Durka-Durka-Muhammed-Jihad!!
Here's an article that an associate pointed out to me about how the left is starting to fracture. At least, here is one man's perspective of why he bailed on the 'progressive' movement:
Leaving the left
A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.
When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.
My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.
I remember being bombarded by a constant stream of crap that Reagan would initiate World War III and I started planning on where to go when the CIA headquarters at Langely (two miles from my house in Virginia) was hit by the first salvo of ICBMs from the Soviet Union. I even joked to friends that if I had enough time that I'd go up on the roof of my building and slather up with tanning lotion so that I'd get a great tan.....for about 0.0034 seconds.
I even remember watching the CBS News with my mom and her constantly making comments about how Reagan was 'out for blood' when the air-traffic controllers went on strike. He's gonna get them all thrown in jail! she would say...and when I expressed a different opinion in her presence that she'd immediately (like most liberals) declare that this wasn't my opinion, but rather someone else's and I was mearly parroting it (in this case; it was my father's opinion which was held in contempt in my mother's house. This was my early exposure to an almost fanatical intolerance of differing ideas & thoughts when confronted with those on the left.
To this day my mother is convinced that the Patriot Act will get her thrown in jail because he talks smack about President Bush and those evil Republicans. And my being a Republican?? She asserts that is cause of the medications I take to control my blood pressure.....25 years later and she is still in denial that I have any notions of my own.
And of course it would take years of independent analysis to un-learn all of that crap, not to mention that as of this afternoon there haven't been any exchanges of ICBMs between the United States and Russia.
Yeah....the serious lack of bomb craters and radiation suits proved those theories wrong.
It's nice to see more and more people realizing that the typical anti-war/anti-Bush/Bushitler!! crowd is loosing people cause they're actually thinking about what's happening and giving it serious thought.
how the left is starting to fracture
Starting? The left's biggest problem is that
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
Yogimus said:
I strongly believe that "smart" munitions should be used ONLY on high risk targets. Carpetbomb ev
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
Mad Mikey said:
Cait: You're right about Panama, but I was talking about a multi-nation invasion/subjugation/expl
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
caltechgirl said:
Mikey, your mom and my husband's mother are a pair. Except he doesn't take "mind-altering medica
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
Cait said:
Well, actually we did invade Central America. In 1983, Reagan sent troops to Grenada, which is c
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
Blackglasses said:
To properlly use the "carrot and stick" techinique, it would be best if the US government and mil
Read more in Rats from the Sinking Ship
Comments on Rats from the Sinking Ship
Growing up with a radical liberal mother in the 80s, I remember hearing - constantly - about how President Reagan was going to start a war in Central America.
Well, even though the US has a long history of supporting repressive dictators, paramilitary groups and terrorism within Latin America, you can't deny that under Reagan, the violence reached unprecedented levels. So the "war" characterization is not far off the mark.
|| Posted by Blackglasses, May 23, 2005 06:15 PM ||Don't forget the quagmire!
|| Posted by Yogimus, May 23, 2005 08:18 PM ||If you are refering to Iraq, i feel you are off the mark. Iraq is not a quagmire, nor is it a Vietnam.
It is a low-intensity conflict that is being poorly managed and was for the most part a wholly unnecessary expenditure of military power. It is a slow drain on the resources of the US military and the economic resources of US itself- resources that could be be better used elsewhere, such as acting as the "stick" in US diplomacy elsewhere in the world.
US-backed death squads in Central America are anothre matter...
|| Posted by Blackglasses, May 23, 2005 10:46 PM ||...economic resources of US itself- resources that could be be better used elsewhere, such as acting as the "stick" in US diplomacy elsewhere in the world.
Ummm, this *is* the 'stick of U.S. diplomacy. The U.S. government decided what to do - the military is simply the tool in which U.S. diplomacy is strongly inserted into the world.
|| Posted by Mad Mikey, May 24, 2005 08:52 AM ||To properlly use the "carrot and stick" techinique, it would be best if the US government and military did not insert themselves into situations in which they are graudally sapped of strength and appear weaker than they really are.
Iraq would be a "stick" if it was managed properly and Saddam was in actuality the credible threat that the US presented him as.
As it stands, what was once percieved as the most powerful military force in the world now begins to look weaker as it loses control of large sections of the country to insurgents, faces a mounting death toll from a staggering number of terrorist attacks on civilian targets (which the military has been unable to effectively stop or even slow down, regardless of what their press releases say ) and is unable to secure symbolic targets which would, at the very least, bolster the perception of US military might (such as the road from the airport to downtown Baghdad)
But going back to the topic at hand, Reagan did do some bad stuff...
|| Posted by Blackglasses, May 24, 2005 09:14 AM ||Well, actually we did invade Central America. In 1983, Reagan sent troops to Grenada, which is considered part of Central American/The Caribbean.
|| Posted by Cait, May 24, 2005 11:22 AM ||Mikey, your mom and my husband's mother are a pair. Except he doesn't take "mind-altering medication" for her to blame. I guess that makes it my fault...
|| Posted by caltechgirl, May 24, 2005 11:32 AM ||Cait: You're right about Panama, but I was talking about a multi-nation invasion/subjugation/exploitation type of war.
Some would think that we did that what with attempting to change Nicaragua from communism but the notion was that it would be a HUGE war engulfing all of Central America.
CTG: Oh, my wife gets 'the treatment'....I'm almost willing to be money that (in her mind) my kidney disease is a DIRECT result of my wife's cooking....
|| Posted by Mad Mikey, May 24, 2005 04:26 PM ||I strongly believe that "smart" munitions should be used ONLY on high risk targets. Carpetbomb everything else.
|| Posted by Yogimus, May 27, 2005 02:45 AM ||how the left is starting to fracture
Starting? The left's biggest problem is that it is so fractured. I swear to god there's nothing more frustrating than being at a small rally where everyone in the room thinks he or she is the most important, smartest, most qualified, has the most important agenda or the most worthy cause. Even big rallies it's Stop the War In Iraq and Everywhere and Don't Eat Meat or Drink Subsidised Milk or Listen to Country Music Everywhere.
I mean I'm an arrogant egomaniacal prick, but jeesus, even I can can it when I have to.
|| Posted by scroff, May 27, 2005 12:39 PM ||