, colonialist, and in all respects worse than the South Africa that every liberal was beating their breasts about when I was quite young, yes. do I consider Jews to have disproportionate influence in various arenas, yes, do I consider this problematic, yes; if you do not see this, then your understanding of the degree of opposition and oppression and the overall barriers facing the Palestinian people (which I presume is the angle whereupon you come by your antipathy towards the Zionist state) is incomplete. But we've gone over all this before. nothing there is
hate or
promotion of violence (or any sort of unpleasantness) too anyone on the basis of their race or ethnicity; certainly no more so than, say, the media's constant harping on White police shooting Black men (usually petty criminals who give the police something to be alarmed about which is definitely taught in Petty Crime 101 ... as Jimmy McNulty said, in a disarmed moment of conviviality, to [my man!] Bodie Braudus, "…don't go making any furtive moves!")
if teh jews are such a problem, isn't it a tad ironic to have named yourself after a song written by a jew?
Not ironic in the least; probably the underlying perverse sexual content of that song would be considerably ironic, but on either charge, it's a work of art which I enjoy; I do not have to engage with the artist's ancestry to enjoy it (unlike some of the Nazis, although someone like Göring, of course, when more interested in being an aesthete, didn't care about Jewishness or any other *-ness anyway) ... besides, Lou Reed wasn't (as far as I know) an active Zionist or really involved in Jewish-oriented politics. I do not believe that art, of any kind, is inherently political. I have Hindu, African, South-American art in my home right now not to mention some prints of classic Modern Art (Miró and Kandinsky) as well as some much more typical and traditional Western art of more a devotional nature, and I'd gladly hang a lot of other different kinds of art, sacred or secular, as long as it,
ars gratia artis, looked good and didn't actually offend.
i know the USA is basking in a revival of racist scapegoating, but is it really necessary to pollute the forum with this (explicitly prohibited) reactionary "race politics"?
with all due respect, this is not the place for racist ideology. creating an explanatory thread of your ideological perspective is one thing - but continually returning to this kind of rhetoric just seems like a particularly ham-fisted attempt at widening the "Overton window" past the point that is considered acceptable by the BLUA.
I simply mentioned one of the most serious and grave reasons why I cannot support Trump (…this being Zionist and economic-political Jewish connections; he is not Jewish, but he is arguably the
most Jewish president we've ever elected; why people suppose him to be anti-Semitic I have no idea, nor do I know why people think he poses a threat to homosexuals, although I see both Jews and homosexuals acting as if Trump opposes them, which he doesn't, based on either ignorance or the desire to promulgate more hysteria, I guess, I don't really know.) As far as expanding the Overton window, I can't say this was an explicit design, but it's a good thing. There are certain things that are taboo to discuss, like harm reduction; there are also certain things that are taboo to discuss in politics. Now, I'm not considering we go ahead and start copying memes over from
/pol/ or whatever, but if there is legitimate political content I think it's legitimate to discuss. Particularly, as regards this election (not general "Jewish question" discussion, but particularly as applies to the
election, as above; and, actually, what touched off the entire anti-Semitism thread … I didn't actually start it, but just pointed out these facts about Trump, and people came flying out of the woodwork with a rather, as you say, hamfisted attempt to tar and feather me as an "anti-Semite" (again, a term that doesn't really mean anything) … with regards to the election, people are focused on various bad qualities of Trump that are more than anything rooted in the man's personality and certain off-the-cuff off-color statements he's made, while some things that
really should get people upset about him (such as what's shaping up to be his Middle Eastern policies, despite criticism of his predecessors which history will probably prove hypocritical, and furthermore prove the President not to be the master of our foreign affairs particularly in that region) -- issues interesting both to the left and to the right. and if people get upset just because people point out that people have Jewish political/economic/etc. ties, then that ought to show you something, and it's not about the person doing the pointing.
Anyways...... If democracy is a shit ideology (id agree) what system would you promote? A representational constitutional republic 2 party system...or something more authoritarian with one party...or one of those multiparty parliamentary systems?
This is a tricky one. I think the Westminster system to be much, much better than the American one, and would like to see a more contemporary equivalent of the "House of Lords" as the upper and significantly more powerful house (cf. pre-1911 U.K.) which is composed of people who actually have power (i.e. military, corporate, union, Church, various types of academy, judges, and so on); this being in the original (Italian) Fascist sense of "incorporation" of these various interests into one "corpus" (this was at the time of course called "corporatism" ...
not how the term is used now to describe the undue influence of international business corporations on government, which is actually something that would be put in check by
corporatism in the original sense, as the
corpora that would be represented would include (hopefully, since I assume this question means I'm getting to talk about my hopes and ideals) resurgent trade unions, even groups concerned with the environment, and so on, and so forth; the lower house being popularly elected, in some form similar to the U.S. congress and electoral college; where both population
and geography are accounted for in representation, something like, say, [font="cambria math,cambria,georgia,times new roman"]2 + (
Pstate / Σ(
PUS))
N[/font] seats allocated, but elected and operating again in a Westminster-type system; essentially consolidating the political functions of the Supreme Court and Presidency into this system, and the addition of an autocratic head of state who is not generally involved in day-to-day affairs but has a great deal of power in cases of necessity or in preventing radical political and social changes.
